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Babylon
Sweden
691 Posts |
 Posted - 03 Sep 2006 : 14:49:46
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'Love tourism'
Diane Abbott
Sunday, August 13, 2006
One of the big growth areas in tourism has been single women from Europe and North America travelling to the Caribbean for what is politely described as 'love tourism'. Now, here in London, playwrights and filmmakers are putting this issue under the spotlight.
Diane Abbott
In March, I saw a Royal Shakespeare Company production Trade written by Debbie Tucker Green. It compared and contrasted three women. Two were British black women who had travelled to the Caribbean for sex; one an older professional woman and the other a young "hottie". The third woman was the longstanding partner and "baby mother" of the man servicing the two tourists.
Recently a new French language film Heading South opened in
London. It is about rich, white, middle-aged women travelling to 1970s Haiti for "no-strings" sex with young black men. And next week a production called Sugar Mummies opens at the Royal Court Theatre.
The pre-publicity says: "Jamaica: a sensual paradise where sun, sea and sand are free but anything more comes at a price. Welcome to the 21st Century where women travel across the world in search of sex, love and liberation. But the reality is that hard cash equals hard man.
It seems that the type of encounters, that used to be seen as holiday romances, are increasingly described by academics and writers as female "sex tourism". The men involved certainly take a very business like attitude to their activities. A journalist quotes a beach boy in Negril as saying proudly: "We are in business. We sell ganja, coke and good loving".
However the female tourists manage to blind themselves to the reality that they are buying sex. British academics Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor and Julia O' Connell -Davidson bluntly describe the way that the female tourists think.
"Racist ideas about black men being hypersexual and unable to contain their sexuality enable them (the female tourists) to explain to themselves why such young desirable men would be eager to have sex with older and/or overweight women, without having to think that partners are interested in them only for economic reasons". The writer of Sugar Mummies, Tanika Gupta travelled to Jamaica to research her play. She believes that both parties are exploiting each other.
"A lot of the women talked about how big the men are and how they can go all night. But what I found most depressing is that the whole thing is not real. So many of the women think that they have found real love. It is all very delusional. At first I thought it was all about white women exploiting black men. But it is not. It's very mutual."
Men have always gone abroad looking for easy sex. But the rise of female "sex tourism" is a new phenomenon and reflects the increasing income and independence of women in North America and Europe. And on holiday these women do things that most of them would never dare to do at home, such as have sex with black men half their age. Jamaica is not the only place where female tourists go for sex.
In the Caribbean, Barbados and the Dominican Republic are also top female sex tourist destinations. And in Africa Gambia is, apparently, a Mecca for middle aged white women looking for a "holiday romance". When people used to say, "tourism is whore-ism" they were more accurate than they thought.
Perhaps the most famous female "sex tourist" is the American writer Terri Macmillan. I always loved her writing. But I could not connect with her book How Stella Got Her Groove Back. For me, she missed something that would have been blindingly obvious to anyone who knew and understood Jamaica.
And this is that the only reason a Jamaican man would have an affair with an American 23 years his senior would be to obtain a green card. Her failure to understand this simple fact ruined the whole book for me.
She went on to marry the young Jamaican lover she immortalised in her book (Jonathan Plummer) and brought him to America. Ten years later the marriage collapsed when she discovered he was gay. In her divorce papers Macmillan said: Jonathan has manipulated me from the very beginning in his scheme to come to the United States, become a citizen and get rich." The baffling thing is that it took her 10 years to work this out.
You could argue that, so long as both sides have no illusions, there is no harm in either male or female "sex tourism". Where you have sea and sand you will always have men and women seeking sex.
But it seems likely that the very high levels of HIV/Aids in Jamaica's resort areas are connected with "sex tourism". If only everyone involved could admit to themselves that what they are actually doing is exchanging sex for cash, maybe they might be more willing to take precautions. But as the poet says: "Mankind cannot bear too much reality".
Source: jamaicaobserver.com
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jambo
3300 Posts |
Posted - 03 Sep 2006 : 19:17:12
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i remember this, it was into a film, she "Toni" cannot pretend to be naive, sorry but i agree it took her 10 years |
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Babylon
Sweden
691 Posts |
Posted - 04 Sep 2006 : 11:04:03
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There seems to be a lot of double standards on this issue, as I have witnessed here on the Bantaba lately.
