Militarism and Sex Industries

Abstract

The modernity of militarized‐industrialized sex work stems from two broader sets of transnational and national systems and ideologies: late nineteenth‐century territorial neo‐imperialism and its attendant militarism, and globalizing capitalism, industrialism, and developmentalism. The postwar sexual proletarianization of third world women was propelled by the economic conditions and motivations produced under the neocolonial hegemony of the United States. Cynthia Enloe has argued that “sexual imperialism,” manifested and institutionalized as military sex industries, is a product of such intersecting dominant ideologies and systems that operate both intra‐nationally and transnationally as patriarchy/masculinism, nationalism/imperialism, class hierarchy, and a racially segmented global labor market. The occupying and hosting countries' governments and the occupying military intervene in the process of commercialization of sex through legislation, medicalization, and other kinds of governmental and military power, control, and discipline at their disposal.