Youth and the Discourse of Sex Work, Rights and Safety

PUC Youth Debate 

The second candidate from the opposing team appears to have a strong point highlighting the value of ‘good woman’, upholding Khmer culture and tradition of being a good woman should do… no woman should choose to do sex work because that job is bringing disgrace to woman…

The fourth candidate from the support team on the topic appears quite energetic at first. But when she attempted to conclude the key points/reasoning that her three fellow team members presented, she could not quite present their point. She mumbled over words and then concluded the point without much logical order, and one that is convinced… Then the committee called for a small break before announcing the results of the three groups. The Anxious Moment Even For Someone who is not on either side of the team…

Debate: a formal contest of argumentation between two teams or individuals.[1]

Ten days ago, on my way to the coastal province of Kep, I received an email inviting me to mentor a youth debate session. It was the first time to mentor the debate club but I like to try out another area of the mostly untapped mind of young Cambodians. So I volunteered to help out! The following Sunday, I was invited to the mentor discussion. The topics are ones that close to my heart: Sex Work, Rights, Safety and Women. All the five mentors met and mind-mapped the main reasoning for each topic, pro and against reasons; the overall framework to guide the reasoning; the resources the debates could study to reference their arguments…

Over the course of the week, I received message from the team I was assigned to mentor (the support team) on the topic: Phnom Penh is not yet a safe city for women and girls.  The team already did well research and come up with three good reasons for their points I practically did not have more idea to give them but ask some questions and raise some further point for them to think through in the context of their three reasons. I also alerted them that I would be attending the debate itself.

The key observation I would like to share: First I had is that in a debate session, there should not be many topics especially more than one topic that are closely related to each other. After the two team presented on the first topic, the debate committee gave thorough comments and hence the second group could reference those comments in their subsequent discussions, in addition to their well research topic. Also, I feel that in an afternoon, two topics should be sufficient enough to gauge the attention of the audience to stay on with the mood of the two teams. Second, to make the debate more interesting and logical, it is very important for each debate member from each team to present their idea with logic and not in order to win the other team. Quite often, trying to win over another person’s idea make one fall into the trap of being defensive and always present a logical thinking; taking the reason to the personal level rather than acceptable and common sense. I have witnessed this more than once in the teams debating the three topics.

My third observation is that, there seems less number of female students in each of the debate team. Each debate team has between 25-50% of female team members only even though all three topics they discussed are closely link to women and their rights. This is rather disappointing.


Group photo at the end of the session with all the debaters from the six teams - mentors, judge and organisers

In general, being an observer during a debate session helps me to think about myself when I am in a situation whereby I have to present our argument over a problem/situation. I learn that our youth at the university have done their research into the main discourse commonly held in society. This made me feel a little disappointed as I am hoping that new challenging idea emerges at least from one of the team member, if not many. But I haven’t found the courageous soul yet. Nevertheless, they help me to understand the current thinking and that there is a long way to guide the way for the alternative perspective to be heard in the mainstream discourse.

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