I got a reply to my comment on the Farang speaks 2 much blog. I will publish it here in it's entirety as well as my response.
"“And wosch! Here comes the Farang in shining armor to rescue the girl from her awful job and come live with him. On one condition though… Give up your high income and start working for 7 000 bath a month plus the change I will throw you every month. See how you can keep sending generous amounts of money back to mommy with that.”
Was this the formula you used to pull your girl out? Seriously, I have to say your examples and comments are so conflicting and convoluted I can’t make sense out of what you’re tryin to say. In the end it seems you’re sayin that since she came out of the bar industry you should expect here to steal if, except if you treat her well… but then again she might steal anyway if she left her old job and you didn’t make it worth her time financially to leave (WTF?)…and even if she does steal, keep her because it’s probably your fault to begin with.
“Off course it’s a job that most of the girls don’t enjoy very much but selling sex is not the same for them as it is for us.” (pmmp & smitty, can you start the TFS2M Blog Awards to be held at the Mango on the anniversary of the Blog? I’d like to nominate the previous phrase for the TFS2M Understatement of the Year.) “Here it is not coupled with the same stigma as in the west which means that for many of these girls it’s ok to do it.”
Really? Most of the girls don’t enjoy very much? Does that mean most girls enjoy it some? I guess most the girls I talk to aren’t the 100k-200k baht girls, because almost all of them dislike to outright despise selling the box. And here’s something, if it’s not coupled with the same stigma in Thailand as other parts of the world as you suggest, then why do so many of these girls fail to disclose to their Thai boyfriends that they’re stuffing the box with Grade A Sausages (farang & Thai) and also seem to fail to tell their parents what they really do? Yea, I know some who do tell their family, but I see and hear hookers in the USA do that as well (hear of Howard Stern? He’s practically made a career of it Seems the working girls have no problem talking about their work or the money on his show). So what make this profession so unique in Thai society again; was it the being more accepted part or was it the people doing things they don’t like to do because they’re dirt poor and have no other option part?
Getting back to the stealing issue….
To say that theft is OK in certain circumstances is laughable.
To say “what do you expect when …” is also laughable.
Here’s a little anecdote germane to the topic:
Both my parents worked, so my mom would hire housekeepers to help tidy up the place. The women who were hired were not from a cleaning company but were in most cases poor woman from non-profit placement organizations who could provide cleaning, baby-sitting and other domestic services. In other cases the women were working as house cleaners for friends of my mother. Guess what, things would occasionally disappear! I would guess that over the 10 or so years that maybe 5 or 6 of those women were canned because things were disappearing. Were these women making so much money before that took a less paying job to make some cash? What do you think? The really interesting thing is the women who were referred to my mother by her friends were the worst offenders and I can remember one instance where my mother brought this up with her friend that it was an eye opener because after connecting the dots said friend realized where the items from her household were probably going (previously she thought it was one of her teenage kids drug addicted friends stealing the stuff).
Would any of you, having found a housekeeper who did everything perfect and everything you wanted, keep her after she stole from you one time? How about twice? Three times?
Years ago, I remember a certain school of thought being pushed in some colleges which can best be exemplified by this example which was actually used in the classroom, “If a woman was stealing food so that her homeless and starving family was able to eat”, was the act a) right or wrong and b) justified? It surprised me when I found I was in the minority to say it was absolutely wrong whether it was justified or not (and it was most certainly justified in the mind of the mother committing the act). The common theme was people said, “It’s OK to steal in this situation because….” Maybe this is why we have these depraved acts of theft by the Bernard Madoff’s and other obnoxiously and not so obnoxiously wealthy men and women? There’s too much justifying an act due to the circumstances: Bullshit. Wrong is wrong. The severity of the wrong should dictate the punishment, in any situation. It doesn’t make one act less wrong than another. I know this isn’t sitting well with the readers who are in the “there are different shade of gray majority. I guess if your domain of morality is a spectrum of grays then it’s a whole lot easier to say an issue isn’t black and white. In that school, I guess it’s also easier to justify the actions of your girlfriend stealing from you and keep her.
Do you get my point here? Doesn’t matter the industry someone works in nor does it matter the need or socio-economic strata. If someone has justified it in their mind to steal then they will steal: how much it may hurt someone they know or supposed care about be damned.
