A Study of Female Sex Workers in Hong Kong
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Accounting for and managing risk in sex work: A study of female sex workers in Hong Kong THESIS presented for the DEGREE of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by NGA YAN CHEUNG Centre for Criminology & Sociology Royal Holloway College University of London 2011 Declaration of Authorship I, Nga Yan Cheung hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Olive Cheung Date: ___18 March 2011______________ 2 Table of Contents Page Declaration 2 Acknowledgements 4 Abstract 5 List of Tables 6 List of Figures 7 Glossary 8 Chapter 1 Introduction 10 Chapter 2 A Historical Perspective on Prostitution in Hong 33 Kong Chapter 3 Understanding Sex Work: 58 A Review of Research and Theory Chapter 4 Risk and selling sexual services: 87 A Review of Research and Theory Chapter 5 Methodology (1): Research design 116 Chapter 6 Methodology (2): Experience in the field 144 Chapter 7 Sexual health risk and sex work 172 Chapter 8 Violence and sex work 213 Chapter 9 The emotional labour of sex work 254 Chapter 10 The emotional experience of sex work 271 Chapter 11 Conclusion 303 References 327 List of Appendices 373 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Prof Jonathan Gabe and Prof Raymond Lee, my supervisors, for their interest in this subject, and for giving me the confidence to continue during the difficult times. I am very grateful to Wah-Shan Chow for introducing me to Sociology. My special thanks go to the sex workers of this study and the staff in sex worker support groups for all the support they gave me. Here I am unable to mention in person individuals who gave up their valuable time to participate in this study and generously shared their experiences with me. But I would like to thank them for their kindness and hospitality. I would also like to thank my friends for their encouragement and infinite support during the various stages of this study. Particular thanks go to Raja Naeem Akram, Michelle Chan, Min Chen, Sam Chan, Bun Cheung, Amy Chin, Priya Davda, Ruby Fung, Zamri Hassan, Ginie Ho, Vincent Ku, Lisa Lam, Michael Lam, Uta Lam, Eddie Lau, Man Law, Ida Leung, Angie Lim, Jessica Liu, Babar Mahmood, Lina Pio, Eve Richards, Iqbal Siddiqui, Victor Tang, A. Tang and Reiko Toyoshima. I am most grateful to my parents for all the understandings and support they have given me over the past years. I am deeply indebted to them. This research was funded by Royal Holloway, for which I am grateful. During the 2005/2006 session, the Academic Trust Funds Committee has awarded me a grant from the University of London Scholarship Fund. A sum of £500 was contributed towards my overseas fieldwork expenses. 4 Abstract This thesis considers how in the course of their work female sex workers in Hong Kong experience risk. It concerns the indoor side of the sex market, an area which has so far been largely ignored in studies on commercial sex. The focus is on women working independently from flats. Focusing on women’s own accounts of work-related risks, risky behaviour and coping strategies, this study investigates sex workers’ reflexive understandings of prostitution and their occupational risk in late modern societies. The study emphasises the social, cultural, interactional and situational context, to understand the ways in which women involved in sex work conceptualise and respond to risk. There are three main themes emerge in sex workers’ accounts. The first one is sexual health and diseases. In this empirical chapter, the main focus is on the flat-working women’s accounts of themselves and their risk-taking (or risk-avoiding) behaviour in (potentially) risky situations, where, for example, unprotected sex has occurred. The findings suggest that, despite sex workers are being frequently seen as most susceptible to sexual health problems, the social norms which exist among sex workers and their clients play a crucial role in enabling sex workers to gain control over the sexual encounter and avoid risk behaviour. The next theme is violence against sex workers. Findings suggest that what violent crime symbolises in the context of sex work is that some women are beneath contempt because of their working identity. It is more “acceptable” to perpetrate violence against sex workers because this group is set apart from women in other service occupations. The last theme is concerned with sex workers’ accounts of their emotional experiences at work, which mainly explores how social and cultural factors influence individuals’ interpretation and accounts of their emotions. Accounts given by women demonstrate that many of them seemingly did not conceive their involvement in the sex business as “wrong”. Nevertheless, because sex work is still largely marginalised and stigmatised in Chinese societies, they might experience unpleasant emotions which were mostly related to the “whore” stigma. 