CityNews – Yesterday at Chiang Mai University’s Department of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai NGO Urban Light along with CMU’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Love146, an international public charity focused on the abolition of child trafficking and exploitation, presented the results of one of the first studies of male sex workers in Chiang Mai.
Love146 and Urban Light Team
Lead researcher for Love146, Jarrett Davis, presented his results in depth, drawing statistics from three major hubs for sex work – Night Bazaar, Santitham and Chiang Mai Land, and dividing the workers into a variety of different parameters, from type of sex work (bar vs. massage parlour) to emotional responses to the work.
The goals were not only to understand the scope of Chiang Mai’s male sex industry and to establish a baseline understanding of the situation, but also to assess the needs of young men and boys working in the industry, and to provide valuable information to service providers, government officials and other NGOs that may pick up where this study left off.
Conclusions indicated that most young men in Chiang Mai’s sex industry have migrated from Northern Thailand, and that male trafficking issues are more prevalent than initially suspected.
For more information visit www.love146.org or www.urban-light.org, and stay tuned for our in-depth story in an upcoming issue of Citylife Magazine.