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Hottola, Petri
Amoral and Available? Western Women Travelers in South Asia
Gender/Tourism/Fun (?)
ISBN 1-882345-39-8
2002: s. 164-171
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Chapter 14
Amoral and Available? Western
Women Travelers in South Asia
Petri Hottola
The importance of gender-aware research in tourism and leisure has been well
highlighted in the 1990s (Henderson, 1994; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994; Richter, 1995;
Swain, 1995). There is no need to underline the different involvement men and
women have in the construction and consumption of tourism. Not only gender
but also the sexed bodies of people construct touristic spaces,"real-and-imagined,"
as Edward Soja (1996) probably would say. Nevertheless, sexuality and the body
have mostly remained absent from the texts of the authors of tourism studies.
Since colonial times, the "native" woman has been a source of fun and pleasure
to Western men (McClintock, 1995). Consequently, indigenous women have often
been presented as the victims of tourism in intercultural studies. It is the "native"
who is gazed at and photographed, or approached for sexual pleasure (see Chapters 15 and 16 also on sexualities). In Asia, the most obvious example of such a
touristic relation can be found in the relatively well-studied interface between
prostitution and tourism (Leheny, 1995)The situation is different, however, in the
context of distinctively patriarchal societies such as India where sex tourism is
practically nonexistent and Western visitors are a relatively small and powerless
minority. In South Asian tourism it is the foreign woman tourist who becomes an
object of gaze and a "source of fun" to indigenous men, with the exception of gay
tourism and pedophile tourism in Sri Lanka.
This chapter is based on material recently gathered in Northwestern India and
Sri Lanka. The issues briefly discussed here are based on a project focusing on
touristic adaptation in foreign cultural and ecological environments of Western
backpackers in South Asia (Hottola, 1999). One of the main conclusions of the
study was a realization of a need to find a new approach to the process of intercultural adaptation in the context of temporally limited visits to foreign cultures,
such as tourism; a need to replace the inaccurate and outdated U-curve model of
culture shock (Oberg, 1960) with a "dynamic model of intercultural adaptation."
Consequently, the concept of "culture confusion" replaces "culture shock" in the
present text.
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Western Women Travelers in South Asia
165
In addition to observations, the subject of culture confusion was discussed with
approximately 440 Western travelers visiting India and Sri Lanka, of whom 110
were interviewed. When asked about difficulties on the road in India, female back
packers invariably mentioned lack of privacy and sexual harassment. With one
exception, all the women travelers (97.2%) interviewed in Bharatpur, Rajasthan,
had personally experienced unwanted sexual advances such as groping, ogling,
and lecherous remarks, often repeatedly. The situation was very different in Sri
Lanka, in Kandy and Haputale, where "only" 31.0% of the women interviewed had
had such experiences.
The harassment of women backpackers proved to be, among other intrusions
on privacy such as "toutism" (i.e., being harassed by touts), the main cause of
friction between visitors and their hosts in the region. The excess of sexual advances had become a part of touristic culture confusion; a phenomenon that could
not be prevented, although it could be regulated by certain behavioral tactics
such as the "escape to the metaworlds" pattern that in many ways defines the
culture of backpacking in South Asia. Travelers spend most of their time in areas of
restricted access and temporal enclaves of Western domination—metaworlds within
the "real" India and Sri Lanka—where they are able to reestablish the control lost
in crowded public spaces (Friedman & Lackey, 1991; Langer, 1983). Under the
stress of the intercultural experience, people from various Western countries develop a sense of belonging together and help one another to adapt to the Other
environment.
The majority of the female travelers handled the profusion of sexual advances
well, apparently because of their high levels of knowledge and independence, and
a common trust that harassment would not advance beyond groping. Their Otherness, "whiteness," and wealth and their consequent high social status gave them
power in these situations. The Indian men were, after all, mainly looking for sex
and romance, and were generally not inclined to act violently. There were, however, also a number of women who responded to sexual harassment in public
space by retreating into isolation and depression. Scandinavian women, especially,
often became hostile towards local men. They represented a different cultural tradition where men and women are considered equal with equal rights to public
space and where there are fewer restrictions on individual expressions of sexuality and therefore less sexual harassment in society. As one Swedish backpacker
explained:
I think it's very hard to try to be someone you are not. I am not the way I act
here. Because I cannot act the way I usually do. And that is very. ... I hate it!
