Getting What They Want: Women as Customers in the International Sex Trade
In recent years numerous organizations have worked to call attention to the abuses of the international sex trade. Of particular interest issex tourism, in which individuals from wealthy countries travel to third world nations with the explicit intention of patronizing prostitutes while there. In some cases, there are special travel companies and resorts that specifically cater to sex tourists.
While much has been made of the fact that many men (and sometimes male/female couples) take advantage of sex tourism, this article shows that when it comes to the exploitation of vulnerable cultures and people, women are more than capable of holding their own. While I’ve been crowing for years that church and society need to regard women as sexual (not just emotional) beings with needs and desires of their own, this article demonstrates the failures of laissez-faire sexual ethics along with the fallenness of our sexuality. The willingness to use the other for our gratification is not something that is limited, or excluded, by gender.
November 28th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
It isn’t prostitution or the same kind of sex tourism as men who pay pimps to sleep with young girls in foreign countries. According to the article, the women aren’t paying the men for sex, they’re just paying their expenses and treating them to the good life so long as they’re sexually involved. As Bethan, a woman participating in this phenomena observes in the article, how is that any different from an older man in this country wining and dining a young girl with the implicit expectation that she will be both his ornament and sexual playmate? I’m not arguing either is at all healthy…
November 29th, 2007 at 6:55 am
I have a somewhat different take on what is going on. In many or most cases, we simply have lonely women with few options in their home cities, finding affection readily available only when they travel abroad.
Just because the media focus obsessively on travel by white women to Africa and the Caribbean, doesn’t mean that this is representative of what is going on.
Black and Asian women also travel in search of love on foreign shores. And these women — black, white and Asian — visit Nepal, Thailand, Latin America, Oceania and most of the world’s travel destinations in search of love.
So, this is not a simple case of neocolonial exploitation or immorality, as many try to make it to be.
If our Creator gave us our sexuality and need for human touch, one might readily argue that these women are in fact acting on very human longings for closeness. The fact that about one in 30 of such holiday flings leads to a long-term relationship shows the potential for holiday sex to lead to something nobler, and in fact, that this is essentially long-range dating between areas of the world with man shortages, and others with surpluses of men.