Belliveau Blog: August 2006 Archives

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August 22, 2006

Thank you to FOB (Friends of Beau)

Beau, right, and Pierre at Betty Hyatt Park in Washington Hill, Baltimore.

Little Beau, our ancient sheltie, has zoomed past the 16-year mark, in fact, he's made it past 16-1/2 years now.

When he was a puppy, he was dubbed the Mayor of Ann Street for his charisma. That youthful energy I am convinced shot him into his longevity -- he had so much life and fire, that even now with congestive heart failure and kidney failure, he still enjoys barking at ceiling fans and snapping at beggin' strips.

Now many people are once again being exceptionally kind to him. We have some neighbors generally on the wrong side of the law, with whom I rarely see eye to eye, but they have been very solicitious of our geriatric canine as he makes his turtle-paced walk up and down one block of East Pratt Street. The mother of a notorious local juvenile criminal inquired about Beau and then told me about her mother's ancient pit bull and its medical problems.

Then there were the four Hispanic kids who kidnapped him for a half-hour at Soccerdome in Jessup last Wednesday. I told them angels were watching them and given them merit points for being nice to an elderly animal. The touching experience reminds me of the benefits of taking an older pet out on exciting little trips.

The staff at Essex Dog and Cat, especially Dr. Nesbitt, take good care of Beau. "Beau, you are just going to live forever," said Dr. Nesbitt two visits ago, marveling at his easy-going endurance.

Last Friday, Diane and Barb at Fells Point Pet Center combined to gently groom our little bug-bear so that he never snapped in discomfort. Before his visit, we discussed how sensitive Beau has gotten to being groomed.

Diane recommended getting him some Dr. Bach's Rescue Remedy from Whole Foods and giving Beau one-quarter of an eye dropper to relieve the stress of grooming. It seemed to work well.

I think he knows he looks wonderful.

Finally, thanks to Lamont for occasionally carrying Beau on his walk when he gets tired in the heat, his dog friends Pierre and Sipsey who give him kisses some times, and Olivia, our young cat who shoulders up to him and curls her tail under his chin, while he stands placidly still.

All are accumulating thousands of karma points as FOB -- Friends of Beau.

Tips on feeding an older dog

Beau's appetite isn't the best so let me quickly share some tricks to feeding an older dog. Over time, we have made the following changes to revive his flagging appetite:

Switching from dry food to wet canned food.
Gently warming the wet food in the microwave.
Going back to cold food, and offering him flavored yoghurt (a favorite, with a lot of taste, much as senior humans like ice cream).
When he shows no interest in voluntarily eating food: Pureeing canned food with water, loading this into a catheter syringe (got some free from our vet), and slowly injecting this into his mouth in numerous squirts.
Following this with yoghurt, which he will eat voluntarily, and a late-evening snack of beggin' strips.

The other important thing is daily tooth brushing with an electric toothbrush and pet toothpaste, focusing on the top molar on either side, which can be prone to tartar. This keeps his breath nice and his teeth shiny white.

posted by jbelliveau at 7:12 PM in The Neighborhood
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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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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
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August 13, 2006

Female sex tourism: Topic A in Britain

As I noted in an earlier press release, the simultaneous release of my book, Romance on the Road, the movie Heading South and the play Sugar Mummies in London had catapulted the issue of female sex tourism to the greatest degree of public awareness it has perhaps ever received.

(At least since the Victorian era, when the release of Henry James's Daisy Miller created a public frenzy.)

This week, female sex tourism has been Topic A in Britain.

Today we have in London's Daily Mail the article "Men for Sale," and on Wednesday the Guardian's "This Is Not Romance."

On Tuesday, I appeared (via a live hookup from the BBC's Washington, D.C., offices), on the BBC Woman's Hour, along with the playwright Tanika Gupta, who wrote "Sugar Mummies," and Julie Bindel, the author of "This Is Not Romance." (You can hear the audio of this program here.)

Hostess Jenni Murray and producer Lizz Pearson prepped me extensively and sympathetically for this appearance.

Surprisingly, I was the one on the BBC panel with the task of defending women who travel for sex and romance, with Gupta and Bindel, two ardent feminists (?), attacking this practice. To me, it shows gumption to go out and find some lovin' rather than sit at home in New York or London, Baltimore or Nottingham, bemoaning one's fate. And Jenni seemed to give me plenty of time on our 11-minute segment to make this point.

All the better that many of the destinations that Western women visit, from Cuba to the Zambia to the Arab world, are peopled by young men whose culture genuinely permits the admiration of older women and of women with fuller figures. (A subtlety missed by Gupta and Bindel.)

My appearance on the Woman's Hour was mentioned in the Daily Mail, and this morning I sent the following letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,
In re: "Men for Sale (Kathryn Knight, 13 Aug.), it's interesting to be identified as "the self-confessed sex traveler who appeared on Radio 4 this week." (Yes, it was I on the radio.)

