The Naked Anthropologist

Tag Archives: sexuality

Is swinging (not) part of the sex industry?

Some people think swinging and polyamory have nothing to do with the sex industry and are offended to be associated with it. In my conception, swinging parties and sex clubs do form part of the industry, because money is exchanged for opportunities to have, watch, smell and listen to sex – one’s own and others. The managers of venues often provide possible partners for your pleasure – sex workers. And, on the other hand, many customers in sex-industry bars and clubs spend time and money without ever buying ‘sex’ itself. The lines supposedly dividing these different entertainment enterprises are very blurred.

When people are offended by this inclusion, it means they think the sex industry is something negative. Since I don’t see it as negative, I’m not insulting anyone who’s associated with it. Rather, I’m engaged in figuring out how and why people think they can differentiate between commercial and non-commercial sex. As far as I can see, after studying it for many years, there’s no way to clearly separate them. Which is a result! It’s a result to find out that the separate categories they teach us about aren’t true, or are, at least, questionable. If you’re more interested in this, consider the cultural study of commercial sex, in its original conception and then later.

Morrissey’s original article moves from Ireland to Berlin and includes many entertaining details. Here I’ve excerpted only the bits most relevant to the sex industry.

More sex with strangers, The Independent (Ireland)

By Deirdre Morrissey, 30 August 2009

. . . I asked Dominique how she came to open a sex club that hosts parties with titles such as Angel in Bondage, Saturday Night Fuck and Circus Bizarre. “Sex is one of the most interesting aspects of my life. I study it, I talk about it, I do it and I teach it,” said Dominique, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “In 1984, when I was 17,” she continued,

“I started working as a table dancer. Then later I began working as a dominatrix, and shortly afterwards I found out that my mother also worked as a dominatrix. So, the sex industry is in my blood. When I was 20, my mother wanted to retire. . . But she reluctantly agreed to manage my S&M studio and leave punishing the slaves up to me. It was hugely successful: 10 years later we had a thriving family business with 20 girls working full-time.

“Then, four years ago,” she says, “myself and my partner were . . . at the most notorious sex resort in the world, Hedonism, in Jamaica. While lying in a hammock one day, we looked at each other and decided to open our own fantastic sex club back home in Berlin. . . where the primary focus would be on creating an environment where visitors, all driven by the same longings and desires, could meet to enact erotic fantasies and sexual dreams.”

. . . From the exterior, the club could be mistaken for somebody’s home except for the name Insomnia over the door. . . . Rory paid a cute brunette kitted out in provocative lingerie and high heels a cover charge of €20 for the two of us — very reasonable, given the nature of the club. . . . We went up a few steps and into this huge, red-lit ballroom with a ceiling that reached for the sky. A huge dance floor, with a bar down one side, was littered with deviants. Hardcore porn was being projected onto a massive, 40ft cinema screen overlooking the dance floor. Topless bartenders were shaking cocktails and above the bar was a mural of a giant, cartoonised, glammed-up orgy. . . .

The dance floor is where the foreplay takes place, but little adjoining rooms are where the real action is. A couple of scary girls had a big henchman stripped down to a red thong. The muscles on his arm bulged out either side of a thick metal armband and he wore a studded metal collar around his neck. He was bound in chains and while one of the girls was whipping him, the other tightened his leash each time he howled. . . . In the jacuzzi a couple were having fun while their respective partners watched.

A crowd was gathered around some action in a little side room. . . Some kind of operation was being performed on a girl who lay completely exposed and bound to a medical contraption of some sort. . . . a mezzanine level overlooking the dance floor. The entire area was taken up by several enormous tented beds occupied by couples, threesomes, foursomes and, in some cases, whole teams. . . .

Adult entertainment, Licensing, Dance, Burlesque, Sex, Camden

A few years ago I did research on how sex-licensing works in Westminster, the London borough where Soho, Mayfair and Shepherd’s Market are located. The Licensing Act of 2003 (which applies only to England and Wales) streamlined several different licensing schemes into one, authorising local governments to grant a single premises licence to sell alcohol and provide forms of regulated entertainment. The four basic objectives to be taken into account when granting licences are: the prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, prevention of public nuisance and the protection of children from harm.

Businesses and entertainment conceived as sexual (because of the parts of the body that get exposed) must be declared and submit to regulation: sex shops, peep shows, stripping, lap-dancing, pole-dancing, table dancing. Places that have these licences are referred to as Sex (Encounter) Establishments. Gentlemen’s clubs, strip pubs and other venues are included. Regulated activities may allow near nudity but prohibit dancers from standing closer than a metre/3 feet from customers. Regulations always prohibit touching.

Each local authority grants its own licences, which is what the following note from Camden, another borough of London, is about. When I was doing research, Camden had a large number of licensed premises offering sex entertainment. The current issue is whether the Council will include burlesque in the conception of entertainment that must be regulated as sexual.

Camden Council Statement on burlesque
Date: 29/7/09

Camden Council is not preventing burlesque performances in any premises in the borough, it embraces the diverse entertainment on offer in Camden.

Our concern is to ensure proper regulation of the premises proposing to offer licensable activity. Our focus is on the premises – not the performers. It is the responsibility of the venue’s licence holder to ensure they have the correct permission for the event they are hosting.

Burlesque performance in its widest form can include various art forms and this alone would not require a licence. The Council’s concern is with any performance which may involve nudity. The Council looks at each application on an individual basis to assess what type of licence is required.

