Sex has increasingly become regarded as part of the tourist experience and tourism has developed some highly sexualised heterosexual and gay destinations to meet this demand. People travel to have sex in different locations with their partners or other tourists or with locals.
This article takes a sociological look at a growing aspect of the holiday trade — namely, sex tourism. Jackie Sanchez-Taylor first looks at how some feminist sociologists viewed the phenomenon, which was largely in terms of patriarchy and the exploitation of women by richer and/or more powerful males. However, she goes on to explore the increasingly complex nature of sex tourism, in which women are now sometimes the purchasers of sexual favours abroad, and in which ‘children’ are not always the very young victims the name implies. Sanchez-Taylor points out that there is not always a clear distinction between prostitution involving children and that involving adults. Finally, and importantly, she then links sex tourism to much wider issues of globalisation, migration and global inequalities. This article contains important material on gender, inequality and globalisation.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
