Sex+Tourism

Introduction
toc What is Sex Tourism "Sex tourism is a protean term that attempts to capture varieties of leisure travel that have as a of their purpose the purchase of sexual services. Clearly the concepts of 'prostitution' and 'tourism' are both central to an analysis of sex tourism, but neither term captures the full meaning of sex tourism." -Wonders and Michalowski, 2001 p. 545

Sex Tourism is the intersection of travel and the exchange of money or gifts for sexual services. This can look very differently depending on the atmosphere, attitudes and laws of each area and culture in which you travel. Sex tourism is often about creating an exotic fantasy that one believes they are not able to find or indulge in while in their home countries, no matter how fleeting or unrealistic the fantasies may be (Pettmen, 1997). Many places are considered hotspots for sexual tourism, and each has a unique feel and niche in which people visit to experience. While much of the research points to the idea that most who partake are Westerners looking for the exotic 'other', the patterns of travel and actual numbers of who travels and when is not very well documented, which could relate to legal, ethical and privacy issues that come along with research around sexuality (Davis & Whitten 1987).

Why might people partake?
Individuals have a variety of reasons for sexual tourism, one insight into why many Westerners may chose this path could be because of the Western focus on rigid sexual and gendered norms, and the wide spread of communication and the global economy (Clancy, 2002). These norms can create a state of shame and distress for any individual who has a deviant object of desire (Davis & Whitten 1987). The differing attitudes around sex work, sexual experience and sexual norms can make an individual feel safe to explore their fantasies or desires, both physically and socially distancing the visitors from their home territories, giving them a sense of freedom and anonymity (Parker & Easton, 1998). Culturally, many of the labels and stereotypes that help to shape the Western world do not exist in other place. Where the Western world stigmatizes those who are homosexual, sex workers or transgender, these concepts do not exist everywhere in the world, meaning the stigma associated also may not exist (Parker & Easton, 1998) These differences are influenced by the worldview of each location, what they believe to be real, what is important, what is acceptable and what the intentions and meanings are behind each action (Koltko-Rivera, 2004).

How different can it really be?
For Example looking at Cuba and Trinidad & Tobago, even though both of these locations are often associated by being within the Caribbean, the climates for sex tourism are extremely different. Cuba is seen as somewhat of a haven for sex tourism. It is a place that mostly men, but also women flock, to escape to their fantasies, and often to go to resorts, where people that work within the hotels and related bars are offering sexual services. Male sex workers in Cuba often tailor to men, regardless of their own sexuality because it is also a popular destination for gay men.Often the workers within the resort do not ask for money, but see this exchange as more of a gift from a friend. These resorts are thriving parts of the economy, and often to make sufficient funds to live people must live close to a resort, or work in one. (Cabeza, 1999, Clancy, 2002) Trinidad & Tobago is one of the least visited of the tourist locations in the Caribbean (Weichselbaumer, 2012). This often means that tourists who travel there for sexual exploits will have an easier time knowing what they want, where to find it, and even possibly build longer lasting vacation relationships- or more. Most of the tourists within these twin islands are women, looking for love, sex and companionship. These dynamics are viewed in society in a highly racialized context in that lighter skinned men are seen as being romantic interest, and darker men are seen as prostitutes. Regardless of how society sees them, the women involved with the men often try to minimize the cultural differences by saying the men are the same as those from their home countries, and often support their lovers or sexual partners in a variety of ways, that often lasts and is recurring (Weichselbaumer, 2012).

The culture of the host country shapes how sexuality and sex work is understood, often larger concepts such as religion, economic status, political agenda and general attitudes towards sex change how sex tourism is enacted within each culture, and the most important values within each location truly come forward when examining how a nation thinks about sex. Cultural concepts, whether general and broad such as individualism/collectivism or more specific such as laws that are for, against or regulating these practices combine to create a unique atmosphere for both those who are working and those who have travelled for the experience. These experiences can be both positive and negative, as it brings home a living for many who may be disadvantaged or oppressed, it is often a form of both independence and support for those working and for the economy by becoming a hotspot for travelers, which can lead to migration to new places. Sex tourism can also be damaging because it creates a situation of uneven power, it can exoticize humans and play into stereotypes about culture and the people within it, without helping a person to appreciate or actually understand the culture. These types of negotiation can turn some into commodities, and others into bank accounts. This page will explore how different cultures understand and relate to sex tourism.

