Some countries, such as Thailand, have become destinations of choice for sex
tourists (mostly middle-aged men from Germany and the United States) and have well-
developed sex tourism industries. This industry was begun in the 1960s, when Thai-
land contracted with the U.S. military to provide “rest and recreation” services for
troops stationed in Vietnam (Nagel, 2003). Proprietors take advantage of high unem-
ployment and traditional attitudes about women to ensure a steady “supply” and use
the exoticism of the “Orient” and traditional stereotypes about docile and compliant
Asian women to ensure a steady “demand” from their heterosexual customers.
Sex tourism thus expresses the unequal relationships between countries who
“sell” sex and countries who can “buy” it, as well as the inequalities between men
and women, both globally and locally. Sociologist Joane Nagel notes how the geog-
raphy of sex trafficking expresses its inequality: Men, women, and children from Latin
America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa are moved to the United States, from Nepal
to India, from Burma to Thailand, from India and Pakistan to the Middle East (Nagel,
2003). “Prostitution and related activities, which are inherently harmful and dehu-
manizing,” according to President George W. Bush, “contribute to the phenomenon
of trafficking in persons, as does sex tourism, which is an estimated $1 billion per
year business worldwide” (Bush, 2003).Pornography
Pornographyrefers to a visual or written depiction of sexual activity with no “redeem-
ing social value.” Of course, what counts as “redeeming social value” is in the eye of
the beholder. Many of the greatest classics of world literature, such as James Joyce’s
Ulysses(1922), D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover(1928), and Kurt Von-
negut’s Slaughterhouse Five(1969) have been banned as pornographic. Information
about birth control was banned as pornography in the 1920s; and, in 1956, the Mat-
tachine Society was cited for pornography simply because its publication used the
wordhomosexual.
The debates about pornography have traditionally pitted conservatives against lib-
erals. Conservatives believe that any sexually explicit material is morally wrong and
socially corrosive: It cannot help but lead to social decay. Liberals believe that adults
should be able to make their own decisions about what they want to view and read.
In the late 1970s, this well-entrenched debate about pornography was trans-
formed by feminist women. Women Against Pornography (WAP) claimed that het-
erosexual pornography was less about sex than about sexism; it was male domination
turned into erotica (gay male pornography was ignored because it did not involve
women). As one supporter said, heterosexual pornography “makes sexism sexy”
(Stoltenberg, 1990). WAP claimed that heterosexual pornography itself was a form
of censorship—it silenced women. They claimed that violence against women was
caused, in part, by pornography, because when men see degrading sexual acts in
pornography, it appears that women like them. In some cases, these radical feminists
joined with moral conservatives in political efforts to reduce the harm caused by
pornography. Other feminists disagreed. They claimed that the censorship of hetero-
sexual pornography, whether by conservatives of feminists, would silence women’s
empowering efforts to express their sexuality (see Dworkin, 1981; FACT, 1985).
Social science research has attempted to assess the impact of pornography on
viewers, almost always heterosexual men. Experiments have found small differences
in both behavior and attitudes between men who viewed significant amounts of vio-
lent heterosexual pornography in a laboratory setting and those who did not. Men
who viewed the violent heterosexual pornography held more negative views about
women and were also more likely to acquit rape defendants in mock trials. However,340 CHAPTER 10SEXUALITY