Brennan

Brennan’s argument is that “the global sex trade relies on and perpetuates inequalities” (p.123), but she has not convinced me that it does so in greater degree than any other trade. There is clearly inequality based on nationality, gender, color, and class, but is it the sex trade that is perpetuating inequality, or is it simply that capitalism does not work unless inequality continues? Is there any other labor available to a poor and uneducated woman (or man) in the Dominican Republic, that does not rely on and perpetuate inequality? She finds that most sex workers arrive in Sosua with hopes of making money, but find that there are more expenses and fewer clients than they anticipated, so they do not stay more than a few months. However, some are more successful, and some even find European men who will give them money (at least for a time), or possibly even marry them and take them fuera.

Gender Inequality. On pages 125 and 129, blame is placed on men for the fate of poor young women: “Young girls whose fathers look after them don’t need to be on the street,” and “When parents do help, their aid can substitute for an absent husband’s negligence.” In this sense, the inequality between men and women can be seen as driving the sex trade, but it is not clear what adjustments in gender relations could hypothetically solve this problem. Rather, it seems that the call is for the fulfillment of patriarchal responsibilities. In addition, she describes an economic situation in the Dominican Republic where jobs for working class men are scarce – one wonders if the father/husband had any money to send. Class inequality has long meant that poor men must earn their living by the sweat of their bodies and the taxing of their backs – the natural physical resource of the male. Is this so different than the trade to which poor young women must resort – the natural physical resource of the female?

The Western feminist agenda vs local agency. Brennan’s approach is generally following Enloe’s lead (she cites Enloe on occasion), in the sense of examining how the forces of globalization and neo-colonialism affect women. On the other hand, she does not fall into the trap Mohanty warned against – the assumption that women around the world share the same concerns and issues. For example, prostitution is seen by most North Americans as an exploitation of desperate women, work they are forced into by wicked men, which no woman would willingly enter into if she had any other choice. Brennan’s research shows that sex work can be viewed as no less onerous, and potentially more profitable, than factory or domestic labor. Although it is emotional labor that can be draining, what makes it worse than the emotional labor of caring for another woman’s children? It is dangerous, but is it more dangerous than working conditions in many factories? Poor Dominican women work because they need to take care of their children, and their educational limitations restrict the kinds of work available to them, but this is true of poor people in all times and places. Those sex workers who are able to save some money for their children’s education are thus, like working parents all over, breaking the cycle of poverty, if not of inequality. In fact, on page 127, she writes that it is not clear what the consequences will be of these women’s decisions to engage in sex work on their dependent children, which seems to be an counter-argument to the assertion that the sex trade is perpetuating inequality.

Women’s power/agency in confrontation with global forces. On p. 182 –What are the challenges to traditional gender relations and ideologies when women out-earn men? I was thinking, as I read this, about the men who travel halfway around the world …for what? For sex? For attention? It occurs to me that there is another silence here, the silence of the lonely man in Western industrial society. Yes, he has agency, in that he has money, because if there is one thing a white man learns in Western society it is how to get money. What is no longer so easy to learn is how to get social support – the isolation of individualist thinking, the vanishing of traditional structures for mate-selection and marriage, the mobility that makes distance from family not only possible but in many cases necessary. Who can tell the stories of these men? In the midst of all their freedom and agency, definitions of masculinity do not include admission of the alienation that can accompany playing the masculine role, and so they rarely describe their pain. Is this the reason behind all the drinking?

Some of the tourists who come to the Dominican Republic are looking for a sexual encounter with some exotic Other, but others are drawn there by promotions touting the admirable qualities of Dominican girlfriends. On page 204, Brennan does write about how why the German man comes to Sosua for a girlfriend. It is because Dominican women are less demanding, more compliant, and more malleable. What are the demands that German woman make on German men? If she is demanding material things, is that demand justifiable? The flip side of a gender inequality in which women are not equally employed or equally paid may be an inequality in which every man is expected to earn enough to support himself, his wife, and his children, perhaps in a style to which he himself never aspired.

Is she demanding equal power in the relationship? What is the model for married life that these older German men grew up with, and is it a model that modern German women will no longer tolerate? The same could be asked in the United States, where the advances in women’s rights during the 1960’s and 1970’s seemed to leave many men in a state of confusion about how they should conduct themselves. Of course, creation and maintenance of a mutually supportive dyadic relationship is not easy, but the point is that, for some people, the new cultural model is one in which they will never be comfortable. A man like Claus who was 60 years old in 1993 was born in 1933, and raised during the war years. Who was there to model for him a relationship in which power was shared equally? How does he negotiate his sense of self-worth against a persistent view, in traditional sectors of the population, that his ability to earn a good income is primary?