Whether smoking in UP Town Center, disruptive intoxication at NAIA, berating SM grocery workers, solicitation of children in Robinson’s Ermita, or sexual harassment in Poblacion—the misbehavior of Westerners in the Philippines is a well-known phenomenon. Their arrogance and entitlement are something many, if not most, Filipinos have witnessed. That is not to say that only and all Western and Filipino diaspora men are guilty of this behavior. Neither does it excuse domestic culpability. Yet, today and in the past, they have been the most visible of outside actors.
In Sexual Economies Reconsidered, Filipino critical theorist Neferti Tadiar writes that the Philippines, through its literal and figurative “prostitution” economy, has become globally synonymous with sexual and feminized labor. This is mirrored in the Department of Tourism’s subtly libidinal slogan “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” It is no surprise, then, that when considering Western misconduct, indulgence in the sex industry is often the initial frame of reference. Although sex tourists are typically defined as those who pay for sex, it may be best to consider as no different even those who do not—that is, men who come to the Philippines to capitalize on their belief in Filipino women's inability to deny their Western charms.
Princesses and Dragons
The reality TV show 90 Day Fiancé which follows American men and their foreign fiancés from economically depressed areas in Latin America and Southeast Asia has birthed internet memes such as Jenny Torres’s “You’re road,” and Rosemarie Vega’s “Ngeh.” While these memes—fixed on the subject’s imperfect English—and the colloquial expression “a foreigner around manila” or AFAM generally draw this dynamic across education and class lines, it exists at greater than realized levels within elevated sectors of society, even the so-called “Big Four” universities. Shady “pick-up artist” Facebook groups like Julien Blanc’s Inner Circle are frequented by thousands of Western men bragging about their latest “lay” from the “Ivy League of the Philippines.”
Behind the humor and class delineations, these images and the cultures that produce them cast these men in a harmless and sympathetic light. However, they are more dangerous and deserving of scorn than it may appear. A relationship that has developed organically between a foreigner and a Filipino woman is one thing. But it is quite another to cross oceans just to find a “wife,” one that fits a cultural or ethnic type just for the sake of it. The specificity of their search for a Filipino wife suggests a predatory inclination. Modern conceptions of marriage denote a measure of partnership and mutual respect, the two very things these men believe Filipino women are happy to renounce.
Filipino men are not spared from this. We, too, are transmuted into objects within their self-mythologized conquest: the Western man saving the repressed and unsatisfied Asian woman from the paradoxical, too controlling yet too passive Asian man. Vietnamese-American sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang writes that white Western sex tourists, in an attempt to renegotiate their failed masculinity at home, target spaces that “privilege an international hegemonic masculinity that affirms Western superiority.” She continues, “Western men constructed a racialized masculinity in relation to women by describing their sexual prowess as better than [local] men’s.” Hoang describes racialized comments such as, “We make you feel better than the tiny Asian guys, don’t we?” spoken by an Australian man, as a “nightly occurrence” during her five years in Southeast Asia.
The analogy is clear. The Filipino man’s shame is the sexpat’s pleasure. For what good is rescuing a princess from a tower without killing the dragon that guards it?
Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline
Before its closure in 1991, the US naval base in Subic Bay was the largest American military base outside of the US with an estimated income of USD500 million generated by the brothels surrounding it. It is believed that 16,000 prostitutes catered exclusively to American servicemen in Olongapo, with at least 3,000 being children. Former US anti-trafficking ambassador John Miller writes, “Human trafficking, especially for women and [young] girls forced into prostitution, has followed demand where a multitude of U.S. and foreign aid workers ... and yes, US uniformed personnel, operate.”
Although US bases in the Philippines closed in the 1990s, their legacy lives on in the men who visit the country to indulge in the sex industry entrenched by America’s military. The legacy of child exploitation at Subic Bay also persists today. A 2020 study of online sexual exploitation of Filipino children conducted by International Justice Mission found that the majority of predators were white men from Western countries.
In her case study Dealing in Desire, Hoang traverses the depths of Western predators’ racialized lust, one predicated upon a perception of Southeast Asian women as living embodiments of Third World dependency. She describes the prevalence of sex workers who darken their skin for white clients to “racialize their bodies in a way that would exaggerate their appearance as poor women in a Third World country.”
Global economic transformations, such as East Asia’s ever-increasing control over global market capitalizations, parallel the rise in soft and hard Asian power in the West, as well as the coinciding decline of Western influence. Through their sexual relationships with local women, white men perform a “nation-based masculinity” to satisfy “their desire for a world order modeled on older tropes of Western global power.
As the East continues its ascent upon the world stage, its citizens must remain vigilant against those whose only way forward is back.
Confrontations
Much has been said of Western men’s exploitation of the local sex industry, but consider that, even if they were to vanish from the Earth, the conditions that push their victims to prostitution would remain. After all, many foreign misdeeds are but symptoms of graver structural ills. Dismantling the structures that enable foreign misconduct is critical. So too is accounting for and addressing the hurts caused by them, especially those suffered by the most vulnerable in society.
Yet what is also at stake is the dignity of a self-respecting citizenry. Everyday discourse over Western degeneracy in the Philippines often revolves around colonialism, imperialism, and the Philippines’ economic vulnerabilities against the West. Assertions about it remain masked under an academic, abstract quality divorced from personal stakes. There are few acts more disrespectful to a nation’s people than publicly discarding the laws and norms of their home—treating and reducing those witnessing it to mute, agency-less objects. It is easy to see how a witness’s inaction, especially when out of fear or learned helplessness, can corrode their perception of themselves as an individual and a Filipino.
Is it not appropriate—even necessary—then, that acts of disrespect be met with acts of self-respect? This can be as simple as speaking directly to the foreigner. Confrontations rarely escalate into physical violence, although a measure of unpleasantness can be expected. This may be the first time they have experienced pushback, and they may be furious that a Filipino dared to rebel against the ideology that convinced the former that they were beyond reproach.
Postcolonial writer Frantz Fanon observes, “At the level of individuals, [rebellion] is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.” These words, despite their orientation towards violent insurrection, remain evergreen. Through rebellion against colonial ideologies, citizens recreate themselves and the world around them. At the thematic heart of Fanon’s message lies the virtue of individual action and its role in shaping the collective.
By moving ourselves, we move each other. ●
The article has been updated to delete two sentences that could have easily been miscontrued given the sensitivity of the subject.
