Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (57 page)

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SEX TOURISM AND SEX WORKERS’ ASPIRATIONS

Despite this distinction between sex work as an advancement strategy and sex work as a survival strategy, there nonetheless remains a tension between the efforts of marginalized women to get ahead and the role of local and global forces that constrain them. My research catalogs many stories of sex workers’

disappointment with Sosúa, its tourism, and foreign men. Sex workers’

relationships with foreign men inevitably fall short of mutual exploitation since white foreign male tourists are better positioned than Afro-Dominican female sex workers to leave Sosúa satisfied with their experiences there. Sex workers in Sosúa are at once independent and dependent, exploitative and exploited. There are women who are content with what they have achieved through sex work as well as those who have suffered humiliation and abuse.

C O N C L U S I O N

Tourism and sex tourism have dramatically transformed this Caribbean beach town, with unequal opportunities for its Dominican residents, on the one hand, and foreign residents and tourists, on the other. With few secure, income-earning possibilities, poor Dominicans migrate to Sosúa to cash in on the tourist boom. They bank on the myth of endless opportunity in tourist spaces where vacationers spend their money, and they imagine that in this

“non-Dominican” town they will make much more money than they could in other Dominican towns. They arrive in search of a better life, as do the foreigners who take up residence in Sosúa. Yet even though the imagination allows individuals throughout the world to fantasize about a better life, the attainability of this fantasy depends on who is doing the imagining and where.

Unlike western men who realize in Sosúa their dreams of an early retirement and lives of comfort that otherwise would not have been affordable in their home countries, Dominicans who migrate there are less likely to fulfill their aspirations. Their gains are on a much smaller scale than the significant socioeconomic leap foreign residents can make in Sosúa.

Transnational spaces not only are sites of new economic, cultural, and sexual possibilities but also are locations that can reproduce existing inequalities. Sex workers in the Third World might exercise more control over their working conditions than they would in factories, as domestics, or in other sites, and they might try to use the sex trade as a strategy of advancement, but their decisions and actions constantly collide with those of sex tourists. As one savvy sex worker, Ani, put it, sex workers who come to Sosúa often end up disillusioned: “They hear they can make money, and meet a gringo, so they come to Sosúa. Some women enter sex work because they
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DENISE BRENNAN

want it all so fast. They come with their big dreams. But then they find out it is all a lie.”

The failure of the majority of Dominican workers to leave with foreign husbands, visas, or fattened bank accounts underscores the inequalities between male and female, rich and poor, black and white, sex worker and sex tourist.

The male clients’ vacations come to an end, and most of them, on returning home, do not continue to communicate with or send money or gifts to the workers they met during their holiday. Meanwhile, sex workers remain in Sosúa hoping that their “ticket” is on the next plane full of foreign tourists, ready not only to have sex—but also to feign love—for a shot at leaving the island.

N OTE S

1. See Denise Brennan, “Competing Claims of Victimhood? Foreign and Domestic Victims of Trafficking in the United States,”
Sexuality Research
and Social Policy
5 (2008): 45–61. See also Chapter 14 of this volume and Ronald Weitzer, “Moral Crusade against Prostitution,”
Society
43 (2006): 33–38.

2. See also Denise Brennan,
What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational
Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

3. Amitra Basu, “Editorial,”
Signs
26 (2001): 943–948, at p. 943.

4. Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly, eds.,
Sites of Desire, Economies of
Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

5. Susanne Thorbek, “Introduction,” in Susanne Thorbek and Bandana Pattanaik, eds.,
Transnational Prostitution: Changing Global Patterns
, New York: Zed, 2002, p. 2.

6. Edward Bruner, “Tourism in the Balinese Borderzone,” in Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg, eds.,
Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of
Identity
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996, p. 157.

