Sex Tourism: Exploring Identity, Agency, and Global Economics

This essay delves into the complex phenomenon of sex tourism from a cultural anthropology perspective. It explores the multifaceted dimensions of sex tourism, encompassing its economic, social, and health-related consequences. The essay examines the motivations of both sex tourists and sex workers, highlighting issues of identity, agency, and risk. It analyzes the impact of globalization and neoliberal economic policies on the rise of sex tourism, particularly in regions like Cuba and Thailand. Furthermore, the study considers the historical context of sex tourism, tracing its evolution from ancient times to the present day, and addresses the role of gendered spaces and power dynamics within the industry. The essay also touches upon the legal and ethical considerations surrounding sex work, including human trafficking and child exploitation, while acknowledging the potential for both positive and negative social and economic outcomes. Overall, the essay provides a comprehensive overview of sex tourism, emphasizing its intricate relationship with culture, economics, and global interconnectedness.

Running head: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Cultural Anthropology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
Sex tourism, as widely known as a form of travel that is planned particularly for the
purpose of sex, normally inside any country in which prostitution is legal. Though, HIV and the
different other sexually transmitted diseases are generally more communal amongst prostitutes.
Sex tourism even has support for human trafficking, which is considered to be one the biggest
criminal industries in the world. Even if in any country prostitution is deemed legal, sex with
minor, human trafficking and child pornography are always considered as crimes. Anyone who
engages in these kinds of activities in any foreign country is still in the purview of the law of
their home country and would get prosecuted after they return. According to Gregory (2014), sex
work is just largely the byproduct of the global, exploitative capitalist system and if mentioned
specifically then the neoliberal economic policies that has been thrusted and forced upon the
Dominicould Republic by the western capitalist nations. What has been widely termed by
scholars as sex work is not just it and involves more than just sex for money interactions and
therefore could be seen as sexual-affective relations or tactical sex. From the point of view of a
woman this concept could reflect that women possess some amount of agency and they also
could move on to develop long term relationships that could further move on to extended
economic support and even marriage (Jacobs 2016). The study of sex work and these kind of
affective sexual relationships is very hard if attempted to study systematically. This study would
be attempting to study the intimate link between desire, transgression and risk with both female
and male sex tourism. With the help of examples from all over the world, issues of identity and
agency would be explored.

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Discussion
While standard mindset accomplices sex tourists with white, reasonably matured Western
men, there are more young men, men from Latin America, and even women sharing in this kind
of tourism. Since there is a broad assortment of classes of sex work, from cheap street walkers to
high-end escorts, tourists of all compensation levels could be clients.
Respectably matured, heterosexual Western women are ending up more progressive sex
tourists, particularly in Jamaica and Ghana. These women are ordinarily bulky or respected
sexually deplorable in their countries of beginning. Some even report having been related with
harming or disastrous associations already. They are consistently moved nearer on the beach by
"beach boys"- male sex workers. The men begin a "vacation romance," where in the midst of the
length of her stay they give her thought, warmth, and sex. Consequently, she gets him gifts and
drinks, and routinely gives extra financial recompense. A short vacation romance with one of
these men is a straightforward way to deal with feel recognized and crucial and delightful. In this
way, in any occasion among this creating people of female sex tourists, romance is an added
segment controlling their activities. A similar number of them are starting from baffling
associations and little achievement in the dating scene, their chance with the "beach boys" fills
an emptiness – physical intimacy, and in addition enthusiastic closeness moreover
(Bandyopadhyay 2013).
The aftereffects of sex tourism have monetary, social and furthermore broad prosperity
points of view. Disregarding the way that there are stresses of sex trafficking and child
exploitation, while trafficking and child sex exploitation do take place, they mean a tiny bit of
the business. Child exploitation in Thailand do take place and such human rights violations
cannot be repudiated. In a case study of sex tourism in Samoa, the child sex tourism industry is a

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noteworthy concern powered by destitution and family brokenness. While the potential for
financial points of interest for neighborhood individuals proposes sex tourism could profit
tenants of a country, there are moreover useful and unfavorable social results. As noted above,
sex tourists might have the ability to attempt sexually and fulfill dreams that they couldn't do at
home, either as a result of social norms or comfort. "Beach boys" are more stunning than female
sex workers to use condoms, perhaps in light of the fact that they don't for the most part name
their coordinated efforts with female tourists as instituting sex work. Thus, the two tourists and
"beach boys" have greater chances of getting sexually transmitted infections and after that
offering those infections to their distinctive associates. In ranges where sex work is unlawful, sex
workers also go up against perils of attack and theft with negligible real arrangement of activity –
as they could be caught or bothered for taking part in sex work in case they approach adjacent
law approval. To the extent fiscal outcomes, sex tourism could be a constructive power in a
making economy. Since many sex workers begin from obstructed establishments, sex tourism
allows them to pick up a basically higher wage than working distinctive occupations (Rivers-
Moore 2012).
Sex trafficking is a concern the hospitality and tourism industry faces far and wide. For
all intents and purposes all parts of the world, excluding for Antarctica, experiences sex tourism.
Prostitution is authentic in 49 countries around the world, 12 countries have limited laws
permitting a couple of parts of prostitution, and 39 countries have laws making prostitution
unlawful. The Netherlands is a champion among the most understood countries with legitimized
prostitution due to the Red Light District arranged in Amsterdam. Thailand is a famous sex
tourism objective for tourists from Australia, Europe, Japan, and the United States. Sex tourism
exists all through the globe with both honestly run affiliations and diverse associations whose