So now I feel: Oh God, I can go home and be myself again! Running
around . .. and you know... like women in Scandinavia are.
Jane Flax (1990) and Rosi Braidotti (1989) have reminded us that human bodies
are sexed. It is the difference of sexed bodies that forms the basic categorization
in human social gaze. The sensual pleasure derived from observing the human
body is in itself a positive and innocent pleasure. The aesthetic body is inevitably
touched by the glow of eroticism (Tuan, 1993). This is especially true when the
observer shares the male tendency to sexual/erotic attraction (Ernulf & Innala,
1993). In that sense we are all objects of the sexual gaze and are all objectified,
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P. Hottola
particularly in public space. When our integrity and privacy are respected, being
an object of sexual gaze is hardly offending. On the other hand, if the attention
reaches the level of intrusion on privacy and we are ignored as persons, it is probable that we feel offended. Any act with sexual meaning that is felt as a threat,
invasion, or assault by the target person can be considered sexual harassment
(Halson, 1991).
On the societal level sexual harassment in India can be seen as a form of patriarchal control and abuse of power, which is manifested through actual or implied
violence (Pain, 1991; Radtke & Stam, 1994). According to this point of view, unwanted sexual advances tell women that their bodies should not enter public space
unless they are protected and controlled by members of their kin, preferably men.
In Northwestern India, where purdah prevails among the majority of the population both in urban and rural areas, respectable women stay at home and are escorted when going out. Although venerated as mothers, women in India are culturally and historically constructed in various ways as lesser human beings that require
protection and control by men (Ahuja, 1993; Chowdhary, 1994; Upadhuay, 1991).
The behavior of the Indian men who harass Western women could be condemned
as a part of universal male misbehavior victimizing women. This kind of victim
feminist essentialism is, however, best avoided. Men are not by nature enemies of
women. There may be some universal tendencies to be found in misguided sexual
advances, but in an attempt not to create another holistic judgment, or a "brown
men harassing white women" stereotypic scene, I decided to try to find specific
explanations for the situation. The postmodern paradigm requires us to recognize
that a phenomenon such as this has its societally and situationally specific forms
and explanations. The discovery of explanatory factors did not make the harassment more acceptable, but the more material surfaced the more understandable
the behavior of these men became. Chapters 9,10,12, and 13 also discuss local
perceptions of and reactions to tourist behavior.
The nature of touristic contact (Lea, 1988) explains one dimension of the clash
between cultures in the South Asian travel scene. Both visitors and their hosts are
often seen as stereotyped objects in touristic settings. In the absence of both the
time and the incentive to develop more individualized and nuanced relationships,
both sides of the touristic encounter have a tendency to draw caricatures of one
another (van den Berghe, 1994).This feature becomes particularly well expressed
in Third World contexts where the imbalance between visitors and hosts is considerable. Somehow it is rarely noticed that the imbalance may also be unfavorable to the visitors. In the case of India, Western travelers come and go, and may
therefore be treated as transitory objects that can be exploited.
In fact, Western women have for some time been considered as a touristic at
traction in South Asia, both in India and Sri Lanka. A new form of domestic tourism
has emerged. Groups of men purposefully travel to beaches that are frequented by
Western visitors to see foreign women in swimsuits, to photograph them, and,
hopefully, to have an affair with them (Davies, Longrigg, Montefiore, & Jansz, 1987;
Wilson 1997). For these domestic tourists, distinctive from the professional "beach
boys" of the beach resorts, the motivation to travel lies mainly in the beautiful
bodies found on the beaches, and the excitement of gazing at them.Therefore.this
form of tourism could be called "3B-tourism."
