At a time when U.S. Senators are listed in call girl telephone records and caught cruising men's rooms for sex, it should come as no surprise that a sex tourist should have the air of a sophisticate. Nevertheless, it was with a decidedly queasy feeling that I read the reprint of one such tourist's purported escapades in Morocco on Morocco Travel Information. Written in the chatty tone of a typical travelogue, the piece discourses on the cultural life and history of Morocco: its Arab language and Berber ethnicity. The article's raison d'etre, however, is a comparative analysis of where best to procure the services of Moroccan prostitutes. One notes with a certain schadenfreude that the "tourist" is relatively unsuccessful, and a certain shock that, consistent with his overall behavior, he recklessly disregards safe sexual practices.
Not that prostitution is uncommon in Morocco. One of the biggest surprises for me during my stay was how common prostitutes were in rural villages, when I had expected that they would be found primarily in the big cities. But I was periodically reminded that for a divorced woman, there were often few alternatives to either domestic service or prostitution, since most other occupations remained closed to any women without an education or a family.
The underside of prostitution only becomes fully apparent in the work of such organizations as SOS Morocco, which strives to prevent the exploitation of children in the sex market.