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Spencer Ruelos
Dr. K. Berry
Understanding the Complexities of Transnational Queer Tourism:
An Intersectional Feminist and Post-Colonial Analysis
When looking at the emergence of the global queer tourism, I’m sure that many people would
assume a simplistic and romanticized narrative commenting on the inclusion of gays and lesbian in the
mainstream consumer market. What this narrative fails to acknowledge are the complexities and inequalities
that are inherent in many, if not all, acts of global queer tourism. In order to tend to these complexities as
presented in the literature on transnational queer tourism, I will explore the racialized, gendered, classed, and
sexualized effects of gay tourism on specific cultures and transnational spaces in order to illustrate how
global queer reproduces processes of colonization and systems of inequalities while reifying the neocolonial
categories of race, class, gender, nation, and sexuality. To begin our discussion of the complexities of global
queer tourism, this paper will begin by historicizing the emergence of the gay and lesbian niche market and
examining how corporations and transnational gay travel guides position specific queer-identified person as
actors and objects in this global consumer market. The second section of this essay will then shift to
examining the complexities in the crafting of specific tourist destinations or sexscapes as ‘gay-friendly.’ In
the third and final section of this literature review, we will explore the complexities and sociocultural effects
of transnational queer tourism in Thailand, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. Throughout the discussion of
transnational queer tourism, I stress the importance of an intersectional feminist analysis and a post-colonial
theoretical lens, ultimately arguing that these two specific frameworks allow us to understand the
complexities that global queer tourism brings forward.
Positioning the Queer Consumer
The shift in marketing strategies that target queers as primary consumers is a relatively recent
phenomenon. It is generally agreed upon that gay and lesbian marketing segment was particularly
galvanized in the 80s and 90s mostly by AIDS epidemic and the subsequent desire of gays and lesbians to
become more visible in the mainstream (Puar 2002a:105; Pritchard et al. 1998:274). This desire for visibility,
however, has contributed to the colonization of the new gay and lesbian niche market by hetero-patriarchal
capitalism. According to Alexander, “heterosexual capital’s gesture of rolling out the ‘welcome mat’ [to gay
and lesbian consumers] has less to do with hospitality than with the creation of a new consumer and a new
market… both of which must be [colonized]” (Alexander 2005:71). In the mid 1990s, companies began
hiring gays and lesbians in order to help target the interests of this new queer consumer, thereby attempting
to acquire the queer dollar and its ‘untold millions’ (Alexander 2005:73). These desires of neo-imperial
capitalistic expansion and extraction of wealth illustrate the connection between the emergence of the global
queer tourist market and reproduction of colonial discourses and processes.

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Despite this seemingly more queer-inclusive shift to marketing strategies, one very specific and
idealized queer body—which is simultaneously racialized, nationalized, gendered, and classed—is positioned
as the primary queer consumer. Utilizing an intersectional feminist analysis reveals some of the power
dynamics inherent in this representation and positioning of the queer consumer. Alexander provides a
useful foundation for our discussion: “[T]he quintessential homosexual consumer within the contemporary
racialized, gendered political economy of the United States is invented and imagined as male and white”
(Alexander 2005:72). Building upon Alexander’s discussion, Rushbrook calls attention to the politics of
difference and the production of racialized Otherness. “When the normal is white straightness, the
spatialization of difference or deviation in mutually exclusive, oppositional zones in a hierarchy of places
reinforces the production of queerness as white” (Rushbrook 2002:185). One could also argue that this
same production of difference creates a masculinized homosexual subjectivity as the ideal consumer, one
that Alexander describes as akin to the real Marlboro man (Alexander 2005:72). Alexander and Pritchard,
Morgan and Sedgely very briefly mention the positioning of this imagined and idealized gay consumer as
able-bodied. Thus the invention of the queer (or, more appropriately, gay) consumer idealizes a gendered,
masculinized, racialized, and able capitalist body.
