Page 83 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

OF DESIRE, THE FARANG, AND TEXTUAL EXCURSIONS 77

And as you dress and put on your hat
You look back and say…
‘Did I fuck “that”????!!!!’

Similar, but more concise, messages about the delicatesse can be found on
baseball hats, T-shirts, and bumper stickers.
In 1987, the Thai national planning authorities officially designated it to be the
Visit Thailand Year. Many events were planned to attract a record number of
foreign tourists. It was the same year that the Thai government began to take
actions to address the impact of the AIDS crisis on Thailand. The conflict
between dealing with AIDS and promoting tourism became apparent. The Thai
government was determined to play down the scope of AIDS. The rationale: to
avoid public panic and hysteria.
Today, it has become customary for service girls and bar boys in the
entertainment districts to wear round their necks an ID card—known as the
‘green card’—issued by the local health officials stating their HIV test results,
proving to their local and foreign clients that they were safe, without being
offered a reciprocal proof from the clients.

The United States Pacific Command, a massive military complex, spans
over five major Asian countries and the vast area of Micronesia. With
three hundred bases and facilities stationing about 330,000 servicemen
and women, this military complex has had a profound economic impact on
the host countries. A whole host of small businesses is stimulated and
sustained by the presence of the military personnel; these businesses will
not survive had it not been for the whole economy of sexual labor
(Sturdevant and Stoltzfus, 1992). In Thailand, next to the production of
rice, prostitution is the largest industry.

In addition, the modern tourist industry in Southeast Asia is modeled
after the ‘rest and recreation’ (R & R) centers that were established during
the Vietnam War. The understanding of the specific shape in which the
AIDS crisis is taking in the 1990s cannot be separated from the
understanding of what transpired in the war of the 1960s, and the global
economic tales of the 1970s and 1980s.

In the realm of the military, sexual relations always take on particular meanings.
The military depends on certain presumptions about masculinity in order to sustain
soldiers’ morale and discipline. It goes without saying that the construction of
militarized masculinity goes hand in hand with the construction of feminized
poverty and sexual submission.
In the New York Times article, a long report spanning more than a full page, no
mention is made of the historical conditions in which Southeast Asia finds itself,