Sep
7
“The globalization of the sex industry means that markets in women’s bodies are no longer confined within national boundaries. Trafficking, sex tourism and the mail order bride business have ensured that women’s severe inequality can be transferred beyond national boundaries as the women of poor countries can be sexually bought by men from rich countries (Belleau, 2003). The late 20th century saw the wholesale engagement of prostitutors from rich countries in the prostitution of women from poor countries in a new form of sexual colonization. This is taking place through the mail order bride industry, in which women from Latin America are imported into the US, for instance, or women from the Philippines into Australia. It is taking place also through the industry of sex tourism. As part of tours organized through rich countries, or as individual ‘tourists’, rich buyers seek out local or trafficked women in sex tourism destinations. Thus men can be compensated for the loss of their status in countries where women have made strides toward equality, by outsourcing women’s subordination to be consumed elsewhere or from imported poor women. The supply chain has been internationalized with large-scale trafficking of women from poor countries on every continent into destinations which include their richer neighbors, i.e. from North Korea to China, and to western sex tourism destinations such as Germany and the Netherlands. The Internet offers male buyers in the US sex chat lines funnelled through impoverished island states (Lane, 2001). This integration of the sex industry into global capitalism has not been sufficiently remarked or studied, and the implications for women’s status and for governance have scarcely been remarked at all.”
Jeffreys, Sheila. The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
