Sex tourists & exploitation

Sex tourism is not new. Nor is it one specific thing. It occurs in many forms. But its most visible form is when ugly, pot-bellied, middle-aged white & Arab men prowl the bars of Thailand, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ukraine & the Philippines, looking for much younger women to sleep with. And occasionally get married to.

Here's a documentary on a few of the 'bar girls' of Thailand, the fierce competition amongst them to entice visitors in the hopes that one day they'd marry them and take them away from a life of poverty.



While the power imbalance clearly results in a situation where men can take advantage of or even exploit the women, the latter are not entirely without agency. They voluntarily put themselves out in such situations in the hopes of ensnaring a foreigner, even as they find these men despicable. For them these men are simply a ticket out of poverty. And for the men -- some of whom are borderline predators -- these women are an easy, exotic adventure in bed. Even when they do get married, it's often no more than a transaction: a green card & a provider for the woman (and her children), and a pliant wife who also doubles up as good housekeeper for the men, most of whom would have great difficulty in attracting someone locally. In other words, they deserve each other. Sure, some of these couple do sincerely love each other even if they approached the interaction in a transactional manner initially, but these are few and far between.

While most of these men are stereotypically ugly slobs, I have to point out that most of the women in this meat market are also ugly, uneducated and often uncultured in their respective social milieu. They have few alternatives to achieve a better life. Respectable, educated Thai women, for instance, would never consider putting themselves out there like this. If they did marry a foreigner, it would be on equal terms and for love.

The other point to consider is if poverty were the only reason for these women to put themselves through all this indignity, why don't we see such exploitative sexual transactions taking place in even poorer countries like India, Bangladesh, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. at this scale? Why don't we see hordes of middle-aged white men roaming the streets in these countries? The fact is that firstly women in these countries have chosen not to put themselves up for sale to the first foreign bidder. Secondly, the societies in which this happens are generally sexually permissive enough to at least turn a blind eye to what's going on. Now, I'm not suggesting that there's something inherently wrong in sexually permissive societies. There isn't. But these societies have agency and they choose not to discourage such exploitative practices.

So viewing women exclusively as victims and men as predators is a facile and intellectually lazy assessment of the situation. The line between perpetrator and victim is not so clear. Who is really the exploiter and who's the victim?