Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand's "new sexual harassment law" and as we will get into here in a moment, there seems to be more to it. That being said, what's the thumbnail? Well for those of you who are South Park viewers, this is the "sexual harassment" panda; that was a rather good episode. I’ll put a link in the description below to IMDb on information regarding that episode of South Park. It is a rather old episode. It is kind of funny these days, it’s humbling to realize how old South Park is because it makes me feel old. I remember when it came out; I was in my late teens when I first saw that show. That being said, in the show the sexual harassment panda kind of finds himself rendered obsolete and he ends up on the island of like misfit mascots where there's the “don't run with scissors” beaver, and all sorts of other mascots that like fell by the wayside. It's a funny episode; it's a funny episode.

That said, the reason for the video, I'm going over here where I initially found this over on X @OGTNAF: Quoting directly: "Update: (Thailand): Sexual harassment has now included any ct of a sexual nature, whether physical, verbal or digital (including stalking and surveillance) that causes distress, humiliation, fear, or sexual insecurity. This means that stalking is now a criminal offense which carries a penalty of imprisonment up to one year or a fine up to 20,000 baht, or both." 

Now, that's pretty good analysis frankly for lay folks and all of that. I can't really, I'm not trying to contravene that or find any fault with the analysis, but I think people are failing to see what precisely this looks to me to have been invented for. And it looks to me to have been invented primarily to stop people from filming people in Thailand without their permission. We've already got laws on the books to that effect. This law, again quoting directly: "or digital including stalking and surveillance that causes distress, humiliation, fear or sexual insecurity." So any of those things, so "distress, humiliation or fear", I mean that's a pretty low bar. Look, to be clear, I remember in the early 90s back in America when they invented the term "sexual harassment" and in many ways it's kind of one of these nonsense terms in my mind especially from a legal standpoint; it reminds me of “hate crimes” where it's like, "well what's that?" We just put an extra predicate on it because of what someone was thinking. It's not in my opinion good law. 

That said, sexual harassment was sort of created, it was a workplace thing. In Thailand to be clear, this is now considered a crime whereas it was initially created as sort of this nebulous, civil type offence where somebody had acted inappropriately but it didn't rise to the level of any kind of criminal behaviour. Now my personal opinion on this is adults should act more like adults and just kind of deal with things rather than trying to make everything a "federal case" as we would call it the United States. 

That being said, this law specifically looks to me to be more targeting a specific concern of Thais. One that I personally have had issues with in the past year or two as we have seen more of these tourists come back in especially in the aftermath of COVID, where folks seem to think that they can just film anybody doing whatever on the street with impunity. Well that is not legal in Thailand. It never was, and this law puts an even finer point on that. One thing that I really don't like to see is in the adult entertainment areas, people walking around and photographing people. I remember at a time, I can literally remember this being in Patpong the old Madrid Tavern, sitting out front on their porch watching people go by, and I mean if anybody pulled out a camera, people would go nuts over that. And it was considered massively bad form, considered terrible manners to say the least and again, in light of Thailand's various laws regarding illegal surveillance and basically illegally filming other people, it could cause you real problems. But again with the frankly addiction of people to smartphones in the past roughly decade, decade and a half, we've seen people's sort of attitudes change, and I do get that. There's a notion in Obscenity Law for example in the United States where there is a notion of what is called contemporary community standards where basically people's paradigms shift, and they have a different idea of what should be legal and illegal. Well Thailand is pretty clear on this. People want privacy in their day-to-day lives. They don't want to be hassled by illegal surveillance, people filming them, when they are just going about their lives, and even if that means they are having a good time in an adult entertainment zone. Sorry, adults are people too as it were, and they are allowed to do what they do without again without "distress, humiliation fear or sexual insecurity". 

I think overall, the thinking behind this law is good. I'm worried a little bit about application because I am worried it could be used frankly abusively, in much the same way it has oftentimes been used in the West. That being said, I'm going to keep an eye on this and we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.