RE-EVALUATING ANTI-TRAFFICKING: CAMBODIAN FEMINISMS AND SEX WORK REALITIES

AN ESSAY
BY HEIDI HOEFINGER

What does feminism look like in Cambodia?
It comes in many forms. Women hghting for
their rights in response to forced evictions
from their land by male-dominated govern-
ments and international corporations. Female
garment workers striking against their
(mostly) male bosses for increased pay and
better working conditions. Women politi-
cians trying to have their voices heard
within stringently male-dominated politics.
Female and transgender sex workers demanding
respect and recognition as human beings for
the decisions they make to sell sex. The
hrst three examples are fairly uncontrover-
sial territory within feminist debate in
that they are generally agreed upon as worthy
and acceptable feminist issuesall women
should have the right to their land, to
better factory work conditions, and to par-
ticipate in politics. But the fourth example
remains a herce ideological battleground.
The dominant feminist discourse around
sex work in Cambodiaat least the one most
audible due to the hegemony of the inter-
national `rescue industry' thereis that of
`anti-sex work' abolitionist feminism. Within
this model, prostitution is conHated with
sex trafhcking and is thus always viewed as
an act of violence against women; no 'pros-
tituted woman' could ever willingly decide
to do this work, and thus she should be
rescued from it and taught other vocational
skills, like sewing, so that she can par-
ticipate in forms of more `dignihed' labour,
like factory work; and any 'prostituted woman'
who does not identify as a victim in need
of saving is simply an objectihed pawn of
the patriarchy. Hence, the sex industry and
sexual slavery (considered one and the same)
should essentially be abolished.
One of the most visible abolitionists in
Cambodia has been Somaly Mam. Cambodian-
born Somaly Mam and The Somaly Mam Foundation
(SMF) have become globally famous due to
Somaly Mam's efforts in speaking interna-
tionally about her own experiences as an
orphaned trafhcked victim who allegedly
spent her life enslaved by various violent
men and brothel owners. These stories have
been painstakingly detailed in her memoir,
The Road to Lost Innocence (2005). As a result
of her confessions, and the parading of other
female 'victims' of trafhcking in front of
cameras so that they may describe their
abuse in lurid details, Somaly Mam has won
prestigious awards and millions of heartfelt
dollars. Rich westerners and celebrities,
both outraged and moved by the `trauma
stories' have generously opened their pockets
so that she could continue her rescue work
work which has involved accompanying police
on brothel raids in order to rescue women
(who do not necessarily want to be rescued)
and detaining them in vocational shelters,
or sending them to government-sponsored
`rehabilitation centres' (which, in Cambodia,
are nothing more than prisons).
The problem with Somaly Mam's work is that
it has mostly been based on falsehoods and
exaggerations. According to investigative
journalist Simon Marks, who broke the latest
story in Newsweek in May 2014, she was not
an orphaned sex slave for most of her young
life. Instead, she was raised by her bio-
logical parents and attended school until
high school (a privilege many girls do not
have in Cambodia due to gendered inequities
in education). In at least two cases, the
young women she paraded in front of the
media were not victims of sex trafhcking
eitherbut instead persuaded to say so in
order to raise funds for SMF and Somaly
Mam's anti-trafhcking NGO in Cambodia, AFESIP
(Agir Pour Les Femmes en Situation Prcaire).
After seeing these revelations in print,
I am left with two feminist questions: How
is this kind of feminised exploitation for
gain any different from the male `pimps' and
other third parties who proht from the
labour of sex workers whom she so vehemently
opposes in her abolitionist anti-trafhcking
work? What have been the consequences of
these allegedly false and unethical aboli-
tionist tactics for other sex workers in
Cambodia?
The answer to the hrst question is simple:
in many ways, it is no different. She has
used poor women and fraudulent stories for
her own gain and international prestige
which works only to create a credibility
issue for real survivors of abuse. She is
guilty of exploitation for proht, and the
consequences of this, and the anti-trafhck-
ing gravy train it has inHuenced, have been
detrimental for many other people in Cambodia
who make their livings from trading sex.
