Negotiating the bar: sex, money and the uneasy politics of Third Space

Stereotypical representations of sex tourism in Southeast Asia have abounded for the past three decades. Images of middle-aged Western men debauching adolescent Asian girls in the red light districts of Patpong in Bangkok or Ermita in Manila, or of servicemen 'letting loose' in the R&R districts surrounding American military bases have inspired extensive critiques of American colonialism, cultural imperialism and the commodification of Asian sexuality. It is difficult to imagine these commoditized sexual relations without at least contemplating the structural inequalities and patterns of globalization which have enabled the development of sex industries catering to foreign men. Indeed, it has been through the important interpretive frames provided by feminist, nationalist and anticolonial accounts of sex tourism that the stereotypical encounters between 'voyeuristic' Western men and 'submissive) Asian women have gained a politically strategic coherence