Anakena Paddon

Anakena Paddon

SOC 400

Bodies and Labor

            This week’s theme explores the flux and international trade of human labor and workforce, in various sectors of the formal or informal economies. The articles focused on sex tourism and domestic workers, examining the expectations and presuppositions we may have about these groups.

            I began by reading Thomas Fuller’s article titled “A Thai City of Sleaze Tries to Clean Up”. In it, Fuller sets the scene for a red light district, which surpasses the cliché and expected versions of Las Vegas and Amsterdam. This article set the scene for the other readings, because it subtly highlighted the relationship between power and politics and the sex trade. In fact, the dependency of the city of Pattaya on sex tourism in order to remain economically sustainable began after US military forces left the country. The country is attempting now to “reach for respectability” and is doing so not by striving to eradicate the trade of prostitution and sex tourism (60% of tourists in Thailand are men). Local police forces know it is impossible to fully eradicate an age-old trade, and are instead looking at shining a light on different aspects the country can offer (parasailing and shopping, for example).

            At first, I had trouble finding the connection with the inclusion of the article by Parrenas, about migrant Filipina domestic workers because all of the others focus heavily on sex tourism and prostitution. Parrenas’ article looks at her ethnographic work in Los Angeles and in Rome, interviewing migrant Filipina workers (these destinations were selected because Italy and the USA are the largest destinations of Filipino workers). She conducted 46 interviews in Rome and 26 in Los Angeles, and concentrated her efforts on conversations with Filipina women who work in the reproductive labor sector. Reproductive labor encompasses the labor needed to sustain a productive labor force – this means care of the elderly, of children, of adults etc…

            Because these types of services cost money, usually only class-privileged women can afford to hire other women to do cleaning, care for children, cook, shop etc… This is when I realized the connection between this article and the others: power. The tension surrounding the power struggles in sexual relationship/exploitative situations is similar to the one expressed here, with the migrant workers and their employers. Most of the women immigrants are trained professionals back in the Philippines, but emigrate to the USA and Western Europe for a chance at earning more.

            Interestingly, they replicate the power struggles once they return to the Philippines – many of the interviewed women said that once they made enough money to return home, all the aspired to was to be comfortable enough to hire their own domestic worker. This maintenance of the “hierarchy of womanhood” as it is referred to by Parrenas is based off of race, class and nationality. She points out that women in Western countries are assumed to be more liberated but we must remember that the only reason they have the availability and time to take the same positions as men is because they can afford to hire other women to do their housework and childcare for them.

            This power struggle and the standards of women’s roles and sexuality is something that is also explored in the article on Female Sex Tourism. In it, the author discusses the double-standard set-up in sex tourism: we call male sex tourists “sex tourists”, which carries with it the connotations of “sleaziness” set up in the Fuller article, as well as notions of exploitation. However, when women operate as the sex tourist, we call the phenomenon “romance tourism”.

            The author seemed to struggle with this dichotomy – on the one hand, there is the idea that women cannot exploit or sexually abuse a man, and therefore the similar acts of sex tourism are romanticized and belittled less as an abusive situation. On the other hand, I found the description of romance tourism very different from how I imagine male sex tourism. The women are described as taking their Caribbean boy-toys around the island, to restaurants, treating them more like escorts than prostitutes. The conversation recorded between the older woman and her sex worker, saying that there was to be no furthering of a relationship, that it was all physical, is a step in the “Sex trade” that I do not imagine occurring between a male consumer and a female prostitute.

            I think the female sex tourism industry is very interesting, because I do agree with the statement that it is dangerous to degender prostitution. But at the same time, we cannot assume that the young men and boys who cater to older Western women in search for a few days of sun and fun are complicit and willing actors. I cannot help but assume that they are also feeding into a system of power where gender perhaps doesn’t dictate the most powerful but race and social class.

            Davidson and Taylor’s article “Fantasy Island” also examines the power relations established between sex customers and sex workers, introducing their work with the statement that sex customers often seek out workers who are of a different race, nationality and class than theirs.

            The authors compare the fantasies offered as realities in sex tourism with the fantasies in pornographic films. The concluding thoughts of the article highlight – once more – this theme of power particularly coming from the West. Western sex tourists dictate, as the consumers, what the sex workers can offer in terms of services. This only serves to heighten their power struggle.

            Articles like this counter the kind of cultural counter-globalization we’ve seen, partly with features such as Lagaan, which seem to indicate a new trend. The power struggles at play here seem to only confirm and maintain the power in Western, white, wealthy circles, ensuring the subordination of both men and women in poorer countries.