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Conversations with Men: The Cambodian
In my last ‘conversations with men’ post about the rape holiday, I mentioned that I would pull another experience from my Cambodian visit. In the former, I was an observer. In this story, I was an object.
Women are constantly divided and divided again. It is a male strategy to prevent women from joining against them in solidarity to fight back in a serious way. But scores of women get on board for a variety of reasons in order to show their sisters that the dissimilarities and points of disagreement are much more important than their common experiences and needs.
Despite being the violent and sadistic sex, there is a great deal of evidence that men of different races, socioeconomic classes, religions, and political leanings are always quite able to come together – and even bond – over a single common cause: abusing, torturing, terrorizing and destroying women and girls. It is a pity that women cannot come together over the single common cause of liberating themselves from men, their violence, and their parasitic tendencies.
And it is with this thinking that I present a conversation from several years ago. Reviewing my two experiences well after the fact made me realize that despite the many differences between me and the young, female, Cambodian prostitute, we both shared the reality that we were objects. We were both seen by men, first and foremost, as bodies to be used.
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Rewind to 2003: I was in the middle of a two-week trip by myself to Cambodia. It is very common for travellers, especially if you’re alone, to hire motorcycle guides in the larger areas. These drivers are often connected to guest houses, and you can hire them for single trips or pay a flat fee for a period time. While in Phnom Penh, I hired a driver who was able to speak some English (I don’t speak Khmer, and those few Cambodians who speak French are quite old now). I did a number of things, including seeing some of the historic sites, checking out one of the riverside, local clubs for some live music (no other foreigners there), and on one of the days, spending an afternoon by the water in the shade eating durian.
Through conversation, I was able to get an inside look into the life of a typical, low-earning, young man. And I also was reminded of my place as a woman.
At that point in my life, I sported very short hair, so I had to provide an answer as to why. Surprisingly, I wasn’t asked why I never wore skirts or dresses. After many more years living in China, I’ve come to expect and hate this whole line of questioning about hair, clothes, husbandlessness, childlessness. But at the time, I was still in my first year in Asia.
But then we moved on to other things.
Dude took on an air of sadness. He said he was too poor to get married. he had to share a room with several other guys. And he had to go to prostitutes.
Yeah, he lost me there. One thing I do hate about traditional cultures is the mandatory marriage thing and the idea that you need to have X amount of money in order to live up to expectations and procure a slave. But I don’t feel sorry for the MEN. I feel sorry for the women. Being sold into slavery – which is exactly what marriage was and still is – is not something I agree with or think is part of a healthy society. And in traditional cultures, if a woman can’t get married, there aren’t a lot of other options for her to support herself. Further, she becomes vulnerable to all men when she isn’t owned by one man. It’s a racket that men designed. Women are screwed no matter what happens. But married men benefit, so who gives a shit, eh?
But the marriage thing wasn’t where dude lost me. It was the ‘had to go to prostitutes’ comment. Men believe they must have sex. And they believe that if they can’t get it from their personal whore (wife/girlfriend/family member), then they must get if from a public whore. And then there is outright, payment-free rape of strangers, which I won’t get into in this post. The thing is, nobody has ever died from not having sex. And I say this as someone who, for much of my life, has had a demanding sex drive that no man (or woman, for that matter) I’ve known could match. Ever. And yet, despite almost never getting what I wanted – quality or quantity – and then eventually just ditching men altogether when I came to my senses about ‘how shit works’ in both the greater world and in my own world, I never felt I was entitled to sex. And I haven’t died from the lack. Presto magic. So take it from me, men don’t need sex.
And then the conversation got worse.
Dude got it in his head that he should have sex with me. The suggestion was put out there. He didn’t actually offer to pay me for sex. No. The idea was that I could continue to pay for his driving services as well as the food we were consuming, and he could have sex with me. It was almost as if he were offering himself up as a prostitute (although he didn’t ask for extra money), except for one very, very significant difference.
This difference lies in the sexes of the people in my last story versus this current story.
Women generally don’t offer themselves as prostitutes because they like sex or want random sex with strangers. Prostitutes are generally desperate, vulnerable women with a history of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. Both men and sex are dangerous to women, and men generally don’t cater (let alone acknowledge) women’s sexual needs. Don’t believe me? Well there is a shit ton of evidence on all. I don’t need to provide statistics. Spend five seconds on Google.
Men seldom offer themselves as prostitutes to WOMEN. To men, yes. That is more common and I don’t really care about that dynamic. When a man, like in my scenario, suggests sex to a woman, he is looking to get off. And in this case, especially, a) he didn’t suggest a monetary exchange, and b) in most cultures, especially traditional ones like Cambodia, men don’t service women – they use them. And if they give something, it is never without the expectation of something in return. So this dude wasn’t offering me anything. He was expecting something.
Of course, I said, “No.”
Everything about this exchange was repulsive. There was fear that he would attack me because I said no (luckily, that didn’t happen – HIV rates were at an all-time high in Cambodia at that time – and nobody wants to be raped anyways). I realized that none of my ‘privilege’ could erase the fact that I was still a woman and thus was under the thumb and at the whim of this guy and every single man on the planet regardless of their status among other men. I realized that because he, a man, brought up sex, no matter how this guy had framed it, he was insulting me: to offer me money would be to tell me I was a piece of meat, but to not offer me money told me that I wasn’t worth paying for and I should give it away like (they think) all ‘free’ Western white women do.
I went away from that conversation with another piece chipped off my tiny block of female self-confidence and then added to the growing pile of evidence of male yuck.
