www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Good morning,

I'm a sociologist, currently at the University of Toronto. The research for my PhD dissertation was on the sex tourism industry in San José. I interviewed sex workers, sex tourists, and state officials in order to get a full picture of who participates in the industry and why.

At the moment, I am beginning a follow up project that focuses on North American men who have gone from being tourists to being residents of Costa Rica, and the importance of sexuality in their migration decisions.

As I said, I have already done research on the sex tourism industry in San José. However, I want to be very clear: I approach the topic from the perspective that sex work is work, and that there is nothing fundamentally 'wrong' or 'bad' about the encounters between sex workers and their clients. The aim of my research is *NOT* to condemn the sex industry but rather to explore its dynamics and the interests of those who participate. My work has sought to provide a much more nuanced view of the participants in commercial sex than is found in so much of the writings on this area. My contacts with male clients in Costa Rica have demonstrated that you/they are a varied group of men who are, by and large, respectful of the women that they meet. My experiences interviewing you/them were very good, and the feedback I got from the men I interviewed was also positive. In fact, if there are any CRT members out there that I interviewed (2006-2007), please feel free to reassure everyone that the experience was good (assuming it was!).

So, if you are a North American man who lives in Costa Rica (permanently or part time) and would be interested in discussing your experiences with a non-judgmental, friendly, sex work positive sociologist, please send me a private message. I would be happy to do interviews via email or in person (at a coffee shop in central San Jose).

Hope to hear from lots of you!
Yolsol

To the members I gave her permission to post this, if anyone has a problem with this question feel free to let me know or voice your opinion.

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Thank you for supporting CRT!

The legalization of sex workers diminishes a females position to leverage sex for marriage, power, money, and/or male dominance. For this reason, it is not likely that women will ever want to legalize sex work. Seeing how about half of the voting population is female, it may always be illegal. In addition to religious beliefs, forget about it.

So no matter how accurate you present it, the goal seems futile. The audience is biased.

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* These are the "Good Ole Days". Enjoy Them.

* RENT but, "Don't Buy a Home in Costa Rica" until you have lived here for THREE years.

I disagree. I think you'd be surprised. There are many, many women (including sex workers, obviously) who are in favour of decriminalising commercial sex, for lots of different reasons. My own perspective is that it should be regulated like any other service sector business is regulated. And I've written op-ed pieces in Costa Rica that argue just that, and that focus on the labour rights of sex workers as workers.

Don't assume that only men buy sex...lots of women buy sex, they just tend to be less honest about it and are therefore more likely to describe 'holiday romances' than sex tourism. It's because we have really different ideas and expectations about male and female sexuality. But just look at all the women who purchase sex in the Caribbean, directly and indirectly.

So I don't think we can generalise about who is in favour of decriminalising the sex industry and who is against it. It's complicated.

If you are writing a book, please leave my chapter out.

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DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO

Yolsol,
I think it would be fair to ask you to make your dissertation available for the members to read.

+1 It's about power and control. They wont relinquish that.

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"If you dont think women are explosive,....drop one."

+1 or maybe 99% ?

This is probably the position of 99% of CRT members.

If a 45 year old man in Florida wants to share some of his after tax wealth with a 35 year old woman for her time, attention and sex,...

1. HE GOES TO JAIL.
2. HIS PICTURE GETS PUT IN THE PAPER
3. HE LOSES HIS LIFELONG JOB.

Ok, we get the picture. Many of us have left, leaving you all with all that mess.

So I'm fairly confident most of us don't want you following us to where we went nosing around.

_________________
* These are the "Good Ole Days". Enjoy Them.

* RENT but, "Don't Buy a Home in Costa Rica" until you have lived here for THREE years.

I will put you all to sleep forever if I post my dissertation. Here is the abstract:

"Getting Ahead in Gringo Gulch: Transnational Sex Tourism in Costa Rica

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to understand how it is that Costa Rica, a middle income country so often described as ‘exceptional’ in Latin America, became a major sex tourism destination and what that might tell us about how gender, race, class, and nation are produced and lived in sex tourism. Using a political economy of sexuality approach, I argue that the micro encounters of sex tourism should be understood within the context of macro practices of neoliberalism, tourism dependency, and evolving patterns of gendered labour. The local, the national and the global are all co-constitutive of the dynamics of sex tourism in San José at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By situating the sex tourism industry within this broader structural context, I highlight the importance not only of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, but also of labour, class, mobility, and consumption. I contribute to transnational feminist and sociological literature that centres the continued importance of the nation in the context of globalisation, exploring how particular configurations of race, gender, nation and class are mutually constituted in the geographic spaces of San José’s sex tourism industry. The thesis, further, offers a nuanced analysis of the encounters between sex tourists and sex workers, suggesting that these relations are defined by an uneven and often contradictory synthesis of exploitation and empowerment. I demonstrate the importance of assessing how masculinity has shifted in the context of globalisation among non-elite men, arguing that various kinds of value are created in sex tourism, including social mobility, which requires homosocial recognition amongst men. Finally, I demonstrate that sex workers are involved simultaneously in production and consumption at multiple scales and thus are best understood as agentive participants in globalisation, not just as its victims. By focusing on sex workers’ definition of their work as care, I propose that to theorise sex tourism as a reversal of the ‘global care chain’ offers new insights into the role of care in the global economy and into the ways we think about and theorise sex work."

I've had an article recently published in an academic journal that I would be happy to share with anyone who sends me an email address. I can also send along newspaper articles in Spanish for those who read in that language and want to avoid all the academic jargon...

I should add that of course I will make every effort to ensure confidentiality: all interviewees will be given pseudonyms, any identifying information will be changed (including your CRT i.d.). I'm the only one who will listen to, transcribe, read interviews. Any taped interviews will be erased immediately after transcription. You don't ever have to give me your real names. So there isn't much to lose.

Wow it is easier to read Greengo

i know! horrible! i swear that i am easier to understand in person.

Yes, you should get all your information for your project from Greengo. He has an elegant command of the Queen's english.

Costa Rica does not want to be known as a Sex Tourist Destination. The country is scatterd with "drive in Love Motels" built and used by locals for discretion. They don't want that advertised either. Kind of a, 'do what you want behind closed doors' kind of country'.


I think your story, "Love in the Gringo Gultch" is publicity nobody wants.

And your story has been written many times. I think the last was the in the form of an 80's song,
"People are still having Sex" by La Tour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWbvdv1h7MQ

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* These are the "Good Ole Days". Enjoy Them.

* RENT but, "Don't Buy a Home in Costa Rica" until you have lived here for THREE years.

nice link, icantstayaway.

costa rica is already known to be a sex tourism destination, i'm certainly not revealing anything that can't be found in 10 seconds on the internet. my intention with my phd was to get at some of the complexities of the phenomenon, rather than allow the costa rican state and press (and many others) to represent what happens as bunch of nasty men behaving horribly towards a bunch of poor women. we all know there is a lot more than that going on, and surely it's of use to talk about that.

the research i'm interested in doing now is actually not about costa rica as a sex tourism destination, it's about the role that sexuality plays in the decision to migrate more permanently. i don't see that as a particularly controversial or scary topic, just interesting (at least to me). just from reading discussions on CRT, making the move from tourist to migrant is obviously a big and complicated decision with lots of consequences. i'm just hoping to hear more about that.