It seems commercial sex in a striptease culture (McNair, 2002) is mainstream. The liberalisation of sexual behaviour reflects a particular conceptualisation of modern subjectivity as individualised and commodified (Livingston, 1998). This perspective acts as a powerful moral pull in favour of the normalisation of the right to a range of sexual behaviours that might formerly have lain in the domain of the abject. This liberalisation, even a compulsion to speak of sex, retains a hint edge of moral taint, though. In the case of commercial sex, from the everyday erotic labour of bar staff (Boyle, 2007) to market exchange of sexual intercourse, there is a tension between tolerance and taint. On one hand is a powerful drive towards tolerating or accepting sexual practices where those who engage are seen as making legitimate choices as agents in modern society. On the other are arguments that such practices are invariably degrading and inappropriate, either because sex – like other intimacies – ought not be marketised, or because those selling sex cannot make a ‘free’ choice to self-exploit (Barry, 1995). And even those who feel empowered by a (postfeminist) right to speak and act as a sexual subject are, for McRobbie, being interpellated into a dominated subject position (McRobbie, 2009).

What sort of work is this webcam performing? Well, such Live Sex Acts (Chapkis, 1997) might be ways in which workers can maximise the returns from what Hakim calls ‘erotic capital’ (2010): sex appeal, charm, social skills and all-round phwoarness. Prostitution, classically understood is not advertised by JobCentre plus. It is morally outside the pale as it involves the transgression of corporeal boundaries. The webcam performer, however, though their corporeality is central, seems to escape this outsiderdom. They and the customer (the webcam wanker) are engaged in a cyborg reality of sex work. Sight and sound are the senses that matter, not touch and smell and taste. The body is seen and heard; consumed like a tv programme, not consumed like a cake.

© Cammie Touloui, from Lusty Ladies series

The ad says that the job involves “explicit sexual dialogue which may cause embarrassment to some people”. This interests me: the nudity is present in a matter of fact way, it’s the talk that is problematic and may provoke an emotional response. In the exhibition at Tate Modern Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera there are several photographs that explore dimensions of the sex industry. Susan Meiselas’s pictures of strippers and Cammie Toloui’s remind us that there is nothing passive, nothing safe, nothing disembodied about ‘just looking’.

References

1. Barry, K. (1995) The Prostitution of Sexuality. New York: New York University Press.
2. Boyle, K. (2007) ‘The mobilisation of sexuality: an ethnography of the sexualised labour process in the style bar industry.’ Paper presented to the 25th International Labour Process Conference.
3. Chapkis, W. (1997) Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labour Routledge.
4. Hakim, C. (2010) ‘Erotic Capital’ European Sociological Review doi:10.1093/esr/jcq014 .
5. Livingston, J. (1998) Modern subjectivity and consumer culture, in Strasser, S., McGovern, C. & Judt, M. Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the 20th Century: 413–430. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. McNair, N (2002) Striptease Culture: Sex, Media, and the Democratization of Desire. London: Routledge.
7. McRobbie, A. (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism Sage.
   ]]> http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/1027/feed 0 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/825 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/825#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:53:50 +0000 Lynne Pettinger http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=825 Five Daughters (BBC 1, 25^th, 26^th, 27^th April) told the stories of Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholas, who were murdered in Ipswich in 2006. It was based on testimony of those involved. The five women were sex workers (or ‘Vice Girls’ to readers of some newspapers) working on the streets to fund drug addiction. Teela Sanders (2005) shows how women working in the indoor sex market aim to get a regular clientele as a way to manage risk, both the obvious risk to personal safely, but also the risk of not having any customers, and so not making any money. A punter’s appearance, age and ethnicity are used to indicate trustworthiness, as is their compliance with instructions (2005: 57–70). In Five Daughters, once news of the first two murders is out, the women working the streets whisper to each other: regulars only. It makes sense. Less risk.

   In the show customers (‘punters’) are shadowy figures: one walks into a café, later we see one of the sex workers being punched from inside a car. Steven Wright, the man eventually sentenced for all 5 murders is almost disembodied in the show; we see his car prowling, then we see his hands on the wheel, and eventually his face, his body, his voice emerge. This relative invisibility makes it easy not to consider who are the punters. If we did, we’d see that they are very ordinary men, they are men you know.

   

   The other punter who appears in Five Daughters is Tom Stephens, the initial suspect. He lurks with flowers at the edge of a police cordon, later we see him driving away with one of the women, hoping to protect her from the unknown threat. The real Tom Stephens was interviewed by the Sunday Mirror:

   Michael Duffy (interviewer from Sunday Mirror): You seem a smart, well-educated man. How is it that you can spend time with these people? How is it that you can find common ground with them?