Another intersection in the construction of the gay consumer concerns both the subject’s education
and socio-economic class. The development of the new gay and lesbian niche market was rooted in the
assumption that gays and lesbians were on average more educated than their heterosexual counterparts,
producing an above-average annual household income (Alexander 2005:72; Puar 2002a:109, 2002b:937;
Pritchard et al. 1998:275). However, Puar and Pritchard Morgan, and Sedgely challenge the homogenous
assertions of these statistics by arguing that because of gender discrimination in the work place, lesbian
couples in fact earn on average lower incomes than those of gay male couples (Pritchard et al. 1998: 275)
and possibly even less than heterosexual couples (Puar 2002a: 110, 2002b: 938). Companies within the gay
and lesbian travel industry also position queer couples (and especially gay couples) as hyper-consumers,
taking this increased dual income and the absence of children as fact for all queer consumers (Puar 2002b:
937). Because of these frightful assumptions, however, many queer bodies—i.e. lesbians, queers of color,
working class and poor queers, queer with disabilities, and (as we will soon talk about) Third World queers
and trans-identified queers—are rendered invisible through this normalization of the queer tourist as a
white, middle-class, well-educated gay man.
Exploring the level of analysis that both Alexander and Puar provide allows us to understand how
the gay travel guides and websites reproduce neocolonial narratives and perpetuate this idealized queer
consumer. In her analysis of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) and Spartacus
gay travel guides, Alexander presents several ways in which these media replicate colonial tendencies:
o the reproduction of boundaries of colonial geography;

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o the positioning of the writer, imagined reader, and targeted tourist as white and Western;
o the nativist discourse which construct the ‘character’ of Third Word people, for example as
‘friendly’, ‘exotic’, and ‘primitive;’
o and the paradisiacal framework of the geography which reifies the construction of the
exotified Third World Other.
Drawing upon Gita Patel’s notion of the nativization of fetishes, Alexander discusses that this Third World
queer body only exists within the colonial narrative and in “the authentic local geography” in order to fit
into the “colonialist fantasy” (Alexander 2005: 85). Because of this, autochthonous and Third World queer
persons are not positioned as travelers, but rather only as sexual and commoditized queer bodies to be
experienced and consumed by the idealized Euro-American gay tourist. While acknowledging the
consumption and commoditization of the fetishized and Third World/native queer body, Puar in contrast
focuses her analytical framework around the images of the positioned European queer nationals. She
ultimately argues that by juxtaposing white, middle-class gay men against rainbow colors and national
monuments and flags, gay travel industries invent and imagine gay (and lesbian) inclusion and authenticity in
the nation state (Puar 2002a: 113). This discursive construction of European queer nationals typifies
Alexander’s claim that the writer and reader are positioned white, Western gay men. Puar also presents a list
of countries which guides have positioned as “homophobic sites”, all of which happen to be “non-Western”
countries (e.g. Peru, Colombia, Afghanistan, and Bavaria). In doing so, the guides situate the West with
colonial assumptions of progress and liberation, whereas these Third World countries embody intolerant
and uncivilized ideologies. Both Alexander and Puar provide key analytical frameworks to understanding
how gay travel guides create both an imagined gay tourist and an imagined, nativized queer Other, thereby
illustrating several ways in which global queer tourism employs neocolonial discourses.
Spatial Construction of a Transnational Queer Sexscape
In addition to the positioning of an ideal queer consumer, understanding the discursive construction
of a queer travel destination also sheds light in the neocolonial processes of global queer tourism. Several
authors explore how the label ‘gay-friendly’ is used to craft that which Murray calls queer tourist sexscape, a
term used to describe a designated queer space which he adapts from Arjun Appadurai’s terminology
regarding transnationalism and global cultural flows (Murray 2007: 58). Through an examination of the
literature, three dominant characteristics emerge which construct a transnational queer tourist sexscape: the
existence of a well-known gay population, the creation of queer festivals and events, and the positive status
of LGBT rights. However, retaining our post-colonial and intersectional feminist analytical frameworks
complicate the construction of ‘gay-friendly’ queer sexscapes by bringing forward a discussion of
neocolonial redeployments and systems of inequalities.

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Pritchard, Morgan, and Sedgely (1998) describe the first dominant characteristic of ‘gay-friendly’
sexscapes as gay infrastructure, i.e. the existence of a core gay population. In their analysis, they discuss how
the European and American cities—specifically Amsterdam, Manchester, and San Francisco (more on San
Francisco, see also Boyd 2008)—have become prime sites for gay tourism because of their large, established
concentrations of gay residents. However, looking back at Alexander’s analysis extends this claim to Third
World locales as well; for example, the colonialist and nativist discourses of travel guides conceptualize
Burundi as traditionally bisexual (Alexander 2005: 84-5). Closely tethered to this is the construction of a
“tradition of tolerance,” where travel companies position both specific Western countries (e.g. the
Netherlands and France) and non-Western locales (e.g. Indonesia) as free of homophobia (Pritchard et al.
