Taiwan to Legalize the Sex Trade

January 7, 2011

Ralph Jennings reports for Forbes, 7 Jan 2011:

http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/0117/companies-wang-fang-ping-brothels-decriminalizing-sex-trade.html

On the surface, Taipei works like any other Asian city. Bar girls snuggle up to men who buy them drinks. At nightclubs hidden inside high-rise apartment complexes, men make private deals for sex with the hostesses. Massage parlors, in their own words, offer "more" than service for sore backs. In the older sections of town, women discreetly solicit men for sex, trading 15 minutes for US$30.

What sets Taipei apart from, say, Beijing or Hong Kong is that the government is legalizing the sex trade instead of squelching it. Taiwan will formally decriminalize prostitution in November, but it will be legal only in certain areas. Officials are now studying where those areas should be; one proposal would allow studio-style brothels in parts of Taipei. The explanation for this move to live and let live: The world's oldest profession happens to be one of Taiwan's best organized.

After officials began to tighten a noose around prostitution after more than five decades of hush-hush permissiveness, defiant professionals formed the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters in 1998 to defend it. Some of the members knew no other career and didn't want to switch in their 40s or 50s. Others ran profitable nightclubs and sought to protect their livelihood. Based in a narrow Taipei alley that once bustled with brothels, the nonprofit wields surprising clout for a group with just 71 members. It has demonstrated loudly outside cabinet offices and Taipei's city hall for looser rules. Its protesters followed then president Chen Shui-bian around "like a shadow," to quote the group's secretary general. The collective once ran a candidate for city council, winning 443 votes but not enough for the seat.

The collective, billed as a women's rights group, not only wants prostitution legalized. It also demands safe zones for soliciting customers and safe rooms for sex, both without police surveillance. "The government's position is always passive, and if you don't push, nothing happens," says Wang Fang-ping, the secretary general, speaking with the angry edge of an activist for a tough cause. "We push not just to change policies, but also to change the views of normal citizens. What we are doing is a revolution."

Wang, 45, is the movement's rudder. She's a no-nonsense former trade union general secretary with a lifelong soft spot for women's struggles in male-dominated Taiwan. In 2002 she was drawn to the collective's cause as Taiwan's estimated 80,000 sex workers were suffering some of their worst setbacks after thriving in the early 1990s. "I can understand women of weak status," she says, citing her mother's limited prospects. "I also deeply respect workers and realize the power of organization to improve their destiny." Wang's 12-hour days of calls, letters and attendance at pivotal events have brought sex workers from the brink of extinction to the bargaining table. "I know the collective as a group of concerned citizens with a strong voice on the topic," says cabinet spokesman Johnny Chiang.

The topic was thrust into the spotlight in the late 1990s. Chen, then Taipei's mayor, ordered brothels shut down to throttle the sex trade and remind Taiwan of his opposition-party credentials. The rival Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) had winked and nodded at prostitution in one form or another since taking power in the 1940s. Chen upped the pressure as head of state from 2000 to 2008. The collective says 20,000 sex workers were punished under Taiwan's "social order maintenance" rules over the ten years ending in 2008.