Women and Sex Tourism Landscapes

Erin Sanders-McDonagh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317601142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Sexual spaces, normally inhabited by (mostly) female sex workers, are understood as masculine spaces, and positioned for and around male consumers. However, red light zones and public sex performances in both Thailand and Holland are being explored and visually consumed by female tourists in significant numbers. Their presence in red light districts and sexual venues is at odds with the ways in which sexual spaces have normally been positioned.

Woman and Sex Tourism Landscapes explores female tourists' interactions with highly sexualized spaces and places in two very different contexts: the Netherlands and Thailand. Addressing this incongruence, this text explores the ways in which these spaces are constructed, and examines the different relations that govern the management of, and female tourist interactions with these liminal, sexual zones. Ethnographic data collected in both countries suggests that far from being male-centred spaces, the red light districts and associated sexual entertainment venues are very much open to female tourists. Drawing on this research the author argues that some women are indeed interested in exploring sexualized zones, challenging assumptions about women's involvements with sexual space. Thinking specifically about the visual nature of women's sexualized experiences, the analysis draws on a range of different theoretical understandings that address power, privilege, and the gaze.

An important contribution to a range of debates, this book will appeal to students and researchers in tourism, geography, sociology, gender studies and cultural theory.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315747385-1

Walking through London’s Chinatown to Tisbury Court on a Friday evening in 2013, I stop outside the last remaining peep show in Soho, wondering whether I should step through the threshold to see what is inside. Next door is a strip club, and on a Friday night there are a number of men, clearly intoxicated, standing outside, smoking, waiting, talking. As I consider entering the peep show, a small group of three men notice me; start speaking to me – crass comments. As always in these kinds of situations, I’m not sure what these comments are meant to do, but it feels intimidating. The peep show is in the middle of a small alleyway, and there is limited room to manoeuvre around them easily. As I debate what to do, another drunken man emerges from the peep show. He brushes up against me as he goes – intentionally? I don’t know. It’s clear from less than two minutes outside this venue that this show is not meant for me; this is not a place for a single woman, and being on my own here makes me visible, makes me vulnerable. I leave without going in.

Compare this to a Friday night outside a peep show in Amsterdam. Walking through the Red Light District on a summer’s evening, not too long after my Soho visit in London, I feel almost invisible. The street is full of people, lots of men, but a lot of women too – couples, mixed groups, groups of men and groups of women, and a number of other single people. I am one of many and being a woman on my own does not seem to elicit any reactions from anyone. Stopping outside the peep show, the bouncer is chatting to two Australian women who are asking if they can come inside. ‘Of course’, his friendly reply, as he ushers them in. They walk in and I follow closely behind them. Here there are a few drunken tourists; I can hear Italian and French being spoken, and the groups of people here laugh and joke with one another, taking no notice of me or the other two women I walked in behind. The people standing in these spaces, waiting for a cubicle to open or changing paper notes into coins are diverse. Some look in their early twenties; others look like they’ve long-since retired. I separate out from the women I followed in, find my money in my wallet, and move around the circular corridor to wait for a cubicle to open up.

This is not my first peep show, so I know what to expect. After entering what looks like a very small closet, I will close the door behind me and a frosty window will be immediately in front of me. I will put a 2-euro coin into a slot on the wall, the lights will dim inside the cabin, and the frost on the window will disappear. Through the window I will be able to see a woman, or in this particular venue maybe a couple, on a rotating, round bed, performing erotic labour. On this occasion when I enter, there is a white woman with long brown hair, not a silicone Barbie-like vision, but a normal woman with cellulite and big, saggy breasts. She is naked and masturbating, de rigueur for this type of show. I watch her for a moment, before seeing who else I can see. The structure of the peep show enables customers to see not only the performer, but the other customers who are also watching. Everyone is watching everyone – the performer is watching the customers – making sure to make eye contact with every new window that opens – the customers are watching the performer – some avoid her gaze and look embarrassed, others delight in this personal encounter – and the watchers watch each other. Across from me is a heterosexual couple in their thirties. The woman looks at the performer, with her hand across her mouth and eyes wide, the man stands back, eyes flickering to the star of the show, and then away again, looking a bit uncomfortable. To their right is a single man on his own – he is close to the window, his face almost pressed up against the glass, and he shakes slightly, rhythmically. I imagine he is masturbating as well, in time with the woman on stage. I can see six windows from my vantage point, all filled with different varieties of people, all engaging with this performance in a different way, but all watching. My two minutes end, the window frosts over, and I exit the cubicle. As I leave, the two Australian women I followed in are waiting for my stall; I smile as I pass them and they laugh with one another before entering, one saying ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this’. I leave the peep show, passing more people who are coming to experience the sexual fantasies that Amsterdam has to offer.