1998: 278, Puar 2002a: 113, Alexander 2005: 83). Thus, the presentation of an established gay population
and the assumed lack of homophobia provide a relatively convincing construction of a ‘gay-friendly’ tourist
destination.
Equally important to note is how a sense of homotemporality—or queer time—actively shapes the
embodiment of a queer tourist sexscape. Pritchard, Morgan and Sedgely (1998) stress the crucial role that
events like gay pride parades, the Gay Games, and Mardi Gras festivals have played on promoting global
gay-friendly tourist destinations. In his own research on gay and lesbian tourism, Markwell illustrates how
Sydney’s Mardi Gras has created a sense of gay place and time, while simultaneously positioning Sydney as
an international gay and lesbian city. Surveying the literature himself, Markwell argues that events like Mardi
Gras contribute to the imagined postmodern city as a site for pleasure, fun, and consumption (Markwell
2002: 87). Whereas Pritchard, Morgan, and Sedgely emphasize the importance of gay places, Markwell
examines the implications of homotemporality (what he terms “gay times”) on the construction of
transnational queer tourist sexscapes. Mardi Gras provides an example of this homotemporality, when one
month out of the year has an increased focus on gay and lesbian issues (Markwell 2002: 89). Markwell
argues that while this does have positive implications for the queer community, there is a risk that gay and
lesbian socio-political issues are ignored outside of the Mardi Gras gay time (“the danger of ‘temporal
containment’” [Markwell 2002: 89]). However, because of the increased success of its Mardi Gras festival,
Sydney has become known as an international gay and lesbian city, where cosmopolitan queer consumers
are called forth in order to participate in queer celebratory events during the month of February. In doing
so, Sydney’s Mardi Gras as an event provides a critical discussion of place and time in the spatial
construction of a queer tourist sexscape.
While both the existence of a gay population and creation of gay events are crucial to the
construction of a transnational queer tourist sexscape, Boyd (2008) argues that the status of LGBT/queer
rights plays the most important role in the construction of a ‘gay-friendly’ tourist destination. Specifically,
he argues that the US-based gay marriage movement has contributed to the growth of the global gay tourist

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economy, while simultaneously disciplining consumers by producing homonormativity—that is, a normalized
set of ideologies and behaviors that asserts citizenship rights for gays and lesbians via neoliberal politics and
conspicuous consumption. The creation of the gay and lesbian niche market, as I have touched upon,
contextualizes queer consumption as a vehicle for both visibility and civil rights, where neocolonial
discourses also equate spending with citizenship rights. Because of this, same-sex marriage has become a
tourist attraction in which same-sex couples can participate and get married, thereby demonstrating their
citizenship rights through both the act of getting married and the participation in consumer culture. Gay
marriage and gay tourism together thus create “a new kind of queer consumer [who is taught to be a good
citizen through the participation] of civic life via the social rituals of marriage and the commercial rituals of
conspicuous consumption” (Boyd 2008: 228). However, Boyd does point out that with the spread of the
gay marriage movement internationally, a new global queer citizen/consumer assumes the “modern queer
sexuality” which emphasizes neocolonial messages about Western sexual liberation and freedom through
citizenship, civil rights, and ‘out’ visibility. Hence, the placement of LGBT rights in the forefront of the
construction of a queer sexscape is rendered problematic through a post-colonial theoretical lens.
Making use of our post-colonial and intersectional feminist analytical frameworks also complicates
the production of transnational “gay-friendly” tourist sexscapes as a whole. Firstly, several authors discuss
how the promotion of a tourist destination with an established and popularized queer community and
events can lead to a commoditization of queer identities by (cis-gendered) heterosexual travelers and
ultimately a de-gaying of queer sexscapes (Pritchard et al. 1998: 279, Rushbrook 2002: 191). For example,
queer commodities can become commodities for heterosexual spectators at gay pride events and drag
shows. The influx of heterosexual tourists to Manchester has also been known to cause local queer residents
to feel unsafe and not welcome within their own gay space. Targeted as a sexually Otherized body, some
local and non-local queers can become neocolonial spectacles for white, neocolonizing heterosexuals.
