Is Sex Work Sex or is Sex Work Work?
Intimate Exchange and the Making of the Sex Worker in Bangalore
Gowri Vijayakumar, UC Berkeley
Economic sociologists argue that the process of exchange produces relations of emotional as
well as monetary or social value (Zelizer 1997; Zelizer 2007; Bourdieu 2005) in highly differentiated
ways. Recent ethnographies of sex work focus on economic differentiations, highlighting forms of
emotional and intimate exchange in distinct economic tiers of sexual markets (Bernstein 2010;
Hoang 2015). In both accounts, upper-end sex workers blur the boundaries between intimate and
monetary exchange, while low-end, street-based sex workers subscribe to what Bernstein calls a
modern distinction between “work” and love.
In this paper, I extend the investigation to not only economic differentiations, but also
gendered differentiations within the particular cultural economy of sex in Bangalore. Using
interviews with 50 male, female, and transgender sex workers, all members of a sex worker union in
Bangalore, I show that their gendered understandings of sexual intimacy shape the potential value of
a sexual encounter as emotional, sexual, or financial, even within the same economic “tier” of sex
work. For the three groups, sex work falls on a spectrum between operating as an extension of sex or as
an extension of work. My interviewees relate the differentiations in their sexual exchanges to concepts
of masculinity and femininity. For men, selling sex is intertwined with networks of unpaid sex
pursued for pleasure, while for women and transgenders, sex work begins as a source of income,
either to maintain a family livelihood or to secure membership in the hijra community. Narratives
of sexual intimacy and pleasure are more available to male sex workers, who draw on the language of
male sexual playfulness to make sense of their work. For women, the language of maternal or wifely
sacrifice positions sex as work rather than pleasure. For transgender women, sex work extends from
membership in the community of hijras and the rituals of hijra kinship. However, these
differentiations are often blurred, and I emphasize the role of concepts of masculinity and
femininity, rather than strict categorizations of “male,” “female,” and “transgender,” as shaping
accounts of sexual exchange.
Through histories of colonial and postcolonial regulation, up to the most recent round of
NGOization and HIV prevention programming for sex workers and sexual minorities, the “sex
worker” has solidified as a category of sexual identification. I argue that, rather than a personal
identity for sexual expression, “sex worker” serves as a strategic basis for political solidarity across
varied experiences of the relationship between sex and work.
References
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2010. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. University
of Chicago Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. The Social Structures of the Economy. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Hoang, Kimberly Kay. 2015. Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden
Currencies of Global Sex Work. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Zelizer, Viviana A. 1997. The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other
Currencies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
———. 2007. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.