Overdue update and what is weighing on my heart

It has been quite a while since I posted anything on the blog so I figure I am overdue. My lack of entries has been the result of two specific causes. The most recent cause was the fact that the Cambodian government blocked several blog domains due to the criticism of the government from a few select bloggers. This left me unable to access my blog for a while and I didn't realize that I could access it now until about 5 minutes ago. The second reason I haven't posted much was simply because I am not sure what to say and what to keep to myself, so I try to err on the side of caution. This lead to a build up of unpublished drafts and a blog with no recent entries. Today I am throwing the second factor out the window because I just want to rant a little bit about some of the stuff spinning around in my heart and head.

Part of what has grabbed my attention in Cambodia has been the difficult role women are forced to play in Khmer society. There is a Khmer code of conduct for women known as Chbab Srey which specifically states that a woman should not hold herself to be her husbands equal, to always be quiet and shy, to keep herself hidden, not to laugh too loud, not to sleep with her back to her husband, etc. Women and men are often described through this axion "Men are like precious gems, if they are dropped into the dirt or mud they can easy be cleaned and restored to their original nature; women are like fine linen, if they are dropped into the dirt or mud they will forever be tarnished regardless of how hard they try to remove the stain." I remember hearing this when I first arrived in Cambodia and thinking "What a bunch of bullshit." Almost two years later and seeing how Chbab Srey actually functions in society I often find myself disgusted by what is seen as normal behavior by men in Cambodia. Not all men are guilty of this and I can say that I know a handful of men that to all appearances treat their wife as their equal. This is not the norm though. Many of the foreigners who arrive here adopt their own sick versions of Chbab Srey to justify their own exploitative desires, so it is not strictly a phenomenon relegated to Cambodian men. To clarify how this shows up in regular everyday life for young Khmer women, if a girl has a boyfriend before she is married and losses her virginity her prospects of marriage decrease and the stigma placed on her will follow her for years if not for a lifetime. her boyfriend however may be called a playboy or a gangster (a broad term here) but he really won't have any signifigant difficulties. Girls are taught to guard their virginity because without it they have little value and because of this the majority of Cambodian men have their first sexual encounter in a karaoke bar, brothel, or at another location with a sex worker. Others turn to the use of force because they know that having a consenting partner is difficult due to the risk a woman faces if her sexual activity is disclosed openly or even slightly questionable.

Part of what I do in my town is to distribute condoms at local karaoke bars and to provide education about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Most of the young women that live or work in this places are so socially marginalized that they literally have no other option. They are largely deprived of education, sometimes lacking even the most basic education such as reading and writing Khmer, and have no marriage options because they lost their virginity to a boyfriend or had it taken by a rapist. Others have been tricked into sex work by traffickers that promised their families that the girls would be given jobs in a factory. Some are sold into the brothel or bar by an aunt, uncle, or acquaintance in order to make a few hundred dollars. The girl is expected to have sex with customers in order to pay off the debt that the bar owner took by purchasing her. These young women are at the absolute lowest rung of the social ladder in Cambodia and have very hope of escaping a life filled with violence, rape (usually more than once), and poverty. Other women in the community look down on these women, who are often still more girls than women, because they are no longer "pure" and they can never be made pure again. It is striking to hear a young woman who makes $10 a day (which is decent here) talk about a sex worker of the same age and describe her as "a bad girl who only wants to have a lot of money and likes to be with many men." The truth is that this is a lie the girl must tell herself because there is actually very little social cushioning to prevent her from being in the same situation. Walking in a rice field alone and being discovered by a man or group of men with hurtful intentions can not only leave her emotionally shattered and traumatized, but it can also be the symbolic piece of straw that breaks the camel's back. It goes unsaid but it is important to remember that it isn't any one action that leads to the life of quiet desperation sex workers live, just as it wasn't one piece of straw that broke the camel's back, it is the millions of other pieces of straw underneath it. Not all girls that lose their virginity before marriage end up as sex workers, neither do all the victims of rape. However, listening to the women that work in the sex industry reveals that almost all of them experienced a situation along these lines that left them "impure" or "stained" in the eyes of their society. Most of these young women were born poor to begin with, so they entered the world with a heavy burden to shoulder anyway. In a society where a male child is openly preferred to a female child and without enough money to escape the multiple burdens of poverty, these women are viewed as disposable once they no longer possess the redeeming quality of being a virgin. They have a social stigma, no education or trade, an empty stomach, and very often they are expected to make a financial contribution to their family. Where are they supposed to go in a society that considers it normal for a married man to go out drinking with his friends at a karaoke bar with his friends and sleep with one of the girls there. If his wife were to dress even slightly immodestly, she would "lose face" as well as her husband and she would likely face strong reprimand by her husband. For his infidelity, which is usually an ongoing occurrence, he probably won't hear a word from his wife or from anyone else simply because it was expected. When there exists a social mechanism that demands that a man be able to quench his sexual appetites while simultaneously demanding that women maintain a rigid sense of purity, it gives rise to a market that actively creates a disposable class who no longer have any purity to maintain and that can be used and discarded by men.

So where am I going with this? Where is the silver lining to this grey cloud? At this moment there isn't one. As I go about passing out condoms and talking about HIV, people think that I am quite odd. Even the women in the karaoke bars sometimes seem confused that I'm not there for sex since the man who hasn't had sex with a prostitute here is a rare find. There are organizations putting up a valiant fight to help these young women. Organizations like AFESIP, Action Pour Les Enfants, International Justice Mission, and others are dong all they can but it is only making the smallest of dents in what is a country wide (and region wide) problem. Through no fault of their own they are somewhat limited to trying to help the absolute worst cases of exploitation and due to funding and distance I have never seen them in my town, but I pass multiple karaoke bars filled with young women on a daily basis. The only organization I did run into was a small Cambodian run NGO that had me summoned to the local health center director's office out of concern that I would try to apply for their USAID funding. Once they heard that I am a volunteer and work for free and have no interest in their funding, I never heard from them again. Even when I asked them if I could volunteer for them and help them in any way, they said thanks but no thanks. Maybe they do great work, but I can tell you that when I am talking to karaoke bar owners or trying to teach basic English to the children of the sex workers I have never run into that NGO.

So this is where I am at; these young women need help. They need a future. Every piece of purity they have supposedly lost is totally intact. You can see it in their eyes and hear in their laughter during those moments when they realize that your not there to take anything from them, not there to hurt them, not there for sex, not there to throw another piece of straw on the camel's back. I'm no Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dr. King or anyone else along those lines and I don't want to pretend to be. I'm not even particularly good at what I'm trying to do, but I can't look away. I can't pretend that I don't know that no one else is going to try to help the young women in the seven karaoke bars within a kilometer of my house. It has broken my heart and I'm glad it has. It is my prayer that this breaks your heart too. I hope it breaks so deeply that you can't look away and that you have to do something even if you don't know what to do. Call your Congressman, write him/her a letter, donate to an NGO fighting the exploitation of women and children, start an NGO for this, just do something.