Secondly, the economic incentive in positioning of a queer sexscape allow (often) heterosexual capitalists,
nationals, and organizations access to an increasingly developing consumer market, illustrative of the
insatiable neoimperial capitalist desire to generate revenue. Finally, the construction of a queer sexscape
through both gay events and LGBT rights lead to the romanticization of geographies, assuming that all
queer spaces are without inequalities. As many of the authors I examined point out, this claiming of a queer
sexscape forefronts sexuality and sexual identity, which simultaneously erases and renders other categories
of difference—like race, class, gender, nation, ability, and sexual identities different from gay, lesbian or
straight—invisible (Rushbrook 2002: 184, Puar 2002a: 112, Puar 2002b: 936, Pritchard et al. 1998: 274). As
a result, the normalization of the sexual and idealized queer consumer reproduces systems of inequalities
based on categorical differences and the neocolonial politics of representation. Overall, the label “gay-

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friendly” may not be as all-inclusive as it may seem; the crafting of a transnational queer sexscape as a tourist
destination continues to draw upon neocolonial tendencies that perpetuate systems of equality.
Exploring Queer Tourism through Case Studies
In this final section of the paper, we will explore the ways in global queer tourism have affected the
specific global locales of Thailand, Mexico, and the Czech Republic with the reproduction of colonial
discourses and systems of inequality. By building upon the previously discussed theoretical frameworks that
we have explored, we will understand how neocolonial processes of global queer tourism have specifically
shaped the experience of tourists and local peoples within each of specific locations.
Trans Medical Tourism in Thailand
As I briefly mentioned earlier, trans tourism has almost always been absent in the travel guides and
literature on global queer tourism. Despite its absence, however, it seems that medical tourism sought after
by trans-identified individuals is still mediated through neocolonial processes, the exotification of Third
World cultures, and global neoliberal politics. Aizura, one of the lone authors who has examined trans
medical tourism, illustrates this in his research on gender reassignment surgical (GRS) tourism in Thailand.
In the first section of his article, Aizura explains how Thailand in part functions as a transnational
trans sexscape. “Medical travel to Thailand has become a large industry since 2000, facilitated by governments
eager to find a new source of international revenue in the wake of the 1997 Asian economic crisis…”
(Aizura 2010: 5). Consequently, Thai surgeons have crafted a trans “sexscape” in a sense through the
position of Thailand as the “’Mecca’ of transsexual body modification” (Aizura 2010: 2). Because of this
increase in foreign travelers to Thailand for GRS, the once domestic market for reassignment surgery has
shifted directly because of the globalization of the economy to a transnational luxury service. As we have
seen before, the existence of a Thai gender variant also helps position Thailand as a trans sexscape. Several
Thai trans clinics even market themselves within these tourism discourses by providing four-star hotel
accommodation and classes, excursions and activities during convalescence. Through these somewhat
familiar processes we can begin see how Thailand is positioned as a trans sexscape.
After elaborating on the construction of Thailand as a medical tourist travel destination, Aizura
describes the experience of two trans women to illustrate the complexities of cultural appropriation and the
incorporation of “Thainess” into these women’s experience. During Melanie’s trip to Thailand to meet with
her surgeon about completing her GRS surgery in 2007, she bought a painting of a Thai goddess who she
described as “Kinnaree…it’s the representation of a goddess of earth. Feminine grace, beauty” (Aizura
2010: 9). Unknown to her, Melanie had actually confused the goddess Kinnaree with the goddess Mae Phra
Thoranee. After eventually returning to America, Melanie got a tattoo of Kinnaree on her shoulder and
would begin describing this goddess with characteristics of Mae Phra Thoranee. According to Aizura post-
colonial theorists have critiqued these forms of cultural appropriation of “exotic” and “primitive” tattooing,

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which is seen as an ethnicized commoditization of the cultural Other (Aizura 2010: 10). A similar
discussion of appropriation can be seen with Elizabeth, an Australian trans woman who set ablaze her
removed testicles and presented them as an offering in the fishpond of a Theravada Buddhist temple. While
both women could be seen as appropriators who participate in practices which construct Thailand as an
exotic and ethnicized Third World country, Aizura argues these practices cannot be strictly seen as
neocolonial and orientalist appropriations:
They need to be read as an effect of Melanie and Elizabeth gaining the space to
perform their own feminine genders in relative, and temporary, freedom [which]
enables both individuals to imagine rituals marking the event of gender reassignment,
incorporating something of the geocultural location in which they feel so respected and
recognized. (Aizura 2010: 16)
Thus this supplementing of femininity through tattooing and the incorporation of Buddhist beliefs in a self-
designed ritual complicate the neocolonial context of such practices. While these practices are disciplinary
in the creation of an orientalist and exotified Other, they are emancipatory in that they allow these women
to carve out spaces where they can freely negotiate their own gender identities.
