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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Thursday, February 2, 2017
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WHILE in Bangkok, Thailand, we found ourselves striding through Patpong 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 tourist guide must have read our minds. He said that among the sexy skimpy-dressed ladies gyrating to the sound of music in the many resto-bars 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 could have chosen 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 took a look at a row of sexy girls available for a price.
While writing this column yesterday, I remembered that Patpong night. If prostitution were legal in the Philippines, I surmised, those girls might not have left home.
And if prostitution were legal here, I digressed, women drug pushers might have chosen that oldest profession instead. There would be less extra-judicial killings of drug pushers in the Philippines.
The Thais are not Christians; the majority is 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 victim is as compatible with the perpetrator as are dancing partners. As regards the harm that prostitutes inflict – probably venereal disease – the only way to curb or minimize it is to legalize prostitution.
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. We have known of well-off people losing their bottom peso to the casino.
Some politicians are worse than prostitutes. We saw how senators and congressmen colluded to impeach and convict a sitting Chief Justice to please the Higher One in Malacanang.
Let’s face it, most 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, especially the bachelors, the widowers, and the separated. Without them, men would marry while not ready yet to support a family.
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 “hot Arabs” raping Filipina domestic helpers./PN
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