gayhughhefner:

I want to take a quick second and mention the trans sex workers in Thailand. Thailand is notorious for sex tourism (where foreigners come in and pay for copious amounts of sex and entertainment that fetishizes Asians). A quick google search of Thailand prostitution will provide you with various sites that tell you how and where to find prostitutes and how to differentiate between female prostitutes or “ladyboys”. Because of the recent explosion in the sex trade, more and more people are voluntarily becoming prostitutes but there is still an incredibly high amount of forced sex slaves and one particular group is the kathoeys or the ladyboys; kathoeys are essentially transgender (male to female) sex workers. There are kathoeys that were sold by their family to pimps and forced to undergo gender transition surgery, often shortening their lives to about 20-30 years due to medical complications, mental health issues, substance abuse, and HIV/STD transmission. Thailand’s political/social understanding and tolerance of transgender issues have been severely misconstrued because of the intertwining of sex tourism. I might also add that it’s usually white men that perpetrate a lot of the transmisogynist and fetishy behavior. I have seen people glamorize kathoeys/ladyboys for their looks and I am disgusted that they intentionally ignore the struggles of Asian, transgender sex workers, exploited by a harmful, destructive tourist industry.