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agents are sex trafficking losses. Sex tourism was at first portrayed as tourism for business sex
purposes, however has progressed to consolidate individuals who have been trafficked for sexual
activities (Jordan, Patel and Rapp 2013).
A similar number of tourism objectives end up being more promoted, traffickers have
abused setbacks and tourists hunting down sexual activities. Not every tourists who share in sex
tourism travel just for this exact development. For the most part tourists go for various actions
and explanations, and the prospect of partaking in sexual activities could in like manner happen.
This makes it troublesome for researchers to portray the right tourist who might partake in sex
tourism. A couple of tourists might go to brothels or strip clubs, while others might acquire
prostitutes by the hour, the night, or for a definite number of days. Inside the sex work industry,
transgression and transgressive behavior is very easy to identify from the outer surface, but the
discussion of even a cursory list of these kind of actions opens up institutional size cans of
worms that could mire the participants knee deep in squirming muck. Each sexual association
outside of marriage dismiss the law of unobtrusiveness. This joins intercourse; touching the
private, consecrated parts of another person's body, with or without attire; blending sexual
feelings in others or yourself with the end objective of joy; overview or sending suggestive
excitement; scrutinizing disgusting written work; intentionally pestering sexual contemplations;
and talking or texting about sex in an express route with the point of energizing sexual opinions.
There is a line which must not be crossed (Wilson and Ypeij 2012).
The overall political economy of need impacts the improvement of gendered spaces in
Cuba. One of the outcomes of extending overall linkages has been the climb in sex tourism all
through the world. This is particularly outstanding in Havana where young women and women
are dynamically being pulled in to commercial sex work as a technique for money related

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survival and access to dollars-just places, for instance, diners, hotels, nightclubs, and stores.
Regardless of forty years of gender esteem laws and a highly-educated people, sex work in Cuba
has ended up at ground zero, and the nation is quickly getting the reputation, "the Thailand of the
Caribbean." Sex work is one aftereffect of the Cuban association's progression of the nation's
women as a trademark "asset" to attract overall tourism, much like the sun, sand, and sea.
Honestly, the Cuban government requested Playboy magazine to picture a spread in the 1980s,
achieving the general movement of notification of topless Cuban women on perfect beaches.
Tourism displayed Cubans to outside convictions, particularly usage of luxury products, which is
terrible cursedness to the Cuban precept of surrender and monetary adjust. The introduction of
mass tourism and the synchronous dollarization of the economy think little of those individuals
who don't have dollars. Henceforth, admittance to dollars has transformed into the portraying
aspect in the financial class structure on the island.
Sex work is one association in an overall thing chain that sustains regular sex tourism
objectives and makes these objectives more sensible and more open than some other time in late
memory to travelers from industrialized countries. Sex tourism necessitates Third World women
to be fiscally adequately dire to enter prostitution. The opposite side of the condition entails men
from rich social requests to envision certain women, normally women of shading, to be more
available and tame than the women in their own countries. General sex tourism, and the
homogenizing qualities credited to sex workers all through the world are segments of the world
economy of excitement. The changing legitimate structure of overall capitalism can, to some
degree, clear up the rising in overall sex tourism. It is a vicious incoherency that sex tourism
ought to be one indication of globalization, the 'blend' of the whole world into a single economy,
when both the workers in the business and the clients from overseas are themselves the

