Bodies and Labor Post

Rachel Becker

April 23, 2012

Moodle Post – Sex Tourism

            Wonders and Michalowski (2001) serves as an excellent overview of sex tourism as a global practice.  They say that, “Cross-border tourism typically reverses this pattern [less advantaged people migrating to more developed countries in search of opportunity] as privileged bodies from industrialized nations cross into less developed ones in search of exotic pleasures and a little (highly controlled) danger” (Wonders and Michalowski 2001; p. 548).  In this way, migration is defined as an act for the less privileged.  They are allowed to work and to provide pleasure and comfort for others.  Tourists can afford to vacation, to take a break from their lives and purchase pleasure.  Because we are operating both under a culture of consumption and a culture of privilege, we feel entitled to this practice and to get as much of it as we feel we need.  We expect our needs to be fulfilled.  This raised the question for me of why anyone feels entitled to use anyone else for self-satisfaction, exotic or otherwise.  These tourists feel that they are being open minded and experiencing new things while really just validating their pre-existing beliefs.  It certainly has something to do with capitalism – sex tourists feel that they are paying for a service and that entitles them to appreciate it without shame.  In fact, Wonders and Michalowski (2001) point out that the “global sex industry is worth ‘at least $20 billion a year and probably many times that’” (p. 549).  That is the largest reason that little has been done to slow this practice. 

            Wonders and Michalowski (2001) quote other authors in writing about Thailand.  They say, “’Thailand is like a stage where men from around the world come to perform their role of male supremacy over women and their white supremacy over Thai people’” (p. 550).  In this way, not one but two forms of privilege are being enacted and taken advantage of – race and gender.  This blends nicely into Thomas Fuller’s (2010) article titled, “A Thai City of Sleaze Tries to Clean Up.”  Again, I have an issue with this title.  It may very well be a sleazy city, but it seems like horribly biased journalism to present that as the only option within the city.  Fuller (2010) writes, “If Las Vegas is Sin City, Pattaya is a bear hug from Lucifer himself” (p. 1).  There is nothing about that sentence that isn’t sensationalist and a massive generalization.  I also wondered who got to decide that it was a city of sleaze – that seems like a privileged position to be able to make that call.  And I was not surprised at all to find that it was US soldiers who took a quiet and beautiful fishing town and turned it into a city of depraved hedonism.  Still, though, it is foreigners who frequent this city and make their economy possible; it can’t come from within.  I found it particularly telling that the director of the Pattaya branch of that Thai tourism office was so blunt about this.  He said, “’You talk about sustainable development, how about prostitutes?  They have been around for a very long time,’ Mr. Niti said.  ‘We can’t close down the go-go bars.  It’s a free country.  Besides, it makes money’” (Fuller 2010; p. 3).  This raises a few questions.  Are we really to believe that nothing can be changed just because it has been existence for a long time?  And this may be a free country (is it?), but are these women free at all?  Are they free from disease and free to decide when they get pregnant?  I have no idea.  Lastly, this ties back into the Wonders and Michalowski (2001) article – why is this country so different from Amsterdam?

            I was very interested in the dichotomy explored in Davidson and Taylor’s “Fantasy Islands” between the sexualities of women of color and those of White women.  According to this article, they are often perceived as two entirely different entities.  Here, men of all races are thought to be acting on racial socializations that promote women of color as naturally sexual whereas White women are repressed.  At the same time, when White women aren’t quiet about what they want from a sexual partner, they are seen as demanding and too much work.  Davidson and Taylor say, “’With an increasingly active global feminist movement, male-controlled sexuality (or female passivity) appears to be an increasingly scarce resource’” (p. 454).  In this way, men looking to prostitutes is the fault of women again.  Here, the connotation is that they do not satisfy sexually and have in fact joined up in order to empower themselves and be hostile to men.  Women of color are viewed as the other in this situation and that is especially dangerous because it dehumanizes them and leaves them in an incredibly vulnerable situation.  At the same time, sex tourists often want affection from the women they are seeing and are paying for the illusion of desire.  It’s a weird disconnect between wanting totally aggressive, objective sex and wanting a connection with a person who you are not willing to treat as a person.  The women in Taylor’s (2006) article do something very similar when they want sex and to be made to feel attractive by much younger men who they are paying to flatter them.  These authors also raised the issue of sex tourists helping the women they hire by supporting them financially.  Although we see in the case of Pattaya that this industry was started by US soldiers and we are therefore responsible, these men that they are continuing to help these women to survive.  Again, they are merely paying for a service that they would be engaging in anyway because they are so primitive.  It is a very similar narrative between the female and the male sex tourists – how much agency can the people they are seeing really have?

            The idea of a nanny, especially a live-in one, has always been a little strange to me.  I understand that mothers need and deserve help with their children, but I wonder when a line is crossed and that person is more bonded to their child than they are.  An entirely other level is added to this when mothers leave the Philippines to raise children in other countries, leaving their children to be raised by poorer Filipino women.  Again, I understand that this could be the more reasonable financial decision, but how is this possibly a more reasonable solution?  What does this do to children?  To a mother’s bond with each set of children?  It all seems horribly confusing and upsetting.  I also thought Taylor’s (2006) point that, “in its commodification, the worth of reproductive labor declines in society… ‘When performed by mothers, we call this mothering… when performed by hired hands, we call it unskilled’” (p. 562).  Of course, this is to say that we give any value to mothering to begin with.