The Council has met with the burlesque community in response to their concerns and agreed to seek a clearer understanding of what constitutes adult entertainment. This will help define what reasonable measures premises should put in place prior to adult entertainment being performed.

A further meeting between the Council and the Institute is scheduled to take place in September 2009.

More discussion at Save Burlesque in Camden

Recently I wrote about the New York School of Burlesque.

Cross-dressing, Cosplay and the Sex Industry

Cosplay is costume play, common to sex and sex work both. Connexions to the sex industry are highlighted in bold. This is an example of the blurry area between commercial and non-commercial sex, where ‘workers’ can be lovers and friends, and vice-versa.

Japanese Cosplay and the Sex Industry

Japanese Cosplay is about the person becoming a chosen character or idea. The person looks and acts exactly like the character they are portraying. You become a specified character in order to become a cosplayer. The sky is the limit, if you can dream it you can become it. Cosplaying is about having fun.

Japan and most other countries have participated in cross dressing as well as cosplay in the sex industry. This is an age old practice where costumes have been used for sexual practices, and dressing up is used for sexual play which is commonly known as a sexual fetishism.

In Japan as well as other countries there are special facilities where you can rent costumes for a night of ecstasy and passion. Specialized facilities like hotels or inns cater only for the sex industry. The costumes you can hire for the occasion range from school uniforms, nursing outfits, or whatever suits your fetish they will accommodate you with the outfit you request.

The Japanese cosplay industry has long been the home to professional cosplayers since the rise of Comiket the Tokyo Game Show, as well as other conventions, there is a misconception that cosplay is specific only to Japan. The term Cosplay is from Japanese origin but this flamboyant occupation is now supported by practicing fans globally.

Terms and conditions have been set by cosplay groups, that whatever character you have chosen to dress up as, you have to become the character, in words, action and nature. Japanese cosplay is not only dressing up and acting out, there are also a rich culture as well as tradition behind the character they have chosen to portray.

However there are costumes worn without any conviction by Japanese cosplayers that westerners would not consider wearing as it would be culturally not correct like a Nazi uniform or any other uniforms worn by dictators in the past. Japanese cosplay does not only cover specified role playing but covers all kinds of obsessive fandom.

Burlesque in New York and the Exotic World

I met Jo Weldon more than ten years ago; I think Priscilla Alexander introduced us. The last time I saw Jo was at the Miss Exotic World contest in Las Vegas last year and all I got to do was give her a hug because she was hurrying to a judges’ meeting while I was waiting on line. Other highlights of our relationship include eating tuna-melt sandwiches while discussing threesomes and watching Betty Dodson’s Viva La Vulva!.

If you live in New York, you’ve got the opportunity to attend Jo’s School of Burlesque and learn, among other things:

the sexy shimmy
the tantalizing glove peel
the devastating bump n grind
the dazzling tassel-twirl

Burlesque has never stopped being popular, but for some reason commentators are always saying it’s ‘new’ or ‘under revival’. I often think that the ‘newness’ story is about our being able to know more about everything now that we’ve got the internet, youtube, facebook and so on. Anyway, here’s a CBS report from last year about Jo’s school:

Another ever-contentious element of talks about burlesque involve whether doing it is sex work or not; whether burlesque dancers and strippers are sex workers; whether there is a hierarchy in which some kinds of dance are lower and more sexual (lap dancing is named) while others are more artistic. Jo always says she loves them all.

By the way, when I left the Exotic World contest I was hoarse from cheering so much.

What Not to Wear if you want to be French, and other tales of sex and women

On Monday Sarkozy threatened to make wearing a burka in public illegal in France. I wrote about this kind of thinking last year in The Guardian. This issue is related to migration, it is related to trafficking and it is related to commercial sex. Ideas about how the right kind of women should look predominate in the history of women: you’re meant to cover yourself up more, or less, or in some particular way. From the original text of Sarkozy’s speech:

Le problème de la burqa n’est pas une problème religieux, c’est un problème de liberté, de dignité de la femme. Ce n’est pas un signe religieux, c’est un signe d’asservissement, d’abaissement. La burqa ne sera pas la bienvenue dans notre République française.

From the BBC story:

We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity. That is not the idea that the French republic has of women’s dignity.

Note the applause from politicians when he makes these statements.

Women wearing burkas are not welcome in France. That ‘Frenchness’ should depend on clothing I find very scary. That the idea of personal identity should be institutionalised by the French state I find even scarier. The original title of the following piece was Which migrants assimilate best? How do we know?, which editors changed to

What Not to Wear – if you want to be French

The Guardian, Comment is Free, 6 August 2008

Laura Agustín

A woman from Morocco who has lived in France for eight years with a French husband, has three French children and speaks fluent French, was refused citizenship recently on grounds of being insufficiently assimilated. The Conseil d’etat said Faiza Silmi’s way of life does not reflect “French values”, particularly the goal of gender equality. The judgment claims she lives in “total submission” to the men in her life because she wears the niqab, which covers all of the face except the eyes. The decision was approved by commentators from right, left and centre. Fadela Amara, the urban affairs minister, called Silmi’s clothing a “prison” and a “straitjacket”. Predictable debates about fundamentalism unfolded in the media, with Silmi appearing as a strange, distant object.

