MADRE Calls on The Nation to Stop Promoting Sex Tourism
September 16, 2004
Victor Navasky
Publisher and Editorial Director
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor
The Nation
Irving Place
New York, NY 10003
Dear Editors:
Since April 2004, The Nation has offered weekly advertising space to Bendricks International Men’s Vacation Club, a Florida-based company that promotes sex tourism in Costa Rica and Thailand. As the Executive Director of an organization that works with community-based women’s groups in conflict areas worldwide to demand women’s human rights—and places ads in The Nation—I am deeply disturbed that The Nation is selling ad space to an industry predicated on the exploitation of women from poor countries, putting them at risk of rape, physical abuse, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
The burgeoning sex tourism industry increases the demand for sex trafficking, a $4 billion global business in which women and girls are forced into prostitution and sexual slavery. Sex tourism, like sex trafficking, preys upon young women who live in extreme poverty, lack access to education and employment opportunities and are compelled to work in these industries because of armed conflict and neo-liberal economic reforms. Indeed, the same policies that make it necessary for some women to work in sex tourism, make it possible for certain men to take “erotic vacations.” In promoting “private companionship” with “hot Latin women” and women from Thailand who “take pride in their sexuality,” companies like Bendricks reinforce racist stereotypes that sexualize and degrade women of color.
The Nation advertising department has speciously claimed that running the Bendricks ad is an issue of free speech. I am aware that The Nation often allows, and even favors, advertising for groups with whom it politically disagrees. However, there are times when offering advertising space to controversial groups and/or inflammatory viewpoints sanctions racist and sexist practices, as in the case of Bendricks, an industry that violates the rights of women and girls around the world. We trust that The Nation would know the difference between an advertising policy that allows for “political disagreement” and one that profits from selling space to industries that perpetrate human rights abuses and violence against women. Choose your priorities: corporate privilege disguised as “free speech” or women’s human rights.
Sincerely,
Vivian Stromberg
Executive Director
