For most people, the term sex tourism conjures up a standard set of images. The sex tourist is profiled as white Western man, middle-aged or older, who travels to developing countries that have a reputation for tolerating sexual commerce. He believes that buying sex while traveling poses little if any risk of discovery by friends and family members back home, and he knows that local women charge much less than what he would pay at home for the same service. He considers these women exotic, more erotic, and more compliant than women in his home country, and his relations with them bolster his perhaps eroding sense of masculinity.
If he has a current partner, he is no longer attracted to her. If he is older and single or divorced, his chances of connecting with an appealing Western woman are thin. He believes that his whiteness makes him attractive to women of color. And his economic resources give him power over women who come from poor backgrounds and see transactional sex as a means of survival or economic advancement.
The research I conducted for my book Sex Tourism in Thailand shows that this profile is simplistic. Sex tourists vary considerably, in Thailand and worldwide. While plenty of individuals fit the above profile, sex tourists more generally differ in age, gender, sexual orientation, race, and motivations. Many are young, from 20 to 35 years of age.
Many are people of color. Many male tourists are gay, such as those who go to Brazil and the Philippines with the intention of connecting with a local provider. Although not the focus of my book, I conducted a few observations in these places and noted their similarities to heterosexual prostitution bars.
While many tourists are different races than the sex providers they encounter, that does not necessarily mean that they are racially prejudiced or have a sense of supremacy. Many Western sex tourists in Southeast Asia are attracted to Asian women and men for the same reasons people outside the sex industry are attracted to people of another race and enter into romantic relationships with them. Racial difference does not necessarily spell superiority or animus, and this is as true for sex buyers as for the sellers.
