Customer Reviews

Sex Slaves: The Trafficking of Women in Asia

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was asked to read and give my opinion of this book by a student who is about to embark on a masters course on this same topic. I therefore dutifully slogged through it, although I would have never finished it otherwise.

The topic of the book is primarily about the condition and circumstances of Asian women who have been trafficked into the sex industry for consumption by Asian men. As a book that brings focus on the abject abuse, imprisonment, slavery and torture of women, it is a welcome contrast to the more exploitive (read: crap) books on the market such as "Private Dancer," which tend to deal with the high end of Thai prostitution with western customers, all based more on fiction than on research. Brown's book is looking at the same coin from the opposite side. OK, that's about it for the positive comments I have to make about the book.

On the minus side, this book is so redundant, you need only read the first chapter, "The Market," to learn all you will about what Brown has to say on this subject. In chapters such as "The Management" and "The Law," Brown just spins a few interviews with Calcutta or Thai sex workers to send the same message of how horrible trafficking is and her disgust at the men who perpetuate it. I think she's spot on with her opinion and I had no idea of the depth of the problem, but more complete research might have given her more to write about each topic, and would have allowed me to read more than 4 pages before going to sleep.

As a case in point, there is a chapter titled, "The Customers." I was expecting to read data and observations based on interviews with the people who use prostitutes. Instead, all you read is more extrapolation of what she thinks men are thinking based on said interviews with the sex workers in Calcutta, the Philippines and so on. Her only published interview of a male seems to be the one young motorcycle taxi driver youth who said he went to brothels because he was "lonely." For this book to have increased substance and power to change and dismantle systems, interviews and insider information from all parties are required. In this same chapter Brown writes, "We should ask what these customers think about prostitution. And why they have to buy sex." Indeed, she should have.

As for her conclusion that prostitution should remain illegal, she ignores all of her evidence that it's precisely because it's illegal that police and other institutionalized corruption completely prevent the dismantling of the system. So which do you want? The unrealistic ideal of ending all prostitution while keeping it illegal at the expense of the continued state of women being kidnapped, cajoled, forced, sold and leveraged into accepting a fate (and by fate, I mean the end of their lives as they know it) of severe mental and physical abuse, confinement, rape and murder? Or do you try to help those suffering the most by legalizing and regulating it as an industry, with the intention of allowing more access of NGOs to inform, educate and help improve general working conditions in non-prostitution industries? This underlying confusion in her argument is really what annoys me the most about this book. I respect her passion for the subject, but she needs to take a reality pill, or at the very least try to draw conclusions that arise from her data.

In summary, as a person who purports to be tackling this as an academic, her research is weak and all of her conclusions seem to be based just on personal opinion and interviews with sex workers. As for her claim that her work is not meant to be sensational, with a title of Sex Slaves in bold red letters, and a cover shot of an Asian woman seemingly about to service some blurry unclothed man, it seems that sex does sell after all.

I have gone through other readers' reviews and I must agree up to a point, but mostly I disagree. The main problem of this book is that it cannot be used as source for any other report or study. This book neither offers statistical data, nor sociology theories that may be applied to the situation. It is mainly a collection of impressions, interviews with sex workers and helps to provide an accurate state of the human trade for sex in Asia.

I cannot agree with others that this lack of statistics makes it less valuable, though. As a researcher myself, it is easy to dismiss reports lacking hard data, but qualitative reports are as valuable as from-the-desktop graphics making. And in a case that this one, it is more so. I can access easier to the figures provided by different NGOs and international organizations than visiting low end brothels in Bangladesh or the Manila's casas. And there is where this book offers added value.

The book describes a real situation accurately, if not scientifically. It might be better a journalistic report, and it lacks many aspects, but it provides a good overview.

This book is simply not good. There is little academic rigor on display, plenty of emotional invective, and a thinly veiled contempt for the Asian male, some of which could be forgiven, if it wasn't so exasperatingly repetitive, cloying and one-dimensional. I just spent several minutes looking for one of my favorite lines, whereby the author suggests that some wildly gratuitous assertion be "taken as axiomatic". Sadly, I couldn't find it, but I am sure you'd have shared my bewilderment. Want axiom? The author's understanding of "Asia", or at least that which is found in the pages of this book, is as pedestrian and imbalanced as any on display. The problems with the book don't diminish the importance of the topic, but don't expect to be enlightened within its pages.

