August 21, 2006
Roundup on female sex tourism
Here's a roundup of the latest news regarding road romances:
From today's Daily Mail, a story of problems after English woman Elizabeth Christopher, shown at right, met a Gambian man on holiday: "Yes, it all ended in tears:"
Now, a devastating sense of betrayal is all that is left from Elizabeth's nine-month union to the Gambian man nearly 20 years her junior — that, and her depleted savings account. Six months after they returned to England as man and wife, the charismatic, charming man who wooed her so tenderly during her exotic African holiday has disappeared without a trace.
This just goes to show how off-base many of the critics of female sex tourism are in their charges that Western women "exploit" foreign men. There is plenty of latitude for a conniving man to take advantage of these women's loneliness and con them into a rather heart-breaking situation.
Also in "romance on the road" news: Add Poland to the list of destinations for women, at least according to this news release (which borrows from the definition of female sex tourism that I wrote for Wikipedia): Sex tours to Eastern Europe becoming fashionable For women:
Traditionally women have gone to the Caribbean, Southern Europe, and Africa to meet men on sex tours. But advertising of the Polish plumber in Western Europe as part of the European Union entry process by Poland had a significant side effect in that it attracted the attention of many women in Western Europe.And the attraction of women to the Polish Plumber has been noted internationally. As a result Eastern Europe and Poland are attracting women for sex tours from America, also. As more and more women come to Poland and have pleasant experiences with Polish men and the Polish plumber, sex tours to Poland become more popular as they relate their experiences ever so privately to other women in their home countries.
I can't vouch for the veracity of this article, but it fits in quite smoothly with the concept of dating wars and man shortages spurring Western women to leave their home countries.
And here's a tidy rebuttal of the notion that female sex tourism is a reprise of slavery, in this review, "'Sugar Mummies' Sex Tourism on the London Stage":
Some of the women's behavior when angry is wholly unbelievable -- the overt references to slavery -- the whipping, the "unsayable" insults -- seem to shoehorn a message -- "look, this is almost slavery -- a replay of it" -- where it simply doesn't fit.
To say the least. Women who get involved with foreign men enter an intriguing dance where both they and their lovers are basically uniting to reject the control of white men (or non-whites who hold control).
This was true of the Victorian lady explorers who took local guides in Syria and other remote areas as a means of rebelling against the control a European man would exert if he led their traveling party.
This excerpt from 
Romance on the Road takes an exactly opposite tack to the Sugar Mummies view:
Female sex travelers may act as radicals for fairness, as they bestow affection on foreign men and thus acknowledge the men’s humanity. These pairings unite the rainbow couple in a challenge to the old order of white men in charge. North Africa explorer Isabelle Eberhardt vigorously defended “the exceptional nature” of her Algerian husband to a skeptical French colonial. Other Victorian women sang the praises of foreign men to an extent that can only be described as subversive, given the way female praise undercut attempts by colonial men to portray their subjects as childish and incapable of self-government. These female pioneers appear to feel empathy toward foreign men, for both had to struggle against attempts to “keep them in their place.” The film Heat and Dust, set in colonial India, has a moment crystallizing the difference in perception. As Olivia washes the back of Douglas, her husband, he opines, “They’re so transparent. The Indians, all of them. They’re like children.”Olivia replied, “They look like grownup men to me. Certainly the Nawab does.” She sees the local governor as grown up, and they later become lovers.
Finally, the Baltimore Sun ran an article Aug. 15 entitled, "A man is hard to find in Md.":
According to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ratio of men to women in Maryland is among the lowest in the nation, with fewer than 93 men for every 100 women here. Only the District of Columbia and Mississippi have more lopsided gender ratios. Looking for the best odds to find a man? Try Alaska, with its 103 men to every 100 women - some towns, with up to 120 men per 100 women, have even tried to recruit women to move there.Maryland might be off-kilter, experts say, because its economy is more friendly to women, particularly the many government office jobs in Baltimore County and the Washington suburbs.
Others posit the theory that the numbers could be traced to the fact that African-American women typically outnumber African-American men and Maryland has one of the country's highest percentages of African-American residents. The disparity between the total number of men and women in the state has been noted for the past few years.
"This is more than a curiosity," said Martha Farnsworth Riche, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau and a fellow with Cornell University's Center for the Study of Economy and Society. "This is something policy-makers need to think about. This has a long-term effect on the economy, the education system."
Of course, what concerns many women is the so-called marriage market.
In Maryland, according to an analysis of the new census information, unmarried men slightly outnumber unmarried women in the 20-to-34 age bracket - prime marriage territory - but from 35 on, unmarried women outnumber unmarried men by a greater and greater margin until after age 65, when there are nearly four unmarried women for every unmarried man in Maryland.
"It definitely puts women at a disadvantage," said Jillian Straus, author of Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We're Still Single, published in February by Hyperion Books. "Unfortunately, if you're a woman, there's a lot more competition out there."
Well, I read this and thought, "No wonder it was I (a Marylander) who wrote Romance on the Road. As I wrote in RotR, quoting Baltimore family therapist Mary Ann Constantinides, "I see so many truly nice women and so few truly nice men."
Now we have numbers to back Constantinides and myself up.
- posted by jbelliveau at 7:19 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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