Female sex tourism

Articleissues
OR = August 2007
disputed = August 2007

Female sex tourism is travel by women, partially or fully for the purpose of having sex. The practice differs from male sex tourism in that women do not typically use the structures of the sex industry (e.g. strip clubs, sex shows and organised tours) to meet foreign partners. Women's trips may be referred to as "romance tourism." They typically involve sex with locals from the holiday destination country, as opposed to with other tourists, possibly from their own country (a holiday fling).

The phenomenon has been explored by French Novelist Michel Houellebecq in his novel "Platform" and in the non-fiction book "Romance on the Road". These works support the idea that sex tourism by both men and women reflects serious problems in the tourists' home countries, including a "dating war", or profound conflict between the sexes.

Destinations

The primary destinations for female sex tourism are Southern Europe (mainly Italy, Greece, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia, Spain and Portugal), the Caribbean (led by Jamaica, Barbados , Southeast Asia, (Bali in Indonesia [ [http://www.littlespeck.com/region/CForeign-Ind-040102.htm Bali gigolos] ] and Phuket in Thailand), and Ghana, Gambia and Kenya in Africa. Lesser destinations include Egypt, Tunisia, Nepal, Morocco, Fiji, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Thailand, the Dominican Republic and Cuba are exceptional in that both male and female sex tourists use these countries.

An estimated 650,000 Western women have engaged in travel sex from 1980 to the present, many of them as repeat customers. [ [http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/arts/story.html?id=6f1d0124-af59-431a-b9eb-f75a5aa47882 Sex tourism: When women do it, it's called 'romance travelling' ] ] By some estimates, 80,000 North American and European women flock to Jamaica for sex every year. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2006/jul/23/jamaica.theatre.theobserver How sex tourism became the basis of a Royal Court play | Travel | The Observer ] ]

Lesbian sex tourism is nascent but evident in Lesbos (Mytilini) in Greece, Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand.The men used by tourist women are termed "kamakia" (“fishing harpoons,” Greece), "galebovi" (“seagulls,” Croatia), гларуси ("glarusi") (“seagulls,” Bulgaria), sharks (Costa Rica), rent-a-dreads, rent-a-rastas, rent-a-gents and the Foreign Service (Caribbean) [http://goasia.about.com/cs/azsiteindex/a/aa010501.htm] , Kuta Cowboys or "pemburu-bule" (“whitey hunters”, Bali), Marlboro men (Jordan), "bomsas" or "bumsters" (the Gambia), "sanky pankies" (Dominican Republic), "gringa hunter" o "caza-gringas" in Ecuador and "brichero" in Peru. "Beach boys" is a more generic term.

Male prostitutes may in general be referred to by various terms and euphemisms. Some of these men can be considered gigolos, for instance.

"A holiday fling" or "a holiday romance" may refer to either sex tourism (having sex with a local) or an affair with a fellow holidaymaker, possibly from one's own country or indeed package tour. Either may be called "fun in the sun". Euphemisms abound.

History

Barring some isolated cases of women traveling for sex among North American Indian tribes and within Turkey, female travel sex (involving American and English women) began in Rome in the late 1840s, at the same time as first wave feminism, which encouraged independence and travel.

Affairs and intrigues, particularly between American heiresses and impoverished European aristocrats, continued steadily until World War I, inspiring a whole genre of literature such as Henry James's "Daisy Miller", Joaquin Miller's "The One Fair Woman", and much of the early output of E.M. Forster.

Female sex travel declined from the time of the Depression until the 1960s.

Coincident with the explosion of leisure travel in the 1960s and second wave feminism, sex tourism by women re-ignited, first via French Canadian women travelling to Barbados and Swedish and Northern European women to Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia and the Gambia. Female sex travel became ubiquitous throughout the Caribbean, from the tiniest islands through the big destinations of Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Barbados.

In the 1990s, women from Japan and Taiwan began to appear on the beaches of Bali and Phuket in Thailand.

Today, many other destinations are popular, including Morocco, Nepal, Thailand, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico -- everywhere with beaches (or in Nepal's case, mountains) and a surplus of underemployed men.

Reasons

Female sex tourism's first and second waves coincided not only with feminism but with Victorian era man shortages that began in England and later occurred in continental Europe and the United States.

