August 14, 2006
More on 'Sugar Mummies' and female sex tourism
From the Times (London) review of Sugar Mummies:
Wealthy, unfulfilled women travel to the Caribbean for sun, sea and sex. Local men, for whom life in this impoverished picture-postcard setting is far from paradisal, charm the cash from their purses with honeyed tongues and honed bodies.Who is exploiting whom? Does she who holds the purse strings also hold the power?
What is all this talk of exploitation between tourist women and foreign men? My read of these interactions is that most are mutually beneficial, some involve manipulation (common enough in interpersonal relationships) rather than "exploitation," and that the true risks of female sex tourism aren't even touched by Tanika Gupta's play.
As I noted in the Experiences chapter of 
Romance on the Road, negative experiences allied to casual travel sex include HIV, AIDS, other STDs, rape, harassment, mental health problems, broken marriages involving the foreign man's original wife, high divorce rates for post-holiday marriages, and suicide.
These are far more concrete problems, which came up in my six years of research, than quote-unquote exploitation.
Hail to the Guardian's Michael Billington, who writes of the play:
Behind the play lurks a puritanical assumption I find hard to share: that there is something wicked about female sex tourism. If men can go on holiday looking for sex, why not women?
Hear hear. Billington goes on, "Gupta's moralism shows itself most clearly in a dreadful scene in which Maggie ties up a 17-year-old lover who has failed to rise to expectations." When a producer for the BBC's "Woman's Hour" described this scene in the play, it seemed absurdly negative, and as I said on air, I take a far more benign interpretation of the female sex tourism scene. It is a logical response to man shortages in the West, affordable air travel, and women shortages and chronic underemployment in the developing world.
Finally, as promised in yesterday's entry, some dandy comments from the public on this entire topic of female sex tourism.
The most amusing comments come from the Guardian article,
"This is not romance."
For full entertainment value, read the original article first, and then note the British skill at pointing out obviously absurd aspects of Bindel's piece, mainly that she fails to acknowledge that men love sex, that they love especially to be viewed as "hypersexual," that they love to be thought of as having "big" bamboo, and that while it is possibly to sexually assault a man, it is impossible for a woman to rape him.
Comments:
- "Incidentally, is it more or less sexist/racist to imply that black men have big cocks, or than white men have small cocks? Because, even if they're equally offensive, I wonder which of the two insults most men would prefer to endure."
- "Ms. Bindel mistakenly conflates prostitution with destitution; i.e., that no one actually wants to be a prostitute, and that all prostitures are thus victims of poverty. This is untrue. Firstly, many horny young men leap at the chance of being payed to do what they are desperate to do anyway, 24/7: have sex. Secondly, the idea that prostitution is demeaning is a peculiar one, born of guilt about sex inculcated by the nonsensical Abrahamic religions."
- "Try picturing this maybe. A sweet and sexually adventurous middle-aged woman, slightly lonely and attracted to younger men goes on holiday and observes that for a fee certain men will sleep with her. She is sensitive and empathetic enough to understand when one of these men is not necessarily attracted to her and the sex is a bit of an ordeal. She politely pays in full or part anyway and sends him home. Some insist on doing what they are paid for, some thank her and leave.
"Eventually she finds someone who is attracted and they have a great time and even become friends. He makes money, a new friend, she a new friend. All a bit of a muddle at times but it worked out, life often does if you focus on the bright side of things and people."
- "So some men are younger and poorer than some women? And sexual relationships often features a measure of exploitation? Aside from the weather, how does this differ from relationships all over the world in every country?
"I look forward to Bindel's next story, Dog Bites Man."
- "I�ve been to St. Lucia and met the guys that do this kind of thing (this was back in �92, so we�re not talking about a new phenomenon here). None of them had any particular complaints about the business they were in. Indeed, they were very happy with their lot. I spoke to one man who had launched himself into the jet ski rental business because one happy client had bought him his first jet ski. A happy man indeed."
- "The idea that these men would starve if they didn't sell their sexual favours is debatable to say the least. Jamaica is nowhere near as poor as some of it's neighbours or some Sub-Saharan countries. Most if not all of these men resort to this lifestyle becuase it is easier than working."
- [I love this one:] "This is a poor article. Power dynamics based on wealth often occur in relationships in the wealthy Western World as well.
"As Ms. Bindel notes, the men do not feel in danger so what makes what they "sell" any different from those who put on voodoo displays for tourists?
"It's only because they are black and the women white that it has become fashionable for the media to make a big issue of it--because writers like Ms. Bindel still think in the parlance of slavery and thus calling it an abuse of racial power makes it more sensational.
