“Show Me the Best Bar in Town”: Romantic Tourism and Labor Extraction
What North-South Dating Continues to Reveal About the Patriarchy and Neocolonialism
I’ve grown so tired of reading the phrase “show me the best bar in town” on men’s dating profiles that I’ve decided to explicitly include “here to date, not be a tour guide” on mine. This apparently innocent and flirty sentence reflects colonial patterns of labor extraction that I’ve observed in my experience meeting tourist/expat men in Latin America. Although these behaviors also reflect the general pattern of men burdening the women in their lives with the physical, mental, and emotional labor required to be in a relationship, men dating abroad add another layer of gendered labor division in their already colonial practice of traveling the world as expats or tourists. Weaponizing incompetence has never been easier!
In our current travel culture, men from the Global North are openly being encouraged to travel to the Global South to find more “exotic,” “committed,” and “loving” women (read: more submissive maids) to build romantic partnerships with. Meanwhile, women from this side of the world are fed the idea that these passport bros are great catches because they love and treat us better. In reality, they often have more financial power, but are like any other man. As I like to say, regardless of his circumstances, a man is still a man. Assuming they’re better or even different just because they have more “resources” and come from a different (more “developed”) cultural background is dangerous. If anything, this additional power imbalance can also quickly reinforce the existing imposed social hierarchy that informs cishetero relationships, exposing women to more potential (often “subtle”) abuse. And the idea that a woman from the South will easily fall head over heels because a man is from the North is racist, sexist, and insulting to our intelligence. This trend also makes it harder to know whether there is genuine interest or if it’s just fetishization and conditioning. We are all too familiar with how seeing more good in men than there actually is can quickly turn into wasting years of life in detrimental relationships.
Some might choose to believe men are not doing any of this with intent. Frankly, it doesn’t matter, and I don’t care. The era when we coddled men’s feelings and gave them the benefit of the doubt is behind us. The system they’ve built has created a bunch of grown-ass men aggressively collecting passport stamps like they’re collecting fucking Olympic medals and expecting you to put on your grown-woman shoes to “show them around,” a service they would hire another stranger for if you were not available. They can plan, book, and pay for trips around the world, but finding a vegan gluten-free restaurant for dinner is too much work. Their excuse? “I’d know how to do this if we were back home.” I guess they must not feed themselves when abroad.
And it doesn’t matter if they’ve just made it to town or have been around for years. They will tell you to eat at your place so it’s easier (for them) before meeting up at a park (you have to find) to “chat.” Even when you provide them with some of your favorite options (e.g. restaurants, activities) that they could plan around, they “joke” about how they prefer to invest more effort in the subsequent dates because you might end up not liking them once you meet, anyway (see how they deflect and manipulate by trying to come across as a little bit insecure, but only end up telling on themselves? Yikes!). Wrong, Chad. I already do not like you - that’s my starting point because you’re a man. You’re being assessed from the moment you uttered the first hello, and if you’re not making any effort to make me even a bit curious about you, what makes you think I will grant you even a first date? Why would I leave my house if there is no incentive at all? Not even an initial effort and safe food that might compensate a bit for the potentially poor company.
Why would I want to meet someone who treats accommodating my dietary needs like a burden? And this is where the layers can quickly start adding up. As a Black disabled woman who needs accommodations even to be able to consider leaving my house and reduce the anticipatory anxiety of meeting with a stranger who will possibly dismiss my boundaries (and could kill me, btw), I’m already doing more physical, mental, and emotional work when I choose to date or just show up. So, if I have to figure out where to go, possibly translate your order for you because you can’t speak the local language, and probably also entertain some inappropriate bullshit at some point from someone I do not know at all, again, why would I leave my house? Why would I actively choose to make my life harder? Not to mention that they also usually expect you to sleep with them and will ask you to split a $50 bill, before they pack their bags and go back home - you might never hear from them again. Like one of my favorite content creators, The Slumflower, always says, dating men is a choice. And I’d rather choose to unmatch every single time.
And again, these behaviors are not exclusive to foreign men dating abroad, but their being tourists or expats adds another layer of power imbalance in their interactions with local women. It all looks like cute and “exotic” dating preferences when it’s really labor extraction and racism disguised as cultural exchange. As a Black immigrant woman, I could never afford (or even pretend) not to figure out how to get around, especially in a new city - that’s the difference between survival (immigrating) and privileged choice (temporary/permanent tourism). What this continues to reveal is that while men get to carefully pack their sexism, ableism, and racism to carry their low effort approach to relationships across countries, women are expected to manage everything that requires work and bridge the gaps created by men, even across borders.
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This essay was originally published on my Substack newsletter, Unmapped Poetics. Subscribe here for essays on literature, diaspora, and politics that challenge dominating narratives.
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