Chillie love lips
There is a bar that sits on a street, conspicuously enticing with its bright lights, an open air concept and a plaque that reads “Can Do Bar”; it not only serves drinks to its customers but also sex. This is a place many sex workers call home, while simultaneously becoming the setting for an organisation that sets to tell the story and struggle of sex workers in Chiang Mai. Owned by EMPOWER (Education Means Protection of Women Engaged in Re-creation), a sex worker organisation, it was first established as an informal gathering of sex workers in Bangkok, where friends would exchange and discuss ideas about life and love, and learn foreign languages to better understand the needs and wants of customers they deal with on a daily basis. What originally started with a humble beginning, is now a thriving non-profit group that has offices across Thailand. Though the organisation was in itself an accidental appropriation, its existence in Thailand’s society is not. Thailand’s sex work industry is a large and booming one, and for it to not be protected legally and formally would seem absurd. However, this is exactly the case.
Reflections of empowerment
EMPOWER is owned by, run by, and protects sex workers. Unlike other non-profits that are mostly headed by those who are isolated from the lived experiences of what they are fighting for, women of EMPOWER are those who have gone through the abuses of the such work; this then makes them the best people to advocate for the protection of sex work and sex workers alike. Liz, the translator and coordinator of the session, explains that EMPOWER wants to be the centre in which sex workers can come and feel like they are part of a community. Apart from the bar (which employs two full time bar workers, and about 20 or so sex workers), EMPOWER also provides language courses, computer and typing classes, as well as sex education. The organisation has an outreach program to increase awareness about sex work, sex workers and the health and safety issues within the community. EMPOWER is also opening a sex workers’ museum to educate the public about the history of sex work in Chiang Mai; clearly, to EMPOWER, benefits should not only be confined to the workers, but also to the wider public who may have forgotten the historical significance of this form of work. Therefore educating them about it would emancipate them in some way from the reality in which they live.
The most prominent struggle sex workers face is the lack of legal protection that comes with engaging in such an employment. The government does not recognize sex work, and so those who work within the industry get little to no protection. Even so, Liz says that there are informal standards that sex work and workers are meant to adhere to; many of these are disadvantageous to the workers, and only profit the employers. Thus as a working example, the Can Do bar, established in 2006, runs by a set of standards that are beneficial to workers, employers and customers alike.
Travellers with Liz and friends
Through this, EMPOWER hopes that more bars emulate these standards and so will make sex work more protected sans legislation. Of course in the long run, EMPOWER would like to see the equal treatment and protection of sex workers across Thailand, but this hope is for the indefinite future; for now, EMPOWER is practical in its attempts to safeguard the interests of its people through its efforts that teach how to survive and work without threats.
It all then seems rather fitting: an organisation for sex workers, by sex workers. There is a subtle feminist agenda that runs through the whole concept of EMPOWER as Liz explains they do not look to protect male and transgender sex workers, but do work closely with organisations that do. Or maybe it is just realistic, as females dominate the sex industry more so than any other gender. Looking at the emblem of the tin can that opens itself with a can opener becomes the symbol of an empowered sex worker able to work for herself, out of harm and out of will.
The can-do can
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