"I am a black American woman and I experience the same sort of overtures she describes from poor men in India, Morocco and Haiti. Stop waving around race to try and make your article juicier."
- "Every young single girl who's gone to Spain or Greece or wherever in the last 35 years and shagged a waiter or local has probably bought the drinks or paid for the hotel room etc. (more so the further back you go as the locals were poorer). It probably never entered their heads that there was an element of exploitation, it was just young people having fun. Now some of the older women indulging in 'sex tourism' may choose to delude themselves and others may call a spade a spade but I can't get myself worked up about any injustice."
- [This comment raises the question of identity loss, which I write about in the Reasons chapter of RotR:] "A more interesting question is why Western women, young and not so young, feel more sexually uninhibited abroad. Probably because judging voices like Julie Bindell's are not there.
"If it was socially acceptable for middle-aged women to pay for sex here, they would be doing it in the same way as in Jamaica."
- "if you do not want to sell sex as a man, you do not have to. To equate "beach boys" with the sex workers of Eastern Europe being held AGAINST THEIR WILL is disgusting to say the least. I am friends with many of these men, and the point all of them make regularly to me is that if a man chooses to not sell his body, then guess what, he stops doing it. But to sit here in judgement of the women who use the services WILLINGLY offered is just another example of "getting all up in someone else's Kool-AiD" when indeed your name is not cherry. And why is it that we only discuss the heter-sexual nature of this question? So many holes in Ms Bindel's assumptions, that it almost was not worth commenting on."
- I think you're finding too many victims for a non-crime here. A lot of Caribbean men like fat women -- which applies to a lot of British, American and Canadian women in the over-30 age group. Caribbean men also like white women. If the Caribbean man is over 16/18/whatever you consider legal age, what's your problem?
- "Every person and situation is different, naturally - one woman might be a strong and see the situation as a thrill without ramifications."
"Another woman might be desperately lonely and sad that she has to `pay` for sex and romance."
- "Whoever is talking about economic imbalances etc. and all that Guardian tosh, when I went to Jamaica for a week, the bloke who was running the entertainment business at the hotel was firing it up 2 40-somethings who would try to lay their kids off on other people. This is about personal choice in most cases, not economic necessity."
- "I've always been amused by those lefty NGO type women who go on holiday to Cuba, shag a local guy, and manage to position it as a dewy-eyed token of Third World solidarity -whereas a bloke who goes to Thailand or Philippines or wherever and manages to find someone to buy meals in return for sex is a vile colonial rape-monster. "
- "In terms of living with my own conscience, I'd rather be a prostitute than a journalist. As they say in Spain: �Don't tell my mother I work for a newspaper, she thinks I play the piano in a brothel.�
- "How can you exploit a lad that's obviously got a stiffy?"
And my favorite:
- "Although this article has some valid things to say it reeks of Puritanism. The certainty Julie lays down around sex is shocking given its long history and differnt ways of being seen by different cultures. I was wondering if Julie could issue a 4000 page Code of Conduct that would set rules for everthing and define in detail these things. If I go to a country whose GDP per capita is 4% less than the one I live in and buy a non minor I meet a drink and then happen to have sex with them is that still exploitation? Should I first issue them a written disclaimer before I buy the drink? I'm sorry I'm totally lost. Please Julie, get us the Code of Conduct because we desperately need you to define everthing in detail so that it can be set in stone for all time. Please include all the Disclosure Statements and Financial Services Guides we will need."
And comments from the Daily Mail's "Men for Sale" article:
- Helen of Nottingham writes, simply: "Have done the same thing myself many times and intend to keep on doing it."
- Mark writes: "Why should older woman not have some fun? Good luck to them. I lived and work in Cuba from 1993 to 2000 and it was a common sight to see a middle aged female tourist surrounded by a bevy of good looking and much younger Cuban men. What harm was done? The woman went back home with a warm glow and some exciting memories, the men had consumer goods and expensive items they could not otherwise afford."
"Also, although I cannot speak about elsewhere, in Cuba it is by no means unknown and barely worthy of comment for a Cuban woman to take a much younger partner. Are we attempting to impose our own cultural norms onto other societies?"
I'm always on the lookout for mentions of places women visit to keep my geographic list complete, and posters mentioned Cyprus, "older European women with boat boys in Luxor [in Egypt] or beach boys on the Red Sea coast," "East Africa, particularly popular resorts of Mombasa and Zanzibar" and Senegal.
For additional destinations in Latin America, the Arab world and Asia, see RotR.
- posted by jbelliveau at 10:41 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
