FEMALE SEX TOURISM

In reading about violence, whether between equals or imposed by a powerful person on one who is vulnerable (child, aged, female, slightly built, inebriated), the testimony that has impressed me most is the man who lost his marriage because of violence and too late realized that he had been abusive.  He genuinely didn’t know he was abusing his wife and children by yelling at them, insulting them and occasionally slapping or spanking them.  He said every man he knew, including his birth family, acted like that.  His standard was the same as for the United States in defining torture:  it’s okay as long as you don’t damage a major organ.  Bruising, cuts, and even broken bones are not considered to be damage to organs.  (But skin IS an organ.)  The man thought that acting this way was “keeping” order rather than destroying order.  To his mind “order” was a matter of rules, HIS rules.

So now I’m going to throw a curve.  Sex tourism, with female tourists.  Does anyone recognize it?  I recently watched “Heading South,” which might be considered romantic by some, soft-core porn by others and social criticism by the most sophisticated.  It is based on three short stories by Dany Laferriere, a Haitian who now lives in Canada.  The plots entangle three white women, a Wellesley professor of French literature; a conventional but needy wife from Savannah, Georgia; and a factory worker from Quebec.  They are sexually taking advantage of the poverty and youth of black boys in Haiti in 1970.  Living in a resort hotel where the boys are not welcome, the women swim and screw with them on the beach.  The women have no sense of consequences or context, either about the boys’ families or politically.  Their best impulse is to take these older teens home like puppies found while on vacation, which they are sure the boys will welcome.  They forget all about the American reaction to “miscegenation” or the boys’ ability to manage their lives in a foreign country.

The reason I ordered the film in the first place (it streams from Netflix) is that the professor is played by Charlotte Rampling, whom I admire as an actress, and who is, in the plot, the character who comes the closest to understanding the situation -- not that she hesitates at all in doing what she knows is treating real human beings like something less.  None of the three women is capable of recognizing their own vulnerability, their inability to distinguish between love and sex.  How does a college professor have an intimate relationship between equals with an illiterate beach boy?  The women all groan that they can’t get laid at home, but they don’t examine why that is or whether any of it is due to their own actions or whether there might be something else worth doing with their lives.  The working class Quebecois woman comes closest to just staying in the moment: her lover is apparently the oldest.  There is a child who aspires to being a gigolo but, to the credit of those in the story, he’s rejected.  In real life, he is more likely to be preferred as more easily controlled, less likely to object to anything.  Neither STD’s nor drugs are introduced except that the woman from Savannah is hooked on tranqs and they all drink a LOT.

The other dimension for those who are socially conscious, is that Haiti has been corrupt for a long time and runs on the rules of criminals -- “Deadwood” rules.  The most appealing black lover attracts a woman “owned” by the powerful, who kill both of them and leave the naked bodies in front of the resort hotel.  On the black side of the equation it is the black older male manager of the hotel who understands what’s going on, but he doesn’t explain very much.  He is fatalistic.

This movie is actually about sex trafficking, criminal exploitation, and the American appetite for sex that fuels the system.  If you think it only happens in Haiti, you’re an ostrich.  Think of the possibilities of a Native American reservation:  poverty, lots of idle young men with considerable appeal and no particular concern for propriety, plus major romantic notions about falling madly in love with a man who wears feathers.  And the inevitability of simply going back home, leaving all the difficulties behind.  

The first time I saw this scenario acted out was in the early Sixties when Ruth Beebe Hill -- who was our guest at the time -- insisted on receiving a “wonderfully untouched young Blackfeet trapper” while she was arranged in bed.  Research for her novel, “Hanta Yo!” maybe.   The guy, who turned out to be one of our hired men, was scared to death and only stood in the doorway, so it came to nothing.  We were too impressed by Hill’s credentials (mostly her friendship with Ayn Rand which included caretaking in Rand’s fancy house while pretending it was hers) but also so incredulous and amused that we did nothing to prevent this charade.  Nothing happened anyway.  But the pattern was there.

The point is that there is nothing simple about sex trafficking: entwined with criminals, drugs, tourism, violence, domination, privilege, and fantasy.  And disease.  It seems to be an impossibly coiled complex of causes.  But the point of access for making change might well be simple consciousness-raising.  We did it for littering, we did it for smoking, we did it for some aspects of feminism.  Why can’t we get people to understand that messing around with kids, even if they are boys, and esp. if there is money involved, is damaging to all concerned -- including the larger society?  

The idea of wickedness has a multiple role:  what the women are doing is wicked by the standards of their own society and they are titillated by it.  Such swaggering boys often feel that being wicked is a source of power and even protects them.  The people like the older resort manager who feels that the boys are wicked stigmatizes them.   The system that supports criminals -- feeding their appetites -- is the most wicked of all.  Not just the criminals -- the SYSTEM, including the fatalistic assumption that this is the natural way for things to be, so enforcing it with violence is justified.  Truthfully, what else can the boys do to earn money?  And the women want it.

Leferriere, I feel sure, did not write his stories for the erotic amusement of middle-class Americans who will consider this an exotic little adventure with just enough danger to be exciting.  Casting an actress as strong as Rampling means that for those who are smart enough to figure it out, they will see the evil at the heart of the apple.  The problem then becomes what to do about it.  The solution for these women is simply to escape back to home.  But there IS no escape: Haiti is entwined with America even at Wellesley.  No longer can we just leave foreign countries behind, but what comes back with us is not innocent boys.