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Home , Brothel, Sex tourism

ThirdWorld Quarterly, Vol 18, No 1, pp. 93± 108, 1997

Bodypolitics: international sex

JANJINDYPETTMAN

Thisarticle explores some puzzlesin international politics, in particular about whatit might mean to write ` thebody’ , takingaccount of embodiedmateriality andsexual difference. I pursuethis puzzle through a focuson ,which means askingquestions about relations between sex andpower, men and women,® rst andthird worlds, and sexual relations across state,national, racialisedand culturalised boundaries.

Prelude Myearlier work as afeministin International Relations (IR) pursuedthe question` Whereare womenin international politics?’ , 1 interrogatingdifferent constructionsof masculinity and femininity in international politics, and using earlyfeminist IR understandingsof gender relations as powerrelations. 2 This meantteasing out connections between the category woman and actual women; betweenwomen and feminism; between different feminisms or feminists. It meantattending to gender constructed relationally, implicating women and men; andattending to differencesamong women, too. It led, also, to a reversalÐto ask what` theinternational’ does to women’ s lives,and to gender relations; and to interrogatethe international politics of feminismÐsomething that ` ThirdWorld’ andminority feminists demand of white, settler state feminists like myself. 3 Iwas reading,teaching, writing as amaterialistfeminist, and a gender feminist.4 Itookon board early second wave feminist distinctions between (biological)sex and(social/ cultural)gender, to deny that biology is women’s destiny,to make room for a feministpolitical project. Seeing gender, along withrace andethnicity, as sociallyconstructed, I tendedto assume bodies weresimply there: natural, neutral, surfaces onwhich the social/ symbolicwas written.What had been constructed could, with dif® culty and struggle, be changed. Inrecent writing for WorldingWomen ,5 Iwas surprisedto detect the eruption ofbodiesÐ sexed bodiesÐ into my text. One reader took the presence of these bodiesin my manuscriptas emphasisingthe physicality of people’ s, particularly women’s, experiencesof the international. Bodies ® gured,she suggested,as `the sitein which the international and the personal most painfully converge¼ it is

JanJindy Pettman, Women’ s StudiesCentre, Australian National University, Canberra,ACT, 0200; email , [email protected] . .

0143-6597/97/010093-16$7.00 Ó 1997Third World Quarterly 93 JAN JINDY PETTMAN onlythrough a resistanceto hegemonic ways of mapping, controlling and silencingthat we can unearth the real bodies that the nation-state and traditional IRhaveburied’ . 6 Bodiesemerged inscribed with differences that matter; bodies were gendered, racialised,culturalised, classedÐ and sexualised. SexÐ as desire,danger, eroti- cisedbodies, transgressions, violationsÐ came throughmy writingtoo, including women’s experiencesin identity con¯ icts, as boundarymarkers orcommunity possessions,as womenwarriors, as commodi®ed cheap labour on the global assemblyline, as labourmigrants, ` foreign’domestic workers, and international sex workers. Madecurious, 7 Ibeganto address thegrowing literature referred to as the philosophyof the body, associated in Australia especially with Moira Gatens, whoasserted earlyon that mapping onto the body is affectedby what kinds of bodiesmeanings are mappedonto, 8 andElizabeth Grosz, writing on the sexed body,and female embodiment. 9 SotooI tookup GillianYoung’ s question:` how canwe address theissue ofthebody in investigatingsocial and global power and theinterconnections between them?’ 10

Missing the body,and the `Third World’ IRhas largely` forgotten’women and gender relations. The citizen, soldier, leader,worker was presumedto bemaleÐif personswere visible at all. Feminist politicaltheory and feminist IR deconstructeddichotomies and hierarchised oppositionsencapsulated in mind± body, culture± nature, public± private, so often translatedas masculine±feminine, and politics± sex, too. 11 Thepublic/ political was revealedas male,with women relegated away from it and from the discipline,into the private, domestic, family. This smoothed the move from male touniversal, a movethat normalised masculinity and erased women.On closer examination,though, ` men’turned out to be certain kinds of men, whose experiences,interests and fears becamethe stuff of theorising. This saw an alignmentof public space andpower with dominant group men, and with particularconstructions of masculinity.Other/ otheredmenÐ working class, min- ority,racialisedÐ might for certain purposes be aligned with women, associated withphysicality, dangerous sexuality, emotions, more of nature and less of reason,for example. If publicspace andcitizenship entitlements are dominantmale places, these are disruptedby ` other’men, and by women of allkinds, who might be seen as outof place,and whose rights claims could endanger them. 12 Thesebody politics werenot available for critique in disciplines practised as dis-embodied,in the absenceof bodies, both of the writers and their subjects. Political Science and IRgrewlargely safe fromthe mess, pain,pleasure and desire of actual bodiesÐthough at times in languagewhich suggested pleasure and danger were justa wordaway. 13 Thereare contradictionsand complications here. While largely disembodied, orin the process of` missing’the body, the discipline colluded with the displacementof both body and sex ontowomen. 14 Enlightenment’s manis 94 BODY POLITICS abstract,individual, centred on the mind, autonomous. Woman, on the other hand,is sexed,and there for (heterosexual) men’ s sex andservice. Men are subjects,women dependents, a `body-for-others’.15 However,men’ s bodiesare boththere and denied in much social science writing.In other constructions, men’ s bodiesare active,women’ s theobject of desireor repulsion. Men’ s bodiesare oftenaligned with technology, useÐ body asinstrumentor weapon; while the female body aligns with nature, receptivity, thematernal or sexual. Tworather different positionsÐ men’ s bodiesabsent, with bodies displaced ontowomen, who are inturn displaced from public space anddisciplinary concern;or men’ s bodiesassociated with doing, action, and women’ s bodies therefor men’ s gazeor use. How then to grapple with representations of ` the’ bodyas male?` Wheneverthe body is abstractlythought of, it so oftenassumes masculinecharacteristicsÐ despite the fact that the body is alignedmetaphori- callywith the feminine.’ This is anothereffect of the ubiquitous public/ private divide.` Whenthe body is locatedin the public domain¼ then both materially andpractically it is assumed tobe male’ . 16 Anothercontradiction. Into the usual and presumed Political Science/ IRworld ofdisembodied public space, or world of disembodied men with women containedelsewhere, male heterosexual bodies do break through from time to time,in veryphysical ways. This is especiallyso inwar and militarism, and the dangerousconnections between (certain kinds of?) masculinity and violence; in nationalistpassions and ethnic cleansing; in the sexualisation of thelanguage of powerpolitics and the eroticisation of masculinist power. Men’ s bodiesfre- quentlybecome weapons, in power plays or sexual attacks, against ` other’men, andagainst women. The language and images here do not ® twithnotions of eitherdisembodied IR orabstract, rational political man. Butmuch IR writingremains disembodied. The writers and their subjects donot have (visible) bodies. Yet the body you are/ are inclearly makes an enormousdifferenceÐ it places you, or me, on one side or the other of boundariesthat mark both power relations and entitlements. It is readto locate usonthe inside or the outside of bordersthat, in international politics, can cost youyour life. IRfrequently` misses’ theThird World, too: a sitein which the body is increasinglyused as aformof international currency. The dominance of Anglo±North American scholarship, and until recently a focuson the Cold Warbipolar world, saw aroutineevacuation of theThird World from the ® eld, whichwas thenleft for development studies or regional studies to consider. CriticalInternational Political Economy (IPE) and globalisation literature, especiallythose tracking the changing global division of labour, subverts the binaryFirst World± Third World. At times,it has overcomewomen’ s invisibility too,for example in studies that reveal the feminisation of the global assembly line,the ` exportof women’ as domesticworkers from poorer South and SoutheastAsian states toricher states inthe region and in the Middle East, andrich states’ menmoving across stateborders for racialised sex tourism. Sowe can trace the marks ofchanging international power relations on the bodiesof women. 17 95 JAN JINDY PETTMAN

