“Elena had moved up in the world: eating in tourist restaurants, sending a daughter to private school, and living in a middle-class apartment were clear symbols of her increased social and economic mobility… thanks to her transnational relationship with a foreign tourist” (5).
What does this mean for her town? What does this mean for her family? What does this mean for her life?
Denise Brennan helps to answer these questions for Elena, her fellow sex workers, and her town of Sousa.
Sexscape: What does that even mean?
“I use the term to seascape to refer to both a new kind of global sexual landscape and the sites within it” (15). Sousa emerges as a bordertown on the Northern coast of the Dominican Republic and a transnational space where many imagine that there dreams for better lives will be attained. This idea of an idyllic escape location doesn’t just apply to the women (and men) who work in sex tourism in this town, but also the European (primarily German) and Canadian men who come hoping to have their fantasies lived out. The majority of the men visit from their working or middle-class lives and are able to come to this Dominican town and fill the role of “big men” as Brennan describes on page 29.
“Without these transnational connections- faxes, money wires, clients’ return visits, and the possibility of traveling to or moving to clients’ home countries- Sousa’s sex trade would be no different than sex work in any other Dominican town” (22).
The dynamic of sex tourism echoes the larger patterns of tourism development and the ideas brought to light in A Small Place about the island of Antigua. "That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain" (81).
XOXO, Gossip Girl.
In an environment and economy driven by women selling themselves, they have to find an outlet for support and connection. "Women create female – based social networks to replace their family and can networks back in their home communities" (167). No matter your place on the globe, it is important to have friends. I think about my life in Tuscaloosa and how lonely, and at times scary, it would be if I didn’t have anyone to grab coffee with, or go for a walk with, or someone to talk about classes. In the networks made in Sousa, they help each other find jobs, share childcare, and even loan each other money. "The sharing of resources, both material and otherwise, with extended family and can help single mothers keep the household running. Social networks a female family members, neighbors, and friends are one way poor women can patchwork together their families survival” (171). In a trade like sex work where women are in danger of rape, abuse or being arrested, friendship can also provide protection. These friendship networks help women emotionally and physically survive.
An important aspect of the social network is gossip. It is something mentioned several times in the book as a critical source of information. Important things are passed through word of mouth- which clients are abusive, who the police arrested, which sex workers are selling drugs. These are things that are typically factual and often helpful for sex workers to know.
There is an inconsistency of men and most mothers do not receive any financial assistance from the father of their children. The prevalence of female – headed households in the Dominican Republic, with mothers as young as 14 or 15, who are the sole financial providers for their children, produce economic insecurity among women and leave them to find jobs on their own. In the Sousa, that is often sex work. In Jamaica it’s as ICIs. In Haiti (and other parts of the Dominican Republic) it’s in marketplaces and second hand clothes. All of these are an active attempt to counter poverty that have resulted because of their race, class, and gender.
Progresar: That’s Spanish for self-making.
No one winds up in sex work because of the glamor. The women who make a life and support families in this industry are doing it with purpose. "Some women have long – term strategies, such as saving enough money to start a business back home, others have more modest goals and use sex work to attain immediate aims. Knowing their personal boundaries – what they are willing and not willing to endure to earn money – helps sex workers achieve their goals with the least stress and disappointment possible" (155).
Nearly every sex worker is a mother. Foreign tourist are sleazy, unpredictable, and unreliable. The women are working “por residenca” not “por amor” they are experts at performing love. Sousa’s sex trade is set apart from many other sex-tourist destinations in the developing world because the sex workers have control over their working conditions because there aren’t pimps or coercion. Women willingly leave small towns and rural communities all over the island, often leaving their children in the care of family or friends, to find their way out- there is a sense of choice and control.
“The sex-trade in red-light districts in the developed world - Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York- by no means defines social and economic life outside of these districts. Nor do the female citizens of these places necessarily become associated with sexual availability or proficiency” (16) but in Sousa women are defined by the role they play in the sexscape- but they do it willingly because it provides them upward social mobility and is an income-generating strategy.
When realistically only a handful of women regularly receive money wires or rent money from men and fewer than that actually migrate to Europe- and it’s even rarer that it works out- it is shocking how strong the Pretty Woman fantasy is among the communities of sex workers in the Dominican Republic. Ultimately, most women in Sousa end up just getting by, rather than improving their lives or the lives of their children. In many cases, they end up in a worse financial situation and possibly with additional children with no child support or way of obtaining it. The success of the trade is so impermanent and the failure seems so inevitable but there is a spirit of determination in the women of Sousa.
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