Sex tourism

From Freepedia

Sex tourism is tourism, partially or fully for the purpose of having sex, often with prostitutes. Sex tourism is legal in any country in the world where prostitution is also legal. Often the term "sex tourism" is wrongly interchanged with the term "child sex tourism". However, sex with children is illegal in virtually every country in the world. A "sex tourist" is usually defined as an adult who is having legal consensual sexual relations with another adult often for the exchange of money or presents, whereas a tourist who is having sex with a child is a "child sex tourist" and is almost always commiting criminal offences in the host country, and possibly the country that the tourist is a citizen of.

Both males and females can be sex tourists. Female sex tourists typically travel to Northern African countries or Caribbean islands such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica. Male sex tourists typically travel to any non-Western country where prostitution is legal and more affordable than in their own country.

Contents

Motivation

Possible reasons for travelling to seek sex include:

  • more relaxed morality laws (for some people a lower age of consent may also be relevant)
  • less rigorous enforcement of laws
  • cheaper rates (typically due to traveling from a economically wealthy country to a poorer one)
  • more anonymity / privacy
  • finding certain ethnic groups more attractive
  • preferring the "work ethics" of foreign prostitutes to those of one's own country
  • finding sex in tropical surroundings and a hot climate more arousing

Destinations

Popular national destinations for sex tourists include The Netherlands, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Cuba, and several countries in Southeast Asia (including the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia.) Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Russia, Hungary and the Czech Republic have also become popular destinations for sex tourists. In many of those destinations, sex tourism is still only a small percentage of overall prostitution, with most prostitutes serving local men.

Individual cities or states/regions can have a particular reputation as a sex tourist destination. Many of these coincide with major Red Light Districts, and include Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Pattaya in Thailand.

One special case worth noting is the United States, where prostitution is largely illegal, with the exception of rural areas of the state of Nevada; these have become a sex tourist destination for some Americans. To a lesser extent, several other large cities in the U.S. are also domestic sex tourist destinations despite legal sanctions on prostitution.

Destinations for female sex tourism include Bali, the Caribbean, the Gambia, and some North African countries. This is less likely to include outright prostitution, as some local males consider it a kind of sport to pick up female tourists.

Child Prostitution

While most sex tourists only engage in this activity with other adults, a small percentage actively look for adolescent or even younger prostitutes, while others are not very selective either way, regarding age. Several countries have severe laws making sex with children (see pedophilia and ephebophilia) a serious offense, for their nationals or inhabitants even if practiced abroad and even if it is not forbidden by the laws of the foreign country, see also Universal Jurisdiction.

Singapore has no such law, in spite of being adjacent to the sex tourism destination of Batam in Indonesia.

In 2004 Canada started to prosecute individuals under the sex tourism law. The first individual charged in Canada under this law was Donald Bakker.

Sex shops

Near borders of countries with different laws regarding sex shops, these shops on one side tend to be popular with customers from the other side.

Sexpat

One term sometimes used for a sex tourist is sexpat. Its derivation is from expat and did not originally refer to tourists per se, but rather those with similar motivations who have actually relocated to such a location, either as workers or as retirees. The word has since come to be used, at least loosely, in both contexts.

See also

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Sex_tourism.html"


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