International sex tourism Internationalsex tourismbrings together political economy and culture, material relationsand representations, which I haveexplored elsewhere in terms ofan internationalpolitical economy of sex. 18 Thegrowth of military-basesex andof internationalair and tourism has increasedthe demand for paid hospitality, andfor paid sex. At the same time,poorer states havepromoted tourism as a developmentstrategy, seeking foreign exchange in theface ofgrowingindebted- ness, tradeliberalisation and pressure fromthe World Bank and IMF to ` open up theeconomy’ . Thewealth generated by internationaltourism returns mainly to therich states andFirst World transnational corporations. And it istherich states whichmainly sendtourists, including to Third World states. In the latter, development policies, currentrestructuring, and often wars andstate violence too, have dislocated local economiesand set manypeople on themove, in search ofjobs. The contempor- aryglobal political economy has feminisedmigrant labour, from rural to urban areas andexport processing zones within states, and across stateborders. Young women’s labouris commodi®ed as cheaplabour, and as docileand less trouble-pronein political terms. 19 Theseworkers are rarelyunionised or rights- protected,and may be subject to exploitation and abuse. Sexual vulnerability seems especiallylikely in occupations that already confuse work with servicing men,including domestic labour and hospitality work. Inher ground breaking study Sex,Money and Morality: and Tourismin Southeast Asia Thanh-DamTruong puts together a politicaleconomy ofwomen’ s labourwith issues todo with sexuality.

Theintersection of prostitution and tourism cannot be understood as a patchwork ofdiscontinuous events resulting from individualbehaviour, or simply as a synchronicexpression of sexism and racism. Instead, it must be placed in the contextof the operations of relations of power and production in the ® eldof air travelwhich preceded its development. The emergence of tourism and sex-related entertainmentis an articulation of a seriesof unequal social relations including North±South relations, relations between capital and labour, male and female, productionand reproduction. 20

Truongexplores how the sexual division of labour incorporates the role of sexuallabour. Prostitutes contribute sexual services, mainly for men, but they alsocontribute to theglobal production of the tourism industry, and to thewealth ofbusinesses, state agents and states whichare engagedin this enormous and lucrativetrade. She also asks howdifferent states becomeintegrated into the internationaldivision of labour through the provision of leisure services, which cruciallyinclude sexual services, through (mainly) women’ s sexuallabour. SomeWestern European states, the USA, Australiaand have a repu- tationfor sending the sex tourists;other states, notably and the ,are reputedsex touristdestinations. (Not coincidentally, they were signi®cant sites formilitarised prostitution, too). In turn,sex touristdestinations are representedin terms ofculturalised and sexualised differenceÐ as exoticand erotic. 96 BODY POLITICS

Sexualfantasies Often,prostitution thrives on provisionof paidsex across racialisedboundaries. Thisis seen inthe importation of ` exotic’Third World sex workersinto ® rst worldbrothels, in the international trade in ` mail-orderbrides’ and in sex tourism. `Asianwomen’ circulate globally in representations which resonate with and reproducecolonial romances and ongoing domination relations. 21 Theserepre- sentationsare familiarin other sex across therace lines.Dominant group men’ s access tothe bodies of subordinated, colonised or slave women was partof the privilegeof power. These women were frequently constructed as sexual,avail- able,promiscuous, or alternatively as passive,or already abused: excusing the usingmen from responsibility towards the women or theirchildren. The children usuallyinherited the mother’ s status,thus keeping the (white) race pure.Any sex across therace boundarybetween white women and subordinate men, on the otherhand, betrayed the complexities of power, and threatened both racialised hierarchiesand dominant group men’ s controlof ` their’women and their paternallines. 22 Nowtourist brochures, airline advertisements, and hosting states’ enticements regularlyfeature a newOrientalism in constructing both tourist destination states andtheir women. Receiving states are feminised,and along with women are alignedwith nature, receptivity, and sexual allure and danger. 23 Theseimages colludeprovocatively with colonial representations, though this time they may becalled up and sold by ex-colonised or Third World men and states, too. Tourismoffers adventure,escape, something different. Tourist sites specialise instagedauthenticity, and appeal to tourist, often presumed male, fantasies. 24 In theprocess, particular kinds of bodies are represented,constructed, circulated, sold.The Southeast Asian woman becomes a body,not a voice;not a subject, butsubjected, available for men’ s gazeor purchase. She is sexualised,and perhapsa comforttoo; more skilled in pleasuring men than the tourist’ s own groupwomen are. The latter may be seen as feministinfected, and therefore dif® cult. `Culture’is deployedto justify the use madeof ` other’women’ s bodies,to excuseabuses, including ¯ outingany notion of and using child prostitutes.Poverty, too, is usedin a functionalexplanation of the sale or purchase,helping out those who have no other option, and whose earnings are presumed(rightly, often) to beprovidinga modicumof incomefor impoverished families.In the process, bodies are displayedand put into performance. The bodiesof the sex touristare notso evident,though when they are madevisible, itis oftenalso in stereotypic form, as theaging, ugly white male predator, as en-masse besuitedJapanese businessmen,as themacho US militaryman.