Why is it "romatisized" and more accepted when "innocent" women buy sex in Gambia (than men buying sex in places like Thailand?)
Why is it called Love tourism for women and sex tourism for men?
To me it´s all the same. It makes no difference if the client is male or female or if the prostitute is called a bumster, gigolo, beachboy, callgirl, madam or whore.
Theres no difference.
The racist, sexual exploitation of black men and women + asian women in particular needs to be stopped.
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jambo
3300 Posts |
Posted - 04 Sep 2006 : 11:21:26
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babylon definately double standards, i think the issue is this, for women it is emotional for men it is financial.
Women meet a male, thinks its love, looks for a future
Men meets a women, thinks sex, pays and leaves
thats how I see it. if I go by the understanding of prostituion |
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Babylon
Sweden
691 Posts |
Posted - 04 Sep 2006 : 11:36:42
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| Jambo, you´re right there are women who seek love. But I beleive it is also many times an abuse of racial and economic power. I`ve often heard appalling sexualised racism from some of the women. "I want a big bamboo", and "black men can keep it up longer" are usual comments. Or "If he doesn't perform, he doesn't get to eat. End of story," How sad: young men having to perform like studs for a plate of rice and peas. That is exploitation and abuse, not fun or something I would call love. |
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jambo
3300 Posts |
Posted - 04 Sep 2006 : 11:47:01
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Agree on that, some will seek out the dark skinned lover. I heard a women from eastern europe said she did it to shock her family
Once in a cafe in senegambia I gave a woman a piece of my mind when she started on "how she was not paying for anything because he was not good in bed". She never once questioned her actions. for the both parties it good end on a good note, theya re happy together or could end on a bad note. Aids.
A german man once commented on these women he saw as "looking for something to replace something", i asked what he meant and he said for some it is the feeling of being in control. they are holding the purse strings and normally in their own relationships they donot do this.
I thought that was interesting, and started to look at the picture in a different light. |
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leokat
United Kingdom
123 Posts |
Posted - 04 Sep 2006 : 18:39:10
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quote:
Once in a cafe in senegambia I gave a woman a piece of my mind when she started on "how she was not paying for anything because he was not good in bed". She never once questioned her actions.
This has nothing at all to do with the issue of 'love tourism' but illustrates a similar point.
Whenever my daughter and I used the services of our unofficial guide we offered him drinks and food as we felt appeopriate. I asked our guide one day if it was the custom for all tourists to do the same. He replied some do and some don't. He said it was hardest when he went out all day with tourists who drank constantly from their water bottles without offering him so much as a mouthful. He also said that some people offered him drinks then gave lectures about how unhealthy sweet fizzy drinks were if he chose one. He said that the sugar gave him energy.
One day we were going out for an all day trip and I noticed that the fruit seller on the beach brought our guide some breakfast to eat before we left. After much questioning I discovered that she had made some money that morning buy selling fruit to two tourists for breakfast. She immediately spent that money (in the hope of getting it back later when I payed him)buying breakfast for our guide so that he would have something in his stomach to give him enough energy to do his job.
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jambo
3300 Posts |
Posted - 05 Sep 2006 : 10:28:19
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Leokat, that illustrates a good point, but i have to admit i would have thought the guide wouldhave had breakfast. regarding the fizzy drinks thats just something people do.
changing the subject were did you go on your trip  |
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serenata
Germany
1400 Posts |
Posted - 25 Sep 2006 : 19:03:54
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| The book 'A Winter Tan' by US author Maryse Holder shows that female sex tourism is not a totally new phenomenon. In the 1970ies, when Holder wrote her diary, US ladies went to Mexico for sex; maybe they are still doing it. Maryse Holder, after all, died in Mexico; it looks as if one of her numerous sex partners killed her. But the more shocking fact for the public was that she didn't pretend to look for 'love' and made it absolutely clear that her aim was sex. |
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gambia6005
Canada
79 Posts |
Posted - 16 Oct 2006 : 20:29:30
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when love tourisme is between 2 adults I see no probleme-it is the oldest proffesion on earth-but when I see a 70 year old men with a young girl from 20-or a 60 old lady with a young stud from 20
it make me both laugh and turn my stomage around!!!
I cannot imaging that they even like each other it is pure business
ans whome is using whome
I hope I did not insult anyone-that's not my aim |
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