Degradation Of Women Through Sex Tourism
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Middle class white men simultaneously construct powerful manhood in terms of both civilized manliness and primitive masculinity to combine white superiority with male dominance. Civilized manliness comes from the idea that civilization is a racial concept. It was believed that races progressed through a natural progression from savagery to civilization. This belief entitled white men to believe that they were superior to those other savage and barbaric races. Primitive masculinity is used to impose differences between the genders. Men were supposedly naturally more aggressive while women were more subdued. They are supposed to be seen as a dominating force. Tourism promotes the notion of the ideal global tourist by allowing the civilized rich man to be pampered by the poorer and barbaric races.
“For to be a poor society in the late twentieth century is to be “unspoiled.” (Grewel Kaplan 392) By being unspoiled these tourist destinations are seen as barbaric since they were not touched by white mens desire to civilize them. When people want to get away from the constraints of their civilized lives, they become tourists in these unspoiled countries. However, tourism is a system of servitude. In order to make money from tourism, the people must be willing to serve the richer and more powerful tourists. This in turn requires them to showcase their exoticness for the tourists. The tourists can judge from these experiences that they are witnessing something from a more savage or uncivilized society. This type of experience emphasizes the superiority that the middle-class white man has over another because of his perception of civilization, wealth, and consumption.
Women are considered exotic and sexual. Sex tourism thrives from this idea. “To many men, women are something to be experienced.” (Grewel Kaplan 391) White middle-class men can unleash that primitive masculinity