Work

Sexual Frustrations and Dream Vacations: Gay Tourism, Straight Tourism, and the Role of Racialized Desire after West Germany's Sexual Revolution

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: This article argues that sexualized travel was a crucial site in which the ambivalences of the so-called sexual revolution were negotiated. Focusing on the experiences of white, West German men between the late 1960s and early 1990s, this article draws on a wide range of travel literature—as well as criticism of sex and travel—to document the ways in which tourists made sense of sexual ambivalences at home through discussions about sex abroad. Regardless of sexual orientation, white, West German men drew on overlapping languages of racialized desire to describe perceived pleasures abroad, revealing that race and racism are inextricable from the history of the sexual revolution in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Source: Central European History

DOI: 10.1017/s0008938924001031

Authors: Christopher Ewing, Ulrike Schaper

Institutions: Purdue University West Lafayette, Freie Universität Berlin

Language: English

Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies

Subfield: Gender Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,450