5 List of Tables Page Table 1.1 A typology of sex work careers 29 Table 4.1 Occupational dangers/risks of flat-working women 98 Table 4.2 Occupational dangers/risks of women working 99 indoors or in the street sex market Table 8.1 General services available from flat-working 216 women 6 List of Figures Page Figure 2.1 Hong Kong 38 Figure 2.2 Tai Ping Shan brothels on Hong Kong Island 39 Figure 2.3 Licensed brothels in central Hong Kong, 1879 39 Figure 2.4 Brothels in Hong Kong after 1935 51 Figure 6.1 The floor plan of a working flat 150 7 Glossary Ah-gu 阿姑 Women working from brothels in 19th Century Hong Kong Bak-gu 北姑 Literally, ‘Northern girls’, Mainland Chinese female sex workers Changsan 長衫 Ordinary prostitutes who provided sexual services in exchange for money in 19th Century Shanghai Fei-ge-coeng 飛機場 Literally ‘airports’, massage parlours which offer sexual services such as hand relief Gail 雞 Literally ‘chickens’, female sex workers Gei-neoi 妓女 Female prostitutes Gei1 妓 Prostitutes Gei2 伎 Female artists Ha-baau 口爆 Ejaculation into the mouth Jat-lau-jat-fung 一樓一鳳 One-woman brothel Ngaan-se 顏射 Ejaculation on the face Ngai 藝 Art 8 Ngai-gei3 藝伎 Female artists (women who were trained in music and dancing with the aim to provide entertainment) To-dei 陀地 Literally ‘local girls’, Hong Kong female sex workers Seoi-haak 衰客 Bad Clients Shek Tong Tsui West 塘西 The well-known red-light district of the nineteenth century Hong Kong Shuyu4 書寓 Courtesans in the 19th Century Shanghai Sing-gung-zok 性工作 Sex work Sing-gung-zok-ze 性工作者 Sex workers Ze-mui5 姊妹 When literally translated, Ze-mui means “sisters”, which is widely used by female sex workers to address their colleagues. Notes 1 See note 2 in Chapter 2. 2 See note 2 in Chapter 2. 3 See note 1 in Chapter 2. 4 See note 3 in Chapter 2. 5 See note 4 in Chapter 8. 9 Chapter 1 Introduction The metaphysics of male sexual domination is that women are whores. This basic truth transcends all lesser truths in the male system. One does not violate something by using it for what it is: neither rape nor prostitution is an abuse of the female because in both the female is fulfilling her natural function; that is why rape is absurd and incomprehensible as an abusive phenomenon in the male system and so is prostitution, which is held to be voluntary even when the prostitute is hit, threatened, drugged, or locked in. (Dworkin 1981, p.203–204) What I hate most of all is the idea that we are all victims. That’s what we are trying to change in society: the idea that every woman who is a hooker is a victim. We are not woman who hate men, we’re not women who have been beaten up by our parents, that’s not what we are at all. (Jasmin 1993, p.34) Introduction This thesis considers how in the course of their work female sex workers in Hong Kong experience risk. It concerns the indoor side of the sex market, an area which has so far been largely ignored in studies on commercial sex (Weitzer 2000; Sanders 2005a). The focus is on women working independently from flats, commonly known in Hong Kong as jat-lau-jat-fung (一樓一鳳), which is most often translated as “one-woman brothel” (see p.148 for further discussion). Focusing on women’s own accounts of work- related risks, risky behaviour and risky coping strategies, this study investigates sex workers’ reflexive understandings of prostitution and their occupational risk in late modern societies. The study emphasises the social, cultural, interactional and situational context, to understand the ways in which women involved in sex work conceptualise and respond to risk. In order to establish a context for discussion, the present chapter begins with a broad overview of the sex industry in Hong Kong. Then it moves to a brief discussion of the established association between sex and risk in the existing literature, and how far the occupational risks of sex work are conceptualised 10 in the related literature. The final part describes the way in which the thesis is structured and provides the key themes and content of each chapter. Why choose Hong Kong as the site of research? In this study, Hong Kong is chosen as the site of research because of its specific historical background. The city was once a British colony. As will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2, during the colonial period Britain played a significant role in shaping the meanings of prostitution and consequently the policy response to this activity in Hong Kong.