Doing sexual risk in the Dutch Navy in colonial Curaçao

In this study we explore the relationship between Dutch militarism and brothel visits by members of the Dutch Royal Navy in Curaçao from the 1960s to the 1980s. The encounters of these navy personnel with Latin American sex workers in the brothel Campo Alegre took place within a context of Dutch colonialism and within a tradition of institutionalised sex work and regulated tolerance. In the article the role of the Dutch colonial government in the institutionalisation and medical regulation of sex work on the island will be explored using both data sourced from Dutch colonial archives and qualitative interview data from oral history interviews with 10 men who were stationed in Curaçao with the Dutch navy. These interviews provide insights into how the management of sexual risk related to the non-conforming sexual behaviour of these men. In this article we adopt a social constructionist approach to risk to emphasise how risk can be perceived as both a power relation and a form of doing. The meanings of militarised masculinity were upheld and challenged in the daily brothel visits and masculinity became enmeshed with age and race in the daily sexual encounters with Latin American sex workers, resulting in a complex and contradictory hybrid form of masculinity. As sex work clients these men transgressed societal norms of respectable masculinity and heteronormative notions of sexuality; at the same time their transgressive behaviour was compensated by their risky behaviour which contributed to a reinforcement of their masculinity within their peer group.