Tangail's Brothel and Sex Work: The "At Least" Sydrome

Black and red smeared eyes peered out between the curtains of their rooms. Some women’s faces were painted white as a Geisha, dressed in vibrant, sparkly skirts. We didn’t know if their make-up was to appear more enticing to customers, or to disguise who they are under a mask.

Despite all the color and glamour, this was a dark place.

Diya and I took a trip through Bangladesh’s oldest brothel in Tangail. Walking through the small alleys, it was similar to a dirty, slum. The ground is the wastebasket and everything reeks of various human fluids. Houses (single room shacks) are practically on top of one another, sharing walls as apartment buildings. There’s no privacy with curtains for doors and outdoor bathrooms. The narrow alleys are filled with sex workers waiting for clients—and clients just dawdling, chatting with shopkeepers selling soda and chips, watching with televisions. It’s own self-sustaining community with food, shelter and water pumps. People could stay inside for weeks without needing to go outside the brothel. Diya turned to me at one point: “This is the strangest place I’ve ever been.”

It was only so uncomfortable knowing what goes on behind these billowing curtains. Shirtless men peered out from the beds, staring at us foreigners unashamed. Honestly, I couldn’t even look at the men. To the women, I tried to smile but I felt intrusive walking in on their work and home space. I didn't take photos for that reasons. And it was mid-day.

It was additionally heartbreaking after hearing the personal stories of the women. I don’t want to sensationalize their lives in this blog, but I do want to create awareness. Some women cried to us during their interviews, sharing how their parents abandoned them or they were sold into the brothel. One woman was so small, ten years old, that she wasn’t even menstruating when she was forced to have sex. Her body was so young and fragile her hip broke when one man was penetrating her. Some girls look (and are) so young that some madams (women pimps) inject hormones used to fatten cows. (Thanks for the link, Neelofer!)

Often, young girls and women are chukri, bonded prostitutes. A relative or the trafficker have a large debt that is endowed to the young woman. They work under a madam until it is paid. With extremely high and unfair interest, women have no other livelihood or skill by the time the debt is settled. Some continue with sex work or become madam, continuing the cycle. Often times, they make more money selling sex than any other job, but the cost of living in this brothel is much higher than living outside of it. Their earnings rarely stay in their hands.

We learned that most of the violence doesn’t come from customers, but from police and shopkeepers. Sex workers are constantly chastised and beaten when they step outside the brothel. Clearly these men don’t think that it’s their brother or neighbor who is buying sex services, perpetuating the demand for female sex workers.

The organization we went with gives trainings to the women on how to not appear like a prostitute outside the brothel. Their explanation was: “Sex workers are treated as their work all the time. A businessman can leave his business and be a father or brother. Sex workers are beaten when they aren’t working because people can tell what their work is by the way they walk and dress. We give them training on how look more respectable in the public eye.”

At first, I was disappointed by this training’s approach. The problem lies in the idea that men think that women’s bodies are dangerous and must be hidden. Telling sex workers to change their appearance is reiterating that sex work is immoral and should be kept out of the public view. But violence is occurring—what can be done to stop it now? By helping these women change their dress, they can at least be safe on the street.

“At least”—that term was ringing in our heads throughout the entire trip. So much violence is happening: physical, emotional, structural. There’s no way to change every thing at once. With small steps, though not perfect, women “at least” are moving forward on the long road to equality and empowerment. “At least” it’s better, not perfect, but better.

We witnessed the NGO workers holding hands and gossiping with some sex workers as if they are normal women (because, shocker, they are normal women). The staff was really sweet and non-judgmental. Diya asked the women about the organization’s work and it’s impact on the brothel community. Women responded that it was truly helpful. They are helping release bonded prostitutes from their debts and instructing condom use. The organization has this really innovative approach to providing services to women who are traumatized: a workbook that uses symbols for women to draw their experiences and express their needs (see left).

One woman responded that if the organization wasn’t there supporting the sex workers, some company would have torn down the brothel and built a factory. Without this community and space, sex work would be much more difficult, and dangerous.

I still toss around my opinion on legalizing sex work. One of the world’s oldest professions, it’s not disappearing. It’s impossible, and unsafe, to try to erase it. People will find a way so we should 'at least' protect them. But legalization does not suddenly transform how most sex workers don’t necessarily have much of a choice in picking that profession; nor does it erase the bullshit patriarchal notions behind sex work: that a man has such ‘unruly’ hormones that he can’t control his sex drive and need to use a woman’s body to fulfill this uncontrollable desire. Therefore, she is turned into a slut, something worthless. I will accept it’s legalization with maybe the following conditions: sex work is consented by the worker and client together, there are scholarships and services for workers who want to leave the profession, psycho-social therapy services as well as amazing health care (like athletes), anti-discrimination laws... and there are just as many male sex workers as female with just as many females clients as male. And let’s forget heteronormative sex. It’s confining and boring.

