If a “John” is a guy who buys sex, is a woman who buys sex a “Jane”? The last installment of “The Secret Life of Johns” asked: Who are these men that buy sex and why do they do it? But now I propose the question: Does “Jane” exist?
Joan Nestle describes female-buyers and Harlem brothels for women in Sex Work — which includes an account of one madam keeping a shotgun by the door to deter unwelcome men. According to Dr. Melissa Ditmore of the Sex Workers Project: “Women clients seem to be prevalent in places where women have more earning power than the sellers. Consider the female clients of local men in the Caribbean and parts of Africa today.”
“Yes — women buy sex.” This was Jeannette Belliveau, author of Romance on The Road, which includes research on (and first hand experience with) “romance tourism” — a form of sex tourism driven by women. Kris, a gay sex-worker and activist explains: “Women are possibly the biggest users of sex tourism. Many women I know personally travel to Turkey and to parts of Africa to buy sex from young men. In these cases a pseudo form of affair takes place but both parties know that money/goods are exchanging hands in return for sex.”
According to Belliveau, romance tourism has been going on since the Victorian era — coinciding with the first wave of feminism. “During the first wave of feminism, women became able to travel on their own and soon we had the first women sex travelers going to Syria, Italy and Africa.” While on vacation without male companions, they began flings with the local men — the men got to live like a rich Westerner and the women got a young attractive tour guide. Lesbian tourism also exists in Greece and Thailand, but is not as popular.
According to an article in Reuters, Kenyan locals estimate one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex. When British sociologists Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor and Julia O’Connell questioned women tourists in Negril, they found a third of them had sexual contact with local young men during vacation. Sixty percent agreed the men probably did it for money. In Jamaica, the men-for-hire are commonly known as “rent-a-dreads;” they comb nightclubs for women, which help them keep up with the latest sneakers or sunglasses. “Going rates for sex with men have been reported as high as $30 an hour in Jamaica. Men can earn as much as ten times the typical income,” says Belliveau.
Belliveau says she’s been asked to buy dinner for guys in the Caribbean, but not flat-out to pay for sex. “It is a very informal thing, maybe the woman pays some of his college tuition when he mentions it, or that he has a tourist business and needs a car to get set up. It’s heavily unstructured and more likely to be ‘so I am visiting my cousin in Kingston and really need $200’ the morning after.” Click to read the entire article at Sexis, which goes on to include an account of a woman who hired a sex worker in the U.S.
This is an excerpt from a series of journalism pieces I am doing for Sexis Magazine. I interviewed over 20 men who buy sex, in hopes of learning their stories so we can all see more clearly on the legal issues of sex work. Stay tuned for the next installment, in which I tackle trafficking.
10 Comments
So interesting! I had no idea this was such a large market.
Thanks LGS
WHO KNEW, right?! This is def where the women buyers are, in the Sexis piece I go onto detail women who hire sex workers for threesomes with their husbands, or watch their husbands with a sex worker. I detailed another woman who was egged on by a friend to buy a session with a transgender sex worker, out of curiosity. But I think those cases are much more rare than “romance travel”.
But how do you draw the line between this and when people take advantage of wealthy women when they’re traveling?
Corey,
Basically it’s the same thing, that phenomenon you are talking about IS romance tourism. And I love that you bring this up, because what became apparent to me while researching this is that one could argue that the exploitation goes either way. You could say these wealthy, western white women are exploiting these young men (often not white) from poor countries & disenfranchised backgrounds, that they are exploiting these men who have to have sex with them to survive. But one could also argue that these men are exploiting the women–that they are con artists who are out to get the most they can from these women. Can both be true?
I think that, perhaps, they are sometimes both true, but not always?
Thanks for your interesting pieces!
I wish I had money so I could buy sex, just to see what it’s like.
LOL @ Kendra
Con artists? I don’t think so. Obviously, sexism is not the only form of oppression, and, as in this case, not always the predominant one. Money will always be more powerful than a penis. These men earn a fraction of what their clients do, and they both know it. I even think assuming that female sex tourists don’t know what they’re doing is a sexist bias.
It just goes to show you that women love sex just as much as men do. Theres goes the myth.