The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade

138 Prostitution tourismhow ‘sex’ tourism operates as a service sector for the capitalistwest, refreshing tired corporate warriors in a form of ‘rest andrecreation’ similar to that created for US soldiers in South East Asia(Jyoti Sanghera, 1997). Kemala Kempadoo explains that prostitutiontourism props up ‘corporate capital, First World identities, andmasculine hegemony’ (Kempadoo, 1999b, p. 18).Prostitution tourism offers men from rich countries the opportunityto confirm their masculine dominance over women, whoare claiming equality in the west and prepared neither to acceptmasculine authority nor to adapt themselves so dutifully to men’ssexual demands. As Kempadoo puts it: ‘Many male sex tourists ...expressed the view that in their home countries, women enjoyexcessive power, through which traditional male authority is beingundermined ... In the Caribbean, they are able to fully reaffirmtheir masculinity’ (ibid., p. 26). However, Kempadoo takes a sexwork approach and positions the prostituted women and men of theCaribbean as having ‘agency’ and being involved in acts of transgressionwhich free them from oppressive relations rather than subjectingthem to oppression. Too many studies, she considers, emphasizethe problems associated with prostitution, and obscure the ‘agencyand subjectivity’ of sex workers (Kempadoo, 2001, p. 41).Though this feminist work shows an acute awareness that prostitutiontourism is based on class, race and gender inequality, it takesthe position that recognizing prostitution as work and legalizingit will resolve the problems associated with the practice. BeverleyMullings, for instance, writing about Jamaica, says that if ‘paidsexual labor’ is not recognized as ‘legitimate work’ then the sexworkers will be vulnerable to labour and human rights abuses(Mullings, 1999). Sex tourism should, she says, ‘be viewed as anexport industry, with consumers who import services from localproviders’ (ibid., p. 57). Taking this ‘industry approach’ will allowthe ‘truly exploitative aspects’ to be ‘more effectively policed’ (ibid.,p. 79). ‘Sex’ tourism can then take on the character of a ‘trulycommunity-based tourism’ (ibid., p. 79). In fact studies of the statesin which prostitution has been recognized as work and the industryhas been legalized do not support the notion that this approach willreduce the harms of prostitution (Farley, 2007; M. Sullivan, 2007;Shared Hope International, 2007). The field research and interviewsof feminist prostitution tourism researchers, whether they take a sexwork perspective or not, provide good support for the notion thatprostitution tourists from the rich western world seek to compensate