The ROC is erasing the history of comfort women's sexual slavery by romanticizing it

I am reasonably sure that not one of these women is real

Once a year or so, we go to Kinmen for work and then plan an extra day to relax, drive around and do whatever, usually booking a traditional 洋樓 (yánglóu, or 'foreign style mansion', though they don't look terribly 'foreign') for a few nights.

This year, our first stop was the Military Brothel Exhibition Hall in Jinhu township along Qiongjing Road (瓊徑路) - if you want to go there, it's easiest to just plug it into Google Maps. I've been aware of ROC military comfort women for some time (yes, quite a bit like comfort women forced to service the Japanese military in World War II), and that the practice was particularly predominant on Kinmen as it was a major military outpost.

Having felt for some time that the issue of Japanese comfort women, while also important, has been given priority over ROC comfort women with the issue manipulated for political purposes, I wanted to see how this museum portrayed the issue. Did it get anywhere near actually tell the story of women forced into prostitution to 'meet the needs' of ROC soldiers?





No.

I learned more about the soldiers who went to the brothels, and how the brothels operated on a bureaucratic level, than the women who actually worked in them.

The exhibit, which is in English and Mandarin, hemorrhaged copious reams of verbiage justifying the 'needs' of the soldiers (as above - and this wasn't the only culprit). A huge percentage of the words on the wallboards attempted to convince visitors that these 'teahouses' were necessities of war, because how could our boys on the front line continue to fight without getting their sexual requirements met?

I don't really need convincing that any given group of people (except ace folks) spend a large percentage of their time thinking about, wanting to and trying to get nasty. That's just human. Just about everyone likes to bone down. Fine. And I don't need convincing that sex work is important or necessary - I'm in favor of legalized prostitution, in a system in which the sex workers themselves have power over their work - not a pimp and certainly not a government.

But the exhibit also spent a great deal of time telling you about the different 'tea houses' all over Kinmen and why they existed or how successful they were. You even got to learn about the quality of 'service' at each one and what 'grade' each teahouse was given (which...let me tell you. Forget wanting to work at a 'Grade D' brothel - can you imagine how insulting - and terrifying - it would be for a woman to be assigned to one?)







Every single thing gets its moment in this exhibit - except for the women. The men and their needs are centered, and there's a lot of description of the humdrum bureaucracy of the brothels. You get to see a replica of the tickets that servicemen were issued, and the rules and regulations they had to follow. There are a lot of pink and purple shades and soft floral patterns - you know, because it's women's stuff - which is an attempt to soften the truth, and was hardly the reality of the matter. The attempted romanticization is more than a little off-putting.

You heard about the women's health checks and other rules concerning their lives - including that they weren't allowed to leave, yeesh - and that they were 'recruited' as 'waiters', are expected to get the impression from this that they chose to ply their trade in Kinmen and that the military took good care of them. You could read - briefly - about how 'bitter' and miserable their lives were in Taiwan proper, trying to convince you yet again that this was a good thing for the women, and everyone was consenting. After reading that, you'll learn how often the women had pap smears, but still nothing at all about who they were as people.

The very brief text that actually discusses the women and their lives uses the phrase 'finding their way to the frontline', as though they journeyed to Kinmen of their own volition.



Of course, they did not.

In the famous case that caused the 'teahouses' of Kinmen to finally close in the late 1980s, an underaged woman (16) was tricked/forced to go to Kinmen and then, after refusing to engage in sex work, was told she had to do so for several months before she could return to Taiwan (link in Chinese).

I also have it on good authority (and the Taipei Times backs up) that most of these comfort women were not consenting and not taken care of well. Most of them were prostitutes working illegally  (only 'municipal brothel' prostitution was legal) who were caught and essentially forced to work in these 'teahouses', often - as the link above mentions - made to have sex with 60-70 soldiers a day. As I highly doubt they agreed to that many clients, that essentially means they were raped 60-70 times a day.

And someone on the committee that designed this exhibit is aware of this, as you can see:




Sure, the women were not forced into prostitution as a trade, but if you write 'nor did they willingly go to support one side in a war', you are implicitly sending the message that someone forced them to do so.