Social reasons for women seeking promiscuous and no-strings-attached sex abroad include the dating war, as typified by extreme competition between the sexes in schools, the workplace, while dating, in marriages, and even in contentious divorces. The dating war appears especially to drive sex tourism by Australian and Japanese women, and to a lesser extent, German and Scandinavian female tourists. The changing theme of pop culture in the wake of the feminist heyday in America and elsewhere cannot be ignored. From the 1970s onward, the emergence of stronger, independent character roles for women in film, music and television doubtlessly influenced the expectations of ordinary women viewers everywhere in the western world.

The men may do it for the money, or for the sex, or for other unresearched reasons. Women usually give clothes, meals, cash and gifts to their male prostitutes. In some destinations, there are "going rates" for male companionship, ranging from $50 to $200. In other destinations, especially in Southern Europe, Turkey, and the French Caribbean, men do not expect to be compensated.

Depictions

Non-fiction books include Anne Cumming's "The Love Habit" and "The Love Quest", Fiona Pitt-Kethley's "The Pan Principle" and "Journeys to the Underworld", Cleo Odzer's "Patpong Sisters" and Lucretia Stewart's "The Weather Prophet."

Female sex tourists have been notoriously difficult to find and interview on the record (see de Albuquerque, 1998, in "Major academic publications" subheading, below). Thus some observers have turned to film and fiction to examine the motivations of women who travel for sex, love and affection. Movies include "Heading South (Vers le Sud)", with Charlotte Rampling, which depicts three Western tourists in Haiti in the 1970s, taking their pleasure with local men. Earlier film depictions include "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and "Shirley Valentine". "Stella" led to a quantifiable increase in trips by women to Jamaica [Michele Faul's Associated Press article, 12/6/1998, “ ‘Stella’ the Movie Attracting Single Women to Jamaica.” ] . Important works of fiction include, in addition to Michel Houellebecq's "Platform," Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying", which coined or popularised the term "zipless fuck".

Risk of HIV/AIDS

Half a million people have HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, where the rates of infection are among the highest in the world, second only to those of sub-Saharan Africa: 5.6% of the adult population in Haiti, 3.2% in Trinidad and Tobago, 3% in the Bahamas, 2.5% in the Guyana, 1.7% in the Dominican Republic, 1.5% in Barbados, and 1.2% in Jamaica. [ [http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/hiv_aids_adult_prevalence_rate_2007_0.html HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate(%) 2007 country rankings - Flags, Maps, Economy, Geography, Climate, Natural Resources, Current Issues, International Agreements, Population, ... ] ]

Those rates are much higher than in Canada (0.3%) or the U.S. (0.6%). Even so, female sex tourists in the Caribbean are not especially preoccupied by the risk. [ [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/11/1057783358449.html Sex tourism as economic aid - smh.com.au ] ]

ee also

* Feminism

References

External links

* [http://www.beaumonde.net/romance.shtml Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men]
* [http://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/0706/books.html Book review of female sex tourism history Romance on the Road]
* [http://www.arsrc.org/downloads/omondi.pdf Rose Kisia Omondi: Gender and the Political Economy of Sex Tourism in Kenya]
* [http://dr1.com/articles/sankies.shtml Dominican Republic Sanky Panky] , dr1.com
*Emily Monroy, [http://www.webcom.com/intvoice/emily22.html Interracial Sex #5: The White Woman Abroad] , "Interracial Voice", July/August 2002
* [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/11/1057783358449.html Sex tourism as economic aid]
* [http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=73637 CAPE VERDE: Sex tourism on the rise?]
* [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12F63C5B0C778DDDAB0894DA404482 Kenya Cracking Down on Beach Boys, Gigolos Serving Tourists]
* [http://www.aegis.com/news/mh/2003/MH030706.html Jamaican beach boys a tourist temptation]
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1168172.ece Women who travel for sex: Sun, sea and gigolos]
* [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1827032,00.html Sex, sand and sugar mummies in a Caribbean beach fantasy; Sex tourism in Jamaica] , "The Observer", Sunday, July 23, 2006
* [http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/arts/story.html?id=6f1d0124-af59-431a-b9eb-f75a5aa47882 Sex tourism: When women do it, it's called 'romance travelling']
* [http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=2bdb148d-66df-4f8a-918f-ffe59d617b90 Sex tourism in full boom] , "Ottawa Citizen", Monday, January 08, 2007
* [http://english.pravda.ru/society/sex/29-06-2007/94318-sex_tourism-0 Women going on sex tours look for big bamboos and Marlboro men]
* [http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2638979720071126 "Older white women join Kenya's sex tourists"] by Jeremy Clarke, "Reuters", November 26, 2007.