Mexican Sexual Colonization and Liberation
Continuing the this discussion of disciplinary and emancipatory effects of global gay tourism, Cantú
argues that in order to understand the complexities of American gay tourism in Mexico one must
understand the processes of sexual colonization and liberation at work. To foreground this complexity,
Cantú discusses the historical and economic relationship between the US and Mexico. The economic ties
between Mexico and the US have been particularly developed through Mexico’s membership in the WTO,
GATT, and NAFTA, stimulating both social and cultural ties between the two countries (Cantú 2002: 143).
One of these ties has created a movement of peoples across the borders both from the north to the south
and both legally and illegally; unfortunately, however, crossing the border has proven to be more difficult
for Mexicans who might be branded as homosexuals. It is because of this that the globalization of economy
in Mexico through its relationships with the US has lead to the migrations of Mexican queer men and
women to urban areas for better economic alternatives. With the development of tourism industry in the
1960s, the migrations of both Mexican queers and American tourists to Mexican urban centers have lead to
the development and commodification of Mexican gay culture through transnational gay tourism (Cantú
2002: 144). Consequently, according to Cantú, this has sparked the new emerging Western gay identity for
both men and women and the overshadowing of the previous ambiente identity.
Since this development of transnational gay tourism, new guidebooks on Mexican gay travel have
emerged which depict the workings of sexual conquest through the redeployment of colonial process of
sexual exotification. These guides, following the same methods that the previous guides we have discussed

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have, focus on sexuality and target an American male audience. Firstly, in the covers of the guides that
Cantú provides all the Mexican men are at least shirtless, symbolizing their sexual readiness and availability.
Secondly, the representations of Mexico in these guidebooks are twofold: one depiction of Mexico as “just
like home” and a second as an exotic, Third World country which tempts the colonialists desire to be
explored and conquered.
Yet for queer tourism there also exists a “border” tension between the lure of an exotic
paradise and the dangers of homophobia in foreign lands. Here Mexico seems to
represent a homosexual paradise free of the pressures of a modern ‘gay life style,’
where sexuality exists in its ‘raw’ form yet where the dangers of an uncivilized
heterosexual authority also threaten. (Cantú 2002: 148)
It is easy to see how these guides do embody the discourses of sexual conquest and neocolonial
representations of Third World locations and peoples by crafting a sexual and racialized Other as a
commodity for American gay tourists.
While it’s clear to see that the guides present a problematic framework and representation,
transnational gay tourism has complex implications on the lives of Mexican gay men and women which can
be seen as both disciplinary and liberatory. As Cantú illustrates the emergence of the gay and lesbian tourist
market in Europe created the foundations for the development of the gay and lesbian movement in Mexico
(Cantú 2002: 155). Tourism has also sparked the migration of same-sex sexual couples to the States, which
itself can be seen as liberatory and disciplinary. In many instances, same-sex sexual couples decide to
traverse the US-Mexico border in order to create better opportunities for themselves and their families.
However, often when same-sex sexual couples from Mexico do arrive in the US they are faced with
homophobia and racism, despite the claim that the “modern” US is more liberal than developing countries
like Mexico (Cantú 2002: 155, 157). Another beneficial factor that global gay tourism has brought to
Mexico have been tools for combating HIV/AIDS, ultimately providing condoms, lubricants, medications,
and literature to promote HIV/AIDS activism. One of the more or less shocking influences on Mexican
gay men’s lives has been the embodiment of colonialist desires for conquest in elite Mexican men. For
example, upper-class Mexican man named Franco describes his tourism in Cuba: “‘the men in Cuba are
fantastic. I always take some extra things like cologne and clothes. Cuban men will fuck you for a Nike
baseball cap’” (Cantú 2002: 156). Through this description, we see how Franco embodies a (neo)colonizer’s
subjectivity by seeking sexual conquest in the exotified Cuba and by creating a colonial knowledge about the
sexuality of Cuban men. These are some of the diverse impacts on Mexican gay men and women’s lives
that situate global gay tourism in Mexico within a disciplinary, yet concurrently liberatory framework.
