‘Sex tourism’ isn’t the defence men like Thomas Markle thinks it is
Thomas Markle, estranged father of the Duchess of Sussex, has admitted to travelling to the Philippines “several” times in the past, specifically to have sex with prostitutes. He shared the news that he had previously participated in the practice of sex tourism in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, while vehemently denying that he’d ever had sex with a minor.
“I have never had sex with anyone under the age of 18,” the 82-year-old said, adding that, when single, he travelled to the Philippines at least twice and “slept with prostitutes”.
“I like Asian women, but that is not a crime,” he added. Another report yesterday, suggested that he had allegedly told his first wife that having sex with young girls in the Far East was justified as their families needed the money.
Thomas Markle Snr is said to have told his first wife, Roslyn Loveless: ‘It’s legal over there – that’s how they support their families, by prostituting them.’
Markle is currently facing one count of possessing indecent images of children, allegations he maintains are false. His son (and Meghan Markle’s half-brother), Thomas Markle Jr., alleged that he found a stash of child sex abuse images belonging to their father and turned him in to the authorities. A Philippine interior minister has since told The Guardian that all signs point to Thomas Markle Sr being a “possible sex offender of the grossest kind”.
Whether or not he is guilty will be for the courts to decide. But Markle’s “defence” – that the sex tourism he engaged in was above board because the women involved were adults – is problematic in and of itself.
The case has shone a spotlight on the uncomfortable practice of usually older, middle- or upper-class Western men travelling to the Philippines and other less wealthy nations across Southeast Asia in order to hire prostitutes.
As Dr Jessica Simpson, senior lecturer in sociology at Leeds Beckett University puts it: “Sex tourist destinations are gendered social constructions which are created, promoted and consumed by and for the dominant tourist, that is, the white, Western male. Western men travel to ‘third world’ countries in order to visually and physically consume difference in the form of the exotic female ‘Other’.
“This highlights how both the male and tourist gaze overlap and form a ‘male tourist gaze’ which is privileged within tourist discourses and which perpetuates racial and gendered stereotypes.”
In many of these countries, sex work is not technically legal, but authorities turn a blind eye. That’s largely because it’s big business; a previous estimate valued Thailand’s sex tourism industry at $25bn, equating to 12 per cent of the country’s GDP.
“It’s important to highlight that ‘sex tourism’ is a label that, while catchy, minimises the harm perpetrated on the people in destination countries,” says Lori Cohen, CEO of Protect All Children from Trafficking (PACT), a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to ending child sexual exploitation and sex trafficking.
Though PACT focuses on children, in reality their mission “necessarily involves working closely with adult survivors of the commercial sex industry, who have shared that most of them were initially exploited as children,” according to Cohen.
“There is a fantasy that many adults being sold for sex are doing this voluntarily,” she says. “However, if a child being sold for sex turns 18, does that mean the child is no longer a victim but instead a voluntary sex worker?”
While sex tourism exists throughout the world, it consists of both legally run organisations and businesses whose employees are sex trafficked. It’s difficult for foreign “punters” to distinguish between the two, or to guarantee that they are engaging with the former, rather than the latter. For example, one study found that sex tourists in Thailand who were not actively seeking out child prostitutes would “most likely come in contact with them anyway”.