7. Dennis Altman,
Global Sex
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 11.

8. Although this chapter focuses on women sex workers, racialized male bodies are also sought by white tourists in sexscapes. For a study of gay sex tourism in the Dominican Republic, see Mark Padilla, “‘Western Union Daddies’ and Their Quest for Authenticity: An Ethnographic Study of the Dominican Gay Sex Tourism Industry,”
Journal of
Homosexuality
53 (2007): 241–275.

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SEX TOURISM AND SEX WORKERS’ ASPIRATIONS

9. On Cuba, see Amalia Cabezas, “Between Love and Money: Sex, Tourism, and Citizenship in Cuba and the Dominican Republic,”
Signs
29 (2004): 987–1015.

10. Kamala Kempadoo,
Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labor
, New York: Routledge, 2004.

11. Cabezas, “Between Love and Money”; Deborah Pruitt and Suzanne LaFont, “For Love and Money: Romance Tourism in Jamaica,”
Annals of
Tourism Research
21 (1995): 422–440; Kamala Kempadoo, ed.,
Sun, Sex,
and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean
, Lanham, MD: Rowman

& Littlefield, 1999; Sylvia Chant and Cathy McIlwaine,
Women of a Lesser
Cost: Female Labor, Foreign Exchange, and Philippine Development
, London: Pluto Press, 1995.

12. Chant and McIlwaine,
Women of a Lesser Cost
, p. 225.

13. Ann Stoler, “Educating Desire in Colonial Southeast Asia,” in Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly, eds.,
Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 44.

14. These Chinese women’s transnational use of marriage has earned them a reputation as “gold diggers” searching for foreign “airplane tickets.”

Constance Clark, “Foreign Marriage, ‘Tradition,’ and the Politics of Border Crossings,” in Nancy Chen, Constance Clark, Suzanne Gottschang, and Lyn Jeffry, eds.,
China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Culture
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001, p. 105.

15. Nicole Constable,
Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual
Ethnography, and “Mail-Order” Marriages
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p. 65.

16. Brennan,
What’s Love Got to Do with It?

17. Annette Hamilton, “Primal Dream: Masculinism, Sin, and Salvation in Thailand’s Sex Trade,” in Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly, eds.,
Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 145.

18. Hamilton, “Primal Dream,” p. 151.

19. Jeremy Seabrook,
Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry
, London: Pluto, 1996, p. 36.

20. Seabrook,
Travels in the Skin Trade
, p. 3.

21. Seabrook,
Travels in the Skin Trade
, p. 3.

22. Kempadoo,
Sexing the Caribbean
; Coco Fusco, “Hustling for Dollars:
Jineterismo
in Cuba,” in Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema, eds.,
Global Sex Workers
, New York: Routledge, 1998.

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H A P T E

C

R

14

SEX TRAFFICKING: FACTS AND FICTIONS

Ronald Weitzer and Melissa Ditmore

Sex trafficking has become a hot issue over the past decade. The media have increasingly covered the issue, often in a sensationalized manner; an influential moral crusade has been in the vanguard in influencing popular perceptions of the problem; and governments and international bodies have devoted substantial resources to fighting trafficking. This chapter examines (1) facts and popular fictions regarding sex trafficking and (2) the main social forces shaping U.S. government policy in this area.1 The chapter is based on an analysis of activists’ pronouncements, interest group documents, publications of government agencies, and relevant legislation. We show that many of the popular claims regarding both trafficking and prostitution are dubious if not entirely fictional, yet activists have met with remarkable success in getting their views incorporated in government policy and law enforcement practices.

These activists are part of a larger moral crusade fighting the entire sex industry.