As an ethnographer, my work has centred on noticing the incongruent – noticing what goes against the grain. This book is born out of observations that suggest the way in which we normally understand sexual spaces, and the inhabitants of these spaces, needs to be re-imagined. Since 2007 I have spent a great deal of time in two very different places, the Netherlands and Thailand, observing some very similar behaviours. In exploring the sexualized experiences on offer in these different contexts it is possible to see what only a few other academic authors have engaged with: the overt consumption of sexual spaces and places by women. In both Thailand and the Netherlands (and Amsterdam specifically), red light zones and public sex performances are being explored and visually consumed by female tourists. In many venues female customers comprise not a small minority, but an equal proportion and in some cases a clear majority. Their numbers in Red Light Districts and sexual venues in these locations seems odd; it sits in contrast to the ways in which (hetero) sexual spaces and sexualized entertainment are framed, as hegemonically masculine places, as places where women are either excluded, or understood to be threatened, disinterested in, or disgusted by (Jeffreys, 2008b; Hadfield and Measham, 2009; Hubbard and Colosi, 2015). The research presented in this text will argue that women are active consumers of sexual spaces and sexualized entertainment in these contexts. It is this incongruence that I will try to make sense of.

The research presented here is primarily focused on participants’ visual consumption of sexual entertainment, and as such I have sought to explore consumption in relation to ocular desire. Psychoanalytic theory will be used extensively throughout this text, as its theoretical contribution to understanding the power and politics of looking is clear. However, there are a range of other disciplinary contributions that help make sense of visual desire and that are useful to consider when analyzing these interactions.

Consumption studies, for example, are uniquely interested in processes of desire, and many theorists have recognized the ways in which contemporary consumption practices can reveal something about the social and cultural realities of (post)modernity (Baudrillard, 1988; Featherstone, 1991; Bauman, 1992). Inherent in these discussions are considerations about the ways in which desire is manifested. Baudrillard (1988) for example, argues that desires are created through advertising, and that we consume certain objects or experiences as an expression of identity, while Bourdieu (1984) maintains that consumption processes are linked to social and cultural practices that establish difference between certain social groups, and work to reinforce socially stratified hierarchies. Consumption and desire may be understood, then, as mechanisms of expression, and the process of consuming some thing or some one may be understood as both social and relational, as well as political.

Beyond recognizing the meanings that may drive consumption practices, consumption studies have also explored the ways in which certain places, spaces, and time may impact the nature of desire. Bakhtin (1968) for example, suggests that the medieval carnival was a particularly interesting space in relation to the governance of desire, and argues that the carnival represents what he terms a liminal space, where the normal rules that govern normative behaviours were lifted, and people were able to pursue taboo desires in this unique space/place out of time. Tourism may be understood as the contemporary mode of carnival, and in these spaces people may indulge in satiating transgressive desires. Belk, Ger and Askegaard (2003) argue that desire in these liminal moments produces a tension which involves ‘individual and social opposition between embracing and resisting objects of desire’ (2003: 330). The cultural norms that govern desire are inverted here, and fear and curiosity emerge as expressions of the pleasure of transgression: ‘curiosity shows in the perverse delight by some in transgressing social moralities’ (Belk, Ger and Askegaard, 2003: 330). The idea that desire can be understood both as a social and political processes, but equally, that time, place, and space may also influence how desire is manifested and governed suggests that understanding desire requires a nuanced and multifaceted approach.

This text will consider desire from a range of perspectives, and consider the various ways in which desire is expressed for women who consume sexual spectacles on their vacation. These interactions are largely visual, but this does not mean that the consumption process itself is less meaningful than a more haptic engagement might be. I will argue that visual desire here must be understood as it relates to both desire for difference, and desire for the Other, and I suggest that the ways in which desire is produced in these spaces has the potential to be productive, but social and cultural norms that govern codes of feminine respectability thwart any meaningful generative attempts. I will return to this idea at various points through the text, but for now let us explore the locations of desire.

The where of desire

Desire will be explored here in relation to two particular touristic contexts, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and four tourist cities in Thailand. These cities have been chosen because of the unique sexual performances that are offered to travellers as part of a mainstream tourist experience, and both of these locations have highly publicized and world-renowned tourist-oriented Red Light Districts. While vibrant sex scenes flourish in almost every global city across the world, the public sex performances in Thailand and the Netherlands offer a highly scripted and intensely sexualized encounter via a variety of different types of venues and entertainments. This text will focus on women tourists who visit and visually consume the entertainment on offer in these spaces, and will argue that women’s foray into these spaces is driven by a desire for a particular form of difference.