**Tourism Statistics in Amsterdam**
Amsterdam is a popular destination in the Netherlands for tourism, and is particularly associated with recreational use of cannabis and visible sex work within the Red Light District. In the "Golden Age" of sex work during the 1960's, Amsterdam's sex workers were largely catered towards citizens of the Netherlands and were residents of the Netherlands themselves. The Netherlands was no longer associated with wooden clogs and tulips, but rather free love and psychedelic experimentation. As tourism increased over the next forty years, this image became marketable and commercialized, as did the tourism itself. Amsterdam was widely seen as a tourist destination, and the Red Light District was a crucial meeting point for sexual exchange, exploration, exploitation (in many aspects), and commodification.

Annually, sex tourism earns the Netherlands 1.1 billion dollars, which amounts to 5% of its gross domestic product (Caldwell, 2010, para. 1). In terms of United States contribution alone to this GDP, US Americans spend about 100 million dollars per year on sex tourism in Amsterdam (Gaughan, 2012, para. 2). Sex tourism earnings are not just for the act of sex itself, but everything that accompanies the process of tourism, from food to sleeping accomodations, to visiting sex museums, as well as any other related tourism a visitor might partake in between sexual encounters (Wonders & Michalowski, 2001, pp. 557).

It is also important to note that when we speak of tourists as an “other” here, we are commodifying them as much as the “normal” narrative commodifies sex workers. Talking about tourists as the other positions people as dollar signs. It begs the questions of how that dehumanizes the tourist. It also is worth asking how the views of tourist as an individual versus tourism as an industry differ among cultures.



** What are the effects of tourism? **
One way some Dutch individuals have expressed opinion on tourism in Amsterdam is negatively. A common Dutch attitude is that tourism has made Amsterdam "seedy," or cheapened it: “The Dutch see the Red Light District as increasingly a more foreign and tourist place than a local one. Public opinion has situated the zone as a typical tourist attraction and thereby not something having to do with local life” (Sabat, 2012, pp. 162). Because sex and drugs often draw similar demographics in terms of tourists, it encourages a "theme park" atmosphere in the city, laden with souvenirs, ostentatious marketing geared to draw the gaze of passers by, similarly to the bright glow of the red lights surrounding each window framing sex workers. “The emergence of this type of marketplace of bodies is dependent on the presence of a global tourist gaze—patterns of gazing and looking and the way international visitors “know” the red light district even before they came to Amsterdam” (Sabat, 2012, pp. 168.) This global visibility and international recognition has created spaces for invisibility in sex work that does not happen within the physical space inside the red light district. It assimilates people from all sides of sex tourism into new positioning of commercialized sex. Previous red light establishments allowed tourists to view sex workers as commodities, exotic others, transparently through a glass, but also transparently through the sex trade itself whereas now the practice is becoming more obscured. With the new development of enforced regulation, the landscape becomes much murkier.