I spent six years researching the topic of female sex tourism for my new book (Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men).

My conclusion: It's no great surprise that the women of the West, beset by dating wars and man shortages, travel to resorts and get together with Third World men, themselves beset by dating wars and woman shortages. Now affection and companionship are a commodity -- something that can be purchased -- and a globalized commodity at that.

The fact that one in 30 of these holiday romances evolves into a long-term relationship shows that, underneath the games and manipulation sometimes seen in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, the Gambia, Kenya, Bali, Phuket and hundreds of other destinations for lonely women, are encounters that bring together international couples who smash the old rules of mating behavior.

Sincerely,
Jeannette Belliveau
Baltimore, Md., USA

What is most fascinating to me by FAR are the comments that appear underneath the Daily Mail and Guardian articles. This once-taboo topic is coming into the open, with women acknowledging their own trips and a growing minority of commenters defending the practice of romance on the road -- even when it includes gifts and outright payment -- as an understandable and human response to simple loneliness.

I'll return soon to the astounding comments posted by readers on these Guardian and Daily Mail articles.

posted by jbelliveau at 10:41 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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August 6, 2006

Another take on the movie "Heading South"

Well, there certainly is no shortage of controversy about the film "Heading South," including this review from the Boston Globe, "A muddled exploration of sex tourism."

Here is my letter to the editor regarding this review.

A muddled view of women, travel and love

Ty Burr's movie review, "A muddled exploration of sex tourism" (Aug. 4), displays a rather harsh take on the women shown in "Heading South," who travel to Haiti for sex with local men.

Perhaps the reason director Laurent Cantet never sets a match to a potential "tinderbox of racial and sexual exploitation" is that so very few First World women are actually involved in "moral strip-mining of the Third" World.

Rather, the opposite is often true, as I found out during six years of research for my new book, Romance on the Road. As one example, my husband's mother, who founded a community college on a tiny and quite poor Caribbean island, teaches a student whose tuition is paid by his older foreign girlfriend. Her gift of college courses is tremendously significant in the scheme of this young man's life.

Outsiders often damn such relationships, showing little empathy for the loneliness of many tourist women, who flee man shortages, a dating war, or a painful divorce. Their holiday lovers are also seek an escape from lives of poverty, limited options and local women who reject them.

Both parties in a holiday romance often benefit, and the fact that one in 30 such relationships evolves into something long term demonstrates that the hunt for a mate is yet another activity that has become globalized.

Jeannette Belliveau
Author, Romance on the Road
Beau Monde Press

posted by jbelliveau at 11:48 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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August 3, 2006

How to speak Bawlmerese

If you are moving to Baltimore or living here, or just a toorst (tourist) or day-tripper from Warshinn (Washington, D.C.), you will quickly realize that English as she is spoke here has a number of charming variations to standard American English.

Here are some of the main examples of Baltimorese.

Terms of endearment
"Hon" is short for "honey" and replaces mister, miss, missus and an actual name when greeting someone. We can't imagine why anyone would find this sexist! Folks are just trying to be friendly.
Places
Let's start with Bawlmer, Maryland (Baltimore, Maryland), Queen City of the Greater Patapsco Drainage Basin, which has neighborhoods such as Haw'n'tin (Highlandtown) and Lit-lit-lee (Littly Italy).

Suburbs where residents speak fluent Baltimorese include Dundawt (Dundalk) and Glimm Burney (Glen Burnie), which is in Anarun'l Cownie (Anne Arundel County).

Further away, you might head Downey Ayshin (down to the ocean, that is, Ocean City) and even to Yorp (Europe).
Your first complete sentence
Worsh and wrench your hands in the zinc *

* Wash and rinse your hands in the sink.

Baltimorese contains not only place names but many common nouns. Around the house, an old-timer might talk about winders (windows) and the turlit (toilet) and tals (towels) in the baffroom.

Over in the kitchen, you might want aigs and arnjuice for brefist (get the idea?).

What's that noise outside? It might be an ambolamps (ambulance), farn gin (fire engine) or pleese sarn (police siren).

_{"Turlits" photo taken at the 2005 Honfest by Raymond Cheong. Used with permission.}
Driving directions
If you get on B'lare Rowd (Belair Road), you can head right out to Horfud (Harford) Cownie.

If you're trying to get to Fait Street in Cayntin (Canton), you better write that down, because that will sound just exactly like Fayette Street. Or you can head toward Haird, better known as Howard Street, a one-time shopping mecca.
Expressions
If you really agree with all your heart with someone, say, "Ain't it?"

When asked what you think of a movie, whether you thought it was fabulous, terrible, or average, you can say, "S'aw-ite" (it was all right).

"Jeet?" (did you eat), "jeet-nuf?" (did you eat enough), "waymint!" (wait a minute) and "wooja ..." (would you) will carry you a long way. What to know what's new with somebody? Try, "snoo few?"