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Exploring the growth of sex tourism within Brazil

Exploring the growth of sex tourism within Brazil
Author: Quicani Domingos Goncalves
1 Commentries
Should sex tourism or Prostitution be legalise in Brazil?
Author Quicani Goncalves
Abstract
This paper discusses will focus in sex tourism in Brazil and why tourists choice Brazil as destination this paper I will examines the significant long-term potential being offered by the local tourism industry, especially with the country hosting the football World Cup in 2014 and then the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Sex tourism, like so many facets of the world, has not been left untouched by globalisation. The powerful entity that is globalisation has had a profound impact on the arena of sex work.
Keywords;
Exploring the growth of sex tourism within Brazil
Discussion paper
What is Sex Tourism?

The most widely used definition describes sex tourism as "consisting of people from economically developed nations traveling to underdeveloped countries specifically to purchase the sexual services of local men, women.
In the past months news about Brazilian prostitutes learning English in preparation for potential international clients during the World Cup has hit worldwide media circuits. There was a mocking tone in the news, with some resorting to sensationalist headlines as: "Brazilian prostitutes keen to learn the lingo", which added a certain sense of absurdity to the fact. Yet again, what was so funny about these women taking legitimate steps to increase their earning ability similar to what businesses are doing across the country to maximise their profits from this high profile event attracting big spenders from around the world? The tone of the news not only reflects an attitude of preconceptions about prostitution but also an assumption of cultural superiority by ridiculing the idea that Brazilian prostitutes could actually learn English. For the upcoming World Cup events, it is crucial to tackle this issue, since it is exactly these types of attitudes that play a big role in constructing Brazil as the exotic getaway location attracting a large number of sex tourists alongside avid football fans.
In Brazil, employing prostitutes or running a house of prostitution is a criminal offence, however there are no Brazilian laws incriminating individuals who wish to practice it. Although not technically a crime, the profession is looked down upon as immoral in the country, especially due to its strong Catholic following. The state does not regulate prostitution; hence there are no mandatory health checks or legal rights for prostitutes similar to those of other workers.

The paper has the potential to be very good if more research is carried out in to the subject area as there are some good points. It may have been interesting to look at sex tourism from both the tourists and the local peoples view to get an all-round view of how Brazil is affected by sex tourism.
Because Brazil has been a sex tourism destination for so long it may be of use for the author to compare it to other sex tourism destinations to see how sex tourism has affected them and make comparisons and maybe to look at countries where sex tourism is legal but does take place and look at how the legislation affects the industry and whether it helps to have legislation in place or not.
From all information I have about Brazil I can conclude that the lack of anti-prostitution legislation in Brazil fits the rational choice theory. Economically, sexual tourism appears to aid all the city in Brazil.
Brazil isn't going to want a fight over this with other countries," stated another federal police officer. "There's too much coming in financially from these other countries. We're not going to fight about something as small as prostitution, which isn't even illegal in the first place and lose the support of that country, whose dollar or Euro is strong. The money the President and huge corporations are bringing into the government would be at risk," adding, "With children and adolescents it is a fight but with adults it isn't that important because for one, it's legal and for two, it will cause problems with other countries".

The final point that I would like to raise for this paper is the influence of the media has not been covered in great detail, I think that it may be possible to investigate the media's influence on the travel companies and their views of tourists travelling to destinations known for sex tourism.
From the point of view of the tourist, possible discrimination maybe formed by them choosing to go to these sex tourism hot spots for their annual holiday. This would be more likely to happen within travel agencies as I believe that the media has formed a stereotypical view of the type of people that travel to these destinations, which then can be interpreted by travel agents to generalise that all people going to the hotspots are only going to part take in sex tourism.





References


Mullings, B (1999) "Globalization, Tourism and the International Sex Trade". In Kempadoo, K (Ed.) (1999) Sun, Sex And Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.),p.65.
World sex guide (2010) information: London: IUSW. Available at: http://www.worldsexguide.org/WSGMainPage.html.
OPPERMAN, M., 1998. Sex Tourism and Prostitution - Aspects of Leisure, Recreation, and Work. New York: Cognizant Communication
Exploring the growth of sex tourism in Brazil, commentary
Author: Taru Hamalainen
The reason why I chose to comment on this particular conference paper was the fact that this topic fell into the same strand with my own conference paper and I did do some reading about sex tourism among gay community while writing my own paper. It is also very interesting topic to deal within this context.

The paper brings up well the issue of media attention and negative attitudes in Brazil about the prostitution and how it is considered immoral, and offers a contrast with the views of the politicians who are keen on making money and do not really care about the issues attached to prostitution as long as it brings in foreign tourists. Issues such as human trafficking and human rights violations are often present when dealing with prostitution and as long as there is no legislation or laws put in place with prostitution, these problems remain. When it comes to the exotic image of Brazil as a tourist destination as stated in the paper, it should be asked if the prostitution is crucial part of this image or not?

The paper gave rather positive impression about prostitution as it is a big money maker in the country. However, no answer was provided for the question if prostitution should be legalized or not. Then again, there is no simple answer to this question as the prostitution question in Brazil is very complex. Maybe the issues and the apparent benefits attached to prostitution could have been discussed in more length. Nevertheless, the paper offers wide range of suggestions for future research on the topic.