Materialising the body Insex tourism,then, women’ sÐ and children’ s, andyoung men’ sÐ bodies becomepart of thetrade, as dobuyers’ bodies. But surprisingly tourism studies seem tohave shared social sciences’ reluctanceto engage with the body. The 97 JAN JINDY PETTMAN

Introductionto the ` Genderin Tourism’ special issue ofthe Annalsof Tourism Research notesthat gender has onlyrecently interested tourism researchers, and arguesfor ` thinkingabout tourism issues as genderedrelationships between individuals,groups, social categories, types of tourism,and nations in First/ Third Worlds’. Articlesincluded ` exploregender ideology in consumption practices, genderperceptions of tourism development, , sexuality and nationalism,gender in the political economy of tourism, gender relations betweentourism consumers and providers, and the reframing of gender ideology usingtourism leisure practice’ . Inthe process itbecomes clear that ` thesexed bodyand social sexuality are signi®cant dimensions of gender in tourism’ . 25 SoileVeijola and Eeva Jokinen write on the absence of the body in socio- logicalstudies in tourism.

Sofar thetourist has lacked a bodybecause the analyses have tended to concentrate on the gaze and/orstructuresand dynamics of wagedlabour societies. Furthermore, judgedby the discursive postures given to the writing subject of most of the analyses,the analyst himself has, likewise, lacked a body.Only the pure mind, free from bodilyand social subjectivity, is presented as having been at work when analysing® eldexperiences, which has taken place from thedistance required by the so-calledscienti® c objectivity,from theposition-in-general. 26 Theyrewrite several in¯ uential tourist studies, and themselves, ` intothe duration oftime and sexed body, into being and writing there,inthe temporal space of tourism’ . Indifferent disciplines’ literature, we cantrace the usual absence, and now in some thenew presence, of thebody. Explaining why the body was absented,we returnto the exclusion of women, in particular the association of male with mind,public, political, and the female with body, private, natural. Bodies are associatedwith ¯ uids,blood, are polluting,sinful or sexual; distracting and possiblydangerous to men, including to thinking/ writingmen. Whythen has thebody recently become visible in some disciplinesformerly missing it? Feminismis adiversepolitics, and theorising the body is associatedwith particulartendencies. However, women’ s bodiesare oftenthe given explanation fordiscrimination, and women frequently experience oppression and subordina- tionbodily. Key feminist campaigns include organising against violence against women,, and . These reveal transnational similarities and nationalforms, for example in Indiaagainst dowry murders and female foeticide. Everywhere,many feminist claims concern women’ s bodies,for example for choiceconcerning whether or not to marry, have sex, have children, or an abortion.Against such claims, women’ s rightsand mobility are underattack in right-wingand fundamentalist politics. Their bodies become political battle- groundsfor different kinds of projects,especially those against the secular state, andin reactive state-legitimising politics. 27 MichelFoucault’ s writings,especially Historyof Sexuality ,Volume1, have beenenormously in¯ uential, and generated productive insights and ways into bodypolitics which have entranced or seduced many feminists too. 28 Foucault wrotethe body as effects ofpower, produced through discourses of sexuality, 98 BODY POLITICS medicalknowledge, legal and moral ideas. Bodies are disciplined,subject to surveillanceto produce docile bodies. Bodies are producedthrough practices, whichmark the materiality of power in discourses and other disciplinary effects. Butthe body of Foucaultian writing is often,remarkably, not a genderedbody. Women’s bodies® gureinfrequently, in references forexample to the maternal body.` Womenlive with the physicality of bodily encounters, and often with physicalviolence, in wayswhich Foucault did not examine.’ 29 (Soin some ways dominority, including sexual minority, men). Otherwritings reveal other bodies: the citizen body, the military body, presumed,apparently, to be male; however,the connections between these bodiesand ` thebody politic’ remain problematic. 30 Men’s bodieshave also becomevisible in sociology, which writes of theproduction of different bodies, andin new sexuality writings that explore masculinities, and ` deviant’sexuali- ties.31 Culturalstudies and feminist ® lmstudies have explored fashion, advertise- ments,politics of the gaze and body image, for example where women’ s, and some men’s, bodiesare mostobviously constructed as sexualor erotic bodies, forothers’ consumption. Bodies circulate in different ways as idealsand as saleableitems. Writing these bodies engages a politicsof sex, and not only of genderin the sense ofsocial relations between men and women. They identify theproduction of sexual identities which include the homosexual and the prostitute.They help us movefrom the body to bodies, to different kinds of bodiesand to sexualities. Whiletaking different forms withinand between different disciplines, writing thebody disrupts the old sex/ genderdistinction. It can move beyond a gender constructionistunderstanding, 32 tore® gurenotions of materiality, corporeality, embodiment,subjectivity and identity. So, for example, Rosi Braidotti moves beyondthe sex/ genderdistinction to thesocial construction of bothsexuality and thebodyÐ or, rather, different kinds of bodies. She writes in search ofa materialisttheory of feminist subjectivity, that develops the notion of corporeal materialityby emphasising the embodied and therefore sexuallydifferentiated structureof the speaking subject. Braidotti locates ` corporaland consequently sexedbeings’ , assertingthe speci® city of the lived, female bodily experience. Thisis animportant strategic move that makes itimpossible to disregard gender andsexual difference in the way so muchsocial science still does. She advocates acorporealpolitics of location, which assumes embodimentand the situated natureof subjectivity.