That's not consenting - it doesn't matter that they were prostitutes before. You can't force someone to work for you, even if you pay them. That's slavery. The government can't knock on my door and tell me I must teach in a particular government school and then frog-march me to a classroom. This is no different just because it's sex work.

And yet, that one line in one (rather terrible) poem is the only clue that these women were essentially forced to be raped by soldiers six days a week. What's worse, the NewTalk link above describes the attempts of Kinmen-born writer (and I guess politician? It's not clear) Chen Changqing to retcon the history of military prostitution into a consensual industry in which the women were well-cared for despite the preponderance of historical evidence to the contrary.

Beyond that, the exhibition hall does not tell the stories of any of the individual women who worked as military prostitutes, even though many are still alive. One could easily ask them, and many of them would likely want their stories told.

You don't even see pictures - just stylized anime-like airbrushed cartoons of generic beautiful women. They don't actually exist. Even though surely photos of the actual women who worked in these teahouses could be found, and photographs of still-living ones could be taken. I'm sure some of them (though surely not all) would give consent for their images to be used, if exhibited as a part of a well-designed and impactful exhibit. But, of course, nobody asked them.

Much easier to write a few platitudes about 'bitter lives' and place them next to soft-focus cartoon women than to face what your government did to real, actual women.





I have to wonder why they did it this way. Was it because whoever was in charge of this didn't want to make the ROC government look bad (especially on Kinmen, where the KMT remain popular)? Was it because they - though possibly not the women themselves, given the activism of the women who worked in municipal brothels in Taipei - regard the actual work of such women so shameful that they felt they were doing these women a favor by romanticizing it while keeping the women's actual stories quiet? Was it because the moment you tell the truth of what the government did to these women, it raises the question of compensation? Or was it straight up sexism: did whoever was put in charge of designing this just not even consider that the women's stories mattered?

The government has been much more forthright about the work of Japanese-era comfort women from Taiwan. A museum was created for them, while quietly trying to squash the attempts of ROC-era comfort women to do the same thing, as the links above show. Is this because the Japanese era is in the more distant past, and most of those women have died? Is it because it allows them to blame  Japan, not themselves - blame which can be strategically trotted out for political purposes? Don't forget that the previous administration made a point of souring Taiwan's relations with Japan as much as possible, in order to garner favor with China. Is it because the women forced into sex work in the Japanese era often weren't prostitutes to begin with, so it's less 'shameful'? Or is it perhaps all of these?

In the end, it bothers me not just that this story was told badly, but that politics seems to determine who gets their stories told at all - and it never seems to actually be about the women.







I want to be pleased that the government isn't trying to pretend this part of Taiwan's history never happened. I want to rejoice that they're not trying to bury it as so many governments do to the more unsavory stories of their past.

But I can't - I just can't believe someone thought it was a good idea to set up a 'military brothel exhibition hall' and then spend the whole time justifying the brothels' existence, without even trying to tell any of the honest, true, detailed, human stories of the actual women who worked there.

If nobody is willing to have their story included - which is possible, but I doubt would be the case - then you can at least tell the absolute truth of how the women came to work there and what their lives were actually like beyond a list of 'rules and regulations'.

If there's one thing this exhibit can learn from museums cataloguing horrible things which exist around the world, it's that you don't need to justify the past. You're not fooling anyone. We know that romanticization is just one step removed from erasure. 

It happened, and what matters now is that we look at it squarely and honestly, and whenever possible we try to make it right. The Military Brothel Exhibition Hall does not do that, and all I can suggest is that they take a good, hard look at their first attempt and try to do better. 

The ups and downs of International Women's Day in Taiwan

I've had a hard time writing this, because I don't want to sow further discord among feminist activists and various feminist groups in Taiwan, but...I just can't let it go.

I'm not too involved in Women's Day or Women's March Taiwan or any of those groups, in part because I have a hectic enough work schedule that I usually can't do groups (I never went to a single Indivisible Taiwan meeting because I was never free) and besides, it may surprise you to learn I'm just not a joiner. Beyond that, I sort of see feminism in Taiwan as something best led by Taiwanese women; I'm not really needed. If I'm free, I'll lend my support by attending public events, but I'm usually not free.

This year's women's march, dubbed WoMen (which means "we" in Mandarin) took place on a rainy Saturday (I wasn't able to attend due to work commitments). Looking at the news reports, you'd think everything ran smoothly and 80-100 marchers enjoyed talks, demonstrations and performances by a variety of women doing interesting things in the community. And that is what happened that day.

