Sexual Labor

The journal Sexualities came out with a special topic this Spring. It was dedicated to a variety of questions about sexual labor. Sexual Labor is a term the editors use to go beyond a debate around sex work. Sex work, they argue, was a term coined to remove the stigma from prostitution. Not all prostitution is forced and that is why we talk about it as work. (That there are other forms of sex work besides prostitution is something the editors ignore.)

The term Sexual Labor instead focuses our attention to a different field of study, that of labor studies. Rather than seeing sex work in the framework of sexuality studies, the articles in this journal suggest that we should also use a labor studies approach with its focus on labor practices, economics and legal frameworks.

How Silencing Condemns the Victims and Supports Local Politics

If any one theme permeates all 8 articles in this journal, it is that of silence. Denise Brennan begins the discussion by reviewing why she had such difficulty finding formerly trafficked persons for her study. This article immediately shows how a labor studies perspective helps us understand more about the lives of trafficked persons.

The experiences of trafficked persons cannot be understood outside of the context of migration experiences. And migrant experiences can only be fully understood in the broader context of labor issues. Exploitation of migrant workers, both documented and undocumented, creates an atmosphere where forced labor can flourish.

Anti-immigrant policies maintain the circumstances in which sex trafficking can operate. This is an important turn around of the usual arguments. Rather than blaming migration for unsound labor practices, Brennan shows that without the exploitation of migrant workers, forced labor, including sexual slavery, cannot exist.

Trafficked persons have a unique experience because they fear that if they leave, they will be hurt or their families will be hurt. Whatever the work is that they do, they live in fear and silence.

Breaking this silence is more difficult now than several years ago, because of a backlash against undocumented migrants and the push to deport them. This increases the fear among the trafficked persons, since they cannot be sure how they will be treated once they come forward.

Furthermore, trafficking has become synonymous with sex-trafficking.Recent media attention has focused on American victims who now need to be rescued. The attention on sex-trafficking has thus made it more difficult to find other trafficked persons. Brennan is clear in pointing out how necessary it is to fight sex-trafficking.

However, the privileging of American victims over other victims of trafficking has had the consequence of further isolating trafficked migrants in other labor markets. And this plays into the hands of anti-immigration politicians.

Felicity Schaeffer-Gabriel explores further how the focus on sex trafficking removes attention from the exploitation of migrant workers in the US. Instead, the specter of sexual slavery of innocent women functions to absolve the US from complicity in several ways.

First of all, US authorities maintain an implicit distinction between freedom in capitalist countries and slavery in others. We conveniently forget the historical roots in slavery of the US economy. In fact at times, former president Bush made an explicit distinction between the freedom loving world and socialist countries such as Cuba. After all, he stated, only in countries like Cuba could we see propaganda about the cleanliness of prostitutes.

Even anti-trafficking organizations collaborate in silencing victims. They depict these women always as silent. Silent victims solicit more support for the cause, and it has the inadvertent effect of preventing these women from speaking for themselves.

Parreñas Shimizu's article on sexual slavery and gonzo porn investigates how silent the Asian women depicted in pornography truly are. Gonzoporn is a specific genre of pornography, shot in South-East Asia. It typically depicts western men holding a camera as they visit brothels and seek out the sexual services of prostitutes.

The tendency is great to see all women portrayed in gonzo porn as victims. The author wonders whether this is not limiting our view of what these women are doing. She states that even though there are real limits on the possibility of expression for these women, they do seek to find places for authentic self expression within the framework allowed by the filmmakers.

What Does the Term Labor Help Us Understand?

This journal discusses several different types of sexual labor. It is not entirely clear how these different treatments of this term work together. Becki Ross, Mireille Miller-Young and Alyssa Garcia discuss sex workers in a more or less familiar manner and place these sex workers in historical, racial and class analyses. These analyses highlight how certain groups of sex workers are often pitted against other minorities, often in sexual terms.

Miller-Young describes the racial discrimination faced by Black porn actresses. Becki Ross describes how a gay community in Vancouver targets sex workers as the enemies of their middle class aspirations. Both of these articles take a historical view of their subject.

Garcia does this as well as she explains that the treatment of sex workers in Cuba is not new, but is in fact a continuation of mistreatment that occurred before the Cuban revolution.