Western Women Travelers in South Asia
167
The men who participate in the sexual harassment of Western visitors in India
form a diverse group. There are domestic tourists, groups of young men, unemployed men, touts, students, officials, officers, and entrepreneurs. The majority of
them seem to be middle class and well educated. Those who harass foreign women
are a minority of misguided extroverts and occasionally openly malicious individuals among the Indian men but they form a sizable minority, and are often
passively supported by others. Passers-by observing harassment situations rarely
interfere with them. As one Indian man in Bharatpur exclaimed: "if the Western
women decide to behave and dress in ways which make them vulnerable, they
can only blame themselves."
One group of men involved are married Indian men who try to have an affair
with a foreign woman. According to them, the women travelers represent the amoral
West where "sex is free" and all women by their nature are looking for it. Many of
these men act in good faith, believing their amorous attempts are welcomed by
the women they approach. Therefore, they are often genuinely surprised if the
expected romance is not there and the women react with fear and hostility. Different expectations of gender and sexuality create a very real form of culture confusion (Turnbull, 1986). One Australian traveler described the situation:
I think they really think that's just our society. And therefore they think our
moral standards to be.... Like I was getting badly hassled on a bus once
and I was obviously upset by it and he said: "Oh, what's wrong? But I like
you, I like very much."I said that "I don't like you! You know, I feel its awful.
I don't like that you touch me." And he was ... it seemed, genuinely
shocked that the fact that he liked me and he was trying to touch me and
kiss, and stuff, and I wasn't flattered.
Young men with little experience with women take their chances of getting a
feel of a woman through bodily contact with the foreigners. Travelers are available
to them without the social condemnation encountered if the woman touched belonged to the local community. These men are usually too insecure and afraid of
women to actually try to develop any kind of romantic relationship. Instead, they
may follow and ogle a foreign woman, catcall after her, amuse other men in the
group by lecherous remarks, and perhaps take hold of the body of the woman. When
confronted, they normally retreat. As a rule, there is no violence to be expected.
Suppressed by a society where individual sexuality and intergender relations
have traditionally been strictly controlled by families, Indian men take their chances
of meeting women when they see Western travelers who are supposed to be consenting, and try to realize their fantasies of masculine identity and stereotyped
foreign identity (H. Moore, 1994; Rose, 1993). Significantly, the perceived amorality of Western women travelers is often regarded as a positive feature. The women
of the West are perceived to be "like men" in their relation to sex. What is more,
both Hindu and Muslim men have traditionally been allowed to have affairs outside their marriages, to fulfill their sexual desires with the "bazaar girls" (prostitutes) who occupy the profane outer world that constitutes the opposite of the
inner sanctity of home (Ahuja, 1993; Roy, 1990).
The Western women travelers who visit India have a role as code-breakers and
challengers of the indigenous societal norms. They reconstruct the Indian-lived
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P. Hottola
space by their arrival. Some of them confirm the amoral stereotype. Women travelers may
dress in clothes showing their body in a way that would attract attention even in the
West. They are also usually more promiscuous than Indian women. A small minority of
the Western women actively look for romances with Indian men. Women who are not
ready to show conformity in a foreign culture can be found. Nevertheless, the majority
of the Western women get a specific kind of attention despite the fact that they do
their best to show conformity to local customs and values, and do not in any way
provoke sexual advances. Their reputation is strong enough to attract attention.
A somewhat xenophobic dualism of amoral and modern West and moral and
traditional East, prevalent in the minds of many Indian people, forms an important basis
for one-sided views of Western people. This counterconceptual dichotomy (Duncan,
1993) has its roots in the relatively recent colonial history and seems to be constantly
re-created as a part of postcolonial resistance and militant nationalism. Views such as
this are further strengthened by the lack of factual information on everyday Western life,
and on the basics of Western cultures and values, not to mention women's position in
Western societies. Finding accurate information about the West in the media or in
school education is hard indeed in India, and the situation is not likely to change.
Equality of educational opportunities for men and women in Sri Lanka and greater
media information on contemporary Western lifestyles have made for a very different
attitude to foreign women tourists from that of India.
The arrival of colonial British women challenged local gender relations on the
subcontinent (Bhatia, 1979)The puritanical Victorian codes of behavior appeared loose
in the even more puritanical Mogul India. Much later, in the 1960s and 1970s, the hippie
invasion of South Asia and "orgies" on the beaches of Goa created conflicts with local
people. Articles on hippie behavior in Goa were widely published in newspapers all
over India (Mehta, 1979; Wilson, 1997). Still today, backpackers are often associated
with the close-to-extinct hippies and "free sex." More recently, the emergence of
conventional beach tourism in South Asia has become another verification of the
perceived Western amorality.
