| Abstrakt: |
The stereotypical view of prostitution is based on the idea that sex work destroys the woman's capability for sexual pleasure and alienates her from her sexuality. In this paper I ask what kind of links exist between sex work and the sex worker's experiences of pleasure. The article is based on three years of fieldwork in the world of the Finnish sex business. My main material consists of all messages posted on the closed internet discussion forum of sex workers (including 11,000 posts from 2003 to 2006) and interviews with 25 sex workers (20 women, 2 men and 3 transgender). In the light of my interviews with Finnish prostitutes it is hard to see any common link between commercial sex and sexual alienation. In many cases, professional sex work requires distancing from one's own sexual pleasure and emotions, but even in this case my interviewees were capable of maintaining romantic private relationships in which they could derive sexual satisfaction. There are also many examples of how the experience of control in commercial acts has emancipated sex workers to more independent sexuality If there is internal variance, and the idea of the destructiveness of sex work is not universally obvious, this has to be taken into account in prostitution policy as well. Instead of compiling statistics on the numbers of prostitutes, we should consider the conditions under which sex work takes place. This also implies that instead of the traditional view of victimization, we should look upon sex workers as political agents and as experts in their own lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