Cuba is now, as it was then, dependent on tourism for currency and the sex industry lures many visitors from abroad. Sex workers are placed on heavy scrutiny because the boon to tourism is also the bane to the country's reputation, in the eyes of the ruling elite.

Gender Labor

Jane Ward discusses an entirely different form of labor: Gender Labor. Gender labor is the work that one gender does in order to validate the gender identity of another. In Ward's article, femme lesbians who have relationships with transmen work very hard to strengthen these men's sense of a masculine identity.

This is difficult and sensitive work that often ends up reinforcing gender stereotypes. Women serve the men, including in maintaining a masculine identity. Transmen are well aware of the difficult work they require of their female partners and in fact struggle to make sure that the enforcement of their masculine identity does not turn into a sexist disregard of things female.

Kay Hoang highlights a similar type of labor albeit in a totally different context.Her analysis of sex work in Ho Chi Minh City reveals how higher paid sex workers do greater emotional work for their clients. Lower paid workers are under no obligation to express any kind of emotional interest in their clients.

Higher paid workers on the other hand earn that distinction to a significant extent by showing "genuine" interest in the client and by providing a kind of rarified privilege. Of all the men this sex worker could spend time with, the actual client feels special of the being the one. Wealthier patrons not only have access to better paid sex workers, they also have access to a greater spectrum of emotional expressions than poorer men.

Sexual Labor and Politics

Three articles do most in placing sexuality in the context of labor discussions. Brennan, as discussed, shows that highlighting American victims of sex trafficking silences all trafficked persons from abroad, regardless of the industry they work in.

Schaeffer-Gabriel does a close reading of the meaning associated with sex trafficking, sexual slavery and victimhood. The ahistorical use of these terminologies has the effect of suggesting that the United States is characterized by benign capitalism and associates slavery with non-western countries instead of its own history. Efforts to prevent sex trafficking create a dichotomy that serves the west and ends up justifying anti-immigration and nativist sentiments.

Another dichotomy, between victims of sex trade and "bad" women who choose prostitution, ends up justifying similar anti-immigration sentiments. This is the argument that Parreñas Shimizu suggests, though does not substantiate. She offers the possibility that women in particular forms of pornography find ways to express their agency which we might be able to read around the fringes of the genre. Such a viewing of pornography can then dissolve the dichotomy that helps none of the women involved.

Breaking Silence?

The emphasis on silence in this journal ends up highlighting that most authors don't tell stories about the people they investigate. The articles are all of a significant theoretical character and very few sex workers, femmes, trafficked persons or others are actually visible in these texts. Miller-Young and Kay Hoang do most in letting their respondents speak. Their articles are also immediately the most memorable, even though they are the last two in the roster.

The strength of the social sciences (in which I include history), lies in well researched case studies, not in theoretical exposés. It is painful to see social scientists decry the silencing of a specific group of people and at the same time not make an attempt to let these people have their own voice.

Even Miller-Young cannot escape the impression that her own analysis is more important than what the women she speak with have to say for themselves. Her analysis is all over the issues of hegemonic representation. However, this does not reflect the immediate concerns of the women she speaks with, who speak mostly about inequalities in pay based on racial grounds.

Parreñas Shimizu is perhaps the most egregious offender. She posits that the women in gonzo porn express themselves, but never explains what it is they are saying. In fact, I am not entirely sure that the author actually watched a gonzoporn movie. I assume she did, but a real analysis of expression by a woman in such a film is completely absent. When she states that women's "engagements with the camera tell a very different story from the coerced and victimized subject outline in the anti-trafficking law" it is unclear what that engagement looks like and what these women might be saying.

While these articles name the silence, they don't actually help to break the silence.

Concluding Thoughts

The meaning of the term Sexual Labor hasn't gained much clarity in this special issue of the journal Sexualities. I am not even sure that coining this term has raised specific questions in a new way. Do we know something new about sex work, sex trafficking, gender labor, emotional labor, historical oppression of sex workers, something new that we didn't know before? I don't.

The strength of these articles lies in the discussion of silence around several significant groups of people. The articles highlight how sex trafficking end up serving local political goals rather than save the trafficked persons (if I am permitted to use this term "save"). And so in the end, we once more realize that politics serves its own purposes. Politics does not end up serving the interests of those in need.