Some of the unwanted sexual advances are explained by misunderstood nonverbal
signals. In India, women who take the initiative while interacting with men are still
often considered to express their desires (Roy, 1990). Foreign women travelers
communicate strongly to Indian men by their bold stare and solitude. They loiter
around streets and mix freely with male backpackers, and by doing so continuously
break the local codes of suitable behavior for respectable women. Although much of
this behavior is understood and accepted as representative of a foreign culture by
tolerant Indians, there are still many men who do not recognize that women in the West
should be respected despite their alien behavior.
The whole field of popular culture on the subcontinent includes features
strengthening and reproducing the prevalent view of Western amorality. This is
particularly visible in the Indian popular movie industry, which is still the most
influential source of entertainment in South Asia (Arora, 1992). In the historical scenes
of popular movies, British colonial officers are often portrayed as cruel and corrupt.
Western gadgets and attire identify criminals, while Westernized women are portrayed
as amoral "fast girls."The vamp dressed in Western clothes is often
Western Women Travelers in South Asia
169
pitted against the virtuous, traditionally clothed Indian woman, who wins in the
end, often through self-sacrifice. The desired code-breaking roles have been Westernized in order to make them more acceptable. Again, the barbarians live abroad.
Postmodernity has arrived in South Asian urban and suburban areas in the form
of satellite television and the Internet. Today's "global cultural currency" (Thompson, 1990), American soap operas such as Baywatch, Acapulco Heat, and The
Bold and the Beautiful are available to wide audiences. These popular programs
do their best to confirm the already existing views of the West, although they also
provide some balance to the even more biased information flow that dominated
only a few years ago. There are also some Hollywood action dramas and cartoons
reflecting Western values available in large Indian cities.
What is readily available even in small towns are soft and hard core erotic
movies. These films portray only Western women (Turim, 1993). The vast majority of foreign films shown in South Asian movie theaters today are American Bfilms such as Barb Wire, starring the Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson, or The
Tower, starring the Playboy "Playmate of the Decade" Anna Nicole Smith. Currently in many ways very similar in content, the Western B-films have recently
emerged as an important competitor to the highly eroticized indigenous popular movies (Chowdhary, 1994;Turim, 1993). At the same time, a large variety of
Western hard core films, Garam mal, are shown in video parlors and homes all
over India Gain, 1991). The Western women acting in these films never say no
when approached. And even if they do, they probably imply they do not really
mean it.
In India, the British pin-up and model Samantha Fox has reached an iconic status as a nationally known representation of the Western woman. In this sense, her
popularity has apparently only been rivaled by that of the late Mother Theresa. For
at least a decade, posters of Samantha Fox have been sold side by side with posters depicting Hindu gods and goddesses, or local films stars with a semidivine
status. Her pictures can be found, for example, as decorations indicating modernity in numerous popular films, covers of books, or magazine illustrations. These
commercially profitable objects of desire become meaningful in India because
they answer to the fantasies of the common man living in a system of repressed
sexuality. In South Asia Samantha Fox has also become a code-breaking example of
an emancipated woman in a postfeminist sense (Davis, 1997). This idolized Western woman prefers womanhood instead of motherhood and takes initiative in an
environment where women are expected to be sexually passive.
The pretty, buxom, and often naive blond is one of the most important and
constantly reproduced erotic figures in Western cultures, and readily adopted in
other cultural contexts as well (Featherstone, 1995; Podlesney, 1995). She is popular all over Asia, and is not only appreciated by men but also increasingly copied
by women (Nousiainen, 1996). We humans seem to employ the Other not only as
an object of our fears but as an object of our fantasies as well. Consequently, the
Other embodiment may become idealized and compelling. What is lacking in our
society is perceived to be found in the Other society.