That’s not me. This is Thailand and there are many, many attractive girls out there. This trust has been broken. I would find a 5K baht/month apartment, paid 3 months in advance, had her personal items moved, changed my locks and had her dropped her at her new pad.
But that’s me. The can see black and white, cold hearted farang who always negotiates and has never had anything stolen."
Bubba
Hey Bubba!
I understand that you think most of what I write is BS and that’s ok. I guess I’m more of a different shades of gray guy than a black and white guy. I would say that it is ok for a poor mother to steal food to feed her her starving family. Not if she was steeling from someone who was equally poor but if it was from someone who had plenty, then yes. Even if it was from me, if I had plenty.. ;-P I think this is called empathy? Maybe I’m also a bigger fan of Robbin Hood than you are?
I think most legal systems in the world take the reasons for an action into account when passing sentence on a crime (killing in self defense would be the extreme, is killing right or wrong?) so I would say that most of society is more gray than black and white. It can’t be easy to be black and white, especially not in a very gray society like Thailand.
The wosch bit was supposed to be irony but maybe that was lost? I was trying to put a finger on the strange attitude of many Farangs that the ex bar girl girlfriend should be grateful to get the opportunity to live of the scraps from the Farangs table. I’m saying that if you don’t show love, trust and loyalty how can you expect to get it back? You heard about self fulfilling prophecies? I’m also saying that if you don’t understand the basic need of the girlfriend, eg taking care of the family back home, you will get into trouble eventually because to most Thai girls the family is the first priority and they will do anything for them, even steal and f..k for money.
I’m not saying it’s ok to steal, I was addressing the general attitude of many Farangs, and maybe I strayed from the subject a little. I was just so taken by the willingness of people on high horses to pass immediate judgment without asking for the reason behind the action or to consider the Thai culture. It’s not uncommon here to go behind someones back as to not bother them with problems. For a Farang this is not ok but it will take some time to recondition someone who has grown up in another culture, Farang or Thai.
For me it is hard to give any advice about the “theft” without knowing more about the reasons for taking the money. Does she have a gambling or drug problem? Did she get into bad debt for helping her parents, maybe she borrowed money from someone else because she didn’t want to worry the boyfriend and now she couldn’t pay back? Or maybe she is just a bad apple? If you had a Farang girlfriend, since two years, who stole some money from the household account because she had a gambling or drug problem would you then drop her like a piece of garbage or try to get her help?
And seriously… I can’t really see how you can talk about Bernard Madoff in this context?? But maybe that’s the gray in me that acknowledges the difference in motive?
I’m so fed up with all Farangs who come here trying to impose our different morals as the only right way. This is right, that is wrong and you all should do like we do back home in the US or in Europe. We are the ones who are guests in a different country, adjust or leave. We westerners seem to be pissed off about all immigrants that refuse to assimilate when moving to our countries yet many of us don’t see that maybe we also need to change our attitudes when entering another society and culture.
About the money it’s my view that if you ask someone to give up a high income (I would guess that most girls that are considered girl friend material for a Farang make at lest 50 000+ bath a month) and the possibility to support the family back home you have to look at what you are bringing to the table. This is not different from a Farang Farang relationship and in the west it is not uncommon to compensate age and poor looks with money and status. These girls consider it ok to f..k for money or they would already be working in 7 eleven so taking that bit out of the equation might not amount to such a high value as many Farangs seems to think. The I hate my job line is often true but sometimes also exaggerated to gain the pity of the Farang and make him more willing to open his wallet wider.
And just because the girls don’t tell their parents outright what they do for a living it doesn’t mean that the parents, and most everybody else, don’t know where the money is coming from. I find it hard to believe that the people in Isaan think that all the girls coming back from Bangkok, Phuket and Pattaya with Farang husbands met their men in the grocery store, do you? Or that they can believe that their little girl, who only finished 6th grade in school, can get a job that pays well enough for her to send 5-10 000 bath home every month. Everyone knows what the girls are doing in Pattaya but as long as the money finds it’s way home no one talks about it. One reason they don’t tell is that it is important in Thailand to have the opportunity of plausible denial but I guess you know this already. If you don’t talk about something it doesn’t exist.
We apparently disagree and that’s fine I just wanted to clarify my points and say thank you for the nomination.
CYA!
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