Drawing Parallels on the Othering of Prostitutes Across Time
These images serve to encapsulate the main similarity that connects the prostitution of these two distant time periods: exotification. Just as Algeria was exotic and uncivilized, requiring the imposition of French cultural norms, Boca Chica is marketed as an exotic local with the added bonus of grey-area prostitution. Exotification leads to the dehumanization of the local population and the ease of objectification.
Whether studying prostitutes in French colonized Algeria, reflections on African hospitals, or the modern day sex tourism in Dominican Republic, it is clear that race is often considered as an important factor. Desperate to separate themselves from what they thought of as the "wrong" kind of prostitution, doctors and researchers decided to look towards racial differences to assuage fears regarding what they saw as the breakdown of society in their colonies. In the sex industry in Domican Republic, homosexual prostitution is used as an important lure to the island. While also reinforcing a power hierarchy that firmly places native sex workers at the bottom.
It is through the process of othering that occurs both during Parent du Chatelet's time and modern Dominican Republic that it is possible to truly understand the connections. In both scenarios othering is used to distance and dehumanize POC prostitutes. While simultaneously placing white tourists in a powerful position both financially and in the convoluted sense of morality found in amongst white people. French colonizers saw their actions as protecting Algerians, the health of African prostitutes was explained through racist ideology, and white tourists in the Domican Republic attempt to justify their exotification of the native population. In studying how sex tourism worked for Parent du Chatelet and in the modern Dominican Republic it becomes possible to understand the inextricable link between exotification, othering, racism, and prostitution.