I was both horrified and informed by this book.
Read it yesterday and went to sleep thinking about it, thinking how lucky I am as a British woman with rights and freedom.
Some of these Asian women are treated as commodities.
A heart breaking book. I think the author has done an amazing thing in researching, writing and highlighting the sad state of affairs that exists.
A girl who had been to Cambodia said this book was on sale in many places, which I'm glad about. Plus some of the proceeds go to the the centres that help the women.
If more people read the book, perhaps attitudes would change.
Seems to me that the Asian attitude to sex is extremely hypocrital and needs addressing, as it's the vulnerable in society, the women and CHILDREN, who are treated badly because of it.
This business of 'not losing face' in Asia is also at the heart of the problem.
Anyone who nit picks about this or that in the book, says it seems far fetched or quibbles about the way it's written should get a grip and think - how would you like to be in that situation?
Would you really want to work as a prostitute, but not get the proceeds? To be starved, tortured and then to die of AIDS?

I worked with trafficked women in the Philippines for one year and this book laid the groundwork for so much of the things I came to know while working with these women.

This book is so amazing and you should read it!

The area of human trafficking is fraught with misinformation and sadly, "Sex Slaves" adds to it.

For example:

"Commercial sex is a quiet business in Asia.. you have to be an Asian man to know where to find it." p.3

~Totally false. Asia has entire cities where the ENTIRE economy of the city is built on a very public visible sex industry, catering to foreign men (Pattaya in Thailand, Angeles City in the Philippines). Numerous other cities have very visible red-light districts catering to foreigners (and sometimes locals).

-Asian countries are more prone to trafficking due to devaluing of women p.2

~Ridiculous. Trafficking is a worldwide phenomena, and there is a growing consensus that the #1 and #2 causes of trafficking are poverty and political corruption/graft.


It is obvious that Louise Brown feels very passionately and deeply about trafficking, if only she had channeled that passion towards attention to detail, precision and accuracy, she would have been able to truly serve these woman whom she obviously cares so much about.

As it is, she has mostly further murkied the waters of what is possibly the most hazy, illusive and complicated problem facing humanity today.

This book is a good introduction to the Asian sex industry for those who want to know better how it works, and the business aspects of each stage of the supply chain. From this point of view it is very informative.

Where it falls down is that the author is an outsider who relies exclusively on interviews with people in the industry and anecdotes which may or may not be true. She uses these to draw conclusions which I found myself often disagreeing with. And there is the inevitable moralising which often accompanies any writing on this subject. Of course there are sad stories in the sex industry, but the opportunities and money it gives to people who would otherwise be condemned to poverty is often ignored. As well as the fact that the vast majority are voluntary participants, despite the attempts by people such as the author of this book to portray anyone female as a victim.

What would be great would be a full analysis of the industry written by an insider - or preferably by representatives of each area of the industry (workers, recruiters, customers). Then we might get some objective information and begin to lift the veil that covers this important but largely hidden industry.

Negative points are all that I can come up with for this book.

1. There are lots of sweeping overgeneralizations all the way through. She could have given us some detailed case studies of how prostitutes came to be where they were. What she did give us, however, was very brief snippets of what happened in select cases that left me wanting.

2. The treatment of the subject was based on the notion that Asia is all one place. It is not.

3. There are very few numbers that give us an idea of the quantitative aspects of this industry. How big is it? Do the horrors that she describes happen on a very large scale or are these truly the extreme cases?

4. The author focuses on South Asia-- even though the Indian/ Bangladeshi/ Pakistani industry are as different as night and day. It certainly has not been consistent with my experience of the sex industry in China and Indonesia-- and I have experience with both of them, as well as that of the Philippines.

5. The book has no index, and hence a perusal of selected ideas is not possible.

6. It seems like all the chapters bleed together. For example: One chapter talks about "The Commodity" and another talks about "The Consumers," but it seems like the same scattered statements show up in successive chapters-- even though her discussion of the main topic was not clear to begin with.

7. Unfocused, rambling prose fills this book from one end to the other.

This book come across as factual as it tries to analyze prostitution in Asia. Although it is written in a much more subjective & opinionated way. Gender roles are very different within Asian society and although some things may seem very shocking to the western mind set. It's the norm over there. This book often just came across as man bashing. Feminism might be a better category. Seemed a bit far fetched in places.
It's got to be said though. They are really horrible to woman over there. Don't know what the answer is. You can't turn to the law. Even Police will have 3 - 4 women on the go. There's no welfare. Won't wear condoms. Asian men just seem to hate woman. You have see some of the states they they put them in. It's really cruel.
If they have dark skin and they're over 20 year old they're virtually on the scrap heap. Then comes along the western man. Once they've had a baby they can never remarry. Makes them less promiscuous though. On the whole I like Asian woman better than western woman.
I lived with a Bangkok Police woman in for over a year. Still live here.