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Peaceful Dave's avatar

It's been years since I was in Bangkok but at that time you found women women on patpong or soi cowboy. The transvesties were down sukumvit where we got off the bus to catch a took took to visit family. Nobody is being deceived, the sex shoppers knew where to go to get what they were looking for. It appears to be a booming business.

My family and I were on a tour bus that went down thru patpong. It was soul crushing. The girls outside the bars as advertisement looked so drugged that I wondered if they remembered their own names. Truly a horrific sight. The "ladies" outside the trans bars appeared to be sober and other than being obvious prostitutes they were not as dreadful a sight. That just might be me as a father of Thai girls who saw that.

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Steve QJ's avatar

"Nobody is being deceived, the sex shoppers knew where to go to get what they were looking for. It appears to be a booming business."

Oh yeah, I think the guys know exactly what they're getting. That's the point. Last time I was there, in 2018, the ladyboy bars were always full to bursting with men. I'm betting they wouldn't call themselves gay, but we all know what they were there for.

Homosexuality is a complete non-issue in my social circles, and I think that makes it easy to forget how incredibly stigmatised it still is in some places. Heck, a few years ago, I read a story about men who meet up with other men to have sex once or twice a week and still insist they're straight.

And yeah, prostitution is always pretty depressing as far as I'm concerned. Though I agree, it can hit new lows in Thailand. The age of some of those girls too...

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Chris Fox's avatar

The oldest profession.

True story: in one experiment, chimpanzees were introduced to the concept of money. They would earn tokens for certain tasks and could use them to buy treats. They liked it, and it motivated them.

You know where this is going, and you're right. One of the females started turning tricks.

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Peaceful Dave's avatar

Wow, but I suppose that it shouldn't be surprising.

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