What does Silmi herself say? The website Jeuneafrique.com has just published her first interview with the French press, corroborating another in the New York Times. Silmi’s voice emerges clearly:

I am not submissive to the men in my family nor do I lead the life of a recluse and I go out when I want. When I drive my car, I wear my niqab. I alone decided to wear it, after reading some books. I respect the law and my husband respects my decisions.

While she talked, her husband served tea. Continue reading →

Good Sex, Bad Sex: Sex Law, Crime and Ethics

I am in Budapest. Good Sex, Bad Sex: Sex Law, Crime and Ethics is the first conference I’ve been interested in attending in a long time. I swore off the whole conference genre for a while, but the description of this one caught my eye, so I got in touch with two very interesting minds and we proposed a panel. It’s a small event, 35 or so people, and no competing sessions, so you can actually relax and reflect on everything you hear. Our session is:

Monday 4th May 2009, 1600

Session 2: Breathing New Life into Old Fears: Cultural Studies of Prostitution, Pornography and Bad Sex

This panel will explore continuing impulses to criminalise and prohibit forms of ‘bad’ sexual practice. The three papers examine continuities and transformations in recent regulatory impulses to ‘protect’ the ‘innocent’ and the public from individual instances of bad sexual conduct. We ask whether fixed ethical frameworks, with concomitant laws, are appropriate in an age where diversity, autonomy and agency are prime values.

The Evil is in Paying: Sex with ‘Trafficked Women’
Laura Agustin

Prominent politicians and feminists have come to maintain that paying for sex with a ‘victim of trafficking’ is a heinous crime equivalent to violent rape. All migrant workers in the sex industry are considered subject to ‘serial rape’ and ‘sexual slavery’. The movement purposely conflates all prostitution with ‘trafficking’ and attacks those who disagree as pimps and anti-feminists. The justification is Gender Equality, a utopic vision that defines good sex as symmetrical, mutual, personally close, loving and equitable. Resulting laws criminalise the buying of sex on the grounds that introducing money creates a power relationship antithetical to the right kind of sex. This paper posits a different ethical vision in which money is not granted defining status in sexual acts.

Going to Extremes: Understanding New Online Pornographies
Feona Attwood

Online pornographies increasingly provide a focus for debates about permissible and impermissible sexual practices and about good and bad representations of sex. They have also become the focus of broader concerns with ‘extreme’ images of the body, for example in the horror subgenre which has been dubbed ‘torture porn’, in images of real violence and conflict (sometimes referred to as ‘warporn’ or ‘atrocity porn’), and in the wider set of ‘shock’ images which proliferate online. This paper considers the significance of contemporary concerns about extreme online pornographies in a cultural context where norms of sexuality and notions of obscenity are fiercely contested and where the circulation of sexual imagery is more prevalent than ever before.

Five Dominatrices and a Thrashing: the Classifications of Sadomasochism
Clarissa Smith

During 2008 two of the UK’s most august institutions resounded to discussion of activities involving pain and sexual pleasure: the House of Lords debated the rights of British citizens to possess images of ‘extreme’ sexual practices and the High Court was regaled with tales of supposed Nazi orgies starring Max Mosley (Formula 1 President and son of British wartime fascist Sir Oswald Mosley) and five women he had paid to beat him. The rights and wrongs of sadomasochism, consensual violence and the commodification and commercialisation of sexual desire were thoroughly aired across the media. This paper will consider the multiple meanings of sadomasochism and other ‘extreme’ sexual practices in public discourse and the continuing failures of the legislature to understand such practices as anything other than evidence of deviant or irrational impulses.

Paying to watch brothel sex: voyeurs, exhibitionists and reality sex tv

Here’s a sex business with one traditional feature and one I hadn’t run into before. The company, Big Sister, provides you the opportunity to watch other people having sex, either live or filmed. Nothing new about that. What’s different is the sex scenes are filmed at a brothel where

none of the attending guests (males or couples) to the club have to pay to have their desires fulfilled. Instead, they have to agree to consent to be televised and grant all the marketing rights to Big Sister Media for distribution across all media channels. . . Our current library consists of over 18.000 exclusive scenes to date.

The shows have been called reality sex tv. Those who want to watch pay monthly subscription fees (said to be 29.95 euros a year ago). The website claims to get 10,000 to 15,000 hits a day.

As with other kinds of reality television, traditional entertainment models – professional performers on one side, audience on the other – are blurred. The customer (or exhibitionist) becomes the performer for other customers (voyeurs). At the same time, professional sex workers are employed in a traditional sense. Here are some excerpts from coverage by Bloomberg.com about the brothel itself:

Free Sex at Prague Brothel Tests Taboo as Reality Romps Hit Web

By Douglas Lytle and Yon Pulkrabek, 10 Jan 2008

The 36-year-old bank-security technician drove eight hours from his home in Metz, France, to Big Sister, a Prague brothel where customers peruse a touch-screen menu of blondes, brunettes and redheads available for free. The catch is clients have to let their exploits be filmed and posted on the Internet. . .

Visitors to Big Sister start at the electronic menu, which provides each woman’s age, height, working name and the languages she speaks. After a customer makes his selection, a manager makes sure the client signs broadcast release forms, and then the intimate details are arranged with the partner for the evening. . .

Big Sister is based in a renovated apartment building just outside the narrow, winding streets of Prague’s Old Town. . .

