2006/07/26 by Jacqueline Sánchez Taylor · 122 citations
Social Sciences · #Sex work and related issues #Gender, Feminism, and Media #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy #Tourism #Essentialism #Ethnography #Gender studies #Human sexuality #Sociology #Contradiction #Power (physics) #Heterosexuality #Political science #Anthropology #Epistemology
paper · doi:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400280
published in Feminist Review 83(1), 42-59 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2006/07/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/04
This paper argues that the ‘double-standard’ applied to male and female tourists’ sexual behaviour reflects and reproduces weaknesses in existing theoretical and commonsense understandings of gendered power, sexual exploitation, prostitution and sex tourism. It looks at how essentialist constructions of gender and heterosexuality blur understandings of sexual exploitation and victimhood and argues that racialized power should also be considered to explore the boundaries between commercial and non-commercial sex. This paper is based on ethnographic research on sexual–economic exchanges between tourist women and local men and boys in the informal tourist economy in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.