Inthe feminist framework, the primary site of location is the body. The subject is notan abstract entity, but rather a materialembodied one. The body is nota natural thing;on the contrary, it is a culturallycoded socialised entity. Far from beingan essentialistnotion, it is the site of intersection between the biological, the social, andthe linguistic. 33

Writingof the mutually constituting, ¯ uidand mobile making of bodies and sexualdifference, Elizabeth Grosz introduces her project:

Iwilldeny that there is the ` real’, materialbody on the one hand and its various culturaland historical representations on the other¼ these representations and 99 JAN JINDY PETTMAN

culturalinscriptions quite literally constitute bodies and help produce them as such. Thebodies¼ are culturally, sexually, racially speci® c bodies,the mobile and changeableterms ofcultural production. She argues: Thebody must be regarded as the site of social, political, cultural and geographic inscriptions,production, or constitution. The body is not opposed to culture, a resistantthrow-back to a naturalpast; it is itself cultural, the cultural,product. 34 Movingbeyond the sex/ genderdistinction, Grosz identi® es thesocial body. The bodyis socialand discursive object, boundup in the order of desire, signi® cation and power.¼ That may help explain theenormous investment in de® nitions of the female body in struggles between patriarchsand feminists: what is at stakeis theactivity and agency, the mobility and socialspace, accorded to women. Far from beingan inert, passive, noncultural and ahistoricalterm, the body may be seen as the crucial term, the site of contestation, ina seriesof economic, political, sexual and intellectual struggles. 35 Thesestruggles impact directly on the actual bodies of women, seen so dramaticallyin the use ofmass rapeas awarstrategy in Bosnia and elsewhere, andin the expulsion of womenfrom public employment and visibility in Kabul withthe victorious arrival of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan. Feministinsistence on the sexed body and sexual difference disrupts male- as-normand male bodies passing as `the’body or as gender-neutral.It brings intorepresentation sexual difference, and other/ otheredbodies which are treated differentlyin terms ofentitlements and the possibility of belonging. These differencesare crucialto understanding key concepts and sites ininternational politics,in citizenship and relation to state, in nationalism and other identity politics,in wars andother forms ofboundary transgression and defence, and in theglobal sexual division of labour. Differenceinscribed on and read from bodies include sexual difference and racialisedand other (power) differences. Visibilising the body enables us toask whichbodies? How are theybeing represented? And how are theyexperienced bythose who are/ are inthose bodies?

International sex wars Bodiesare troublingenough; sexuality is evenmore threatening, a sourceof muchanxiety and con¯ ict. ElizabethGrosz suggests four rather different meanings of ` sex’Ð as sex drive,attended to in psychoanalysis; as sexualact/ s; as identity,in the sexed bodyas maleor female; andas aset oforientations,practices, desires inseeking outpleasure. 36 Sexis clearlya lotmore than being male or female,and there are manypossibilities in its performance. Sex and sexuality are notnatural (despite naturalisingdiscourses to sanction some sexualitiesand penalise others), but culturaland political, and fought over. Thereare manydifferent positions on sex. 37 Absolutists,including religious fundamentalistsand the new Right, see sex as dangerÐbodies are polluting, 100 JAN JINDY PETTMAN tourism.45 Thisis areminderof the problems inherent in attempting to write a moreinclusive international politics which accounts for ` other’bodies. Renamingis asignalto a changedor new political project. So the Japanese Associationof Women rewrote the character for the prostitute from ` women sellingbodies’ to ` menbuying bodies’ . 46 Butthe bodies in focus are still women’s, orchildren’s, bodies,the bodies of sex workers,not the bodies of the buyers.Note, too, the objection of sex workerswho reply that they are not sellingtheir bodies, but in the short term renting them, or providing sexual services; notso differentfrom other forms ofbodily labour for sale. Manysex workersbelieve themselves to be more or other than prostitutes. Prostitutionis whatthey do (oftenfor reasons ofpoverty, lack of other employmentor acalculationof comparativereturns), not what they are. Naming themas prostitutesmight collude with seeing them as fallen,fatally done, sealingtheir fate. But many Thai women, including very young women and thosestill legally girls, construct themselves as goodand dutiful daughters, as hardworkers whose sacri® ce andgenerosity enable choices and chances for familymembers, though often in dif® cult or dreadful circumstances. 47 The tendencyof some campaignand media literature to reduce them to ` the prostitute’suggests that is allthey are, not that prostitution is whatthey do for money(for now). Thereis alsothe question of different cultures’ constructions of sex andsex work,which requires analysis of indigenous and colonial forms ofprostitution, andof contemporary local demand for paid sex, too. So some commentators remarkon manyThai men’ s widelyaccepted use ofprostitutes,and debates rage over` Buddhalogical’explanations concerning gender roles, women’ s status,sex andBuddhist culture in Thailand. 48