**Project 1012: Neoliberalism of Bodies**
With the introduction of Project 1012 in 2007, many brothels in the Red Light District were shut down. Project 1012's claimed focus was to make sex work safer by cracking down on "unregulated brothels," but what it ultimately aimed for was a revitalization of the romanticized Amsterdam of the 1960's. It became a nationalization of bodies, requiring sex workers to show proof of citizenship. 1012 also requires large sums of money from brothels in order to keep their regulated status, so it becomes a question of who can financially afford to continue sex work. 1012 has begun renovating the Red Light District by setting up cafes, museums, children's parks, and other "family oriented" businesses. It has reinstituted concepts of morality in that there is a "right" way to do sex work and a "wrong" way. Those who conduct their sex work the "wrong way" are not even working, they are committing a crime. 1012 has delegitimized sex work through racism and classism and relegated many sex workers to dangerous means to continue their businesses: "Prostitutes unable to compete economically, will simply disappear into illegality, soliciting in bars and on the street. Their prices will be lower than those of their legalized colleagues...and their status as independent professionals non-existent. Without that status, they will still need the protection of pimps” (Brants, 1998, pp. 633). Many pimps are fluent in human trafficking, and without protection of Dutch law, sex workers without immigration status are vulnerable to unethical and inhumane conditions. Translating from Paul Vugts’s article in Het Parool: “Although criminal cases in recent years have led to significant convictions of pimps, their places were immediately filled by successors” (2011, para. 1). The following video is from an organization that seeks to raise awareness of human trafficking in Amsterdam, and is worth noting the usage of the tourist gaze throughout the video: [|Stop the Traffick Campaign Ad]

Another video worth watching on the blurred cultural distinctions between prostitution, sex work, sex slavery, and how that affects political decisions can be found [|here.]

Project 1012's agenda is implicitly neoliberal in that it employs forced privatization of brothels, lack of care for poorer migrant sex work communities and criminalizes these communities, even though they have increased the regulation of a niche portion of the market. 1012 has even more increased deregulation of the majority of the market by making it informal and hazardous. The Dutch government is trying to monopolize on the globalization aspects of tourism in the Red Light Area, hence making it a secretly neoliberal agenda by responding to tourist influx and subsequently restructuring the economy and its programs, thus rearticulating hierarchies of informality in ethnosexual class formation within sex labor.

** The Loverboy: A Phenomenon in Exotics and Demonizing Race**
The pimp, or human trafficker, has taken on a new image in Amsterdam. He has become insidious and virtually impossible to detain. Dutch media has created a narrative of the "Loverboy," named as such from 1980's and 1990's films such as Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing and the songs of Prince. The image of the Loverboy has been painted as manipulative, intelligent, abusive and emotionless, essentially a sociopath who makes promises to young vulnerable girls in order to "rope them into prostitution" and then pretend to be their boyfriends to emotionally obligate them to remain in the industry.

What is not highlighted is the heavily racialized subtext of each narrative, however. In an investigation conducted by Team Mensenhandel van de Amsterdamse (The Amsterdam Police Trafficking Team) in 2011, the investigators estimated that at least half of the prostitutes in the red light district are in the being trafficked by groups from Turkey, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Many articles note that these new "violent pimps" are rarely "Dutch born" or "foreign" (Simons, 2008, para. 16-17). One article even state that there were lots of pimps named Mohammed, (Bovenkirk & Van San, 2009, pp. 193), and the following video also contains a section where a Private Investigator notes that many of the pimps use Mohammed as their pseudonym: [|Particularly relevant sections include 8:42-9:22 and 12:27-13:38.]

**Visibility, Spaces: Who gets left out of the picture?**
As mentioned above with the introduction of Project 1012, non-citizens of the Netherlands are unable to conduct sex work legally. Despite the "Golden Age" of 1960's sex work in Amsterdam, where 95% of sex workers were Dutch, as of 2007, approximately 80% sex workers are not Dutch citizens and hence working illegally (Caldwell, 2007, para. 3). Several factors that intersectionalize the reasons for illegal sex work also include "migration patterns due to changing social and political climates (like legal restriction) toward prostitution and asymmetries between richer and poorer countries" (Sabat, 2012, pp. 162-163) as well as cooccurring marginalized conditions such as mental illness and drug addiction. There is actually a specific location in Amsterdam set up for migrant sex workers with drug addictions called "the docks:" a poorly lit area on the outskirts of the city where clients can drive in and out quickly (Brants, 1998, pp. 631). This enactment of Project 1012 is literally rendering "illegitimate" sex workers invisible by pushing them out of recognized places.

