Abstract
Insights into the relations between men, masculinities, travel and the gay tourism industry are typically ethnocentric, privileging Western perspectives (Waitt and Markwell, 2006). Our chapter addresses this ethnocentric bias by focusing on the narratives of men who live their lives as Indonesians — particularly those who have migrated to Bali having learnt of the commercial gay venues in the district of Seminyak. Bali is still not an internationally-recognised ‘gay destination’ akin to Mykonos in Greece or Sitges in Spain, yet the district of Seminyak, over the past decade or so, has become increasingly popular as a tourist destination for predominantly mature gay men who live their lives as gay in Europe, North America and Australia. Furthermore, many Indonesian men consider Seminyak a place of ’sexual freedom’. In this chapter, we explore the encounters of men who live their lives as Indonesian with those who become Western tourists in and through commercial nighttime economies sustained by the gay tourism industry. These nightclubs are pitched by the tourism industry as the centre of queer/gay life in Seminyak, Bali. Our aim is to provide what an embodied geographical perspective can offer to better understand the relationships between travel, men, masculinities and sexualities. We conceive nightclubs as always spatial, multiple, fluid, embodied, performative, in-the-making, unstable and endlessly differentiated.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Atkins, G. L. (2012) Jmagining Gay Paradise: Bali, Bangkok and Cyber-Singapore. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Bernstein, E. (2001) ‘The meaning of the purchase: Desire, demand, and the commerce of sex’, Ethnography, 2(3): 389–420.
Binnie, J. (1995) ‘Trading places: Consumption, sexuality and the production of queer space’, in D. Bell and G. Valentine (eds) Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. Routledge: London, pp. 182–99.
Bishop, R. and Robinson, L. S. (1998) Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle. New York: Routledge.
Boellstorff, T. (2005) The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Brown, M. (2000) Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe. London: Routledge.
Browne, K. (2007) ‘Drag queens and drab dykes: Deploying and deploring femininities’, in K. Browne, J. Lim and G. Brown (eds) Geographies of Sexualities. Hampshire: Ashgate, pp. 113–24.
Bystydzienski, J. M. (2011) Intercultural Couples: Crossing Boundaries, Negotiating Difference. New York: New York University Press.
Caluya, G. (2008) ‘“The rice steamer”: Race, desire and affect in Sydney’s gay scene’, Australian Geographer, 39(3): 283–92.
Casey, M. (2007) ‘The queer unwanted and their undesirable “otherness”’, in K. Browne, J. Lim and G. Brown (eds) Geographies of Sexualities. Hampshire: Ashgate, pp. 125–36.
Chatterton, P. and Hollands, R. (2003) Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power. London: Routledge.
Chauncey, G. (1994) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. London: Flamingo.
Collins, D. (2007) ‘When sex work isn’t work: Hospitality, gay life, and the production of desiring labour’, Tourist Studies, 7(2): 115–39.
Connell, R. (1995) Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Grazian, D. (2007) ‘The girl hunt: Urban nightlife and the performance of masculinity as collective activity’, Symbolic Interaction 30(2): 221–43.
Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (2009) Analysing Narrative Reality. London: Sage.
Hughes, H. (2006) Pink Tourism: Holidays of Gay Men and Lesbians. Wallingford: CAB.
Hughes, H. (2002) ‘Gay men’s holiday destination choice: A case of risk and avoidance’, NS 35(4): 540–54.
Hughes, H. and Deutsch, R. (2010) ‘Holidays of older gay men: Age or sexual orientation as decisive factors?’ Tourism Management, 31: 454–63.
Jayne, M., Valentine, G. and Holloway, S. (2010) ‘Emotional, embodied and affective geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, International Journal of Tourism Research, 4(4): 299–312.
Johnston, L. (2012) ‘Site of excess: The spatial politics of touch for drag queens in Aotearoa, New Zealand’, Emotion, Space and Society, 5(1): 1–12.
Laumann, E. O., Ellingson, S., Mahay, J., Paik, A. and Youm, Y (eds) (2004) The Sexual Organization of the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Loinaz, A. L. (2012) ‘Lady Gaga banned in Indonesia following Islamic protests’. Available at: http://au.eonline.com/news/316301/lady-gaga-banned-in-indonesia-following-islamic-protests (accessed 16 September 2012).
Northcote, J. (2006) ‘Nightclubbing and the search for identity: Transitions from childhood to adulthood in an urban milieu’, Youth Studies, 15: 1–16.
MacRae, R. (2004) ‘Notions of “us and them”: Markers of stratification in clubbing lifestyles’, Journal of Youth Studies, 7(1): 55–71.
Malbon, B. (1999) Clubbing Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality. London: Routledge.
Prior, J. (2008) ‘Planning for sex in the city: Urban governance, planning and the placement of sex industrial premises in inner Sydney’, Australian Geographer, 39(3): 339–52.
Taylor, J. (2010) ‘Queer temporalities and the significance of ‘music scene’ participation in the social identities of middle-aged queers’, Sociology, 44: 893–907.
Thornton S. (1994) ‘Moral panics, the media and British rave culture’ in T. Ross and A. Rose (eds) Microphone Fields: Youth Music and Youth Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 177–92.
Thurnell-Read, T. (2012) ‘What happens on tour: The premarital stag tour, homosocial bonding and male friendship, Men and Masculinities, 15(3): 249–70.
Valentine, G. and Skelton, T. (2003) ‘Finding oneself, losing oneself: The lesbian and gay “scene” as a paradoxical space’, Jnternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27: 849–66.
Waitt, G. and Markwell, K. (2006) Gay Tourism: Culture and Context. Haworth Press, New York.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Gordon Waitt and Kevin Markwell
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Waitt, G., Markwell, K. (2015). ‘I Don’t Want to Think I Am a Prostitute’: Embodied Geographies of Men, Masculinities and Clubbing in Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia. In: Thurnell-Read, T., Casey, M. (eds) Men, Masculinities, Travel and Tourism. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137341464_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137341464_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46511-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34146-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)