Transnationalcampaigns Women’s non-governmentalorganisations and organised sex workersparticipate incontests over representations of sex tourism,including on the world stage. I willpursue this politics brie¯ y withreference to a transnationalcampaign as it materialisedin Australia. InMay 1995, a coalitionof Australian women’ s andhuman rights’ NGOs launcheda campaignagainst traf® cking of Burmese womenand girls into prostitutionin Thailand. The campaign included a speakingtour by the writers ofthe Asia Watch report, AModernForm of .49 Thereport documents violence,rape, intimidation and virtual imprisonment, aggravated by thewomen andgirls’ illegal migration status and the illegality of thebrothels in whichthey work.It documents,too, a highlevel of of®cial involvement in thetraf® c atthe border,and in transportation, organisation, and ` protection’. Herethe border functionsnot to keep people out, but to exploit and control those who enter illegally. Aninternational political economy is evidentin the forces propellingthe trade,including civil war, state repression and violence against minorities in Burma,poverty and lack of employment opportunities, and the low status of girls,seen oftenas aburdenon theirfamilies or withobligations to them. Agents 102 BODY POLITICS womenneed to bekept under control. Liberals attempt to remove state and other institutionsfrom sex, to revert to individual rights and private matters. Libertar- ianssee sexualrepression as akeyto social oppression. The last two positions are sharedby some feminists,who see attemptsto control or deny women’ s sexualityas preservingmale domination, or who comment on the irony of feministslooking to a masculiniststate to protect them against male violence or sexualexploitation. They in turn are stronglyopposed by those who see male sexualdemands and compulsory as keyto the ongoing exploi- tationof women. These debates are most® ercelycontested around women’ s bodyrights or wrongs, in sex wars wagedboth against and within feminism. 38 Theyare especiallyevident in bitter arguments over prostitution, andabortion. `Prostitutionoccupies a signi®cant position in the intersection of feminist debatesabout the relationship between power, sex, sexuality and work.’ 39 Argumentshave long raged over whether the prostituteÐ or the institution of prostitutionÐis immoral;whether prostitution is anexample, or emblematic, of women’s oppression;whether it isaformof economicexploitation, or necessity, oropportunity; whether the state should criminalise, regulate or remove itself fromprostitution. 40 Thesedebates also ® gureas theoriesabout gender relations, sex andsexuality, and the nature of women’ s work. Thanh-DamTruong asks howWestern debates about prostitution ® tinrelation toThirdWorld prostitutes in informalsector work, in the tourist industry and in workas migrantprostitutes in industrialised countries. Her own work on prostitutionas sexuallabour suggests that debates about sex tourismcannot be containedwithin the usual women’ s rights/humanrights discourses. In cam- paignsagainst sex tourism` manymore complex issues havebeen revealed, includingracial discrimination, business ethics, economic policy, and inter- nationalrelations (cultural, economic, social and political)’ . 41 Sexualpanics and liberal/ libertarianresistances, feminist or otherwise, have beenplayed out on international stages earlierover white slavery, sexual traf®cking, and the reputed of and threatened pollution by ` other’ bodies.42 Contemporarymoral panics which have claimed international attention includechild prostitution and pornography, international traf® cking of women intoprostitution, international sex tourism,and AIDS.Eachcomes inrepresenta- tionsof racialised difference and sexual danger. Globalising discourses around sexualityand danger connect with other kinds of global¯ owsof people/bodies, in,for example, labour migrations, transnational foreign troops and military bases, andsex tourism. 43 Sextourism at its most crass orromanticised is literallya classic momentin internationalrelations. Pleasure and danger come together with transgressions across theborders of power along First World± Third World, Rich± Poor, male± female(often), old± young (often) in ` apeculiarand unstable combination of sexuality,nationalism and economic power’ . 44 Inthe process theAsian woman or Thai woman or Filipina is reducedto a particularbody, associated with sexual availability, or else withpassivity and victimhood.Here there can be a strangeconvergence between the anti-feminist, sexistrepresentations of sex tourism,and some feministcampaigns against sex 101 BODY POLITICS paythe relinquishing family member a sum whichforms thebasis ofa debt whichthe women and girls must work off. The debt climbs steeply with each transaction,in border crossing, , re-selling, and to cover the girls’ own expenses,including protection. Most have no idea what the debt is, or how far theyhave progressed in paying it off.Police crackdowns often see themarrested, ®ned,and handed back to agentswith the ® nes addedto thedebt. Alternatively, forcedrepatriation on grounds of illegal entry dispatches them to largely unknownfates. Theinternational campaign against traf® cking utilises UN conventionsand international NGO linkages.It focuses inparticular on and on theslavery-like conditions in which traf® cked women work. It also connects withcampaigns against international sex tourism,and puts pressure onsending stategovernments to act against their citizens’ involvement in this trade, especiallywhere child prostitution is concerned.This campaign has heightened awareness andattention, and won some victories.Australia, Sweden and Germanyhave legislated to enable prosecution of their nationals on their return fromabuse of children overseas. The World Congress against the Commercial SexualExploitation of Children, held in Sweden in August 1996, documented thisextensive trade, asserted therights of children, and called on states, NGOs andthe international community to act against child sex, whether paid for by foreignersor locals. SomeAustralian feminist researchers andorganised sex workergroups includ- ingthe Prostitute Rights Organisation for Sex Workers ( PROS)andSex Worker OutreachProject ( SWOP),havemobilised against the anti-traf® cking and anti-sex tourismcampaigns. They challenge the campaigns’ representations of ` Asian’ sex workersas mainlypoor, young, uneducated, coerced, responsible for family dependents,and probably HIV positive. PROS faultsthe ` moraloutrage’ of groups likeEnd Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism ( ECPAT.)50 Itrightly points out that mostof the sex industryin Thailand involves local trade. It challenges popular distinctionsbetween free andforced prostitution, arguing that Asian sex workers are motivated,as Australiansex workersare, by rational choices and the possibilityof earningconsiderably more than in otheroccupations. They suggest thata racistcontrast is drawnin thecampaigns between presumed free-choosing andcompetent Australian sex workersand passive and coerced Asian sex workers. Almostall Australian sex workersnow insist on use, and there is evidencethat Asian, mainly Thai, sex workersare currentlyused in some Sydneybrothels to cater for men who refuse touse acondom. 51 They form an underclass,aggravated by their uncertain or illegal immigrant status (often comingin on temporary visitor visas), and by the large debt of $20 000 to $30000 which they incur as partof theirwork contract. In these situations, while itis clearthat the women come in the hope and promise of large ® nancial rewardsonce they have worked off the debt, they are vulnerableto exploitation andunlikely to have access tosupport from other women. Australiansex workergroups call for decriminalising all sex workand for treatingsex workas ajoblike any other. They assert thatthe anti-traf® cking campaignsperpetuate stereotypes of the Asian prostitute, and invite racism 103 JAN JINDY PETTMAN againstthem, while also further stigmatising all sex workersand encouraging harassmentand intimidation more generally. In these situations, it is harderto providesupport and health services toillegal workers in particular. They argue thatchild prostitution is betterdealt with in terms ofviolations against labour lawsand child rights, and not in terms ofprostitution. It isimportant for westernand Asian sex workers to form linksin order to lobby for socialchange and move away from thesterile distinction between free and forcedprostitution which is usedby anti-pornography feminists to stereotypeAsian sexworkers as victims. Their focus on sex tourism and ` traf® cking’is reinforcing stigmatowards all prostitutes and a distortedview of sexindustries and their power dynamics.52 Theyconclude: in a worldof globalisingbusiness, and communi- cations,why shouldn’ t Thaiwomen come to Australia on workpermits to dosex work,and why shouldn’ t Australianmen cross stateborders for sex? Thesecritiques are areminderof the politics at stake, and of the different investmentsin sex andthe ,including among women. In its internationalforms, whether the sex workeror the , or both, are outside theirown state, we needdisentangle particular constructions of gender relations, alongsideand infusing national and racialised identities and boundaries. Sexual imagesand the exotic/ eroticare packagedand purchased in the international sex trade,and racialised gender images are generatedand utilised in international anti-sextourism and anti-traf® cking campaigns, too.