**Conclusion**
To end with a quote, highlighting words that may deserve analysis or a second look: In Amsterdam, efforts to make the city more attractive for //privileged// consumers and to deal with the //problem// of //migration// have led to laws and policies ranging from the //legalization// of brothels to //regulating// S&M practices. Despite the efforts of these cities to maintain //internal control//, their //mediating// institutions evolved in response to //global forces//, creating the foundation for globally structured, though geographically localized, sex tourism. What is new and noteworthy about global sex tourism is not “sex,” “sex work,” or even the commodifcation of bodies, but the extent to which sex work in specific locales is over-determined by broader global forces. This is what has changed significantly in the contemporary period. //Thus, local infrastructures that shape the possibilities for sex tourism in Amsterdam...increasingly reflect global, rather than local forces// (Wonders & Michalowski, 2001, pp. 565). According to this quote, are the local structures in Amsterdam truly shaped by the global forces of sex tourism? Or are they influenced by their own nationalist ideals of homogeneity in sexual culture? Is this a global rather than local? Or are the two even separable according to the above information?

**References**
Begum, N. (2013). The Significance of regulating prostitution. Internet Journal of Criminology.

Bovenkerk, F., & San, M. V. (2011). Loverboys in the Amsterdam Red Light District: A realist approach to the study of a moral panic. Crime, Media, Culture,7(2), 185-199. doi:10.1177/1741659011412124

Brants, C. (1998). The Fine Art of Regulated Tolerance: Prostitution in Amsterdam. J Law & Society Journal of Law and Society,25(4), 621-635. doi:10.1111/1467-6478.00106

Caldwell, C. (2010, August 19). Amsterdam Travel: Sex Tourism and Human Trafficking. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from http://www.justmeans.com/blogs/amsterdam-travel-sex-tourism-and-human-trafficking#sthash.kqnH0aA0.dpuf

Corder, M. (2015, April 9). Amsterdam sex workers protest window closures in Red Light District. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/amsterdam-sex-workers-protest-window-closures-in-red-light-district/article23861317/

Devaney, B. M. (2016, January 15). Amsterdam's sex workers: The unlikely victims of gentrification. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/15/amsterdam-sex-workers-unlikely-victims-gentrification-red-light-district

Pare, C. (Producer) & Rooke, J. (Director). (2013). The Dutch sex industry's terrifying underbelly. (Documentary). Surrey, UK: Journeyman Pictures. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht8wxROENdE

Sabat, M. (2012). From red light to black light. City,16(1-2), 158-171. doi:10.1080/13604813.2012.663555

Simons, M. (2008). Amsterdam Tries Upscale Fix for Red-Light District Crime. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/world/europe/24amsterdam.html?_r=0

Vinck, K., Dekker, A., Wulleman, P., Lefever, K., & DeWilde, D. (2012, April 04). Girls going wild in red light district. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-a8dAHDQoo

History
Bangkok, Thailand is one of the top sex tourist destinations in the world. While prostitution has existed in the country for much longer, the specific promotion of sex workers to foreigners took off during America's occupation in Vietnam and through the Vietnam War. Thai prostitutes increased from 20,000 in 1957 to 400,000 by 1964 (Gay, 1985). Thailand agreed to provide "rest & recreation" services for the soldiers, which the soldiers jokingly referred to as I&I, or, "intercourse and intoxication" (Rhodes, 1991). Thailand earned an estimated $16 million annually during the entirety of the war, so they were heavily incentivized to not only continue, but expand promotion with many soldiers returning home (Rhodes, 1991).

