Sat, Feb 07, 2004 page2

• Most conscripts use prostitutes

  UNHEALTHY ATTITUDES More than 70 percent of the men performing compulsory military service visit prostitutes, a statistic that alarms and disgusts women's activists

  • By Cody Yiu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Most young men performing military service have sex with prostitutes, with most of those doing so on at least two occasions, according to new research.

  "Of the 600 men aged between 19 and 23 serving military service who were interviewed for our study, 73.3 percent had paid for sex and the majority of these had visited prostitutes more than twice," said Hwang Shu-ling (黃淑玲), an associate professor at the National Defense Medical Center's department of humanities.

  Hwang was speaking at a seminar on women's issues held at the offices of the Broadcasting Development Fund yesterday.

  Hwang said there was a myth in this country that a boy could only turn into a man by having a sexual experience with a prostitute.

  "We conducted a detailed interview with 43 young men born in the 1980s who had paid for sex, and found that most of them had visited prostitutes out of peer pressure," she said.

  Hwang called for this "myth" to be exposed, because it resulted in objectionable and unhealthy attitudes.

  "The 43 men whom we interviewed said that they visited prostitutes mostly out of fear, because refusing to have sex with them was considered to be a sign that they were lacking manliness," Hwang said.

  "This is a chauvinistic idea which has been passed down through the generations in Taiwanese society. It needs to be stopped so that young men can finally learn how to have a healthy relationship with the opposite sex," she said.

  Hwang's survey also indicated there was a reluctance among the conscripts to use condoms.

  According to her figures, 77 percent of those interviewed did not use condoms during their visits to prostitutes.

  The chairperson of Taiwan Women's Link, Sue Huang (黃淑英), indicated that prostitution exacts a high social cost and needed to be stamped out.

  She said this could be done by penalizing patrons of the prostitutes, instead of just the sex worker as the law dictates.

  "In 2002, our government spent about NT$600 million arresting illegal Chinese immigrants working as prostitutes, providing shelter to children caught up in the sex industry as well as handing out condoms to male travelers bound for Southeast Asia," Huang said.

  "All this money comes from the taxpayer and it is unfair that we have to incur these expenses," she said.

  "We should therefore make patronage of prostitutes a criminal offense," she said.

  Taiwan could make good use of Sweden's experience in reducing the size of the sex industry, said Liu Yu-shiu (劉毓秀), chairperson of the Peng Wan-ru Foundation and a professor at National Taiwan University's department of foreign languages and literatures.

  "In 1999, Sweden passed a law making patronage of prostitutes a crime, including third parties who profit from the business, such as pimps, madams and owners of brothels," she said.

  "Since then, the number of prostitutes in Sweden has fallen to less than 1,000 from the 2,500 that existed in 1999," she said.

  "It is a successful method which Taiwan could adopt in dealing with the sex industry," she added.
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