Writing transnationalsex andpower Howthen can we represent the bodies entangled in that form of international relationsthat is sex tourism?And in sex associatedwith bodies which are not onlysexualised but nationalised, racialised and culturalised? How can we move womenand children in the sex tradefrom a bodilypresence to a voice/voices, incircumstances where power relations are so oftenloaded against them? How shouldwe attend to particular bodies in a nowglobalised sex trade? Payingattention to the speci® c locationsof work and the international politicaleconomy of representations might help. What are thespeci® cs of bodies,and embodied experiences? What of gender, nationality, age, class on bothsides? Whatis therole of the state and its different agents, for example incriminalising, harassing or protecting sex workers?Are those workers self- employed,or embedded in business and other relations with, for example, , brothelor pimp? Differencesthat matter include whether the sex workersare citizensin the statethey work in; if not,whether they are therelegally or illegally,with access ornot to support networks and resources. Other presumed differences need interrogating.The voluntary± coerced dichotomy is muchdeployed, but notions ofchoice or consent in unequal sexual relations of any kind are hardto think through.So tooare genderedpower and pressure infamiliesor relationships,and povertyor lackof any other means tosurvive. The adult± child distinction is also complicatedon the ground. Transnational campaigns often focus on child 104 BODY POLITICS prostitutionas childrencannot be seen tohave consented, and because it is illegalin the sending states. The use ofchild prostitutes extends well beyond self-identi®ed paedophiles, and AIDS seems tohave prompted a macabresearch foryounger and newer sex. Local or national cultures concerning the legal and otherstatuses ofchildren compound the problems. In some states childmarriages are alsoan issue.At thesame time,literally millions of childrenlabour in hard, exploitedand dangerous work in other sectors; andfor some, sex isthecost of keepingthe job. The child or young woman worker may be the only income earnerfor the family. Itis necessary thento look at family, local, national and transnational con®gurations of power. What is thedifference between sex purchasedby an Australianman in and sex purchasedby him from a Thaisex worker inSydney? What difference does it make if the sex purchasedis fromyoung menor boys?What if thebuyer is femaleand the provider male? This shifts the focusand terms ofcross-race sex,and of national location. So in`economiesof pleasure’in , for example, or inBarbados, white women seek boyfriendsin aninversion of the gender but not the race orclass politicsof sex tourism encounters. 53 Thewoman buying de® es orconfuses the usual articulations of internationalsex-power. And there are othertransgressions marking the race lines,when young Japanese womenfor example seek sex withwhite men, for adventurerather than for payment. 54 Itis dif®cult to write now globalised sexual politics, marked with power relationsof gender, nation, state, race, culture, class andage. There is currently considerablepolitical debate about and mobilisation against sex tourismtransna- tionallyand in international fora, evident for example at the 1993 Vienna Human Rightsand the 1995 Beijing Women’ s conferences.Sex tourism and women’ s vulnerabilityas labourmigrants were particular concerns, especially for dele- gatesfrom Southeast Asia. Howthen do we make productive use of,or connect, two rather different discourses,the body in feministtheory and feminist IR? Howmight we tracethe effects oftheobjecti® cation of womenand racialised difference in constructions offemininityand sexuality in the international? Sex and the body are notreadily admittedto the study of international politics (despite the profusion of sexual anderoticised metaphors that describe its main business). But it should be possibleto write the body into a disciplinethat tracks power relations and practiceswhich impact so directlyand often so devastatinglyon actualbodies. 55 Thisdevastation is caughtmore often on television screens andin newspapers thanin academic writings. The challenge, then, is towrite a materialist, embodiedinternational politics that is curiousabout women, gender relations, sexuality,identity and the body.

