Not only can women have sex like men, they can buy sex like men
What to make of reports from Kenya that more and more (old, rich, white) women are traveling to the country solely to cavort with (young, poor, black) locals?
According to Reuters — which follows two white English women, aged 56 and 64, as they troll for “big young boys who like us older girls” — the country’s tourism board isn’t pleased with the “unwholesome” situation, wherein women exchange gifts for sex. Officials stopped short of condemning it in the way they have male sex tourism, however. And the women Reuters interviews seem to see it as a far lesser crime — comparing it to ordinary courtship rituals like a man buying his female date dinner.
It’s certainly not so tame, despite sugar-coated terms for the trade like “romance tourism” and a slew of films that neuter the sexual fantasies and fetishes which many female pleasure-seekers want to fulfill. Before “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” there was “Shirley Valentine,” a British housewife bored of preparing her husband’s meals, who wins a vacation and finds her groove with a Greek man. Even the gritty, straightforward “Vers le Sud” — featuring the ever-experimental Charlotte Rampling — explores what happens when the female sex tourist feels romantic and even falls in love.
Responses to the female sex tourism trend vary from disgust to vague unease. No one’s willing to make this out as a victory for feminism, even if it’s a case of women acknowledging sexual desires and having purses of their own to gratify them. (Heidi Fleiss would be proud, and possibly annoyed that her future clientele can find the frisson they seek for cheap overseas.) And it's older women at that—not the ones who are usually chided for "having sex like men."
I’m going to put my vote in the “vague unease” camp. The acts can be considered consensual or, at worst, mutually exploitative. Establishing consent is a bit easier here than where men are concerned, as Catherine Price noted on Salon, since a female purchaser is unlikely to have the physical power of a man, and can’t dominate or abuse her escort. (In any case, danger is probably a desired part of the female sex tourism package.)
But mostly I’m uneasy because the United Nations links the sex tourist trade—mostly male, but also female — to severe child exploitation of both boys and girls in Kenya. Also, prostitution is illegal in Kenya — though, as one Kenyan official notes, unofficial exchanges of hotel stays and meals for compliments and sex may not qualify. Then there’s the reluctance to use condoms despite Kenya’s 6.9% AIDS rate.
And more abstractly, there’s the obvious racial fetishes sex tourism perpetuates. Even Reuters wasn’t immune. The article says that one solicited Kenyan male named Joseph resembled an “Olympic basketball player.” (They all look alike, don’t they?) The story then describes a dance club as filled with “Joseph look-alikes.” (Hey, they do all look alike!)
Photo courtesy Shadow Distribution
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I’ve been a sex worker off-and-on for a number of years and have strong feelings about these kinds of power imbalances. Westerners frolicking overseas with poor people on their vacation is especially disturbing. While it occasionally makes a human interest story when white women go to South America or Africa to enjoy the local gigolos, it really is much more common among men (Rush Limbaugh in the Dominican Republic, anyone?). I guess that’s why it doesn’t make the news. But do a search on blogs and you’ll find guys out their bragging about their libertine adventures in Third World paradise. There are women in these countries selling days of their lives to these sexpat bloggers for little more than food money and don’t have the means to keep blogs and write books. Their johns are doing it for them, telling the world how much fun they’re having.
Posted by: compartments | November 28, 2007 at 09:36 PM
Remember what the King said to Anna: ...woman is like flower with honey for just one man, man is like honeybee to fly from bee to bee, but a flower must not ever fly from bee to bee to bee. Amen, King of Siam.
That's the problem with women around here these days, they want to fly from bee to bee. We need to go back to the days when women acted right. Like they do in good countries like Arabia, where they like saving their honey for one man and wear bags on their head to show devotion. If they do that here then they don't have to run all over the place trying to pick up young boys. Even teachers running after their students and kidnapping them as sex slaves. These women today are a trip without luggage. Don't look one in the eye, she'll steal your soul in a heartbeat and drain you dry, then run off to drain other victim. I think they should go to Iran and Saudi Arabia to get some lessons in being pure. On the other hand maybe not. They would drive the arab men crazier than they are. Maybe if they think you are gay they'll leave us alone. Yeah that's it.
Posted by: GW | November 30, 2007 at 08:23 PM
There is nothing immoral or woried about over the news. Any body can do what he or she pleases as far as extremely unlawful activities which brings damage to others. These older women must be overdisgusted with their lives and totally hopeless about their spouces. Ill- treatment, monotony of household chores, severe responsibility and uncertain life span induces man and women to taste the life (What`s left) in a better way than the current one. So if some think of spending the rest of life in someway better than previous one, it is no way concern or harm anybody in any way than the male species, because they think is their hereditary and God given right.
Posted by: SATYANARAYAN MOHAPATRA | December 01, 2007 at 11:58 PM
As for the Anna and the king comment, interesting point. I think you've had a cheating lover in the past, havent you? some woman you couldn't satisfy? the sex industry is always a bit disturbing, whether or not a woman or man chooses to venture into it, but there is also the point that people should be able to do whatever the hell they want behind closed doors. though it's sad that people exploit one another this way, if people know the risks and still wish to put themselves out there, they can do whatever they please, so long as it is deemed legal in their country, and partners are consenting and of age. who cares, really? why does it have to be about men or women sleeping around? right, it doesn't. it's just people who do what they want, and bearing responsibility for their actions.
Posted by: Elisebette | April 17, 2008 at 01:16 AM
And what causes women to seek pleasure elsewhere when they can't get it at home? It's the economy. I'm working two jobs just to make ends meet because my wife can't work. She's disabled. Oh, to be sure, she does draw disability pay. But that doesn't amount to a hill of beans ($600 per month) when the bills come due. I come home too tired to give her much attention after working 12, 13, and sometimes 14 hours a day. We spend a few minutes chatting and I go to bed because I have to get up early the next morning to do it all over again. The price of gasoline does take a bite out of the paycheck everytime it goes up. And it shows up not just at the pump. The price of everything else goes up with it as well as goods and services also depend on transportation, not to mention the cost of heating those homes and businesses in the winter.
Posted by: James E Surratt | April 19, 2008 at 04:09 AM
And what causes women to seek pleasure elsewhere when they can't get it at home? It's the economy.
I don't know how vulnerable to the economy are dowagers on international seaside pleasure tours.
But it's worth entertaining the idea:
If it's true these ladies are seeking sex outside their marriages because their overlaboring husbands are too harried to give them the attention the feel they deserve, then should the husbands be grateful that their wives are pursuing happiness at a reasonable price? I mean, not using condoms is over the line, but you wouldn't think twice if one of these women's husbands were paying for her expensive new bedroom set or luxury sedan; why should her sexual gratification be any more or less fungible, especially when the price is a bargain?
Posted by: Tim Cavanaugh | April 19, 2008 at 05:38 PM