Iyoko Shojima knows what it’s like to be excluded. Moving to Japan with her Taiwanese parents when she was a toddler, Shojima grew up being called “stinky” and “pig” at school. On her return to Taiwan she was bullied and harassed by classmates for being “Japanese.” She was an outsider no matter where she went.
“I learned very early in life that the world is not always good,” Shojima, who prefers to use her Japanese name, tells the Taipei Times.
These early experiences of exclusion informed Shojima’s decision to start working at the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (日日春關懷互助協會, COSWAS), a sex worker rights group aiming to de-stigmatize and re-legalize sex work. She says she empathizes with the former sex workers, who face discrimination and are fighting for their right to work and seek recognition as individuals.
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
Prostitution was outlawed in 1997 by the then-Taipei mayor, and later president, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). The abolishment of legal prostitution went into effect in 2001 when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was the mayor of Taipei.
Shojima, 32, is an outspoken activist and core member of COSWAS, founded and based at the Wenmeng Building (文萌樓), a former brothel in Taipei’s Datong District (大同).
Heritage site under siege
Photo: Ho Yi, Taipei Times
Designated a municipal heritage site by the Taipei City Government in 2006, the Wenmeng Building has become an educational site under the management of COSWAS. It regularly hosts guided tours, exhibitions and other cultural events aimed at raising awareness of the condition of workers within the largely criminalized sex industry.
A threat came, however, three years ago, when new property owners Lin Li-ping (林麗萍) and Liu Shun-fa (劉順發), who “have done nothing other than having the NT$3.3 million to buy the house,” filed a lawsuit to oust the organization from the property.
“The building is important in that it preserves the stories and histories of common people. It is important because the underprivileged remains oppressed … Through the aunties [former sex workers], young people are able to learn about Taiwan’s sex industry and how it has been regulated, controlled and prohibited,” Shojima says.
In 2005, Shojima saw a documentary about the fate of Pai Lan (白蘭), along with several other former sex workers, during an event organized by COSWAS. She immediately volunteered as a caretaker for Pai Lan, who became paralyzed due to alcohol-related brain damage after a long period of unemployment. As a young woman, Shojima already knew that she wanted to spend her life offering help to the vulnerable in society.
A long struggle
Pai Lan, the first former sex worker Shojima worked with at COSWAS, is among the many who suffer from the consequences of government efforts to clean up the streets of Taipei, which has done little more than driven the sex industry underground. In many cases, it simply made life much more difficult for the women, causing chronic unemployment that sometimes led to suicide.
Born and raised in a poor farming family in Taitung, Pai Lan was sold to a brothel at age 13 and stayed in the sex trade till 36 when her profession was outlawed by the city government. Uneducated and unskilled, Pai Lan was unable to hold onto a job. She died of alcoholism in 2005.
A shocking loss took place in 2006 when Kuan Hsiu-chin (官秀琴), one of the first former sex workers to lift the veil of anonymity and shame associated with selling sex, committed suicide by drowning. Once a leading activist for the rights of sex workers, Kuan was crushed by the burden of working underground, which exposes women to all kinds of dangers, ranging from gangsters and the police to customers threatening to report them.
Three years after Kuan’s death, the Council of Grand Justices handed down a ruling, stating that Article 80 of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which imposes penalties for the crime of prostitution only for sex workers, not their patrons, violates the principle of equality enshrined in Article 7 of the Constitution.
Red light districts
In 2011, lawmakers passed an amendment that allows commercial sex work within red-light districts designated by local governments, while those who sell or buy sex outside the designated areas are illegal.
In reality, no local governments dare to set up sex zones.
“So now you have this ridiculous law, banning prostitution on the entire island,” Shojima says.
Having worked with street prostitutes, the most vulnerable members in the sex industry, in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), Shojima says that sex workers continue to be harassed and arrested by the police since they are “the easiest targets,” whereas sex is bought and sold daily behind the door of “legal” establishments such as hostess clubs, karaoke bars and massage parlors.
“As more and more urban renewal projects have taken place in Wanhua, the working space for street prostitutes has become increasingly limited and regulated, and competition [among the women] becomes more fierce, as the new, middle-class residents want their neighborhoods ‘clean’ and ‘safe,’” she says.
Back at COSWAS, Shojima greeted mourners who went to the Wenmeng Building to pay their respects to former sex worker and rights activist Li Chun (麗君), who died of cancer on July 30 at the age of 75. Despite her failing health, Li Chun spent the last three years of her life trying to protect the collective from being evicted by moving into the building and guarding it.
The banners that currently hang on the Wenmeng Building read: “A pioneer in the sex workers’ right movement with an immortal spirit. Her courageous spirit will forever watch over the Wenmeng Building.”
Unvertainty
COSWAS continues to face uncertainty amidst a large-scale urban renewal development project in the area where the Wenmeng Building is located.
The new property owners Lin and Liu, as the group found out, are real-estate investors from the Chia Chin Real-Estate Company (甲金不動產公司). According to the collective’s estimation, if the development plan involving the Wenmeng Building is carried out, the new owners could make a profit of between NT$18.9 million to NT$31.5 million.
Shojima says that she is reassured by the strength shown by Kuan, Li Chun and Pai Lan as well as other former and current sex workers.
“I have worked with them, gone to streets with them and fought with them. We are excluded, rejected by the political mainstream, again and again. It only makes me feel more certain that I must side with the disadvantaged classes to change the society,” she says.
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