Notes Thisarticle buildson conference presentationsto the second Pan-European conference onInternational Relationsin Paris, September 1995, and the International Studies Association Congress in SanDiego in April 1996.My thanks to those who contributed to the discussions, and to Tasha Sudanand Helen Meekoshafor theirrather differentperspectives on ` thebody’ . 105 JAN JINDY PETTMAN

1 C Enloe, Bananas,Bases andBeaches: MakingFeminist Sense of International Politics ,London:Pandora, 1989. 2 SWhitworth,` Genderand the inter-paradigm debate’ , Millennium 18(2),1989, pp 265± 72; V SPeterson (ed), GenderedStates: Feminist ReVisions of International Relations ,Boulder,CO: LynneRienner, 1992; butsee CSylvester, FeministTheory and International Relations in a PostmodernEra ,Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994. 3 J J Pettman, WorldingWomen: a feministinternational politics ,London:Routledge and : Allen & Unwin,1996. 4 RBraidotti, NomadicSubjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference inContemporary Feminist Theory , New York:Columbia University Press, 1994. 5 Pettman, WorldingWomen . 6 Tasha Sudan,personal commucation. 7 Enloe, Bananas,Bases andBeaches . 8 MGatens, `Acritiqueof the sex/ genderdistinction’ , inJ Allen& PPatton(eds), BeyondMarxism? Interventionafter Marx ,Sydney:Intervention Publications, 1983. 9 EGrosz,` Notes towardsa corporealfeminism’ , AustralianFeminist Studies ,5,1987, pp 1± 16; and Grosz, VolatileBodies: Towards a CorporealFeminism ,Sydney:Allen & Unwin,1994. 10 GYoungs,` Thebody and global political economy: some Foucaultianthoughts’ , paperpresented at the SecondPan-European Conference on International Relations, Paris, 1995, p 2. 11 Peterson, GenderedStates ;JATickner, Gender inInternational Relations ,New York:Columbia University Press, 1992;V SPeterson& ASRunyan, GlobalGender Issues ,Boulder,CO: Westview Press, 1993; Whitworth,1994; and R Grant,` Thesources ofgender bias in International Relations theory’ in R Grant &KNewland(eds), Gender andInternational Relations ,BloomingtonIN: IndianaUniversity Press, 1989. 12 JJPettman,` Womenon the move: globalisation, gender and migrant labour’ , seminar paper,International Relations,Canberra: Australian National University, 1996. 13 CCohn,` Sexand death in the rational world of the defence intellectual’, Signs,12,1987, pp 687± 718. 14 WBrown,` Where is thesex inpolitical theory?’ , Womenand Politics ,7(1),1987, pp 3± 23. 15 MThapan,` Images ofthe body and sexuality in women’ s narrativeson oppression in thehome’ , Economic andPolitical Weekly ,XXX(43),1995, WS-72± 80. 16 ACranny-Francis, TheBody in the Text ,SouthCarlton: Melbourne University Press, 1995. 17 Pettman,` Womenon the move’ . 18 See especially Pettman WorldingWomen ,ch9. Other aspects ofinternational politics brie¯ y alludedto in thisarticle are pursuedin this book. 19 CEnloe,` Silicontricks and the two dollar woman’ , New Internationalist ,January1992, pp 12± 14. 20 T-D Truong, Sex,Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in Southeast Asia ,London:Zed, 1990, p 129. 21 Enloe, Bananas,Bases andBeaches ;andM BSwain,` Genderin tourism’ , Annalsof Tourism Research , 22(2),1995, pp 247± 66. 22 AStoler` Carnal knowledgeand imperial power:gender, race andmorality in colonial Asia’ ,inM Di Leonardo(ed), Gender attheCrossroads of Knowledge ,Berkeley,CA: University of California Press, 1991; MJolly,` Colonisingwomen: the maternal bodyand empire’ inS Gunew& AYeatman, (eds), Feminism andthe Politics of Difference ,Sydney:Allen & Unwin,1992; and J Pettman, Livingin the Margins: Racism, Sexism andFeminism in Australia ,Sydney:Allen & Unwin,1992. 23 JJPettman,` Sextourism: the complexities of power’ in T Skelton& TAllen(eds), Cultureand Global Change,London:Routledge and Open University (forthcoming). 24 R Sharpley, Tourism,Tourists and Society ,Cambridgeshire:ELM Publications,1994. 25 Swain,` Genderin tourism’ , p247. 26 SVeijola& EJokinen` Thebody in tourism’ , Theory,Culture and Society ,11,1994, p 149. 27 G Omvedt, Violence AgainstWomen: New Movementsand New Theoriesin India ,New Dehli:Kali, 1990; HCharlesworth,` Womenand international law’ , AustralianFeminist Studies ,19,1994, pp 115± 28; GSahgal& NYuval-Davis,(eds), RefusingHoly Orders: Womenand Fundamentalism in Britain , London: Virago,1992; V Moghadam(ed), IdentityPolitics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in InternationalPerspective ,BoulderCO: Westview Press, 1994;and J MAlexander,` Notjust (any) body can bea citizen:the politics of law, sexualityand postcoloniality in Trinidad and Tobago’ , FeministReview , 48, 1994,pp 5± 23. 28 CRamazanoglu(ed), UpAgainst Foucault: Explorations of some Tensionsbetween Foucault and Feminism , London:Routledge, 1993; see especially MaureenMcNeil’ s`Dancingwith Foucault’ . 29 J Holland et al,`Powerand desire: theembodiment of female sexuality’, FeministReview , 46, 1994, p 22. 30 MShapiro,` Warringbodies and bodies politic: tribal warriors versusstate soldiers’in M Shapiro& HAlker (eds), ChallengingBoundaries: Global Flows, Textual Identities ,MinneapolisMN: Universityof Min- nesottaPress, 1996. 106 BODY POLITICS

