"Sex tourism on the internet is at the confluence of issues of race, gender, sexuality, technology and globalization. Increasingly, information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the internet, are playing a particularly significant role
...
not only in the promotion and packaging of sex tourism but of a new type of global surveillance of bodies, race and desire (Gabriel, 1998, 2000; Ware and Back, 2002). Cyberspace enables sex tourists to build deeper connections between the racialization, sexualization and commodification of sex workers' bodies and Western masculinity. Like chat rooms (Travers, 2000), MUDs (Turkle, 1995) and MOOs (White, 2002), sex tourists use discussion boards to exchange information and give immediate feedback on their experiences. In this culture of hypertext, users are active contributors to the representation of sex tourism as the recombinant nature of the discussion boards allows them to be consumers and producers (Elmer, 2004: 56; Landow, 1992). The members of this community discuss issues and places with the intention of buying sex and from the experiences of that desire and pursuit. This raises important concerns regarding dystopian and utopian outcomes of internet use. Instead 884 Media, Culture & Society 28(6) of ICTs making us freer and more democratic, they may be deepening social inequality and structures of difference." (Abstract)
more