Sexualities: Abstracts: April 2010, Volume 13, No. 2

Thoughts on Finding and Assisting Individuals in Forced Labor in the USA

Denise Brennan

Georgetown University, USA, brennade@georgetown.edu

This article draws from interviews with formerly trafficked persons who have resettled in the USA. It has not been easy finding trafficked persons in the USA. The author contends that this is due, in part, to a focus of most antitrafficking activities on one industry — the sex industry — to the exclusion of investigations into exploitation of migrant workers in other labor sectors. At the same time, undocumented workers stay quiet about workplace abuses because of a fear of deportation. ICE raids on workplaces where undocumented migrants may labor and the passage of local ordinances that empower local police officers to enforce immigration laws (287g agreements), have increased distrust between law enforcement and migrant communities. Forced underground, migrants working in vulnerable situations will be harder to find and to assist. This environment of threat shapes the resettlement of formerly trafficked persons since they typically enter the same low-wage, insecure and possibly exploitative work after being trafficked. More meaningful rights-based alliances with community-based organizations that focus on migrants’ rights is a critical step to preventing forced labor and to assisting formerly trafficked persons. The fight against trafficking is a fight for migrants’ rights.

Key Words: forced labor • resettlement of formerly trafficked persons • trafficking • USA

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 139-152 (2010)

Sex Trafficking as the ‘New Slave Trade’?

Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel

University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, fsg@ucsc.edu

This article analyzes the United Nation’s media branding of sex trafficking as the ‘New Slave Trade’. The association of forced sex with migrant women as slavery galvanizes a broad contingency against trafficking and broadens the power of the state to intervene in sexual activity under the jurisdiction of national security. Under the guise of national security, the media campaigns’ focus on slavery moralizes stronger border protection and the surveillance of migrants in order to prevent criminal networks and regimes of slavery from penetrating the pure boundaries of the USA nation-state.

Key Words: criminality • media • migration • sex trafficking • slavery

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 153-160 (2010)

Screening Sexual Slavery? Southeast Asian Gonzo Porn and US Anti-Trafficking Law

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

University of California at Santa Barbara, USA, shimizu@asamst.ucsb.edu

Do videotaped scenes of Southeast Asian prostitutes intimately engaging western sex tourists provide evidence of victimization by sex trafficking? Scenes presented in popular ‘gonzo’ or professional—amateur pornography of Southeast Asian sex tourism tell a more complex story that requires a critical visual reading practice not only of prostitution but of pornography and slavery. Looking at the particular case of the sexual imaging of Asian women, I show how we need to develop ways of critical reading that do not simply diagnose pornography as racism, prostitution as victimization, or sex as slavery, but as complex scenes of power, agency, and difference. I illustrate the historical use of Asian women’s images to establish how sexuality is tied to racial sexual difference and interrogate scenes of gonzo porn in which the prostitutes engage the camera. I argue that by employing ‘intimate literacy’, we can attend to what the prostitute might be saying through pornography.

Key Words: Asian/American women • gonzo pornography • representation • sex trafficking • Southeast Asian sex tourism

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 161-170 (2010)

Continuous Moral Economies: The State Regulation of Bodies and Sex Work in Cuba

Alyssa Garcia

Pennsylvania State University, USA, adg10@psu.edu

Contemporary debates regarding sex work in Cuba pose a simplistic opposition between pre-revolutionary prostitution before 1959 and Special Period jineterismo in the 1990s, obfuscating the links between these periods and denying the legacy of the Cuban state’s discipline of women’s bodies. This article situates jineterismo amidst a historical context to explore the phenomena as a continuous practice of state regulation of sex work and women’s bodies in Cuba. Despite the structural changes initiated by the Revolution, I demonstrate the persistence of state forms of bodily regulation both ideologically and materially from the colonial and republic period, early revolutionary campaigns, through contemporary Cuba. I highlight how notions of morality and honor, dependent on particular invocations of race, gender, and sexuality, have fueled state regulatory projects before and after the Revolution in Cuba. Cuban women’s bodies were/are pathologized and constructed as deviant and in turn policed by the state, both materially and discursively.