At the brothel, the Alpine Room is decorated like the backdrop to The Sound of Music with fake Styrofoam rocks and a forest. Other rooms include Heaven, decked out in white, and Hell, which resembles a dungeon. A giant stuffed polar bear watches over proceedings in the Igloo Room. . .

Big Sister has a staff of 25 to 45 women, depending on the season, and 45 workers behind the scenes. Three-quarters of the prostitutes come from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and they make 3,000 to 5,000 euros a month . . . Average wages in the Czech Republic are about 800 euros a month. .

Brothel photos from World War II France

These photos document brothel activity for soldiers in German-occupied France during World War II. The Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) has classified them under Frankreich, Brest, Soldatenbordell. I’m interested in what commercial sex looks like, not in its reductionist meaning of money exchanged for ‘sex acts’ but the whole social context. That means the male bonding, the drinking and laughing and flirting and showing off, and the activities of those employed as providers and enhancers of this male sociality.

Source Deutsches Bundesarchiv. Individual photo captions here, with the following caveat:

For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Factual corrections and alternative descriptions are encouraged separately from the original description. Additionally errors can be reported at this page to inform the Bundesarchiv.

Male sex worker in Kenya with ‘important’ clients

Recently on a history-of-sexuality list, people complained about blanket statements regarding ‘Africans’, given the enormous diversity of people and cultures across the many countries on that continent. I agreed with the complaints, but at the same time I don’t care much for national orientations, either, as though people labelled Kenyan or South African exhibited a set of defining characteristics that can be pinned down, just because they were born there.

The following story is about one man in one city in one country, but for those of us who work in or study the sex industry anywhere in the world, it’s a familiar story. The headline emphasises the social status of the clients – as though it were big news – but there are other interesting details, which I’ve highlighted in bold.

Behind The Mask – a website magazine on lesbian and gay affairs in Africa

kenyan male sex workers serve ‘politicians and religious leaders’
26 January 2009

Nanjala Majale

MOMBASA – 26 January 2009: Panning out to Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya, a young good-looking well-groomed man sits on a bamboo chaise lounge. He is a male sex worker, who caters only for male clientele. He has a slightly bored expression on his face, but is willing to talk about his lifestyle and line of work.

“I don’t know why they think there are only a pocketful of homosexuals in this country”, Brian mused before the interview even started, staring absentmindedly at his nails. “Our main market is not the white tourists who come down here. We cater for people in Nairobi, Meru and even Mandera!” He went on to say, in a slightly feminine tone, that last December he spent the entire month, fully paid, in Nairobi. “I had fun!” Brian enthused.

Brian is one of many male sex workers who cater exclusively to male clients. He regularly attends one of four health centres that serve MSM in the coastal town, set up with the help of the International Centre for Reproductive Health (ICHR) an institution that teaches men about safe sex practices and offers occasional counselling. In a study published in the June 2007 edition of AIDS, researchers estimated that at least 739 MSM were selling sex to other men in and around the city of Mombasa, a “sizeable population that urgently needs to be targeted by HIV prevention strategies,” the research said.

24-year-old Brian says he initially got into the business to make money. “Nowadays sometimes I do it just for pleasure, but mostly it’s for the money. I work only five times a week,” he declared. Asked whether he is a homosexual Brian confided “I was raped by a neighbour when I was about eight years old and from that time I started getting sexual urges – more for men than women. I didn’t take any action after the rape, because I was threatened”, he revealed, explaining that he suffered emotionally for a while before coming to terms with it.

“I started actively going with boys when I was in secondary school. I was in a boarding school and I had about 40 boyfriends during my four years of studying there,” he said with a seemingly shy but proud expression. “I didn’t have sex with all of them, but I liked the romance. After college is when I came out and from then I would look for people who want serious relationships.”

Brian revealed that his first few relationships did not work. “Most people just wanted to have sex and then they would often cheat on me. I have never desired to have a sexual relationship with a woman though. Maybe one day I will, just to try.”

“In my business, I charge about KSH 1,200 per shot. But that’s on the lower side for the younger clients. I only give two shots, once at night and once in the morning. I don’t stretch myself.” “I don’t like old guys,” he confided with a low voice, “so with those ones I charge a bit extra, about KSH 2,500 and that is just for the night.” Brian says that despite the stigma that faces homosexuals, more specifically from society, police, and the church, their clientele is made up of people in these very segments.

It was revealed at a June 2007 conference on Peer Education, HIV and AIDS, in Nairobi, that MSM face high levels of stigma and discrimination. Agnes Runyiri of ICHR said at the forum that homosexuality is considered taboo, un-African and anti-Christian.

“It [homosexuality] is very common. The only problem is stigma. That is why we are scared to come out. But in a real sense, our clients are politicians, businessmen, religious leaders – I’m very sorry to say – but it’s true,” Brian pointed out. Since every business has its own down sides Brian narrated that “sometimes you get bad customers who pay you less than the agreed amount or disappear with your money.”

“Luckily, I have never had a violent customer although I was in a violent relationship once. He used to beat me up and say that it was because I had become naughty, that is why I had to break it off”, he said shrugging.

He also underlined that safe sex is key in his line of work, and even generally with men who have sex with men. “There is a safe clinic [ICHR] that I work with. I started as a peer educator, but since I have a background in journalism, I now work as a counsellor. We have very many gays, who are messing about and they don’t know that they are. We deal with prevention of HIV/AIDS and it is helping because many of us were dying.”

