WHILE in Bangkok, Thailand, we found ourselves striding through Patphong Night Market, the famous alley offering distinctively different products. On one side of the road were vendors selling low-cost souvenir and gift items; on the other side, something else for naughty minds.
Our male tourist guide must have read our minds. He said that among the skimpy-dressed ladies gyrating to the sound of music in the roadside resto-bar were nubile Filipino women. Would we like to have a seat in one of the bars? Thinking of our limited logistics, we shook our heads but encouraged our guide to tell us what he knew about those Pinay dancers.
“You can choose one for the night,” he told us. “They are professionals. They prefer to work here because prostitution in your country is illegal.”
Our tourist guide also took us to a legal prostitution house, where we just stared at a row of sexy girls available for a price. We could distinguish a few Filipinas by their looks.
”If prostitution were legal in the Philippines,” I told the tourist guide, “women drug pushers might have chosen that job instead. There would be less extrajudicial killings of drug pushers.”
The Thais are not Christians; most are Buddhists. But they keep in mind what Jesus Christ said to the multitude who had tried to stone an adulterous woman, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” (John 8:7)
This corner believes in legalizing prostitution in the Philippines. After all, it is where the willing victim is as compatible with the perpetrator as a dance instructor is with a dancing student. As regards the harm that prostitutes inflict – probably venereal disease – the best way to curb or minimize it is to legalize prostitution.
It’s because, as in Bangkok, licensed prostitution houses maintain the services of a physician. Under medical supervision, the girls would be less harmful to men’s health than cigarette smoking. Less harmful than gambling, too, where the rich could lose their bottom peso to the casino.
Some well-connected public officials are worse than prostitutes. They willingly trade principle for unlawful pecuniary gain. Like those officials of the Bureau of Customs suspected of colluding with drug lords in facilitating the entry of P6.4-billion shabu from China, they could be fired, only to be re-appointed to another office.
Let’s face it, Filipino prostitutes are themselves victims of a cruel society that has refused to provide them with decent alternatives. They have turned to prostitution because they want to “retire from poverty.” They don’t care about the puritan condemnation of “exploitation of women.”
Between a prostitute and a teacher-turned-domestic helper, who is more exploited? More often than not, the DH has a low fixed salary, but the “prosti” commands her own price in the hope of “graduating” comfortably from the trade in old age. She sincerely believes it is “more blessed” to give happiness to a man than to work for starvation pay.
In less hypocritical societies, prostitutes are no longer outcasts. On the contrary, they are appreciated for the “love” they render. They serve the biological needs of normal men, the widowers, the separated and especially the bachelors who are not yet ready to plunge into marital responsibility.
The moralists have nothing to fear; prostitutes would not do business with them. On the other hand, the society that shuns prostitution endangers the moral fabric more. We don’t have to belabor the issue; we all have heard of Filipina domestic helpers in Saudi Arabia ending up as rape victims of their male employers. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
