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Sex tourism hotspots are teeming with brand-new arrivals and those visitors are not who they used to be.
We don’t have precise figures about the numbers – because who puts “travelling to get cheap sex” on their visa forms? That’s one of the reasons we can’t ever know exactly who they are. But a bloke who has spent 40 years researching sex work tells me it’s the biggest shift he’s ever seen. Ronald Weitzer, emeritus professor, George Washington University, has been studying sex tourism and its participants for decades, and he can see the change in his own field work: the shift from older men to younger men, the shift in ethnic groups.
It turns out sex tourism is no longer just a country for old men, those in their 60s and 70s, widowed, divorced or otherwise alone. Now it’s young men in their 20s, 30s, 40s. They’re going for what they think is a good time. They don’t have to pay attention to home norms or behaviours. They can be who they want to be, no matter how awful that might be.
But whatever age they are, they don’t usually end up murdering children. Weitzer says the murder of sex workers is unusual – and countries across the world have rallied to be much more proactive protecting sex workers and working to end child trafficking.
This is a sleazy, desperate story. Australian misfit allegedly murders a child sex worker Thanchanok Donhomla, 17, and allegedly stuffs her body in a bag. He’s denied all charges, apologised to the devastated parents and claimed it’s not his fault. But it’s not as if the murder of sex workers is just a problem in South-East Asia. In just the last 10 years, sex workers in this country have been killed and/or sexually assaulted while just doing their jobs, Scarlet Alliance’s chief executive Mish Pony says. She tells me the three most recent murders were of migrant sex workers
Sex work is work in this country – but it is still very unsafe. I get hate mail for supporting the right of women to be sex workers and to be safe but I’d argue supporting the right of people to work in big consulting firms might be worse for humanity.
So why do men travel for sex? Weitzer says it can be something simple, new, exciting, something different to what they would do with their families or significant others. They are visiting a country where there is a wide variety of workers available to do whatever is wanted. Vanilla, kinks, whatever. What the hell would I know? But whatever they do should be safe and consensual – and in Thailand, that’s what the law says too.
In his research for his latest book, Sex Tourism in Thailand, Weitzer travelled to the country and observed a shift. The old guys were still there – but a growing group of younger men were now in the picture.
“They were not the stereotype of the white man looking for thrills – and many of these young men were not – necessarily – incels. They were attractive, fit and presumably would not have a lot of problems finding a date.”
He’d made a prediction, based on his previous research – but that turned out to be out by years.
“The tendency is for older men, 60 to 80, to look for a woman who is more compliant, less assertive. The older generation tends to be frustrated with Western feminism.”
Younger guys, apparently not so much.
But even sex tourists have morals, evidently. There are entire online forums where men chat together about sex trips, where to go, what to do. Weitzer tells me that if anyone in a forum posts about sex acts with underage girls or suggests violence, they are quickly blocked from participation. Small victories.
But child sex tourism (or should I call it child rape tourism) is still rife and no amount of moderation will halt it. According to Australian researcher Mara Lejins, Australia has the third-highest number of any country of Interpol “Green Notice” alerts about individuals who might commit crimes while travelling overseas.
Shockingly, according to AFP numbers, 94 per cent of those notices relate to Australian child sex offenders who travelled. The good news, writes Lejins, is that Australia imposes comprehensive extraterritorial legislation aiming to prosecute those who engage in the uniquely pernicious trade of what she describes as child sex tourism. In other words, we have these laws which means if someone commits an offence overseas we can still prosecute here.
Weirdly, people take child rape less seriously if it happens somewhere that’s not home.
We have to wait until the justice system has dealt with Simon Peter Carman – which means we have to sit with our rage. But there’s one thing Australia could do. We should introduce an offence for those engaging in prostitution with children aged under 18 years – and that’s consistent with the definition of a child.
Weitzer says that in any sex tourism setting, “you are always going to get men who are perverts and are willing to exploit people who are very young”. It’s not something which just happens during sex tourism, of course.
I asked several researchers if they thought DFAT should issue travel advice for sex tourists. As in, protect yourself and others from sexually transmitted diseases. Remember that whatever you do in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, can come back to bite you. Consent is an absolute minimum, whether you are paying for sex or not. And assault, rape and murder are always against the law.
Jenna Price is a regular columnist.
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