A M O R A L C R U S A D E P E R S P E C TI V E

A
moral crusade
is a type of social movement that defines a particular condition or activity as an unqualified evil and sees its mission as a righteous enterprise with both symbolic goals (attempting to redraw or bolster normative boundaries and moral standards) and instrumental ones (providing relief to
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RONALD WEITZER AND MELISSA DITMORE

victims, punishing evildoers).2 Some moral crusades are motivated by genuine humanitarian concerns and desires to help victims while others are mainly interested in imposing a set of moral standards on others. In either case, these campaigns typically propound inflated claims about the magnitude of the problem (e.g., the number of victims), assertions that exceed the available evidence.3 At the same time, crusades usually present horror stories about a problem, in which the most shocking cases are described and presented as typical. Casting the problem in highly dramatic terms by recounting the plight of highly traumatized victims is intended to alarm the public and justify draconian solutions. Finally, crusade leaders consider the problem unambiguous: they are not inclined to acknowledge gray areas and are adamant that a particular evil exists precisely as they depict it.4

Crusade Organizations

The antitrafficking movement is dominated by groups who have a larger agenda. A coalition of the religious right and antiprostitution feminists have become the dominant force in the antitrafficking debate. Faith-based members include Focus on the Family, National Association of Evangelicals, Catholic Bishops Conference, the Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America, Salvation Army, International Justice Mission, Shared Hope International, Religious Freedom Coalition, and numerous others. The premier antiprostitution feminist organization in the United States is the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Others include Equality Now, the Protection Project, and Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE).

Members of these conservative religious and feminist groups hold opposing views on other social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, but they largely agree on prostitution and pornography. The single-issue focus of most of these feminist groups—targeting the sex industry exclusively—

trumps all other issues and facilitates their willingness to work with rightwing groups. The partners in this alliance clearly recognize the strategic advantages of coalition work in enhancing the legitimacy of their campaign, as a bipartisan enterprise. Two prominent activists wrote an op-ed: “Feminists should stop demonizing the conservative and faith-based groups that could be better allies on some issues than the liberal left has been.”5 Another leader, Laura Lederer, describes the benefits of this alliance: “Having faith-based groups come in with a fresh perspective and a biblical mandate has made a big difference” in that abolitionist feminists “would not be getting attention internationally otherwise.”6

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SEX TRAFFICKING: FACTS AND FICTIONS

“Abolitionist feminist” refers to those who argue that the sex industry should be entirely eliminated because of its objectification and oppressive treatment of women, considered to be inherent in sex for sale. It is important to note that mainstream feminist organizations have been far less active in this debate and have been overshadowed by the abolitionists. The premier national women’s rights organization, the National Organization for Women, makes no mention on its website of sex trafficking and has entered the debate only sporadically.7 Another major mainstream association, the National Council of Women’s Organizations, is silent on these issues, though its website does provide a link on trafficking. Because the debate over prostitution and pornography has been so divisive among feminists in the past and members continue to disagree, it is not surprising that organizations not directly involved with this issue would avoid it altogether.

The crusade’s claims have not gone unchallenged. Among the groups that stand opposed to the current antiprostitution campaign are the Sex Workers Outreach Project, Network of Sex Work Projects, the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women, and the Sex Workers Project in New York.8 These organizations conduct research on trafficking and/or provide assistance to individuals involved in sex work, but they do not condemn sex work per se.9

Their primary concern is the empowerment of workers and harm reduction via provision of condoms, counseling, and other support services. Because they reject the goal of abolishing sex work, they have been increasingly marginalized and dismissed as the “pro-prostitution lobby” in the discourse of the preeminent antitrafficking forces.10 They had virtually no access to U.S.

government officials during the Bush administration (2001–2008), when antiprostitution forces gained tremendous influence over policymaking.

Abolitionist forces helped to transform the campaign against sex trafficking into an official government campaign against prostitution.

FA C T S

What are the facts regarding sex trafficking? This question is easy to pose but more difficult to answer. We do know that relocation from one place to another for the purpose of selling sex has long existed, although it has only recently become a public issue. We also know that there are victims of coercive or deceptive enticement into the sex trade: people are transported, without their consent or fully informed consent, to locations where they are forced to engage in prostitution. Reports from around the world indicate that coercive sex trafficking is by no means fictional.11 It is a serious violation of human
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