‘It’s a Puzzle You Have to Do Every Night’: Performing Creative Problem Solving at Work in the Indoor Canadian Sex Industry

Law, Tuulia; Raguparan, Menaka

doi:10.1177/0950017019878325

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 32 publications

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“…The radical shift from prostitution to sex work in the cultural framing of sexual exchange has become a central theme in studies of work and organisations (Benoit et al, 2017;Ham and Gilmour, 2017;Hardy and Sanders, 2015;Law and Raguparan, 2020;Oselin and Hail-Jares, 2021;Simpson and Smith, 2019). These studies have also unveiled the gendered nature of sex work (Jeffreys, 1997).…”

Section: Gender and Sex Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, Money, and Sexuality: An Exploration into the Relational Work of Pakistani Khwajasiras

Ashraf,

Pianezzi

2023

Work, Employment and Society

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This study explores how khwajasiras, a community of gender-variant persons in Pakistan, engage in relational work to gain recognition in a heteronormative world. We highlight how these workers negotiate the meanings of their intimate relationships with different forms, frequencies, amounts, and payment media of financial exchanges. We have identified four such relations i.e. romantic relations, spousal relations, taboo relations, and professional relations. Our analysis shows how these relations and associated financial exchanges allow khwajasiras to navigate gender norms and negotiate recognition by alternatively and creatively playing the role of the khwajasira lover, the khwajasira wife, the khwajasira survival prostitute, and the khwajasira professional sex worker. In enacting these roles, they simultaneously reaffirm, redefine, and challenge dominant gender norms while resisting stable and fixed definitions of transgender sex work(ers). These findings unpack the contingent and situated relationship between gender, sexuality, and sex work and the critical role of financial exchange(s) therein.

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Section: Gender and Sex Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, Money, and Sexuality: An Exploration into the Relational Work of Pakistani Khwajasiras

Ashraf,

Pianezzi

2023

Work, Employment and Society

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Diasporic Capital: Canadian Sex Workers of Color Hacking Sexual Racism

Raguparan

2024

Gender & Society

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The cultural economy of the contemporary Canadian sex industry, particularly the upscale sectors, requires workers to conform to white aesthetics and gestures in conscious attempts to generate desire among white consumers. This article, drawing on a qualitative study, posits Canadian sex workers of color as a critical point of inquiry to understand how they negotiate market expectations against the backdrop of popular representation of, for example, the “Jezebel,” “Sapphire,” the Dragon lady, and the Bollywood Queen. Sex workers of color in my sample are mostly immigrant women and Canadian women with full or partial ancestry in a foreign country. Drawing attention to research participants’ immaterial and intimate labor practices, which include emotional and aesthetic labor processes, I examine how these sex workers of color utilize diasporic capital to juxtapose dominant gender-, class-, and citizenship-based negative controlling images against sexual racism. Such labor practices involve negotiating their multiple, fluid, and overlapping identities as the workers unapologetically celebrate and revalorize their diasporic identities and cultures. Strategically mobilizing economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital facilitates the transformation of their body capital to establish a minority niche within the contemporary sex markets.

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The politics of everyday life as a sex worker: “Affect”, stigma and resistance

Winters,

MacDonald

2024

Sexualities

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This study involves an analysis and rethinking of sex workers’ perceptions of stigma, using Goffman’s theory of stigma management contrasted with Thirft’s non-representational theory (NRT). We begin with a discussion of sex work experience in a unique locale in Atlantic Canada, an urban area removed from the rest of the country by distance, policing history, religious oversight and custom. We chose examples from sex worker interviews of their ‘felt moments’ of criminalization and stigma which we will be discussing against a backdrop of theory of NRT (Thrift) and stigma management (Goffman) in order to better acknowledge the agency and resistance of sex workers. We propose to demonstrate that sex workers can be considered active agents, fully capable of informing and re-thinking the sociological concepts and theories that have traditionally been used to research them and their lives.

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‘It’s a Puzzle You Have to Do Every Night’: Performing Creative Problem Solving at Work in the Indoor Canadian Sex Industry

Cited by 3 publications

References 32 publications

Gender, Money, and Sexuality: An Exploration into the Relational Work of Pakistani Khwajasiras

Gender, Money, and Sexuality: An Exploration into the Relational Work of Pakistani Khwajasiras

Diasporic Capital: Canadian Sex Workers of Color Hacking Sexual Racism

The politics of everyday life as a sex worker: “Affect”, stigma and resistance

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