Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with sex tourists in San José, Costa Rica, this article explores the connections between masculinity and the production of value in sex tourism. I argue that in the context of increasing opportunities for travel and technological innovations, North American masculine identities have become transnational, including for non-elite men. Sex tourists’ descriptions of their experiences reveal that they are involved in a contradictory search for a masculine identity that is simultaneously progressive and hegemonic, one that relies not only on sex workers but also on a critique of the masculinity of Costa Rican men and other tourists. This article also suggests that sex tourism is best understood as a relational economy, in that the encounters between sex tourists and sex workers produce value that is simultaneously economic, embodied, and emotional, including the possibility of temporarily enhanced social status.
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