Sex Tourism and Transnational Topographies

The article and text from this week brought back to my mind the overall sentiments of the readings from previous weeks, such as those of Jamaica Kincaid, Gina Ulysse, and Abu-Lughod. Brennan's work, What's Love Go to Do with It? examines the effects of sex tourism on the region of Sosua in the Dominican Republic. Although the reputation of the land has been slowly desecrated over time by tourists and immigrants who come to capitalize on the destination, it is the local Dominicans who suffer the greatest consequences. Brennan explains that the money earned from hotels and restaurants founded by immigrants from North America and Europe does not actually serve the Dominican people; rather, it is wired back to the immigrant's homelands. The general attitude of resentment of these tourists, therefore, is well earned, as the locals of Sosua become classified and stereotypes as lecherous and immoral due to the effects of the tourists. Furthermore, Brennan explains that the existence of the hotels' prepaid meals and drinks, due to the rising crime rates, do not actually foster any opportunity for economic growth. "In this town of change, struggle, and uncertainty," Brennan writes, "a heightened sense of moralism and traditionalism creates divisions among and within various groups" (82). The situation in Sosua described by Brennan seems to me to be a profound example of the issues of colonialism; when a mess is made, it is left to the locals to clean up, which creates an instability between the local citizens as they struggle to regain what was lost.

The gendered aspects highlighted by the Pratt article on transnationalism are significant as well to the understanding of sex worker's aspirations as described by Brennan. The article points out that transnationalism seeks to somehow ameliorate the negative effects of patriarchy, but ends up only enforcing women's reliance on men. I was interested Brennan's description of the sex worker's fantasies of marrying foreign men in order to provide stability and comfort for themselves and their children, as opposed to having to marry the Dominican men, whom they considered less stable and desirable. Of course, these plans often did not play out as expected. The patriarchal ideal of women's reliance on men for economic stability ends up being a large part of the sex tourist world, which reaches beyond simply providing sexual services to the tourists. This is ostensibly the opposite of what the industry of sex work could potentially represent- that the independence of women still in many cases ends up becoming dependence on the foreign men. A quote from the Pratt article sums it up nicely, not only in terms of gendered performances but in terms of transnational colonialism as a whole: "As transnationalism draws attention to what it negates—that is, the continued significance of the national- it continues to remind us that we have far from reached a post-nationalist state of affairs" (Pratt and Yeoh).