He says it’s unfortunate that homosexuals are mistreated in most health institutions, an issue which he thinks the government should look into. “I wish that the government would sensitise the whole country to accept that this thing [homosexuality] is there and we have to help these guys out. The more we push it under the table, the more we are going to die.”

“What we need is health rights, not even marriage rights because I don’t think even my family would allow me to do that [be a homosexual]. They need sensitisation. People don’t understand that we are normal human beings, it is just that our sexual preferences are different”, he concluded.

Trabajo sexual y derecho al trabajo: Sex work and the right to work

Artículo en castellano sigue abajo. This piece was published in mid-December 2008 in a special edition of Ciudadaniasx (SxCitizenship) called Trabajo sexual: Derechos, estigma y discriminación. In it I talk about the idea of sex work and its use as a base for demanding rights. I’ve added pictures here that are different from those the editors used (and which are more to the point).

Trabajo sexual y derecho al trabajo
Laura Agustín, Ciudadaníasx, N 4, diciembre de 2088

Presentación

Desde los años 70 existe un movimiento social que condena la estigmatización y criminalización del intercambio de sexo y dinero. El movimiento está basado en un concepto de derechos de las personas que venden servicios sexuales, porque son ellas, y no los compradores, quienes han estado – hasta hace poco – persiguidas en todos lados del mundo. La persecución viene tanto de las fuerzas del órden público que quieren encarcelarles como de bienpensantes que quieren rescatarles. Entre los dos, y las leyes que les ningunean, los trabajadores del sexo no viven en paz: sobre todos las mujeres y los y las transgéneros y transexuales.

Estatua de trabajadora sexual en Amsterdam

Después de décadas, las protestas siguen intentando romper el estigma social que mantiene la idea que vender sexo es pecado, perversidad, acto criminal o violación, y la táctica casi universal de los grupos militantes es definir la actividad como un trabajo por el cual existen derechos laborales. Se presentan diferencias entre los contextos sociales de distintos grupos, pero cuando se comparan sus acciones políticas, tanto en Bangkok como en Montreal o Madrid, se ven las mismas quejas y los mismos sueños. Cada vez más las redes se comunican, más participantes hablan más de un idioma y existen programas informáticos y gratuitos que posibilitan la rápida traducción de una noticia a otros idiomas. Pertenecer a esas listas de difusión y utilizar esos sitios web significa ver información que viene de grupos de muchos países, que constituye evidencia de una fuerte comunidad de interés. Entre las redes regionales, algunas son más sólidas y duraderas (Asia-el Pacífico) que otras (América Latina, Africa). Sin embargo, existen nuevas iniciativas que hacen renacer la esperanza incluso en los contextos más criminalizados, como en los Estados Unidos.

Las demandas son las mismas que se sacaban hace décadas. El movimiento que está en contra del concepto del trabajo sexual está bien organizado y enfocado en unas cuantas estrategias, sobre todo la de simplificar lo complejo en un argumento captado rápidamente: que toda prostitución es violencia contra las mujeres, lo cual hay que erradicar. En cambio, el movimiento pro-trabajo sexual ofrece un discurso variopinto, complejo, no reduccionista y difícil de captar rápidamente, inevitable porque desea incluir un sinnúmero de realidades humanas. Dentro del mismo movimiento hay distintos planteamientos sobre cómo se debería proceder, lo cual complica la comprensión por parte de la sociedad en general. Pero todos están de acuerdo con el lema principal: El trabajo sexual es trabajo.

Graffiti en Rosario, Argentina: El trabajo sexual no es delito (foto Pablo Flores)

Instituciones que pueden entender: Los sindicatos

La táctica más estrechamente vinculada a la lucha por el derecho laboral es buscar que algún sindicato general acepte el concepto del trabajo sexual para luego incluir a sus trabajadores en sus actividades convencionales. Ejemplos de esta iniciativa existen en Argentina, donde AMMAR pertenece a la CTA, en Gran Bretaña, donde la IUSW forma parte del GMB, en Cataluña, donde Comisiones Obreras han integrado a estos trabajadores y en California, EEUU, en un club de striptease.

AMMAR es la Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices Argentinas, también llamada Asociación de Trabajadoras Sexuales de Argentina, adherida a la Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos desde el año 1994, con 11 delegaciones en todo el país. IUSW es la International Union of Sex Workers, basada en Londres, fundada en 2000 y afiliada en 2002 con el antes llamado General Municipal Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union (que ahora se llama GMB sin más). Comisiones Obreras es la organización sindical más grande de España, y la mayoría de sus ramas regionales no han llegado a la misma conclusión que la oficina catalán.

En 1997, las bailarinas desnudas y demás empleados de un negocio del tipo peep show en San Francisco, California, logró organizarse como la Exotic Dancers Union y afiliarse al Service Employees International Union. En 2003 los trabajadores formaron un cooperativo después de comprar el negocio, y el sindicato ahora se llama la Lusty Lady Union. Continue reading →

More cultural study of commercial sex, including sex tourism, stripping, rentboys, brothels, courtesans, pornography

In 2005 I proposed a cultural-studies framework for thinking about the sex industry. I then disseminated an announcement calling for articles using the new framework, for a special edition of the journal Sexualities, which publishes work from any academic field that ‘describes, analyses, theorises and provides a critique on the changing nature of the social organisation of human sexual experience in the late modern world.’ Which means the exchange of money for sex can be looked at just the way any other activity involving sex can.

