By Laura Keller and Marjut Jyrkinen
So-called "Thai massage parlors" are also sometimes sites of prostitution. Finnish men travel to well-known sex tourism destinations abroad, both in Finland’s bordering areas and in Southeast Asia (Lammi-Taskula, 1999).
While there is a large body of literature on racism and a growing literature on the sex trade, little of the existing work pertains to Finland or expressly addresses the role racism plays in the sex trade. In contrast, other forms of oppression in the sex trade, such as sexism and classism, are frequent topics of analysis. There are likely multiple reasons why racism receives less attention in this context, one of which may be that it is difficult to tease out the role it plays in concert with other types of discrimination and exploitation.
The purpose of this exploratory article was to take an initial look at racism in the sex trade in Finland. First we briefly look at theories on the role of racism in pornography and in sex tourism in the Caribbean as informative examples. Then we report on our search in Finnish printed media for examples of how women of different nationalities or ethnic groups who are prostituted are presented to potential clients in Finland, and how women in other countries are presented to potential Finnish sex tourists.
Lessons from pornography
Feminist analysis and other research on racism in pornography can provide insight into the role of racism in the sex trade by uncovering racialized sexual stereotypes and discerning the damage wrought by racial ideologies. Pornography sexually stereotypes black women as synonymous with carnality, uncontrolled lust and desire, and animality, and consistently shows black men as aggressive "super-sexualized" studs with unnaturally large penises (Dworkin, 1979; Forna, 1992; Dines, 1998; Cowen & Campbell, 1994; Mayall & Russell, 1993; Nelson, 1993). The theme that people of color are more animal than human is pervasive. While much of the literature focuses on racialized sexual stereotypes of blacks, Dworkin (1979) has discussed pornography's portrayal of Mexican women and men ("hot blooded senoritas", and forceful men who possess an insensitive brute sexuality, pp. 155-156). Mayall and Russell comment on the portrayal of Asian women as "sweet young lotus blossoms or objects of bondage" (p. 277).
Dworkin maintains that every despised racial group has been labeled as having an animal or bestial sexuality – this is the core paradigm of racist sexual ideology. While all women are assumed to share the sexual nature of an unsatiable submissive whose sexuality is fulfilled through violent and painful degradation, women of color have further sexual attributes imposed as a consequence of their color. The specific effect of racism in pornography in the U.S. is that the woman of color's skin becomes her main sexual part. In other words, black skin is perceived as a sex organ and a sexual nature. Forna's position is that pornography draws on and recreates derogatory racist sexualized stereotypes of black people, driving them into consumers' subconscious. Part of the apparatus of oppression, "Racism like sexism is sexualized in pornography: the inequality is sexualized" (1992, p. 106, italics added).
Mayall and Russell (1993) noted that skin color is very salient in the materials displayed in pornography stores, and that pornography titles will usually indicate when people of color are involved. They interpret this as meaning that skin color is very salient to pornography consumers. People of color are a "specialty item" in pornography, much like rape, sadomasochism, and bestialit.
Racism in sex tourism in the Caribbean
Two works in which racism is discussed in some length as an aspect of the sex trade are those by Julia O'Connell Davidson (1996; see also O'Connell Davidson, 2001) and by Beverly Mullings (2000). O'Connell Davidson concluded from her research on sex tourists in Cuba that demands for sexual access to local people are "generated and shaped by particular 'racialised' ideologies". Sex tourism is often a means to satisfy very particular sexual preferences, racialized sexual fantasies being among these. Consistent with this, Mullings (2000) found that sex markets in the Caribbean are segmented according to the racialized sexual fantasy being met.
Racial ideologies also allow the client to imagine women in prostitution as "Other" and place them outside the conventions that protect "good", or "their own", women. For male sex tourists in the Caribbean, local women embody the natural, mysterious island available for exploration and conquest (O'Connell Davidson & Sanchez Taylor, 1998, cited in Mullings, 2000). They often imagine white western women as controlling, cold, and resistant to traditional patriarchal domestic gender roles, compared to warm, Caribbean women who are eager to please and uncontaminated by the ideal of gender equality.
O'Connell Davidson reports that white sex tourists can be put at ease by a native form of racism that corresponds to western varieties, and by local racist stereotypes (such as the "hypersexuality" attributed to blacks), often also endorsed by Cubans of color. Existing racism in Cuba ensures both that more women of color than white women are involved in prostitution and that the sex tourist can enjoy access to "racialized Others" without the disapproval of a racist society and without having to seriously question his own racism.
Racism in the sex trade ads in Finland
Mari-Elina Laukkanen has researched ads in the Finnish daily press as a forum for the sex trade (2000). In her sample of ads for prostitution, escort services, sex shops and bars, pornographic publications, and telephone sex lines she found references to the ethnic background of the women involved, especially for women from Russia, the Baltic region, or Far East Asia. Traditional first names, as in "Tatjana" and "Nadja from St. Petersburg", were used as nationality indicators, more so for Russian/Baltic women than for others, perhaps encouraging an image of all Russian/Baltic women as being involved in prostitution. On the other hand, "Finnishness" was a marketing point, too (Laukkanen, 2000, p.110-111).