UPDATE: Thought-provoking article on laws against sex work in the UK.

Jessore: Liberal Rural Life

We were both excited and dreading to make the trip out to Jessore. The Lonely Planet wrote that there's nothing interesting about the town except hotels and restaurants. From other people, an image was painted about this border town of being, quite frankly, a shithole. But, being a border town, Jessore has an array of anti-trafficking NGOs so Diya and I made a trip.

But did we eat our words! Jessore was a wonderful little town: quiet, clean, driving with battery operated scooters. People were endlessly polite and not intrusive towards us two foreigners. Friends of friends took us to their village where we spent a day with a beautiful, warm family: a father who coaches the girl's cricket team, a mother who loves her straight-talkin' daughter-in-law, and a son who worships his girl child. And the town was filled with interesting, progressive and thorough NGOs.

We were both surprised at the progressiveness of a place that is dyed at rural, ignorant, traditional--and unswayed. However, after interviewing a few NGOs, looking at their groups and services, and attending a probing round-table discussion, we felt that this little town was doing substantial work, even more progressive than many of the programs we've seen in Dhaka.

For example, we met with an organization that is supporting over one-hundred women's empowerment groups in the state of Khulna. The org gives training, information and confidence building to men and women to go into their communities and establish groups that fight for community rights including women's rights. Through these trainings, they learn how to seek justice for domestic abuse. We met one beautiful, humble woman, Iti, who quoted a member of her community saying, "If you hit me again, I'm going to set Iti on you!" She has almost singlehandedly supported the women in her community from the training she received.

I've been thinking a lot about the important of rights trainings, confidence/empowerment groups and space. What I view as a huge problem of Bangladesh is it's limited space, not in the sense of it's crowded population, but it's expression. For surviving through a hectic day, whether a poor rickshaw-wallah, a troubled student, or a homesick ex-pat, there isn't much space to release all the pent up energy and anger. Part of has to do with the inability to pay to use space, but there aren't many free or cheap public or private spaces to let go: no bars, arcades, parks.. safe spaces to express yourself. That negative energy stays inside, builds up and is released in destructive ways, like domestic or child abuse. Man have more options with street-side tea stands to shoot the wind and relax, but women don't have those options.

Women's groups seem a vital way to permeate human rights into culture and society. It's not that women don't seek empowerment, it's that they don't have a space to even discuss it let alone take action on it. Groups as these give a space that is 1) safe, and supportive to share their frustrations and experiences of living as the second gender, 2) creative resource to fight for their rights and develop ways to create change and 3) encourage confidence that they are not wrong or alone and to stand with conviction.

One interesting note from the trip was the presence of technology. Mobile phones are as common as ever. Hotlines for human rights and legal justice are ever present and many groups mentioned how they can communicate to find information (ie. safe migration for example instead of trafficking). But with mobile phones, traffickers can also communicate to each other in forcibly sending people across the border. Now, as in the West, information is easily accessible--what skill in now needed is how to critically judge what is good information and what is bad.

Also, it was mentioned that there are a lot of extreme religious schools established in the area than ever before. Wahhabi Islamic money is flowing into the country from Saudi Arabia funding extremist schools. Slowly, this subversive ideology is penetrating Bangladesh's religious morals and I'm afraid of how it will rear it's ugly head in days to come.

View pictures of Jessore here.

Note of thanks to my Fulbright colleague, Diya Bose, and her endless patience, understanding, energy and intelligence, of whom I view more as a fabulous mentor than research partner.

Transported through Transportation: Visit to the North

My first visit to rural Bangladesh was one of transportation: we rode countless buses, rickshaws, boats and walked on foot through paved streets, dirt roads, shallow rivers and mud puddles.  We were definitely transported to another side of Bangladesh being outside of Dhaka, so it was fitting that we did nothing but use transportation to entertain ourselves: just looking out the window is a cultural experience.

I visited my friend Maude in the town Gaibandha, in the northwest state Rajshahi.  She will be working with the French NGO, Friendship, and interviewing young students from a new project they started.   The six-hour bus ride was certainly a trip – I might have lost hearing from the pleasure the driver took in honking the horn.  But it might have been necessary, because he liked to drive on the right side of the road (which is the wrong side of the road here) to pass the sluggish trucks full of bananas, jute or chickens.

Friday is the weekend, the only day-off the whole week.  But most stores are closed, then most restaurants are closed for Ramadan, as are the museums.  As women, we are not allowed to visit mosques – so what is there to do in Northwest Bangladesh?

Well, quite frankly, nothing.  But Maude and I decided we did not travel here to sit in the NGO office alone.  We hopped on a two-hour bus to the town Mahasthangarh (still having trouble pronouncing it myself.)  We were dropped off at a mosque then wandered down a road to the museum to discover it was closed.  The road was beautiful: lined with rice pattys blowing in a soft breeze.  It was so quiet that we could hear the wind, something lost in the madness of Dhaka.

