The sex workers' rights movement promoted by the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It has relentlessly fought for the rights and social status of sex workers, as well as the legalization of their profession.
This previously taboo culture and debate has become an issue that many -- including sex workers, their customers and aloof and perhaps cowardly middle-class individuals such as myself -- dare only gradually to confront, discuss and even rally for.
Like the Taiwan International Workers' Association (TIWA) and the students' movement to save Lo Sheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium, COSWAS is moving Taiwanese society forward.
But are the mainstream values of Taiwanese society and the relevant government departments also making progress? Apparently not. The 160,000 foreign caregivers in Taiwan are still regarded as second-class citizens by this country, or as machines that can be exploited to work without rest. They have no right to leave bad employers and are still hoping for a law that will protect their basic right to time off and holidays.
The government follows the same standard in setting a date for the demolition of Lo Sheng by completely ignoring both the wishes of patients in the leprosarium and the call for the preservation of a historical site.
When the Human Rights Committee recently debated the abolition of Article 80 of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which stipulates that prostitutes can be punished but not their customers, the Ministry of the Interior and the Cabinet seemed not to have even heard the more progressive ideas of some committee members who argued for the legalization of the sex trade.
Instead, the government simply claimed that there was no "social consensus" for such changes and used the excuse as a pretext to preserve a social order that tramples on the rights of sex workers.
Just what is the "social consensus" in Taiwan on the issue of prostitution? Who defines what this consensus is? Elite middle-class politicians and "public opinion" can only think of eradicating all things "pornographic," meaning pushing the "obscene" sex trade and sex workers away from view.
This kind of hypocritical, ostrich-like attitude to sex work and corresponding government policies cannot possibly solve the problem, but only pushes the sex trade underground, laying the blame on sex workers, causing them to flee into hiding and confining them to an unsafe work environment.
This kind of "policy" continues to stigmatize sex, so that sex workers are discriminated against and exploited. Furthermore, with an extremely hypocritical and distorted attitude toward sex, Taiwanese society continues to create a situation where large profits are made both legally and illegally by pushing the sex trade underground. Is this really Taiwan's "social consensus"?
COSWAS marked its anniversary with the Sex Workers Film Festival, which featured films about sex worker activism and the circumstances sex workers face around the world.
The festival had a lot of educational value and was truly moving. It featured documentaries about a variety of subjects, including Columbian women going to Germany to work in the sex industry in order to support their families and Guatemalan sex workers who organized a soccer team in an effort to confront the discrimination and the violence they face in their work, and to prove the value of their existence in training and matches.
Especially moving was the South Korean film Pink Palace. This movie showed interviews with all types of handicapped men and women, including visually and aurally impaired and cerebral palsy patients, talking openly about difficulties in their sex life, or about how they long for, but have never had sexual encounters.
The festival also featured some excellent Taiwanese filmmakers. Through the story of two Chinese former prostitutes who came to Taiwan to work, only to end up walking the streets in Wanhua, viewers gained a better understanding of issues related to the movements for sex workers' rights. As a result, we also gain perspective on ourselves and our potentially narrow-minded or unwittingly discriminating attitudes and values.
In my opinion, COSWAS, like the TIWA and the students' movement for the Lo Sheng Sanatorium, is an organization of which the Taiwanese should be proud. These groups do their best for the human rights of marginalized members of society and help Taiwan maintain a certain ethical standard so that the country doesn't look completely backward and barbaric when compared to the international community.
But Taiwan has a government that doesn't have its priorities right, with pan-blue and pan-green political parties who are only trying to steal votes from one another with empty issues like referendums on either entering or returning to the UN. They don't understand, and don't care about, these smaller efforts and ideas that could make Taiwan a better place.
If our government only sees or serves the middle class and disregards the human rights of people considered to be lower down the social strata, then even if Taiwan were recognized as a sovereign state, it would still be less than a nation.
No matter if it calls itself Taiwan or the Republic of China, what has it contributed to the world that its people can be proud of except things like being home to the factory that emits the highest amount of carbon dioxide in the world, the trampling of human rights and discrimination against the weak? Even if it is independent, of what use is such a country to the world?
Kuo Li-hsin is a commentator.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
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