The journal also likes ethnographic work, which means using information gathered amongst specific people in actual places rather than purely theoretical, such as whether you consider prostitution to be inherently exploitative or perverted or harmless or any other abstract term.

Although I received many responses to my announcement, most did not venture far from the traditional focus on the meaning and morality of prostitution, even when they used the term sex work.

Soi Cowboy, Bangkok

I chose eight articles, which then went through the usual academic review process, in which specialists in the fields discussed in the work give their opinions about it. All the articles were examined by at least two and sometimes three or four reviewers, people I found by searching high and low all over the globe. I had reviewers working on these articles in Japan, Australia, Israel, France and a long list of other places. For the same article they did not always agree, however, about whether the articles needed to be modified and how.

The best thing about this special edition is the absence of anything like victimising rhetoric or research results that prove anyone’s misery. Hurrah!

Here’s the Table of Contents for Sexualities, Vol 10, No 4, October 2007. If you have access to academic journals, the link to these pieces is here.

Introduction to the Cultural Study of Commercial Sex: Laura Maria Agustín, Guest Editor
Performance, Status and Hybridity in a Pakistani Red-Light District: The Cultural Production of the Courtesan: Louise Brown
Marketing Sex: US Legal Brothels and Late Capitalist Consumption: Barbara G. Brents and Kathryn Hausbeck
No Money Shot? Commerce, Pornography and New Sex Taste Cultures: Feona Attwood
Rent-Boys, Barflies, and Kept Men: Men Involved in Sex with Men for Compensation in Prague: Timothy M. Hall
Sex Work for the Middle Classes: Elizabeth Bernstein
Shifting Boundaries: Sex and Money in the North-East of Brazil: Adriana Piscitelli
Thinking Critically about Strip Club Research: Katherine Frank
Questioning Solidarity: Outreach with Migrants Who Sell Sex: Laura María Agustín

Below is the full text of my Introduction to the Cultural Study of Commercial Sex (Sexualities 2007; 10; 403). Or here is the pdf. (I’m having trouble with this file; if you need it, write to me on the contact form in the sidebar).

Laura Maria Agustín

The articles in this collection explore how the meaning of buying and selling sex changes according to the social, cultural and historical processes in which transactions are situated. Continue reading →

Sex with animals – another Swedish Model?

The Local is an online newspaper published in Sweden, in English, about Sweden. As some readers of this blog know, legislation that criminalises clients’ purchase of sex but not the sale of it is widely known as the Swedish Model. Two sides of a sociocultural conflict claim opposite effects for this legislation: that it solves the problem of prostitution and that it makes it worse. Research is brought forward to prove both sides and neither is persuaded of the other’s truth.

Sex with animals has, until recently, not been seen as a social problem like prostitution. The following news story illustrates the verging-on-hilarious ease with which THIS topic may be discussed publicly by a government Minister at the same time that talking about the sex industry, sex work and sex workers still causes deep frowns and anxiety for the majority of well-meaning educated Swedes.

My point is that ideas about sex are often not predictable within cultures, as another story, about naturists in Germany, showed. People often dismiss the Swedish law on prostitution as puritanism, but this is not sufficient and explains little. Please note the apparently progressive gender analysis and granting of agency and choice to the female dog who is penetrated by her owner.

Swedish bestiality ring exposed
11 Nov 08

A Swedish newspaper has exposed a network of self-proclaimed zoophiles who meet regularly in locations around the country to have sex with animals.

The group, consisting of an estimated thirty people, is headed by a 45-year-old father of two, Expressen reports.

The unmarried former managing director is also moderator of a large internet animal sex forum and has a number of dogs and horses on his farm in southern Sweden.

Having infiltrated the network over a period of several months, Expressen eventually confronted the 45-year-old over his alleged mistreatment of animals.

But the man was quick to defend his relations with a bitch he bought online from a city-dwelling family who said they wanted the dog to have a better life in the countryside.

“Any of the times I did anything with her she was the one who backed into me and provoked it. She was in heat and made herself available. There were also times later when she didn’t want to and then I backed out immediately,” he told Expressen.

During the time spent with members of the network, Expressen learned that the group regularly brought along a range of different animals to “sex meetings” at rented premises.

There, members of the group filmed their sexual encounters and distributed them to other animal sex enthusiasts.

At one meeting in a small village in Småland, five men waited for a woman who had promised to bring along two dogs. But when she was unable to make it to the meeting, the men spoke instead of their experiences, including a previous visit to a colleague they referred to as “donkey man”.

“He has a goat and a couple of donkeys. We tried with a donkey but it didn’t work. But we did have sex with the goat,” one of the men told Expressen.

Previous calls for a law banning sex with animals have fallen on deaf ears. Agriculture Minister Eskil Erlandsson outraged many observers earlier this year with a graphic defence of existing animal abuse laws, in which he presented examples of the difficulties faced by courts when trying to differentiate affection from abuse.

“Is it, and should it be, legal to spread something on the genitalia that might smell or taste nice to a dog, in order to allow the dog to lick off whatever is spread on the genitalia?

“Should it be permitted to stroke a bitch’s teats with love, or should it be classified as animal sexual abuse?” the minister wondered.

According to the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency, 115 cases of bestiality were reported in the years 2000 to 2005.