Presentation of women in prostitution in a Finnish newspaper
We examined the prostitution ads in two one-week samples of the largest national newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, one from May 2001 and one from January 2002, for references to the seller's nationality or race. We included only ads that clearly specified this characteristic.
The 2001 sample included a total of 754 prostitution ads, or approximately 100 prostitution ads per day. There were 132 ads that indicated nationality (17% of all the ads in the sample). The majority of these referred to Thais, followed by references to people of Finnish background. There were 11 references to other nationalities.
In the 2002 sample, Helsingin Sanomat published 723 prostitution ads. Of these, 90 referred to the per-son's nationality or race (13% of the sample). As with the first sample, the majority referred to Thais, followed by references to Finns or to the "domestic" or "native" (kotimainen) status of the person. There were 13 references to people of other nationalities. Most of the ads used descriptors such as "beautiful", "hot","sexy", or hair color, but there were a few ads where specifically Thai women were referred to as "exotic". The few ads for (male) "masseurs" often indicated the person's nationality.
Presentation of women abroad for sex tourists
Next, we randomly selected four Finnish sex magazines (out of 12 on the shelf ) that were for sale at a nearby "Rkioski" (a national chain of convenience stores). The first magazine had an article on sex tours to Riga, Latvia. It contained many practical tips for the sex tourist on, for example, prices, hotels, and places to find (cheap) drug-addicted prostitute women. Baltic women's insatiability was described as being "in a class all its own", and Latvian women were said to be "generous in the East European custom and not too stingy with the 'goods'" (Jallu 2/2002 pp. 12-19).
The second magazine contained an article on sex tourism in the Grand Canaries. This article provided detailed information on the kind of women available and advertised the "international nature" of the women in prostitution, meaning their countries of origin, which included Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil (Napakymppi 1/2001, pp. 29-34). The third magazine’s travel tip was for a cruise called "Tit and Pussy" that originated from Bristol, U.K. (Kalu 1/2002, pp. 70-71). There were no details provided about the women involved beyond photos in which all the featured women were white.
The fourth magazine's article presented Borneo as a sex paradise. The writer gave details about, for instance, having unprotected sex with a local prostitute woman (Kalle 2/2002, pp.18-29). This article was a full 11-page spread with numerous pictures of nude women with Asian features, whom the writers referred to as "pearls of the Far East". The women were described as asking the writers for sex and to provide the writer's with sex, becoming "really hot and unrestrained".
Visible prejudice in Finnish sex ads
The prostitution ads in the Helsingin Sanomat indicate that the race and/or nationality of the women in prostitution is an issue of salience for clients. Foreigners account for only 2% of the population in Finland, while 11% of the prostitution ads referred to (non-Finnish, non-white) nationality or race. References to Thai persons were particularly numerous, while Thais account for only 1% of foreign national residents.
Furthermore, it is clear that for some sex clients it is important to have a "domestic prostitute". This is also intimated by what is not said in the ads: we found no ads promoting Russian or Estonian women in prostitution, even though trafficking in women from those areas is a recognized problem in Finland, and Russians and Estonians account for 34% of Finland's foreign national residents. The emphasis on Finnishness and the invisibility of Russian/Baltic origin may indicate a more recent prejudice against Russians, or a presumption that most prostitution in Finland originates from Russia or the Baltic states, so that any exception is worth indicating for marketing purposes. It is also possible that Finnish men have become leery of buying women who might be working for Russian crime syndicates.
Further, there have been some public health campaigns and media publicity regarding the health risks in buying sex in Finland's neighboring regions. We suspect there may be a general conception among Finnish buyers of sex that women from these areas are "unclean". The contrast of the salience of the "Finnishness"/domestic characteristic in our sample brings up the question of racism in the context of nationalism. The "home-grown product" is often understood to be better quality compared to that imported from abroad – even for "products" like women in prostitution.
As a few of the ads in the newspaper indicate, it is likely that Thai women are seen as "exotic" and therefore desirable. Such representation of Asian women was strongly present in the sex magazine travel article on Borneo. The travel articles in general portrayed foreign women as accommodating, insatiable, and a good bargain for anyone buying sex.
There is a clear need for more investigation into the presentation of women's nationality and ethnicity to Finnish clients of the sex trade. A next step is to look for promotional materials, printed, virtual, or other, created by the procurers and providers of sex, and to apply feminist analysis to the racialized sexual stereotypes that are reflected and created through them.
LAURA KEELER (M.A.) is the consulting editor at the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES) in Helsinki, Finland.
MARJUT JYRKINEN (M.Pol.Sci.) is a consulting expert for the Programme for the Prevention of Prostitution and Violence Against Women at STAKES and a researcher at the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland.
Notes
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