Globalization greatly affects the sexual behavior, choices, habits, risks, identities and health of individuals in the developing world. Sexuality has certainly been altered by the intensification and spread of networks and flows interconnecting individuals and political, economic, cultural, technological and social systems across borders. When we consider how sexuality and sexual behavior have been shaped by globalization, we can come up with dozens upon dozens of arenas of sexuality that have been noticeably marked, like the issues relating to: sexual identity and identification, migration and it's role in the spread of epidemics, homosexuality and bisexuality acceptance and tolerance, the advances of medical technology, ideas and structures of family, increased education, body image perceptions, institutions of marriage and companionship, the widespread distribution of contraceptives and sexual health medicines, racialization and ethnicization of sexuality, the role of the church, feminism and the rise of Western-feminist thought, the omnipresence of NGO's and like-minded organizations; the list simply goes on and on.
[...] Although local and global ethnosexual consumer cultures are a blend of East and West, North and South, Third and Fourth worlds, the power and location of the originating message (the West) should not be underestimated.” (Nagel, 246) Though this has altered the sexual landscape in countless ways, I will very briefly explore only two: the increased demand for western products and distribution and the conveyed message about sexuality that has accompanied this culture. More or less, the focus is upon the spread of the actual commodities and the ways that the marketing of these commodities has altered sexuality and sexual behavior. [...]
[...] The view of homosexuality as an exclusive characteristic of white or Western sexuality has been articulated often by nonwhites and non- Westerners.” In the early 1990's, Zimbabwean president Joseph Mugabe justified the exclusion of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe from an international book fair held in Harare, denouncing ‘homosexuality as a Western corruption imported to Africa through colonization'” (Nagel, 124) Another alleged ‘imported' manifestation is feminism. Its third world critics caution against feminism and all its immoral ideals of gender equality, claiming it to be a corruption of the developed world invading and tainting their society. [...]
[...] Much to the contrary of most researchers, academics and prostitution commentators who operate by that understanding of sex work as exploitation, Laura Agustin sees the prostitution of women in the developing world as liberating, empowering and positive. She sees the former view as predicated on widespread assumption that a woman's body is above all a sexual place, where women's experiences of sex and their sexual organs is essential to their self- respect (this idea is) not universal, and the use of body for economic gain is not considered upsetting or important by many prostitutes.” (Agustin, By bringing the Western ideas of sex as an expression of romantic love, sex as a moral act and sex as alienation of the real self, we are imposing our ideas upon their cultural paradigm, Agustin contends. [...]
[...] Globalization and the advancement in new media technologies are transforming how sexuality is viewed and treated around the world. The result is the beaming of homogeneous images in the media and the tendency towards increased cultural and social uniformity. The result can be seen in discriminatory advertising, and the spread of imposed images of femininity and female roles. The general observation is that the depiction of women as objects of desire in advertising affects gender relations, impressions of self, and ideas about traits of desirability but the biggest effect can be seen in society's attitudes towards women and women's sexuality. [...]
[...] The global or western ideal is interpreted through the filter of the developing nation's society and what emerges is kind of hybrid cultural formation, a fusion of local and global cosmologies of beauty, gender, and sexuality” (Nagel, 247) Farrer compares modernity and traditionalism after his study in the mid-90s of Shanghai dance clubs, which were highly westernized. With gendered sexual performances as a form of participation in global dance culture, he describes the disco as a deliberately engineered space of foreign sexual imagery, which Chinese youth find it appropriate to experiment with alternative sexual styles and sexual self-images (Nagel, (248) Regardless of this “experimental sexual expression, and (presence of) occasional ethnosexual encounters he found that the sexual norms in everyday Shanghai society remained highly conservative. [...]
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