After discovering there was nothing more to do in Mahasthangarh besides breaking rocks with other rocks, we hopped on another bus to a ‘bigger’ town, Bogra.  It was after noon at this point and we haven’t eaten all day with all the restaurants closed.  But after breaking through the swarm of bus hustlers asking,  “kothay jabe?” (‘where are you going?’), we found a hotel for foreigners that had a restaurant.  We enter sweating, and smile in the breeze of the fans and in the soundlessness of the lobby away from the hustlers – then the electricity goes out.

We wait 40 minutes for the fan and our food, but Maude and I are super chatty so it went fast.  And luckily, in the hour we took for lunch, it began then ended the daily rain.  We talk to our waiter about what there is to do in Bogra: "Nothing," he responds.  “Go to Sariakandi and take a boat ride around the river for 50tk.”  Why not?

Hopping on to rickshaw, we swerve through Bogra into another city for 20 minutes then stop at a bench.  “Bus station.”  We sit on the bench and ask the ticket man when the next bus to Sariakandi is coming:  “Five minutes.”

Twenty-five minutes later, there are a constant horde of about two dozen Bangladeshi men standing around, sometimes so close I can feel the air from their open mouths, staring in curiosity.  None of them try to talk to us.  I try to talk but they just stare.  Their dialect is different and can’t understand me.  I try to make them leave, but they just laugh.  Finally the bus came.

Onto another bus ride, which by the way - women usually sit in front.  Mostly to avoid harassment.  After sitting on the back of the bus at one point, I learned my lesson never to sit in the back ever again.  We arrive at another town, and the rickshaw-wallah takes us to the river.  Now we are in a village, with naked little boys running around, hitting each other with sticks, avoiding their mothers screams not to step on the drying dates in the middle of road.

We arrive at the river and the first thing we notice: no noise. No motors, no yelling, no piercing radios blasting Bangla music.  We only attract a small crowd, of about 15 people and we turned our backs to the land and stared into the river – so we almost felt alone.  We “spoke of many things, fools and kings,” and watched a man try to catch tiny fish with a five-foot long U-shaped net.

Realizing our skin is beginning to burn (the woes of being white in a country where its people don’t sunburn), we head back to the bus stop, which is a bench.  A crowd gathers, and we count: 47 people at one point.  In order for us to keep our cool, we make jokes: “We’re like monkeys in a zoo: they can’t communicate with us, but they just watch how we sit and look.  Go get a banana, and you can feed us!  We should start charging them like a zoo: 100tk to stare.  For 500tk, take a picture.  For 1000tk maybe we’ll smile.  Buy us some food, and maybe we’ll do a dance.  Or, maybe I should just start foaming at the mouth and try to bite them, will they go away?”

One man came over to shoo everyone away.  I smiled softly at him and said, “onek dhonobad (many thanks).”  He smiled sympathetically.  After a minute of pushing everyone away, more people surrounded us after wondering why a man was shooing everyone away.  Mission quiet time: futile.  At least having so many people stand over you blocks out the sun and her harmful rays…

We then, again, jump on a bus that has a lion roaring instead of an actual motor, sit on holey cushions and pick off the ants as we speed through the green landscape.  And when I say green – man, I tell ya, I mean green.  Because Bangladesh is such a wet country, there are always crops and plants growing, whether they are edible or not.  If there isn’t a plant, there is water that reflects the green colors of the surrounding plants.

It’s now evening, almost the end of today’s fast.  We stop around dusk for all the men to get off and smoke their first cigarette since the morning.  Maude and I bolt off the bus to find some food and water – sweet relief!  It’s hard to not eat the whole day, but it’s even worse when you are in a climate that you are not accustomed too.  The weather is so hot and we become so dehydrated.  In trying to be respectful, I never try to eat or drink in front of Bangladeshis who are fasting, but it’s hard to find quiet place alone when everyone follows you like celebrities (without body guards).

Around 8, we’re back in Gaibandha.  The town is beautiful at night – no cars on the road, just motorbikes and rickshaws and a few buses.  We pass all the stores open for the night, lit by candle.  We find our way home by the torch on my cell phone, walking through the sounds of geckos and frogs, running past the growling stray dogs.  Finally, as Maude digs through her bag to find the key to the NGO’s office (where we are sleeping), I stand out from under the verandah and for the first time, see the stars from the view of Bangladesh.

Populated

Picture this:
Bangladesh is approximately the size of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont (roughly 54 sq mi).
Bangladesh has the population of est. 150 million people.
In comparison, picture every person east of the Mississippi River (excluding FL) living in an area the size of MN, NH, and VT.

With this description, can you understand the meaning of this quote:

"Bangladesh is like a blind man searching for a black cat in a dark room."
- Azfar, former zealot turned pundit, musician and philosopher