But it was sad watching the social media kerfuffle leading up to the Women's March when the original line-up for the march included a number of men, and was strongly criticized for de-centering women. The response was that feminism is still seen in Taiwan as something for women to fight for, that men don't need to or should not get involved - and that the "WoMen" event hoped to change this by showing a gender-diverse line-up.

Suffice it to say my days of feeling totally pumped and inspired by Women's Marches happening in Taiwan appear to be over.

I don't have screen shots or anything for this, as by the time I thought to gather them, the published line-up was taken down and - I am told anyway - changed. There was no further dialogue or communication about the event and its scheduled performances.

On one hand, I kind of agree with one critic that this was something of an "all lives matter" response - that the one day that centers women among all holidays shouldn't be used to showcase and praise male allies, but to showcase women, with men quite welcome to attend but not to take the spotlight.

I also do agree with the organizers, to an extent, that we need to do something about this particular problem in Taiwan specifically. It seems to me that they had good intentions, but bungled the approach. It absolutely is an issue, more so than in the West. I have certainly seen men show up to events to support women's equality in the US and act as allies. In Taiwan, I've heard a lot of ally-talk, and that's great, but not a lot of in-person support (the recent Vagina Monologues performance was a refreshing change; the audience was quite gender-diverse). What's more worrying, behind those words, there's not a lot of actual action taken by men to challenge the gender imbalance.

For instance, I have noted for some time that social movement activism in Taiwan is heavily skewed male (although women do participate). I know more than one woman who has given up on being involved, for a variety of reasons, or has a less-than-stellar opinion of people widely admired among Taiwanese progressives. I know that several social movement and progressive political leading voices are aware of the problem, but have not seen much attempt at all to address it.

Going back to the Women's March, however, I don't know that having a male-skewed line up was the way to address that issue. There must be a way to raise the number of male allies without having to center men at an event for women, and in any case, male performances at a women's event aren't going to draw in any man who wasn't already inclined towards allyship. There are surely ways to get the message out that gender equality isn't just something women fight for, but something we should all support, without handing the spotlight to men for an extended period on International Women's Day.

On the upside, despite these internal issues, by all accounts on the day in question people showed up, banded together and presented a united front for gender equality. That's something - it matters. I'd like to see more of that in Taiwanese politics (*cough* DPP *cough*).

But my disquiet runs deeper: on a surface level, it bothers me to see so few Taiwanese women involved in these public events. For sure, Taiwanese women did attend the march alongside many foreign women, but with only 80-100 participants, that number was clearly not large. From the media coverage, I didn't note any Southeast Asian female activist participation, although such women do exist. This still feels like an event mainly powered by the Western expat community and as such, I'm not sure how much it can really accomplish.

That said, looking at local groups, I find even more to raise my skepticism.

One of the collaborators on this event - and many other events - is Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation (TWRF). I will say now that they do do some good work. They arose from the Awakening Foundation, founded by former Vice President and current oddball Annette Lu (don't take that as an insult; I kind of like Lu, but I also think it's time for her to either get with the times or retire) and Lee Yuan-chen. Given Lu and Lee's differing backgrounds, Awakening and TWRF have no clear political orientation that I can suss out. That's great.

But...well, I've mentioned TWRF before, and in a not particularly flattering context. They are the people behind the comfort women museum. The museum focuses on Japanese colonial-era comfort women from Taiwan, and I agree their story is important.

However, it - and the KMT, who expends a great deal of energy keeping the comfort women issue in the public eye - has been criticized as taking political aim at Japan, in line with the desires of pro-China KMTers who want Taiwan to get closer to China and therefore drive a wedge between Taiwan and Japan's currently fairly close relationship. Comfort women aren't even the only wedge they use to try and accomplish this. All the while, many of those who claim to care about comfort women...don't actually.

How do I know? Because they only seem to care about Japanese-era comfort women (the still-living among them being quite old). The ROC had comfort women too, and being younger, more of them are still alive, but nobody seems interested in taking up their cause. Some of these women are currently fighting for the right to establish their own museum at the former municipal brothel, which is its own interesting story (the government quietly sold the building it was located in without informing them, and as far as I know their lawsuit to rectify this and stop the building from being demolished is still working its way through the courts).