European Otherness: Colonial Knowledge Production of Czech ‘Boys’ in Prague

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One final case study that provides some distinctive insights into the effects of transnational queer
tourism concerns the relationship between Czech bodies in Prague and the neocolonial desires of Austrian
gay male tourists. In his essay, Bunzl follows Pratt’s analytical framework by arguing that Prague’s gay scene
can be envisioned as a “contact zone:” a neocolonial location which reifies a Western/Eastern European
dichotomy and where the relation between Czech ‘boys’ and Austrian ‘men’ is predicated on sexual,
racial/ethnic, geocultural, and socioeconomic systems of inequalities (Bunzl 2000: 71). At this neocolonial
contact zone, Austrian (Western) gay male tourists live out their neocolonial fantasies to have sexual
encounters with Czech (Eastern) gay male bodies. It is important to note that transnational tourism
perpetuates these racial/ethnic/geographic categories of difference between Eastern and Western Europe
despite the “Eastern transition” into a new Europe through the membership of the European Union.
Because of these imagined categories of difference, Austrian gay tourists constantly position Prague’s gay
scene as a site for Eastern (same-sex) sexual Otherness.
By focusing his ethnographic work on the experience of Austrian gay male tourists, Bunzl illustrates
the ways in which transnational gay tourism of Austrian men operates under the neocolonial production of
knowledge about Czech same-sex sexual culture and sexuality (Bunzl 2000: 82). In parallel to the sense of
danger that Cantú describes in Mexico, Bunzl portrays many Austrian men’s initial experience as fearful of
the perils of traveling to an unknown environment (illustrative of Prague as a neocolonial contact zone). In
this sense, Prague can be seen as a “heart of darkness,” which must be explored by the Western gay male
tourist in order to demystify and familiarize oneself with the Eastern sexual Other. This neocolonial desire
for knowledge production justifies the subjectification (and consequently objectification) of Czech same-sex
sexuality. Bunzl also comments of the effects of socioeconomic class and age in the positioning of Czech
same-sex sexuality. He depicts how Austrians produce knowledge of about Czech sexuality through the
constant description of Czech gay men as ‘boys.’ While bringing to the forefront a racialized age as a
neocolonial category of difference, Austrian positioning of Czech boys simultaneously superimposes the
dependency of Eastern bodies on class-privileged Western tourists. This also continues to justify the desire
of Austrian men to travel and explore Czech sexual Otherness.
A third and final example of the neocolonial production of knowledge of Czech same-sex sexuality
focuses on the colonial trope of sexual availability through the stressing of a distinct Czech same-sex sexual
identity. Similar to the assumptions of sexual identity that we have seen in various gay travel guides,
Austrians position Czech ‘boys’ as in a constant state of sexual readiness. One dominant paradigm of this
sexual readiness characterizes all Czech ‘boys’ as bisexual or pansexual. One informant describes sexuality
in Prague:
[T]hings are totally different. They are just so openly bisexual. Just about all the
boys I’ve had sex with there had girlfriends, but they were into having sex with men as well. […] I

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really think they just like to have sex—boys, men, women—it just doesn’t matter. They’re just not
afraid of their sexuality, and so I’ve always gotten what I’ve wanted. (Bunzl 2000: 86–7)
Another positioning of sexual availability and readiness, as Bunzl also points out, concerns Austrian gay
male tourist discursively creating a sense of Czech ‘boys’ desirability to service men. “’I had never seen
anything like that at home. He didn’t have his own agenda, but was totally attentive to me. We couldn’t
really communicate, of course, but somehow he could feel what it was I wanted. And he just did that’”
(Bunzl 2000: 85). In sum, very similar to positioning a commodified Third World sexual Otherness (as we
have seen multiple times above), this production of knowledge of Czech ‘boys’ sexuality through the
description of sexual availability creates an embodied Eastern sexual Otherness constructed through
neocolonial tropes and desires which serve the purpose of reproducing the categories of racial, sexual, class,
and national difference.
Conclusion
After reviewing much of the literature on transnational queer tourism can we the importance of
understanding the complexities that this relatively recent form of tourism provides. Some of these
complexities are embodied in the rendering invisible of certain categories of difference which normalize the
primary queer consumer as a white, middle-class, Western, cis-gendered gay male. Some can also be seen in
the complex social framework which allows us to see queer tourism as both emancipatory and disciplinary.
Others require to look at the reproduction of colonial processes of exotification in specific ‘gay-friendly’
queer sexscapes such as Thailand, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. As we have seen through this
examination of global queer tourism, both an intersectional feminist analysis and a post-colonial studies
framework allow us to delve into many of these complexities which are often overshadowed and ignored.
Thus through attempting to explore some of the complexities of transnational queer tourism through these
analytical and theoretical lenses can we begin see the ways in which global queer tourism reproduce both
neocolonial power relations and systems of inequality through the categories of race, class, gender, nation,
and sexuality.

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