Promotion & the Industry
Thailand's Ministry of Health estimates roughly 140,000 sex workers as of 2012. The industry caters to numerous niche markets and portrays Thailand as a place where anything goes and no matter what your fantasy, there will be someone there to fulfill it. 10% of the sex workers are male. Thailand also has a large transsexual population, both pre-op hermaphrodites advertised as "ladyboys", and post-op transsexuals known as //kathoey//, many of whom identify as and are considered women (Ocha & Earth, 2013). Many of the sex workers are children and brought in through human trafficking. “The best study to date polled over 2000 venues, and found that of an estimated 27,925 sex workers, 1058 (4%) were estimated to be victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation, of which 29% were underage.” (UNODC, 2013). While trafficking and prostitution are technically illegal, there are many conflicting interests. Many women immigrate to Thailand from neighboring countries like Cambodia and Vietnam, bribing or servicing border guards, to make a better income. Average amount of money sent back to the families of sex workers in rural areas is $300 (UNODC). Because tourism, and thus, revenue numbers continue to increase, regulation of the industry is severely lax.

media type="youtube" key="pNb93TkKGrA" height="480" width="854"

[|(English Subtitled version)] The documentary //Whore's Glory// (Glawogger, 2011) takes an ethnographical look into the daily like of Thai sex workers at an establishment called The Fishtank. The women remain behind a glass display as the patrons discuss their tastes and ask for recommendations from the host. The whole process really dehumanizes and shows the commodification of the women. They are referred to by numbers and not names. They are described in how they would or would not suit the tastes of the patron. They even haggle over prices at the cashier.

An American tourist describes the appeal of Thai sex workers, "American women are fucking bitches. You don’t want to deal with American women – these women [Thai women] are the best, their minds have the right attitude. There’s no girl in the world [other than in Bangkok] that will give you a shower, give you a blowjob, fuck your brains out and fold your clothes with a smile on her face” (Manderson, 1997). Not just tourists however, the industry is heavily supported by locals as well. A group of Thai men in //Whore's Glory// above say that, despite having wives, the sex workers do things that they feel their wives would never do (Glawogger).

As for the youth workers of the industry, Vejar & Quach (2013) summarize the allure of this part of the market: "The is also the innocence factor, in which men like the idea of ‘deflowering,’ or taking away a young girl’s virginity, perhaps because it heightens their sense of masculinity. Of course, this is just an illusion, in which men trick themselves into the notion that the children, based on their youthfulness alone are innocent virgins despite the fact they are prostitutes.”

Cultural Attitudes
Thailand's cultural rationalization for the acceptance of the sex industry is unique compared to Western cultures. The dominant religion in Thailand is Theravada Buddhism. "Three concepts that contribute toward Theravada Buddhism's interaction with sex slavery include: (a) unequal discrepancies between men and women, (b) reference toward acceptable wives that have been set forth by the //vihaya// (e.g., a list of tenets intended for monks), and (c) a sense of reckoning with karmic acts" (Vejar & Quach).

Similar to other Eastern cultures, Thailand has traditional submissive gender roles and expectation of women. Additionally, the religion describes a fatalistic philosophy where your current fortune or misfortune is determined by the deeds done in a previous life. Therefore everyone is seen as deserving of whatever quality of life they endure. In fact, the women are shown specifically praying to have many clients that day before getting ready for work (Glawogger).

However, there are observable double standards. As mentioned, prostitution and child sex slavery are technically illegal yet not enforced. Polygamy is also illegal, however swinging is not uncommon. There is acknowledgment of the collectivist cultural expectations and ideals, yet individuals are constantly witnessed airing their personal individualistic grievances about how their needs aren't being met. Both men and women are shown complaining about their relationships or cultural expectations in several instances if //Whore's Glory//. Particularly, the female cashier of The Fishtank talks about how she acts like a surrogate mother for the women; listening to their grievances and acting as their support for their frustrations with their profession (Glawogger).

@Mail Order Brides
Now, sex tourism can occur in the comfort of your own home. As technology continues to grow and expand, it is clear that there are more and more ways to connect people of different countries and different cultures. This not only applies to the exchange of ideas, goods, and services, but also to the exchange of sex, love, and relationships. Though this is easier now with the availability of technology, the speed of modern travel, etc, sex tourism has been around in the Unites States since the first European settlers. The above link explores the history and current state of mail order brides in the United States.