So I have to ask why TWRF set up a comfort women museum for Japanese-era comfort women, but takes no interest whatsoever in ROC-era comfort women or their cause.

As such, I question their true motivations, and am skeptical of their current involvement in women's issues, and leaves me uncomfortable about my own support.

Suffice it to say that this post has no clear conclusion. It's messy and unclear, and I'm unclear about my own messy feelings on the matter.

All I can say is that Women's Day this year left me feeling frustrated and not particularly inspired.

That's all I really will say on the matter, because I actually do think those of us committed to similar causes need to show each other support, not tear each other down.

The Wen Meng Municipal Brothel (文萌公娼館) and a Datong photo walk

So this past Sunday, despite the crap weather, we decided to get some exercise and hang out in a part of Taipei I love, but don't get to return to often: Datong/Dadaocheng. I have a 2-volume book kicking around called Historical Sights in Taipei that I often use to determine landmarks by which I plan my urban roving, and Brendan and I came across an entry I was quite curious about: the Wen Meng House (文萌樓) at #139 Guisui Street (歸綏街), just west of Ningxia Road (Guisui is a little bit north of Minsheng). It's closest to MRT Shuanglian, and you can get there by walking through a fairly atmospheric old warren of streets if you stay off the main roads - though in this 'hood, even the main roads have crumbling colonial architecture.

The Wen Meng House was apparently opened as a municipal brothel in the 1950s - back when sex work was legal in Taiwan. It was closed in the late 1990s when sex work became criminalized, but the women of COSWAS (a sex worker association) are fighting to keep it open as a historical site and small museum. You can read more about it here.

That article was from 2012, and writing from 2016, I can say the building is still around and still marked as a historical brothel, so it seems no final decision has been reached on the fate of the property. It is, however, locked and nobody is around to let visitors in. There is an active shrine/temple next door but I didn't want to ask, though in this country I'm not so sure a temple would be morally opposed to sex work. They do have sexy temple dancers, after all.



As a sex-positive person and pro-historical preservation urban dweller, I obviously side with the women trying to preserve the site. This is an important part of their history, and is one of the things that makes an urban place more human - by remembering how things were in years gone by as well as acknowledging that sex work, well, exists. It has always existed and will always exist.

Though obviously I acknowledge the rampant exploitation in the sex work industry, and am well aware that a huge percentage of prostitutes are exploited or enslaved, I'm not in theory opposed to legal sex work provided by unexploited escorts of any gender, and legalizing it would make it easier to find and punish traffickers. 



The bandanas tied to the door say "pardon sex work", and I assume the photos below are of the press conferences and political activities of the sex worker association as they fight to preserve the property. Godspeed!

I do view this as a women's issue, and an issue of women's rights. Not only should sex work not be stigmatized or penalized (though traffickers certainly should be), but women should be free to do what they want with their bodies - we all should, in fact! If that means selling sex for money and that's what they want to do, let them do it, regulate it, tax it, protect the workers who choose to engage in it, and otherwise, stay out of the bedrooms of others.

And I do think this is possible in Taiwan - first of all, it's less controversial than the "comfort women museum" (which despite controversy I actually support - women's stories too often get shunted to the side, especially if they are doing something others find 'unsavory' such as sex work - puppets get their own museum but not women who were legitimately forced into sex slavery?) And secondly, as I've explored in the past, Taiwan is not the sheer bastion of conservatism that many believe it to be. Commercial sex work was legal until 1997 after all.

And by all means, let the women have their historic site!







Historical Sights in Taipei, by the way, has a hilariously awkward English rundown of the site:

The indoor compartment or layout of this well-preserved house also reflects the spacial needs and functions of the early-time sex business with the particular atmosphere of a public whorehouse still emanating.

Great, except I wouldn't know what the atmosphere of a public whorehouse is? And if you look over to the Chinese, it gives you the Chinese word for, specifically, a public whorehouse (公娼館)...did not know that was a word in Chinese. Nice.