In Asia, the blond "Goddess America" seems to represent the new era of modernity, opening markets, material prosperity, and hopes of better future. Along with
her male companion, Rambo, she could also be suspected to be an agent of
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postcolonialism. On the other hand, very similar idols, both feminine and masculine,
can easily be found in local cultures as well. What is more, these idols have clearly
become "glocalized" in South Asia (Robertson, 1995). The ways they are interpreted
are distinctively different from the common Western interpretations, although there are
many similarities to be found as well.
Stereotyping more or less equals individual perception in situations where the
available information is incomplete (Adler, 1991; M. J. Gannon, 1994).The stereotype
of the amoral Western woman seems to be so strong in South Asia that it forces us
Westerners to think about the possibility that we really are amoral and corrupted.
Many of us agree that there probably is some truth to such a claim, as often is the case
with stereotypic views that are, after all, partly based on realistic conditions. Our
behavior and cultural norms differ in diverse ways from the dominant moral principles of,
for example, India. We may therefore seem loose from the viewpoint of a society where
the behavior, movements, and appearance of women have traditionally been highly
restricted, such as among the majority of Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.
Nevertheless, although the West may seem amoral when measured against Eastern
values, it does not necessarily seem any more amoral than the East if measured on the
scale of Western values. In this case, our judgments depend especially on our
subjective relation to gender equality, the body, and sexuality.
It can be concluded that a combination of factors has created a strong stereotype of
amoral Western woman that is not easily reassessed. Traditional ethnocentric views of
gender relations, limited factual information, and the dominant counterconceptual
stereotype of the West and Western people complement a recent flow of one-sided
information in the form of commercial entertainment. Markets are opening and values
are changing fast in India where a Foucauldian (1978) backlash against advances in
state control and modernism and postmodernism has a parallel existence with
traditionalism. Little can be done to limit commercial eroticism that answers to the
calls of a sexually frustrated nation. Censorship measures could not solve the
situation because moralism is an important source of the problems, not the solution.
After all, rates of sexual harassment and violence are lowest, and levels of gender
equality highest, in societies maintaining liberal views towards sexuality and freedom
of speech, and a respectful relation to human embodiment, without unnecessary shame
and guilt toward sex, which is predominantly healthy and natural (Kontula & HaavioMannila, 1995; Segal, 1993).
Meanwhile, as more and more Indian men seem to think that premarital sex is
acceptable and the society does not change at a similar pace, foreign women travelers
will remain available targets. Only time will tell if growing awareness of AIDS will
affect the situation in India, as it seems to have done in Sri Lanka. Increasingly
constructed by the images of "glocal" entertainment media, Western women will
probably maintain their reputation. The situation will not deter foreigners from
visiting India but continues to undermine the pleasure of tourism on the subcontinent,
and contributes to negative feelings towards the Indian people and culture.
The distribution of balanced, factual information would be feasible but who is ready
to do it? Facts do not sell as well as fantasies. Knowledge of "hard" Western values
such as women's emancipation has a dangerous potential to erode the cur-
Western Women Travelers in South Asia
171
rent power relations in India where the amoral Western woman stereotype is also
used to keep the Indian woman in her traditional place. In fact, there is a strong
bond between the situation of Western women travelers and the situation of women
in general in the Indian society. As long as Indian women cannot safely and independently occupy public space, foreign women visiting India will probably not be
respected there either. The situation is to a large degree a logical result of a tradition that has masculinized the public arena in Indian society and separated men
and women from one another on the excuse of control of potentially chaotic sexuality. The local men and women as well as the visiting tourists are "victims" of this
embodied demarcation of space.
The problems of intercultural gender relations and their spatial consequences
in the intercultural adaptation process in India are closely linked to questions of
gender equality and distribution at the societal level. Only a profound change in
gender relations and norms of sexuality, increased spatial freedom of women, more
equal access to education, and effective measures to fight poverty in Indian society would reconstruct the spaces in which tourists find themselves, in a manner
that could diminish their problems of intercultural adaptation. It is a tall order and
a long process where the experiences of the tourists become rather insignificant
if compared with the hundreds of millions of hosts who would benefit from these
developments. Many of these problems have, however, already been successfully
tackled in Sri Lanka and India could follow suit.