Abstract
This essay investigates the political economy of sexuality through an interpretation of sex shows for foreigners in Bangkok, Thailand. Reading these performances as both symptoms of, and analytical commentaries on, Western consumer desire, the essay suggests the ‘pussy shows’ parody the mass production that was a hallmark of Western masculine identity under Fordism. This reading makes a case for the erotic generativity of capitalism, illuminating how Western, post-Fordist political economy of the post-1970s generated demand for these erotic services in Asia and how Western, heterosexual masculine desire is integrated into global capitalist circuits.
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Notes
For one sustained analysis of the effects of capitalism on intimate life, see Zaretsky (1986).
Bernstein (2007) offers a related discussion of political-economic transformations of sex work in a study that addresses both sex workers and customers. Other studies of male customers of heterosexual services are Garrick (2005) and O’Connell Davidson (1998). Far more research on male consumers of commercial sex can be found in the health-related research spawned by HIV/AIDS, but for the most part these studies assume a drive/outlet model of male sexuality (Vance 1991). Interestingly, in studies of women who act as the consumers in erotic relations involving material exchange, female desire for such services is not naturalised, but investigated and seen as contingent. On female consumption of male erotic services, see, e.g., Ebron (1997). One anthology that covers both male and female clients of heterosexual erotic services is Kempadoo (1999).
‘Western’ is predicated on problematic geopolitical constructs that reify region and identity, typically in Eurocentric ways (e.g. Grewal and Kaplan 1994). Nonetheless, the category of Western is salient both to the subjects of this essay, and I argue, to its analysis. The well-known Thai word farang glosses as Westerner. The commercial sex trade for foreigners in Thailand is differentiated according to the nationality or regional identity of the consumer, with the result that there are zones associated with a Western clientele, others with East Asian visitors, and different venues for Thai men. Analytically, the term Western offers shorthand for significant global patterns, namely in the distribution of capital, mobility and privileges to recognised subjects of Europe and its settler societies (which are racialised as white but can include individuals of colour). This essay explores how this general context, intersecting with sex/gender systems of heterosexual masculinity, generates particular modes of sexual consumption in Thailand.
A superb exploration of the sex/economic interplay can be found in Bedford and Jakobsen (2009).
Discussions of post-socialist sexuality include media and scholarly attention to women trafficked from the former USSR and Eastern European countries as well as discussion of the re-emergence of sexual services in China or Cuba. I know of no systemic analysis of transnational, post-socialist sexual cultures but case studies of specific contexts are emerging. For one analytical discussion of transformations from socialist conceptions of sexuality to post-socialist modes in China, see e.g., Zhang (2007).
“The stories you've heard about the sex shows are all true and have to be seen to be believed”, a guidebook tells us: “It is not a place for the squeamish or those with feminist leanings” (Van Beek 1988, p. 192).
It is possible to read the emphasis on fatness in these critiques of white women through an economic lens as well. Fatness, particularly in women, indexes poverty or lower class status. Susan Bordo, for example, analyses the emergence of the fit, hard body in the 1980s in relation to shifts in career patterns and job security, as individuals moving from job to job had to project their value and self-control through their resumes and their bodies (Bordo 1993).
The desire for authentic intimacy is also found in the expanse of ‘girlfriend-like’ sex work within the post-industrial West (see Bernstein 2007).
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Acknowledgments
This essay builds on a talk given at the Markets and Sexualities Centre LGS Workshop at the University of Kent in 2009. Warm thanks are due to participants there, especially the respondents and my host, Kate Bedford. Thanks also to Kadji Amin for late-hour editing. The material discussed in the essay draws on long-term fieldwork and secondary research on Bangkok.
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Wilson, A. Post-Fordist Desires: The Commodity Aesthetics of Bangkok Sex Shows. Fem Leg Stud 18, 53–67 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-010-9145-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-010-9145-2