Anyway, just wandering up from Shuanglian along Wanquan (完全街) Street and assorted lanes yields all sorts of interesting sights of a slightly crumbly, gritty neighborhood:





And some tiny alleys lead to interesting things indeed, including antique stone tools in private courtyards (photo taken with permission of owners but not their angry little dog):





...and cool syncretic temples that feel kinda Dao and also kinda Buddhist:





...and I thought I was the only Taipei resident to have a Chen Chu spring scroll (I have one from the year of the horse, with Chen riding a bicycle, which those who know what it would mean for Chen to be depicted riding a horse - perhaps with stirrups - might find as a missed opportunity, albeit purposely so). Chen Chu is the well-liked mayor of Kaohsiung, not Taipei!



By the way, I don't have one for year of the monkey. If any Kaohsiung resident has one lying about that they want to send to me...

I also liked this lovely hand-painted sign:



Sunflower sympathies run deep in Datong - Mr. Hong here was just one of several campaign posters and banners we saw evoking the symbols of the 2014 student movement that occupied the legislature for over two weeks. The actual student activists are not necessarily comfortable with this association or possible appropriation of their name by DPP candidates (I have no idea how close Mr. Hong here is to the student movement). 



...and Datong wouldn't be Datong without its weird little asides:



There are legit other sights too, if you want to walk around the neighborhood. Further north along Chongqing you'll come to this old facade, with an ugly building behind it. The facade itself seems to hold a Starbucks, which I gotta say is a pretty cool Starbucks...for a Starbucks:



...and a turn onto Ganzhou Street will lead you to a Presbyterian church built in the early 20th century, with an ugly-as-actual-sin newer church attached behind it like a tumor that has grown larger than its host. The address is #40 甘州街.



And you'll pass the requisite temples and shrines, of course. This area is also quite near a well-known Earth God temple you may want to stop at. 



If you want to head westward, to the very end of Taipei, walk back to Guisui Street (a bit to the south of Ganzhou) and take it all the way to Lane 303, which is quite literally the last tiny little lane before Huanhe Road, the seawall, and the river delineating the city limits. Turn right and you'll reach the Koo family mansion at #9 Lane 303 Guisui Street, which is now a kindergarten. This was built back when Danshui River trade was much bigger than it is, and the ground floor was used for commerce. The Koo family resided upstairs. This, and the Chen residence further south (on Guide Street between Xining and Huanhe, south of Minsheng) are the only two surviving mansions along the river that I know of, and they don't even border the river anymore. The hideous Huanhe Road does. 





Along the way, the walk is a veritable choose-your-own-adventure of crumbling architecture. Dihua Street of course holds many of the best-preserved examples, but quite a bit exists along Guisui, Guide, Ganzhou, Anxi, Xining, Minsheng, Yanping, Chongqing, and other roads. Just take a wander, See what's out there.






The theater of the lovely little puppetry museum on Xining Road just south of Minsheng: 



...a falling-apart building on either Minle or Anxi Street:



A lane off of Anxi Street:



The old Chen mansion, on Guide Street (#73貴德街）. The backside visible along Xining over the wall, in a mess of overgrown shrubbery and trees, is creepy in a haunted-house sort of way. You could probably keep a hermit in there.









An old house along the park where Anxi and Minle meet above, and a crumbling edifice on Anxi below.

This whole area, especially the park to the east of Dihua Street where these roads meet, is starting to show the early signs of gentrification, with cafes and bookstores beginning to pop up. 



Gentrification, to my mind, is kind of okay as long as local residents benefit (though usually they don't), though I have to say it's a bit of a shock to see my old walking grounds, where I was the only non-neighborhood local around, just me and some old folks and kids, now being full of walkers and tourists on a Sunday afternoon. I'm OK with economic development and all, it's just...weird. At least it means these old architectural treasures are more likely to be preserved. If they draw crowds they're not as likely to be razed by developers. As long as they don't turn into some crappy uniform "Old Street" selling the same shoddy souvenirs as Daxi and Sanxia...





We ended the day by being tourists ourselves, stopping at 217 Manor (in a block of old gray shophouses on Dihua Street north of Minsheng) for coffee to perk up and then a beer to wind down.



Independence indeed!

And then walked down to Nanjing Road to catch transportation home, stopping along the way in my favorite Chinese medicine pharmacy to play with one of their many pets (they also have another cat, an overweight dog and a surly gray parrot).