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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   27860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Good review. I'm also a big fan of that book, and of Houllebecq in general.

Worth noting that the book came out in 2001, presumably based on what it was like in the 90s (I'm very curious how much of this he experienced directly and how much was just his imagination or interviews with other people). I went there a couple years ago, so I can speak to what it's like. In some ways things are still the same, but in some ways things are different:

  • onlike ticket sales, no need for a travel agency. Not a lot of people doing prepackage travel tours, at least not from Western countries.
  • online dating is a thing. In Thailand a lot of the female profiles are either obviously prostitutes or blatantly looking for a rich husband. But brothels and streetwalkers are still a thing there
  • The Thai economy has developed a lot, going from roughly $2000 per capita in 2000 to $7000 now. Still a rather poor country, but a lot less of the desperate poverty it used to have. The average Thai girl has a lot more options now, and there's an upper-middle class who are on par with the poorer foreign tourists who go there. The girls who still do it there now are usually either from Isaan (by far the poorest, most rural part of Thailand) or from Laos or Cambodia. So it's a bet less normalized there than it used to be.
  • Prostitution in the tourist areas is mostly focused on "short time". It's harder now to find the "long-long time" that used to be common there, where you basically hire a girl to be your girlfriend for the week or whatever and show you around. Still exists, but you have to look outside of the main tourist areas. And that's a shame, because I think that sort of thing does a better job giving tourists the "Romance" experience the way Houllebecq showed it in the book.
  • Bangkok is weirdly segregated by race. There are different bars for whites, chinese, japanese, indians, arabs, and probably other types of people too, but those were all the ones I saw directly. They might or might not ban you directly, but they'll look at you funny for being the wrong race when you go in there.
  • Most bars are run by a "mamasan" who's MTF trans. They sort of act as a third gender, helping men and women connect with each other despite limited English and general awkwardness. They're really good at it! I wish the LBGTQ community in the west could taken more of that role to bridge the gender divide.

In general I agree with your review. Houllebecq holds up a magnifying lens at the ugly warts of modern society, forcing us to confront some of the things we'd rather not think about. The sexual revolution idea of "free love" isn't going to work for everyone, it can't work for everyone because there's not enough attractive peole to go around and western society is still kind of awkward and cold about sex. One obvious solution is to solve that problem like we do everything else in capitalism- hiring poor people to do it with money.

And sure, in principle it's not that different paying a poor 3rd-world person for sex just like we pay them to sew garments or grow fruit. But it does feel different when you experience it directly. Most of us are never going to run a 3rd-world sweatshop, we just buy the t-shirts and don't think about it much. But when you go to Thailand, and some woman quote you a price for sex that you know is too high, and you don't want to get taken advantage of like a sucker, but it's still not that high and you know how poor this woman is, but then you look around and see so many other women around who look hotter and are offering it for cheaper... you feel a little piece of your soul die.

On the other hand, it was an interesting experience to see capitalism "solve" sex, the way it solves everything else. Unlimited liquor, junk food, and sex, all for sale in the same place and for basically the same price. Whatever you want, you got it. Now with legal marijuana, too!

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