Even the quest for liberating Eastern sex became a regulated mass-market commodity

Evidence

What they looked for often—correctly, I think—was a different type of sexuality, perhaps more libertine and less guilt-ridden; but even that quest, if repeated by enough people, could (and did) become as regulated and uniform as learning itself. In time “Oriental sex” was as standard a commodity as any other available in the mass culture, with the result that readers and writers could have it if they wished without necessarily going to the Orient. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 488

Categorization

• SEED: An angle: how the pursuit of ‘authenticity’ or transgression itself gets commodified and standardized once enough people repeat it — a pattern transferable to modern wellness tourism, ‘authentic travel,’ or spiritual appropriation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 488
• XREF: connects to: Sexual freedom becomes a market value serving work relations. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 330