Speaking of the ladies
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/ras ... lk-bottles
Julie Binden wrote:
....They are called “bumsters” in Gambia, “Rastitutes” or “beach boys” in the Caribbean and “sanky pankies” in the Dominican Republic. These are the men providing sex in return for money or goods to women who want a holiday “romance”. The men are invariably from impoverished families, have little or no education and are sometimes illiterate.
Over the past decade, I have been researching the increase in female sex tourism in underdeveloped and poorer countries. Most of the women involved are looking for attention and excitement but end up...being one half of a prostitution deal. Although a small number of African-American women travel to the Caribbean for sex with beach boys, most of the women are white, middle-aged or older and come from Europe and North America. They travel alone or with female friends and often have a history of unhappy relationships with men at home.
Barbara is one such woman. In her late fifties and divorced, she travelled to Jamaica for her first holiday alone last winter. She had fantasies about sunbathing on white sand and swimming in a clear blue sea, ....Her destination was an all-inclusive resort in Negril, on the western tip of Jamaica, one of the biggest destinations for female sex tourism. “I got off the plane at Montego Bay and – boom! – there he was,” she tells me over the phone from her home town of Sheffield. “I have never seen a man as fit as Chris. His locks were down his back and his legs were like a footballer’s. I thought, ‘Why is he looking at me like he fancies me? I’m not his type.’”
Soon Barbara threw aside her inhibitions and realised she could behave in a way she would never dare to at home. “It was like total freedom. Chris was all over me and I couldn’t get enough of that beautiful body. He showered me with compliments about my legs, my hair, how I smelled, everything. He even said he liked my accent.” Barbara’s previous marriage had been abusive and damaging, leaving her feeling “worthless and like no man would ever look at me again. Chris made me feel gorgeous and special straight away.”
....“[Chris] moved into my hotel room with me and we had wild sex every night,” Barbara says..... “I ended up paying for everything and once, when I refused, he told me he could pick up any white woman he wanted who would be happy to give him money.” Despite this, she remained under the illusion until the end of her holiday that Chris was her boyfriend. She says now: “If he pretended to fancy me when we were together and just slept with me for money, does that make him a prostitute – or just a lying bastard?”
The markets for prostitution have expanded rapidly since poorer regions in the Caribbean, Asia and Africa have become popular with well-off tourists from the west in recent decades. Expressions such as “sexual paradise” and “fantasy Island” are bandied about and these places turn into notorious hot spots for sex tourism. In the Caribbean and Africa, a racist mythology prevails, with jokes about black male sexual prowess and penis size, perpetuated by the beach boys themselves because it’s good business.
...in the past three decades the numbers of women travelling primarily for sex with local men is thought to have increased significantly, according to an investigation by Reuters. The practice has become less stigmatised and tour operators even add thinly veiled references to sex tourism for women as a marketing strategy...
...Most of the beach bars advertise cocktails with names that are well-used euphemisms for a large penis, such as “Big Bamboo”, “Dirty Banana” and “Jamaican Steel”. I was on the island during spring break and Negril was thronged with young, conventionally attractive, bikini-clad female students – but the beach boys paid no attention to them at all.
At night, in bars playing loud reggae, young men would pull older white women to their feet and show them how to do “dirty dancing”, by way of “introducing [them] to my body”, as one man told me. It was an unusual sight –women, some of them in their seventies, bumping and grinding with men young enough to be their grandsons and sucking Red Stripe beer out of cans.
“I was sick of the men on offer back home,” says Linda, when I speak to her on Skype, having made contact with her through the same social network on which I found Barbara. Linda is a Londoner who runs a pub with her daughter. She has a “string of failed relationships” behind her. “They were all the bloody same. Expect you to treat them like God’s gift, treat you like you don’t matter and never consider what it is you want. The men I have been with [in Turkey] are a damn sight more handsome than they are and yet treat me like they’re grateful to be with me – the bloody opposite of what I’m used to.”
...Each year, as many as 600,000 women from western countries engage in sex tourism, according to Escape Artist Travel magazine.
...many of those I have met are married and have children, and are not stigmatised by their peers for the way they earn a living.
...All forms of prostitution require the seller to flatter the buyer and to display enthusiasm for the transaction. Nowhere is the exchange so theatrical as the one between the beach boy and the female sex tourist. At the same time, the comments I heard in Jamaica about the women seen with younger men were often misogynistic and cruel – there is far more acceptance of older, obese men hooking up with conventionally attractive younger women than the reverse. One young man told me the white women he had sex with made him feel sick. “They stink, have rough skin and look like old dogs. No wonder they have to pay for a man.”
A hotelier told me the women were “all ugly and fat. Men won’t touch them where they come from. I would be ashamed to be seen with any of them.”
...“They often talk about white women as if we are old slappers and have a laugh about how we are willing to give blow jobs when their own women won’t,” says Dawn, a regular visitor to Negril...
The author of the article does seem to engage in a certain amount of Feminist-sounding moralizing: people who see the old bags make "misogynistic" comments; she describes sex tourism as a problem; and concludes with
Julie Binden wrote:
But the women travelling for sex and love are not being deterred and nor are the impoverished young men who have only their own bodies to sell. Our hesitation in describing women such as Barbara as “sex tourists”, and the acceptance of the illusion that it’s about romance and love, further allow us to justify a racist and colonialist view of black male sexuality. For the women, it perpetuates a view of themselves as worthless, because most of these faux romances have no longevity or honesty. For the men, it confirms that the legacy of slavery, under which the black body was commodified and dehumanised, is not far behind them.
She indulges in more than a small amount of Feminist-style hyperbole. For her, everyone is a "victim." At least she isn't going so far as to label these ladies as Misandrists and Matriachs.
These ladies certainly aren't doing me, or anyone else, any harm. Are men my age supposed to be upset that the women my age are ignoring us and going off to have a bit of fun in Jamaica? They might as well go and enjoy themselves. "Justify a racist and colonialist view of black male sexuality" and "confirms that the legacy of slavery, under which the black body was commodified and dehumanized" my ass.
Some Feminists just seem to be completely anti-fun.
She does mention some site where ladies share stories about their sexual adventures. Maybe what they really need is a woman with Winston Wu's writing skills to lead them.
24 Oct 2013, 7:01 am