31 B Turner, TheBody and Society: Explorations of Social Theory ,Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1984; MFeatherstone et al (eds), TheBody, Social Process andCultural Theory ,London:Sage, 1991; J Weeks, Sexualityand its Discontents: Meaning, Myths & ModernSexualities ,London:Routledge and Kegan Paul,1985; S Scott& DMorgan(eds), BodyMatters: Essays onthe Sociology of the Body , London: theFalmer Press, 1993;R WConnell& GDowsett (eds), RethinkingSex: SocialTheory and Sexuality , Cartlon:Melbourne University Press, 1992;R WConnell, Masculinities ,Berkeley,CA: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1995;and D Buchbinder, Masculinitiesand Identities ,Carlton:Melbourne University Press, 1994. 32 Suchan understanding predominated early onwithin feminist IR, seekingto convince the discipline that women,and gender as ananalytic category, are relevantto, and part of, IR. More recent writingssuggest more mobileand contested constructions of sexualdifference, forexample Sylvester, FeministTheory and InternationalRelations ;CWeber,` Goodgirls, little girls and bad girls: male paranoiain RobertKeohane’ s critiqueof feminist International Relations’ , Millennium,32(2),1994, pp 337± 50; and M Marchand& JParpart(eds), Feminism/Postmodernism/Development ,London:Routledge, 1995. 33 Braidotti, Nomadicsubjects , p 238. 34 Grosz, VolatileBodies , pp x±xi. 35 Ibid,pp 18± 19. 36 Ibid, p 23. 37 Weeks, Sexualityand its Discontents. 38 LSegal& MMcIntosh(eds), Sex Exposed:Sexuality and the Pornography Debate ,New Brunswick: RutgersUniversity Press, 1992;L Kaufmann, AmericanFeminist Thought at Century’ s End:A Reader , Cambridge,MA: Blackwell, 1993;A Orford,` Liberty,equality, pornography: the bodies of women and humanrights discourse’ , AustralianFeminist Law Review ,3,1994, pp 72± 102; and L Shrage, Moral Dilemmas ofFeminism: Prostitution Adultery and Abortion ,London:Routledge, 1994. 39 BSullivan,` Rethinkingprostitution’ , inB. Caine &R.Pringle(eds), Transitions:New Australian Feminisms,Sydney:Allen & Unwin,1995, p 184. 40 Truong, Sex,Money and Morality ;andN Davis, Prostitution:an International Handbook on Trends, Problems,and Policies ,Westport,CT: GreenwoodPress, 1993. 41 Truong, Sex,Money and Morality , p 2. 42 LReanda,` Prostitutionas ahumanrights question: problems and prospects of action’ , HumanRights Quarterly ,13,1991, pp 202± 228. 43 AAppadurai,` Disjunctureand difference inthe global cultural economy’ , PublicCulture ,2(2),1990, pp1± 24; J JPettman` Bordercrossings/ shiftingidentities’ , inM Shapiro& HAlker(eds), Challenging Boundaries:Global Flows/ TextualIdentities ,Minneapolis,MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996;and Pettman,` Womenon the move’ . 44 DLeheny,` Apoliticaleconomy of Asian sex tourism’, Annalsof Tourism Research ,22(2),1995, p 369. 45 Asimilar convergenceappears inanti-feminist and some maternalist feministrepresentations that associate womenwith peace. See forexample M.diLeonardo, ` Morals,mothers and militarism: anti-militarism and feministtheory’ , FeministStudies ,11(3),1985, pp 599±617 which provides a critiqueof `themoral mother’ inmuch women and peace literature. 46 KBarry,C Bunch& SCastley (eds), InternationalFeminism: Networking Against Female SexualSlavery , New York:International Women’ s TribunalCentre, 1984. 47 Pettman,` Sextourism: the complexities of power’ . 48 SHantrakul,` Prostitutionin Thailand’ , inG Chandler et al (eds), Developmentand Displacement: Women inSoutheast Asia ,Centre forSoutheast Asian Studies,Victoria Monash University, 1988; S Baustad,` Sex andempire building:prostitution in the making and resisting of global orders’ , paperpresented to the Citizenship,Identity, Community conference, Ontario:York University, 1994; P Phongpaichit, From PeasantGirls toBangkok Masseuses ,Geneva: InternationalLabour Of® ce, 1982;N Tannenbaum,` Bud- dhism,prostitution and sex’ ,paperpresented to the conference onGender and Sexuality in Modern Thailand,Canberra: Australian National University, 1995; and P vanEsterik, ` Thaiprostitution and the medical gaze’ ,inP &JvanEsterik (eds), Gender andDevelopment in Southeast Asia ,Montreal:Canadian Councilfor Southeast Asian Studies,1992. 49 AModernForm of Slavery: Traf®cking of Burmese Womenand Girls intoBrothels in Thailand , New York: HumanRights Watch, 1993. 50 AMurray& TRobinson,` Mindingyour peers andqueers: female sex workersin the AIDS discoursein Australia andSoutheast Asia’ , Gender,Place and Culture ,2(2),1995, pp 43± 59. 51 LBrockett& AMurray` Sydney’s Asian sex workers: AIDS andthe geography of a new underclass’, Asian Geography,12,(1&2), 1993, pp 83± 95. 52 Murray& Robinson,` Mindingyour peers andqueers’ , p57. 53 MJennaway,` Strangers,sex andthe state inparadise: Balinese tourismand its economy of pleasure’ ,paper presentedto The State, Sexuality and Reproduction in Asia andthe Paci® cconference, Canberra:Gender RelationsProject, Australian National University, 1993. 107 JAN JINDY PETTMAN

54 KKelsky,` Intimate ideologies:transnational theory and Japan’ s `yellowcabsº ’ , PublicCulture , 6, 1994, pp 465±478. 55 Seenfor example inUSmilitaryanxiety about potential numbers of their troops coming home in bodybags fromthe Gulf War. There is arelated questionabout the difference itmight make to` bag’women soldiers’ bodies;and alarms expressedabout women POWs,for fear oftheir rape byenemy soldiers:C Enloe, The MorningAfter: SexualPolitics at the end of the Cold War ,Berkeley,CA: Universityof California Press, 1993.While IR has tendedto read sovereigntyas grantingstates themonopoly of the legitimate use offorce, andassumed itto be used against external threats, in the dichotomy inside-order versus outside anarchy, muchstate violenceis directedagainst own-citizen bodies, including the systematic use oftortureand terror.

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