The anti-trafhcking movement that Somaly
Mam helped spur (starting with her hrst
public appearance in a French documentary
in 1998 with a Cambodian girl who allegedly
auditioned to tell fabricated stories of her
own sexual slavery), gained momentum when
the anti-trafhcking agenda became a priority
of the Bush Administration in the early
2000s. By 2003, the `Global AIDS Act' and
the `Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act' were implemented, which
created a series of conditions for organi-
sations receiving US funding for HIV or
anti-trafhcking programming. One of these
conditions was the `anti-prostitution pledge',
which required recipients of USAID grants
to explicitly oppose sex work and trafhcking.
Sex worker advocacy groups that did not have
these policies in place or that refused to
sign the pledge, had important funding
pulled. As a result, certain condom pro-
grammes ended, and certain drop-in centres
for sex workers were closed (Busza 2006).
Grassroots community-led groups in
Cambodia, such as Womens Network for Unity
(WNU)the current sex worker union with
approximately 6400 memberswere directly
affected. Most local and international NGOs
working with WNU at the time were heavily
dependent on US funding, and as a result of
the new stipulations, they ended their
support for fear that collaborations with
WNU would jeopardise their funding (Sandy
2013). Already-marginalised sex workers and
their supporters, including feminists of
other kinds (namely liberal, Marxist,
socialist, or sex radical feminists), were
further pushed to the periphery as the abo-
litionist anti-trafhcking bulldozer raged
ahead.
By 2008, the abolitionist movement had
gained so much power in Cambodia that under
pressure from the US and UK, the Cambodian
government passed the `Law on the Suppression
of Human Trafhcking and Sexual Exploitation'.
This anti-trafhcking law formally criminal-
ised `soliciting in public' and according
to WNU, its implementation was (and continues
to be) devastating to sex workers: large
police sweeps of parks began taking place,
where the possession of condoms was used as
evidence of prostitution (despite that in
the late 1990s, Cambodia implemented the
`100% Condom Use Programme' whereby owners
and managers of all entertainment estab-
lishments had to enforce condom use as a
condition of commercial sex).
According to both WNU and a 2010 report
by Human Rights Watch titled Off The Streets:
Arbitrary Detention and Other Abuses Against
Sex Workers in Cambodia, many cis- and
transgendered adult women arrested during
these sweeps were sent to vocational shelters,
or to government run rehabilitation centres
where they faced a number of abuses. These
included being forced to urinate in the same
plastic bags their rice was served in; HIV
positive folks were denied their medications,
and `pretty' women were sexually assaulted
by prison guards and police. The law that
was meant to `save' and protect victims of
trafhcking and prostituteswho are one and
the same according to the discursive and
practical conHation of sex work and trafhck-
inghas actually put many more cis- and
transgendered women in danger of violence,
abuse, stigma, and HIV transmission.
Another harmful consequence of Somaly
Mam's efforts, and those of other Western
abolitionist feminists, has been the estab-
lishment of a culture of permanent victimhood
for poor women in Cambodia. Impoverished
women who sell sex are all portrayed as duped,
nave, lacking agencyand in need of saving
(a convenient subjectivity for those making
money off the rescue industry). Whenever I
or other feminists contest this construction
of powerless sex workers in favour of one
that is more focused on agency and self-de-
termination, we are told that we are simply
perpetuating patriarchy; that approving of
the `chosen careers' of such women does little
to ground their `choices' in reality; and
that in portraying such women as self-re-
liant, capable, and career-oriented we are
overlooking the more desperate aspects both
of their individual situations and the
situation of women in Cambodia in general!
Here, the `desperate' effort of these feminists
to continuously position Cambodian sex workers
as powerless and incapable becomes clear.
Sex workers' decisions to sell sex (within
a stiHing system of gendered constraints),
and our recognition and respect for those
decisionsare very much grounded in reality.