   Tom Stephens: I’m sad and lonely. I made compromises on my morals to go down (to the red light area) the first time, so I suppose getting involved with them isn’t a huge leap.

   Michael Duffy, Sunday Mirror, 17/12/2006

   Duffy and Stephens conspire to deny that punters play any part in the moral denigration that they easily ascribe to the prostitutes. For Duffy ‘these people’ are the inverse of smart and well-educated, they are abject. Stephens knows the red light district is a damned place, but it holds such an attraction for him. In this way, neither recognises what customers contribute to the moral status of those who sell sex. In my research into Punternet, a website where men write customer service reviews of commercial sex, this is quite common. Men speak of brothels as good when they are clean, safe and discreet and of prostitutes as good when they offer gifts beyond the formal contract. And they speak of each other as potential harmers, who could damage ‘good’ girls if they don’t treat them right. It’s never them who cause harm.

   Wacquant says this sort of thing shouldn’t surprise us, it is “unexceptional” to say we all live in a moral world (Wacquant, 2002: 1472). Public discussions of prostitution tend to circulate a sterile debate between ‘free choice’ and ‘trafficked’ exploitation in a way which negates the complexity of prostitution by presenting it primarily as a question of worker’s agency. Addressing prostitution is impossible without addressing customers, and addressing customers requires understanding of how they constitute the market as moral and negotiate their own roles and identities within that.

   References

   1. Sanders, T. (2005) Sex Work: A Risky Business. Cullompton: Willan.
   2.  Wacquant, L. (2002) ‘Scrutinizing the street: poverty, morality, and the pitfalls of urban ethnography’. American Journal of Sociology, 107(6) 1468–1532.
   ]]> http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/825/feed 0 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/351 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/351#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:07:23 +0000 Lynne Pettinger http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=351 Studies of home work (Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996) focus on the experience of doing (paid) work in your own home. They point to how the boundaries between public and private are eroded. Some homeworkers engage in a range of strategies to separate home and work temporally and spatially – through closing the ‘office’ door at 5, by clearing away the piecework components; for others such demarcations are not possible or desirable, for example when home work is combined with house work and childcare.

   But what do we know about being a customer or client of a homeworker? How is the interaction influenced by this confusion of boundaries between home and work?

   I have a research project on men who pay for sex and write about it on the internet. These men are sensitive when going to a flat or house (rather than to a brothel) to signs of home. Most want no sign of private life (teddy bears on the bed, for example, or cat ornaments), but sometimes one speaks of liking the feel of being in a home for its implication that prostitution is not a performance, but a reflection of authentic desire, so close to the sex worker that she does it in her own house, not in a rented place. Most important, though is ‘safe, discreet and clean’.

   And what about other clients and customers? I was staying in a B&B run by a retired couple who paid great attention to delimiting space and also to circumscribe the services the customer is invited to take advantage of, and – more significantly – those which he or she is not.

   
   

   

   photography by Lynne Pettinger

   The first indication of this came as I call to book (telephone booking; how 20th Century). I am asked to specify an arrival time. And if I can’t make this time I must let them know. When I ring to tell them the bus is late, the phone call itself is as much of an irritation to the landlord as the earlier threat of lateness had been. Then there’s the discussion about breakfast; I’m invited to state my preference, but I am not allowed to coincide with other guests, although I do not know this until the landlady’s face twitches and I sense I’ve made an error. Then too there’s the time I want to shower: this, it seems, needs establishing.

   Di Domenico and Lynch suggest that spaces used by guest and host are ambiguous, and that guests may feel uncertain about their presence and conscious of boundary betrayal (2007: 331), and that this is more marked when the guest house seeks to present an authentic experience of place and ‘home’ (rather than hotel) (2007: 328).

   

   photography by Lynne Pettinger

   So when home is work (and work is a way of life, as it must be when you rent your home and services out to passing strangers) it is hard to balance the public and private and to set rules in ways which make sense to customers. It is hard too for the customer, who expects service but senses their trespassing. Like the men who pay for sex, I quite enjoy the limited intimations of identity – certainly the decorative tray affixed to the wall and the carpet pattern seem revealing.

   But for sure “The social niceties and obligations inherent in the interaction perpetuate the conflicts inherent in the provision of a commercial service within a domestic context” (di Domenico and Lynch, 2007: 333) and for the first time in my life I have an argument with a landlord.

   References

   1. Di Domenico, M. and Lynch, P. (2007) ‘Host/Guest Encounters in the Commercial Home’. Leisure Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, 321–338. DOI: 10.1080/02614360600898110
   2. Felstead, A. and Jewson, N. (2000) In work, at home : towards an understanding of homeworking. London: Routledge
   3. Nippert-Eng, C. (1996) Home and work: negotiating boundaries through everyday life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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