Key Words: body • Cuba • gender • honor • morality • race • sex work • the state

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 171-196 (2010)

Sex and (Evacuation from) the City: The Moral and Legal Regulation of Sex Workers in Vancouver’s West End, 1975—1985

Becki L. Ross

University of British Columbia, Canada, Becki@interchange.ubc.ca

For more than a century, prostitution in Vancouver, British Columbia has been at the centre of legal and political debate, policing, media coverage, and policy-making. From 1975 to 1985, a heterogeneous, pimp-free community of sex workers lived and worked on and around Davie Street in the city’s emerging ‘gay’ West End. Their presence sparked a vigorous backlash, including vigilante action, from multiple stake-holders intent on transforming the port town into a ‘world class city’ and venerable host of the World’s Fair, ‘Expo 1986’. In this article, drawing from interviews and archival material, I examine the abolitionist strategies adopted by Vancouver’s residents’ groups, business owners, politicians, and police to criminalize street solicitation and evacuate prostitutes who, in small numbers, ‘whorganized’ to fight back. The collective disavowal of sex workers as citizens was premised on the ‘cleansing’ of the zone under siege, which became whitened and made safe for bourgeois (queer) capitalism, with lethal consequences for outdoor sex workers in the city.

Key Words: expulsion • homonormative • moral regulation • neo-liberalism • sex work

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 197-218 (2010)

Putting Hypersexuality to Work: Black Women and Illicit Eroticism in Pornography

Mireille Miller-Young

University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, mmilleryoung@femst.ucsb.edu

This article focuses on the labor marginalization of black female performers within the pornography industry. Their representations and experiences as sex workers are shaped by a racialized and gendered sexual commerce where stereotypes, structural inequalities, and social biases are the norm. Black women are devalued as hyperaccessible and superdisposable in an industry that simultaneously invests in and ghettoizes fantasies about black sexuality. In light of feminist arguments against the victimization of women by pornography, I have attempted to show that black sex workers, while facing multiple axes of discrimination and harm, also employ hypersexuality and illicit eroticism to achieve mobility, erotic autonomy, and self-care.

Key Words: black women • discrimination • pornography • sexuality • sex work

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 219-235 (2010)

Gender Labor: Transmen, Femmes, and Collective Work of Transgression

Jane Ward

University of California, Riverside, USA, jane.ward@ucr.edu

This article takes femme/FTM sexual relationships as a point of departure to consider gender itself as a form of labor, or to illustrate how gender subjectivities are constituted by various labors required of, and provided by, intimate others. Analysis focuses on the work that women do in relationships with transgendered men, specifically the work that they do to validate and celebrate their partners’ masculinity. ‘Gender labor’ extends beyond the work people do to achieve our own gender coherence; it also describes emotional, physical, and sexual care-taking efforts aimed at suspending self-focus and helping others achieve the varied forms of gender recognition they long for. Though gender labor is both given and received by all people, the author argues that it weighs down most heavily on feminine subjects, the people for whom caring, sex and other ‘labors of love’ are naturalized, expected or forced.

Key Words: femme • FTM • gender • labor • transgender

Sexualities, Vol. 13, No. 2, 236-254 (2010)

Economies of Emotion, Familiarity, Fantasy, and Desire: Emotional Labor in Ho Chi Minh City’s Sex Industry

Kimberly Kay Hoang

University of California, Berkeley, USA, kayhoang@berkeley.edu

This article examines the contemporary sex industry in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a country that has undergone rapid economic restructuring over the past 20 years. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic field research between June 2006 and August 2007, I analyze and compare the relationships between sex workers and their clients in three different sectors of HCMC’s sex industry. The low-end sector caters to local Vietnamese men; the mid-tier sector services overseas white men; and the high-end sector provides services to overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu) men. I incorporate Arlie Hochschild’s theory of emotional labor to illustrate how women in the low-end sector engage in forms of repressive emotional labor while women in the mid-tier and high-end sectors engage in different expressive forms of emotional labor. The patterning of emotional labor in these relationships illuminates the broader structural conditions that shape the range of choices sex workers have in relation to their clients.

Key Words: emotional labor • ethnography • prostitution • sex work • Vietnam