Despite indications that many of the animals had sustained injuries, none of the reports led to criminal charges. [end of The Local article]

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Fotos de trabajador@s sexuales en la conferencia de SIDA, DF, Mexico

Fotos de la Conferencia de SIDA en el DF en agosto de 2008. De PJ Starr:

Photos from Mexico (part 1) from PJ Starr on Vimeo.

Tiene otros en inglés sobre reducción de daños, como se define el daño etc. Y no se olviden del performance genial de esa conferencia que se ve aqui.

Talents Needed for Sex Work – a partial list from the year 2000

Yes, okay, I know: that Working in the European Sex Industry piece sounds awkward in English. But I had to publish it since Donna Hughes put it in an academic course.

Here’s the section that people really want to see, a list of some talents required for doing sex work successfully. I get a never-ending stream of job applications because of the original of this article written in Spanish. [For the record, I do not reply to them.]

The lead-up to the list begins ‘Obviously, performing oral sex on a client in a car or in an alley in the rain is not the same as spending a shift inside a club with heating, where you talk and have drinks as well as sex with clients. There are, however, some necessary abilities for carrying out these jobs well, that is, in the most efficient and less problematic manner.’

Here’s the list – whose English I have continued to leave alone. I’m terrible at translating my own writing.

• The essence of the work is giving pleasure to others. The worker who doesn’t want to or can’t do this, no matter how good-looking, will fail. The client wants to feel some kind of pleasure.

• As in other service work, the ability to relate to others is very important. To know how to listen ‘actively’, negotiate, encourage, read the body language of the other, sense what is not said and the psychology of the other. To judge when the other is not all right (and not to confuse this with physical appearance). Capacity to smooth situations and calm violent people, confronting or manipulating them. Also necessary for those who work over the telephone.

• Ability to relate to and come to appreciate people from other cultures or ethnic groups or with values different from one’s own. Diplomacy. Clients may be rejected, but income is lost. Being able to imagine the situation of the other, as much through what he wants to hide as through what he reveals. Understanding more than one language.

• Knowing oneself well is extremely important in sex work. Knowing how to use the body sexually and how to take care of oneself, minimising infections, strains and exhaustion, whether physical, emotional or spiritual. It’s necessary to know when one is tired or with little desire to work, because states of neglect often lead to danger. Self-esteem is essential.

• The worker needs a lack of shame about bodies. To be able to talk about sex and show sexual things. A good sense of humour helps.

• As with the jobs of nurses and stewardesses, it is essential to give the client the sensation that he really is desired, that giving him pleasure or taking care of him matters. This is also necessary for cultivating a loyal clientele, one that comes back. Continue reading →

Working in the European Sex Industry

Working in the European Sex Industry: Migrant Possibilities

Laura Agustín

Translated from the original Trabajar en la industria del sexo, in OFRIM/Suplementos, June 2000. If you read Spanish, read the original, it’s better.

Lautrec’s The Brothel Laundryman

Background to the article

When early in 2000 the editor of a Madrid publication asked me to write an article about migrants who sell sex, she stipulated that she wanted it to be free of moralising. I agreed without for a moment imagining the enormous conflict that would arise when I turned in what to me seemed to be an innocuous, purely descriptive piece. The drama began when a well-known Madrid feminist-bureaucrat found out about the piece and intervened, demanding it be removed – in other words, overt censorship. The editor refused. Delays ensued. The conflict rose in the social-services hierarchy until it reached the councillor at the top, who passed my article to her advisers, who gave it the okay. Several months late, the issue appeared with my piece in it. The censoring femocrat was scandalised and I became famous, or notorious, depending on your point of view. Here it is.

Working in the European Sex Industry: Migrant Possibilities

Migrants who come to work in the European sex industry are of every class, colour, age, ethnicity and nationality, and they are not only women but men and transgender people as well. [1] They arrive via uncountable routes—alone, with friends, in couples or in accompanied groups. Some have money to spend, others arrive indebted. Their documentation may be true or false; some arrive with tourist visas. Many of these people have planned their trips personally over a long time, while others have been presented with an opportunity with little time for planning. Some of these potential travellers had already worked in prostitution in their own country. The great majority, agree sources from all over the world, have understood that their future work will either be prostitution directly or will have a sexual aspect. That is, they have opted for doing sex work.

Before going on I would like to point out that the subject of this essay is not to try to explain why prostitution exists, looking for its causes; nor is it define or judge it within any theoretical framework such as feminism, postmodernism etc. Nor am I going to identify which groups or individuals are found more in this industry and how the involved migratory networks function. Above all I will not be dealing with the question of whether any human being can really ‘choose’ how he works, whether in prostitution or anything else.

I begin with the fact that many migrants doing sexual jobs do not describe themselves as ‘forced’ or without other options in life. They may have fewer options or fewer agreeable options than other people, but they have them. It is also important to point out that among those who suffer from poverty, bad marriages and the entire array of possible causing factors, not all opt for sex work, as not all opt to migrate. No type of determinism can explain completely the human phenomenon of choice. Every choice is intervened by questions of class, gender, ethnicity, economic level and the social conditions at the moment in their country (war, dictatorship, famine, violence, unemployment etc.