Recent work on Red Light Districts and sexualized public spaces recognizes the complex social and spatial relations that govern interactions in these spaces, but often focuses on male consumers and female erotic labourers (Hubbard, 1998; Hubbard 2001; Hubbard and Sanders, 2003; Hubbard, 2012). Similarly, when considering sexualized economies in the UK, Phil Hubbard contends that sexualized zones and entertainment venues ‘remain… indelibly associated with men’s search for sexual pleasures in the city’ (2012: 128). Sexual spaces, normally inhabited by (mostly) female sex workers, are understood as masculine spaces, and positioned for and around male consumers (Sanders and Hardy, 2012; Hubbard, 2015). There has been relatively little empirical research that suggests women might also be interested in exploring these spaces, and while it could reasonably be argued, given my experience as a flâneuse in Soho, that in certain contexts women may not be interested in visiting or exploring sexual entertainment, but, this is not universally true. This monograph will explore the sexual spaces where women are not only invited, but often encouraged, to take part in the consumption of sexual entertainment and attempt to make sense of these unusual interactions.

While this text does not engage explicitly with theories on space and place, it is important to recognize that my understanding of space is heavily influenced by geographers such as David Harvey (1982), Doreen Massey (1984, 1994), and Edward Soja (1989, 1996), who argue that space is not grounded in a concrete, material reality, but rather, constituted by social relations. The social and the spatial are constantly negotiated by each other, and as such, space must be understood as both real and imaginary. Like Johnston and Longhurst (2010), I recognize the conceptual importance of space and place, but also note the discursive ways in which space, place and bodies intertwine. This text is concerned with both the public spaces where sexual commodities and experiences are advertised, as well as the interior of the places where public sex performances are located. Mansvelt (2005: 56) suggests that ‘places are not simply areas on maps but shifting bundles of social-spatial relations which are maintained by the exercise of power relations’. Much of this text will focus on interactions in Red Light Districts (sexual spaces) and public sex performance venues (sexual places), exploring the ways in which these spaces are constructed, and examining the different relations that govern the management of, and female tourist interactions with, these liminal, sexual zones. Ethnographic data collected in both countries suggests that far from being male-centred spaces, the Red Light Districts and associated sexual entertainment venues are very much open to female tourists, who take part in various elements of consumption within these zones.

Public sex performance spaces are under-theorized, and this monograph will add to existing literature that has started to highlight the importance of these venues. Lenore Manderson (1992) was one of the first academics to engage with public sex shows in Thailand, while recent work from Ara Wilson (2010) has further developed understandings of these venues. Very little work on the public sex shows in Amsterdam has been done, although there has been some important work done on prostitution and red light windows,¹ as well as on the sexualized nature of the Red Light District itself.

While it might seem that visiting a strip club or a burlesque performance might seem like an obvious comparison for understanding public sex performances, the unique nature of the setting, the type of performance offered, and the live audience mean that it is unique and as such, requires a unique reading. As such, finding a single frame of analysis – a way to understanding why female tourists visit public sex performance venues, as well as how they understand their experiences in these spaces is difficult. In Thailand and Amsterdam, these shows are primarily a tourist attraction, and it becomes important to understand both production and consumption here in relation to tourist desire. The shows sit, in this instance, as a leisure activity that must be understood in the wider context of similar leisurely consumption behaviours, and as such must also be understood as a touristic as well as a sexualized encounter.

While it would be entirely within the realm of possibility to approach these spaces and shows as simply tourist activities and analyse them by using tourism theory, it would also be possible to explore these shows as sexualized forms of entertainment or leisure, ignoring the importance of these spaces as destinations for international tourists. In attempting to understand sexual spaces and sexual performances as both forms of highly sexualized entertainment and a form of tourist activity, I will utilize desire, which is relevant to literature on tourism and leisure, as well as to a wide range of other literatures that will help to make sense of the gendered social-spatial relations, and will help produce a nuanced analysis of the intersubjective and dynamic interactions that take place in these liminal spheres, and allow for the visual and sensorial dimensions to be considered in this framing. Desire is thus uniquely relevant to the consumption of these spaces and places, and becomes a central cadre for the analysis of the empirical data.

This book is ambitious in its aims: investigating sexual spaces in two very different national and cultural contexts is difficult – there are few similarities that exist between Thailand and the Netherlands in demographic, social, economic, or political terms, and as such trying to compare tourist activities located in, but also shaped by the specificities of each context is not without issue. During the process of writing this book, I have often regretted not focusing on one place or the other (no doubt my life would have been made much easier by doing so). While there are a great many differences that make comparisons between and across these two locations complicated, it is important to recognize the similarities that exist, and this text seeks to understand these interactions as part of wider transnational and global processes.

The next chapters will explore some of the important theoretical foundations that help to situate women’s engagements with sexualized venues, and elements that elucidate gen...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Researching public sex performance
• 3 The visual politics of female desire
• 4 Producing desire
• 5 Women, tourism, and the spaces of desire: making the familiar strange
• 6 Ontologies of difference: the low-Other
• 7 The power and politics of the gaze
• 8 Disgusting Others: inscribing difference as disgust
• 9 Constructing the Other: the politics of respectable femininities, prostitution, and stigma
• Bibliography
• Index