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consequence of disintegrating—of close-by gatherings, the crumbling of rootedness and having a
place, the flouting of old cases of work and standard occupations. Power relations isolate sex
tourists and workers. The tourist is requesting a socially endorsed and fiscally drew in
negligibility, while the second, the prostitute, is mocked as a prostitute, a woman of the night, as
the scarlet woman. Therefore, both monetary issues and dream, mediated through the "male
look," play parts in making sexualized tourist spaces.
Sex, tourism and romance are some way or another associated together and could be
taken after to various time of travels by the two men and women. For whatever period of time
that people have been wandering, they have been participating in nostalgic and cherishing sexual
happenstances with the opposite sex. While perceiving that sex tourism is an area of the
gendered tourism industry, it has been centered around that sex tourism has been in nearness
from the out of date Roman Empire to the acclaimed Ground Tours of Europe in the eighteenth
century through nineteenth century's Thomas Cooks' visits. Genuinely, unwinding travels before
1770s, was overpowered by rich folks, and remembering that women generally sit at home.
Moreover, it has been seen that early travel was an incomprehensibly gendered activity,
overpowered by purebred men till the middle of nineteenth century. Nevertheless, female sex
travel weakened radically from the period of "The Great Depression" until the 1960s. Thusly,
female sex travel rots profoundly from the period of The Great Depression until the 1960s. The
Great Depression which began in the United States when Wall Street pummeled in 1929, and
provoked an overall financial subsidence. It was the greatest and most basic overall money
related despairing of the twentieth century with beating sway on essentially all aspects of overall
wander. Overall trade dove into confuse, improvement industry was in every way that really
matters ended, developing, mining and logging almost touched base at sudden end, and the

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overall banking framework was in every way that really matters shut down. Along these lines,
overall travels, containing female travels were unfairly impacted as individual pay and
occupations were furthermore hit hard (Bauer 2014).
Augmentation in female tourists from the 1970s could be credited to aspects, for instance,
innovations in social, fiscal and knowledge in the mid-1970s and furthermore innovations in
packaged holidays, chartered air travel, and bulk production of aircrafts. With added women in
the middle class and with lower weight for social unions, subsequently, more women could set
out on worldwide travels. In addition, it in like manner gave new openings to female tourists to
make part in sexual move with close-by men at tourists' objectives because of the accessibility of
money related resources accessible to them and various women have had the ability to
acknowledge tantamount parts like men in the past period. It is furthermore associated to express
that sexual associations between female tourists and neighborhood folks meet with more broad
ideological, money related and social components which, in a few courses impacts on its
progression. As to it has in like manner been highlighted that Southern European countries, for
instance, Italy, Spain, Greece and Malta, were the major objectives for packaged mass tourists in
the 1970s as of the way that they delineated the Mediterranean Sea with dominatingly worker
family arrangements. As needs be, the low financial position of these men and extraordinary
environment, donated basically to travel toward the south by western female tourists (Simoni
2014).
The erotic practices could be considered to be a very risky venture where there is a
possibility that the current conventions and rules might get endangered due to the broadening of
the scope of bodily pleasures. This might lead to violence and abuse and there is no certain
attached to this kind of activities. The circumstances might be as such that the thin line between

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physical abuse and erotic transgression might be crossed and this is a very common
phenomenon. The erotic transgression has a lot of loopholes which causes the use of various
erotic alternatives which are way worse than abuse. Sadomasochism is the essence of BDSM
which consist of explicit techniques, devices and fetishistic modes. Thus, the use of erotic
objects and pornographic materials in both main stream and offbeat movies has been affected by
this transgression. The most interesting part about this subject is that the contemporar6y world
has been able to create an erotic market which has been marked by political correct and
alternative eroticism which consists of safety, health and issues with self-esteem. However, in
this same world, transgression has always been linked with erotic pleasure. Thus, it could be said
that people interpret the rules in their own way which causes them to defy all the prohibitions
and this leads to imitation of the social norms (Ocha and Earth 2013).
This has led to the development of academic interest among a lot of researchers who are
trying to study the desires and sexual orientation of people towards various erotic objects. The
dynamics of this subject is intriguing for a lot of scholars who have been studying the legitimate
behaviour and the sexual preferences of people who bend and break the rules depending upon
their desires. These practices could lead to development of danger and create a border line; this
will border line between the danger and pleasure could be defined as the limit to sexuality. The
sexual desires of both male and female consumers are very much precise and it might be way
more unconventional. There are lot of consumers who are very much particular about their needs
and this might lead to transgression. It is very difficult to define this thin line between
transgression and eroticism as so many a times the sex workers are violated. The studies that has
been conducted depicts that these limits are set based on erotic theories and personal experiences
so it might vary from person to person. However, if the definition of eroticism is closely

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analyzed it will be seen that both danger and pleasure are closely related to it. However, during
conducting the studies it has been seen that there is a great deal of diversity in the erotic practices
and if is kept within the limitations then are lot of flexibilities in the sexual orientation and
identities of people. Moreover, these practices are not bound by any kind of sexual orientation
which will validate the flexibility of eroticism. However, from these the demarcation of the
studies it could be seen that all aspects will have to be individually analyzed in order to identify
the intimate link among transgression, risk and desire with that of both female and male sex
tourism (Weichselbaumer 2012).
Conclusion
The universe of sex tourism is unique. Any country could be objective for sex tourism
and sex tourists are not quite recently opulent, white men as well might be ordinary. Sex tourism
might be empowered by a collection of fiscal and social aspects. The sex tourism industry could
be profitable for worker, yet it could moreover add to close-by degradation and the extent of
STIs amongst workers and tourists.

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