Sex tours
On any given day in the big cities of Thailand and the Philippines, buses pull up in the “red light” districts, letting loose dozens of Australian men determined to give themselves a good time. It is estimated that about 50,000 Australian men visit Asia on sex tours every year.
The ABC Radio program AM reported on August 15 that 11 Australian men were being treated for AIDS contracted while on sex tours in Asia. Professor John Dwyer, head of the AIDS treatment and research centre at Sydney's Prince Henry Hospital, proposed that Australians bound to countries with a high incidence of HIV should be handed brochures warning them not to engage in sexual activity, or to use good quality condoms.
Ken Davis, from the NSW AIDS Council, told Green Left that warnings about contracting AIDS were already given to Australians travelling overseas, but these “played on people's denial” by focussing on prostitutes and casual sex and not straightforwardly advocating condoms regardless of the partner.
But while the AM story focussed on the important issue of AIDS prevention in this country, there is another, wider issue at stake: the gross racism and sexism of the sex tour industry itself.
Melba Marginson, coordinator of the Centre for Philippines Concerns in Melbourne, told Green Left that any further moves to warn Australians of the health risks in sex tours were to be welcomed, but “we also wish to ask the Australian government and people not to look at it only from the Australian point of view, trying to protect Australians from AIDS or whatever.
“We do understand the AIDS problem is very serious, but we should also look at the plight of the women in the countries where Australians go on sex tours. The women, whether they are Thai or Filipina, are victims, and should not be blamed for the AIDS that Australian men, or any foreigners for that matter, might get from them.
“The reality is that these women get the AIDS from the men themselves, the foreigners who go to use them. So if the disease is transferred to the foreigners, it's not the women who are to blame but the men who brought it to the women.
“We partly blame the government for tolerating the sex tourism network now in operation, whether officially or unofficially.”
The Collective of Filipinas for Empowerment and the Women's Action Supporting Filipinas, two groups with which Marginson is associated, are lobbying the Australian and Philippines governments to “come up with legislation, rules or laws that will really restrict the number of Australian men who go on sex tour holidays”.
By Tracy Sorensen