Conversations with Men: The Rape Holiday
It’s not that I’m shocked when I hear about the horrific things men do to women and girls every minute of every day in every corner of the world. Nothing anyone could tell me would surprise me in the least. It can be disturbing and traumatizing, of course, to read or hear about men’s depravity. But hearing about is different than witnessing, however. When you actually witness stuff, as a woman, that is when you are stunned – sometimes momentarily, sometimes negatively affected for long periods of time. It is only if you find yourself immune or indifferent to the stuff you see, or that you rationalize it away to protect the poor, persecuted, precious penises in your life, that you know you’ve lost too much of your humanity, and accepted your place as a slave.
When you make the mistake of assuming the best of strange men you encounter, that is when you end up with reminders that you are being naive. It is always best to err on the side of caution – all men are potential rapists. All men benefit from rape culture. Most men jerk off to rape (porn isn’t sex, it’s rape), and actively seek out depictions of rape. And all men are rape apologists. If they accept that rape exists, they see it as one of two things: 1) a very, very narrowly defined thing and anything that falls outside their very, very limited, accepted ideas can be waved away as lies! or just the way things are, sweetie, what’s your problem? or you’re paranoid/too sensitive/a manhater; or 2) a very, very broadly defined thing that ends up taking needed focus off of the crime of rape committed by men against women and putting the focus onto men as the main or most important or equally affected victims. Broad definitions of important words are men’s new tactic to erase women’s realities and put themselves in the spotlight, where they feel they belong.
Bottom line: rape is a crime perpetrated by men against women and girls. It comes out of male entitlement. It is done by more men than the world wants to admit. And all men benefit from it whether they directly rape or not.
~~~
Rewind to 2003: I was in the middle of a two-week trip by myself to Cambodia. I was working in Taiwan at the time. All of my Western male colleagues a) told me to be careful in Phnom Penh (which I ignored – I had a great time with locals there), and b) regaled me nostalgically with stories about their rape vacations – on which they strangely didn’t bring their Taiwanese girlfriends. It was gross. These entitled white fuckers thought it was the best deal ever to pay a couple of dollars to rape enslaved, impoverished teenaged girls. Many of these girls were victims of the Khmer Rouge regime and many young girls, having lost their entire families to rape, torture and death, had nowhere to go but into prostitution. Young boys were often taken in by monks and raised in monasteries. I met a few of the latter while visiting. They were quite well off and educated given the recent history of the country and their personal situations, and had a lot of freedom to pursue ambitions. The girls? Not so much.
For a few days, I travelled with an Australian postal worker who was in the middle of admitting to himself that he was gay. So we were talking about that a lot. And while in Sihanoukville, we went out for coming-out talk over a simple dinner at a very small local eatery with a few outdoor tables along the dirt road. I noticed a good-looking white dude sitting silently near, but not with, some local people running the shop beside us. It was kind of a strange scene. He wasn’t eating. Wasn’t drinking. Wasn’t reading or talking to anyone. Just waiting. I caught his eye at one point, by accident. Couldn’t tell anything from that. There was no expression on his face. Nothing in his eyes. Just a bland, but good-looking, dude.
And then a motorcycle pulled up. A local man driving, of course. And off the back of the bike hopped a small, pretty, young girl – 15 at the most. Huge white dude stood up, wandered over for some brief negotiation. I sized it up immediately and stared at him in disgust. He did his best to ignore my gaze. Then the girl and the human stain wandered off a little ways out of sight.
The dude came back alone not long after. Could he have raped her that quickly? Well, duh, of course. Men only need about 30 seconds to get the job done in my experience. It could have just been a mouth rape. In my experience, that doesn’t take long either. And less fuss. And I figured, since he knew he was under scrutiny, he couldn’t take the time to punish her or torture her for that long as many men like to do to what they see as cheap, filthy whores. Had it been more private, he could have beaten her and raped her over a longer period of time, multiple times. Maybe killed her, if he wished. Cambodia is a very, very poor country, and white dudes, for the right price can buy whatever they want. What’s the life of an uneducated, girl child to a rich, white guy likely to go back to his girlfriend or wife in Japan or China or Australia or wherever?
The guy didn’t look my way when he got back. Probably went off to get a beer and a smoke and to relive the rape. Or possibly just to head to bed to forget the child he just abused.
Me? I had lost my appetite, and I felt both dead inside and that I wanted to gut the rapist who was sauntering back to the town. End his rape career. That’s the least he deserved, in my opinion. But I said nothing. And I didn’t say anything to the male person who had had his back to the scene the entire time. It was my private window (albeit partially curtained to the worst of the interaction) into the world of male rape holidays and the complete lack of shame and disgusting privilege that comes with having a penis.
~~
Note: In another post from this trip, I relate a conversation with a local Cambodian – a bottom of the totem pole dude (but much higher than all women) who felt just as entitled as this white guy with regard to buying female flesh – and what his thoughts of me were…
Note 2: White dudes are not alone in rape tourism, even though it is seen as a ‘Western thing’. It’s not a ‘white thing’ and it’s not a ‘Western thing’. It’s a ‘man thing’ and not limited to cocks of specific colours. Plenty of men from all over the world travel to rape. However. White dudes would do well, as the primary economic power, to stop this kind of travel and provide an example to the world. But they won’t. They’re too busy blaming white women for not doing enough to end the suffering of women of colour. Oh and white men are also too busy raping/jerking off madly to rape, of course. And they also like to mansplain that being raped for money is an empowering choice for women – if only they could do it tooooo. Yeah, right. Useless human garbage.
Note 3: I am absolutely not going to use the euphemism ‘sex tourism’, because using a prostitute isn’t sex. It’s rape. Calling it sex tourism takes away men’s responsibility for what they have freely chosen to do, and takes focus away from what girls and women have not freely chosen to do. Prostitution is very, very, very seldom a free choice (if you use the actual definition of free choice and not the liberal feminism definition).
Story Ending Never 
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