And here's the reality: Cambodia is, indeed,
an incredibly patriarchal society. Women live
under oppressive patriarchal conditions asso-
ciated with strict gendered ideals, and on
a daily basis, must negotiate the harsh social
and moral codes that are meant to control
their behaviour (originating from the Chpab
Srei -or Womens Code-- that were written by
monks and elite men between the 15
th
and 19
th

centuries). These codes require women to stay
close to home, to speak quietly, to dress
conservatively, to not enjoy sex, and to
accept their subordinate position to men, so
that they remain `virtuous,' and the household
remains peaceful.
So, by leaving their homes in search of
work, opportunity, and often respite from
other, more oppressive conditions or abusive
situations, they are breaking many of the
social rules, and defying many of the moral
codes which keep them subordinate and
dependent on men. Thus, it could be argued,
they are in fact, resisting and subverting
the patriarchydespite that this is often
done in the context of the existing sexual
and gendered status quo. Although sex workers'
experiences are heterogeneous and vary
greatly across the sex and entertainment
sectors, the case could also be made that by
utilising men for their own material benehts,
some women are undermining the unidirectional
exploitation argument by blatantly `exploit-
ing back'. And hnally, although they are
regularly stigmatised as `broken' and
`stained', many Cambodian sex workers trans-
gress the boundaries of respectability and
challenge gendered double standards by
becoming proud patrons and providers for
their families, despite that their work is
considered unrespectable and immoral.
This perspective of self-empowerment is
by no means an attempt to ignore or deny the
vast structural violence that women in
Cambodia must grapple with on a regular basis.
Instead, my aim is to point out that feminist
perspectives which continually focus on vic-
timhood, exploitation, powerlessness, and
patriarchal oppression ignore not only the
agency of Khmer women, and the unpredictable
Huid ways that power shifts in structurally
unequal situations, but also the ways in
which young women blatantly subvert `the
patriarchy' through the decisions they make
to sell sex (--decisions which are often made
after they have tried other forms of low-wage,
`oppressive' feminised labor such as factory
work, street trading, or domestic work). By
being proactive and attempting to hnd
solutions to, at times, deeply violating
social conditions such as domestic violence
and poverty through their engagement in sex
work, the women challenge perspectives of
victimhood, and disrupt the dominant global
discourse taking place around their lives.
In Cambodia and beyond, sex workers want
to be respected for the decisions they make
within some very difhcult circumstances and
constrained environments. The do not all want
to be saved by `saviours' who claim to know
best. If anti-trafhckers really want to put
and end to the most exploitative cases of
sexual exploitation, they should build trust
and alliances with sex workers on the ground
who most often have the closest access to
these situations--not take away their main
livelihoods by abolishing `sexual slavery'-
-which is simply an inaccurate framing of
the complexities of adult sex work.
Perhaps during this critical moment of
re-evaluation of anti-trafhcking efforts
resulting from the fall of the ultimate
'rescue hero', concerned feminists of varying
perspectives can come together to turn
attention to broader issues such as global
racial, economic and class inequalities, neo-
liberalism, and corporate globalisation, as
well as to more localised issues in Cambodia
such as gender disparities, rapid industri-
alisation, land disputes, working conditions,
violent governmental suppression and political
corruption. Only then can the structural
preconditions behind the expansion of the
contemporary Cambodian sex sectorsas well
as the rights of the workers in those sectors
be addressed. Only then might the needs and
desires of women and children involved in
`real' cases of sexual abuse and sexual labour
against their will, be met.
Bibliography
Busza, Joanna (2006) Having the rug pulled from
under your feet: one project's experience of the
US policy reversal on sex work Health Policy
Plan. 21 (4):329-332.
Sandy, Larissa (2013) International agendas and
sex worker rights in Cambodia in Social Activism
in Southeast Asia, Michele Ford (ed.), pp. 154-169,
London: Routledge.