On the surface, Taipei works like any other Asian city. Bar girls snuggle up to men who buy them drinks. At nightclubs hidden inside high-rise apartment complexes, men make private deals for sex with the hostesses. Massage parlors, in their own words, offer "more" than service for sore backs.
What sets Taipei apart from, say, Beijing or Hong Kong though not Singapore, where prostitution is legal, though severely restricted is that the government is legalizing the sex trade instead of squelching it. Taiwan will formally decriminalize prostitution in November, but it will be legal only in certain areas. Officials are now studying where those areas should be; one proposal would allow studio-style brothels in parts of Taipei.
The explanation for this move to live and let live: The world's oldest profession happens to be one of Taiwan's best organized. After officials began to tighten a noose around prostitution after more than five decades of hush-hush permissiveness, defiant professionals formed the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters in to defend it.
Some of the members knew no other career and didn't want to switch in their 40s or 50s. Others ran profitable nightclubs and sought to protect their livelihood.
Based in a narrow Taipei alley that once bustled with brothels, the nonprofit wields surprising clout for a group with just 71 members. It has demonstrated loudly outside cabinet offices and Taipei's city hall for looser rules. Its protesters followed then president Chen Shui-bian around "like a shadow," to quote the group's secretary general. The collective once ran a candidate for city council, winning votes but not enough for the seat. The collective, billed as a women's rights group, not only wants prostitution legalized.