Migrants act inside these geopolitical and economic structures and dynamics. The ‘underdeveloped’ countries suffer from the well-known policy of ‘structural adjustment’ imposed by the International Monetary Fund. The feminisation of poverty and migrations exists. Moreover, opportunities seem to be diminishing all the time, even for people with university degrees. However, within all this, migrants take actions and decisions motivated by the desire to live better. These are life-decisions they take when they uproot themselves from their homes, considering themselves brave and adventuresome, including when the future implies sex work.

While the majority of sex workers is female, increasingly they are men, transgenders and boy and girl children. Sexual services are desire also by women and transgenders, and not only by men. In an industry characterised by its ambiguities, it is better not to perpetuate the classical assumption of woman-prostitute/man-client. I will speak in neutral terms whenever possible.

Migrants more than once

These migrants play a transnational role within globalisation processes. Studies of migrations between, for example, the Caribbean and the ‘first world’ describe the powerful mentality of transnational migrants: the conviction of a Jamaican of the 1950s that London was his ‘capital’’ the effort that migrants from Nevis make to conserve the island as their ‘country’ though they live in Brooklyn; the great capacity to exist in two places at once of ‘dominican yorks’ (Hall, Fog Olwig, Guarnizo and others). Businesses engaged in charter flights, messenger services, long-distance phone calls, Internet and electronic transfers of money have much to tell us about these phenomena.

The fact of having a job in the sex industry does not take his transnational role away from a migrant. Moreover, migrant prostitutes are a special phenomenon: It is normal for them not to settle in one place to live. They continue migrating, or, rather, they continue travelling. The sex worker you encounter today in Madrid you may find tomorrow in Paris, next month in Amsterdam and a year later in Spain again. And this is not solely the result of efforts to avoid police controls; there exists a culture in which people want to get to know Europe and which people have their preferred places. Although they are often poor and illegal, many travel in a cosmopolitan fashion.

The European press almost always presents the subject of these trips in terms of deceived victims. In this essay the subject is those who have chosen, inside their possibilities, por a trip ‘arranged’ for a Some have chosen arranged jobs also; they have actively searched for opportunities in their home countries. There are those who have searched for them as well, to sell them trips and jobs in Europe: in this group are agents (known by a variety of names, from empresarios and travel agents to coyotes, snakeheads, and tourist boy- and girl-friends who have met them during their vacations, as well as family members and friends. When these travellers feel deceived, it is usual for them to complain of the labour conditions they have to accept at their destination. Frequently they have signed a contract without understanding the extensive surveillance and little liberty that it implies. That is, someone who is familiar with a few kinds of prostitution in his own country (for example, dancing with clients in a bar and having sex with two or three in one night cannot know beforehand how he is going to feel standing nude in a window in Amsterdam for twelve or fourteen hours a day, or standing next to a road in the Casa de Campo in Madrid). These are forms of prostitution which can be described as ‘industrial’. [2]

We are already talking of prostitution as work.[3] What does this work consist of? First it is necessary to ask: Which? Continue reading →

Europe: Grin and bare it, German naturists tell Poles

Here’s a story about sex and borders where both sides of a cultural conflict are Europeans on holiday. The simple ability to travel between Poland and Germany without passport controls has caused people to wind up in the same space – a beach – only to offend each other. It’s instructive to see how different moralities confront each other this strenuously in what is, after all, a pretty mild situation.

Europe: Grin and bare it, German naturists tell Poles

Jess Smee in Berlin

The Guardian, Monday July 28 2008

For decades, Germans holidaying on the white sandy beaches of Usedom have opted to leave their swimming trunks at home. Their penchant for naked bathing is nothing unusual in a country where naturism is popular and seen as, well, natural.

But this summer, border controls between Germany and Poland were dismantled as part of the Schengen agreement. Now flocks of Poles stroll along the leafy coastal paths to nearby German towns – and many are shocked by what they see.

Approach to airport on Usedom

Approach to airport on Usedom

“It is unheard of. People sunning themselves in the nude! And right on the coast, where normal people go walking,” Stanislawa Borecka, a 63-year-old from the Polish town of Szczecin, told the Märkische Allgemeine newspaper. “What should I tell my grandson?”

But for Germans of all ages who enjoy swimming and sunbathing on naturist – or FKK (free body culture) – beaches, the disapproving glances from Polish walkers are incomprehensible and intrusive.

“It’s an FKK beach. It’s awful that fully dressed Polish people come and stare at us,” said 46-year-old Elke Bernholz.

Naturism is so popular on the Baltic coast island of Usedom that German travel agent Ossi Urlaub selected it as a destination for its first nudist charter flight, a trip which was later cancelled because of “moral concerns”.

The culture clash between the border towns is a recent phenomenon. Many cheered in December, when the barbed-wire fence was dismantled as part of the Schengen deal.

“Finally we can cross the border without passport controls,” said Szczecin’s mayor, Janusz Zmurkiewicz.

Little did he know that some German tourists prefer to stroll in their birthday suits. With the FKK beach lying close to the border, some naturists have strayed on to the Polish beach. For many, that is a step too far.

“It is disgusting,” said Edward Zajac, a Szczecin politician who wants to move the FKK beach from the Polish border.

But the Germans, who have been unfolding their towels on the beach year in year out, are unlikely to want to move. For the time being, authorities plan to put up signs marking the boundaries of the nudist beach – in both German and Polish.

Erotic Award Finalist

Sex at the Margins has been chosen as a finalist in the 2008 Erotic Awards competition in London. The awards are made at the Night of the Senses in September. This charity event benefits Outsiders.

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