Women Negotiating Poverty, Work, and Sexuality Mei-Hua Chen Phd
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Selling Body / Selling Pleasure: Women Negotiating Poverty, Work, and Sexuality Mei-Hua Chen PhD University of York The Centre for Women's Studies 2003 Abstract Feminist debates regarding prostitution, both in the West and in Taiwan, have been polarized. Some radical feminists tend to think of prostitution as emboding male-dominated sexuality, in which women's bodies and sexuality are appropriated by men, while some pro-sex-work feminists argue that engaging in commercial sex is performing sexual services. Accordingly, sex workers are just like ordinary workers in other economic sectors. The debates thus generate a series of polarized oppositions: e.g. prostitutes are either 'sexual victims' or 'sexual agents', prostitution is either sex or work, and prostitution becomes a gender or a sexual issue. Based on in-depth interviews with eighteen female Taiwanese sex workers and six Taiwanese male clients, the thesis seeks to break this stalemate. Locating commercial sex in Taiwanese working women's daily lives, I show that prostitution is not only firmly supported by the ideology of the 'male sexual urge', but highly related to a gendered labour market, and the social and cultural practices of gender hierarchy in Taiwanese society. Most of all, the 'miserable prostitutes' are mainly (re)produced by the criminalization of prostitution, rather than the nature of prostitution. Taking all of this into account, prostitution is thus a complex social issue in which gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and age are intertwined together. Drawing on interview data, I also argue that the either-victim-or-agent debate is misleading. In fact, interviewees' working conditions are highly related to the ways in which their work is organized and to their different employment statuses in the sex industry. Moreover, I will argue that performing sex work involves multi-layered boundary negotiation. Many interviewees exercise 'role distance' to perform sex as 'work', and differentiate work sex from their personal sexual intimacy. However, the effort in managing the boundary between sex and work in fact signifies the danger of blurring the boundary. Hence, it opens up the possibility for sex workers to enjoy some specific sexual encounters with clients and/or fall in love with clients. Key work: sex work, prostitution, gender, sexuality, femininity, masculinity 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all my 'rich' respondents, who spent time with me, and brought up so many interesting, disturbing and even extremely sad stories in this thesis. These stories open up the opportunity for me to understand the Taiwanese sex industry and working women's daily lives. Most importantly, they make the whole process of producing a PhD thesis in itself so worthwhile and interesting. There are so many times when I had to laugh when I was transcribing in the office. During writing up, they turned out to be intimate friends of mine. I listened to, thought about, and wrote about them daily. I can clearly remember their faces, tones, postures, and the ways they speak only by looking at the transcripts or listening to the tape recordings. I could even tell which bit of the transcript is spoken by which interviewee without checking their names. The odd thing is that I do not even know some of my interviewees' names. Many thanks to Yenwen Peng, who shared her field notes with me. Moreover, the prostitution debate on the mailing list of Taiwanese Women is indeed very helpful for me to clarify my thinking on prostitution. I would like to thank some of my (old) friends who give me a lot of emotional support to finish this thesis. They are Hui-ping, Rong-chen, Chen-ru. Thanks to 11th-ping, who offered me nine-months' free accommodation when I was conducting interviewees in Taiwan. I am very appreciative of the Centre of Women's Studies and the staff, Trev, Ann, Jean and Helen, who create such a friendly atmosphere for Ph.D. students. I am also very thankful to Dr Anne Akeroyd, who constantly forwarded usefully references and web sites to me. The acknowledgement will be incomplete without naming our research students, who help me out on a great deal of things (e.g. ranging from giving me some tips on living in Britain, offering proof reading for me, daily conversations in the 3 common room to academic discussions) in the past three years. They are Heidi, Janaki, Jessica, Yvette, Au, Jieyu, and Carrie. Without their support, the process of producing the thesis would have been very lonely. The completion of the thesis undoubtedly involved support from Taiwanese friends in academia, who constantly encouraged me, generously gave their advice and comments, and, most importantly, gave me unconditional emotional support throughout the last three years. They are Chia-ling, Mab, and Chin-fen. I could hardly imagine that I could have survived without them in the past three years. I appreciate Chia-ling treating me like a sister and accompanying me in those bad days in my life. I am very much indebted to Professor Celia Kitzinger, who has been on my panel for two years. I am very grateful that Celia read some of the chapters and gave her critical comments, which were very helpful for me to clarify my thinking and writing. Many thanks to my examiners Professor Marianne Hester and Dr Trev Broughton who provided useful comments on the thesis and generously gave their suggestions for corrections. Nonetheless, should the thesis have any remaining flaws, it is my responsibility. I owe very much to my supervisor, Stevi Jackson. The thesis defmitely would not have been completed without her. Thanks to Stevi for taking so much time on reading my drafts and giving her comments page by page. Although my interviewees provided a great deal of interesting data, it is under the supervision of Stevi that the data was able to become meaningful knowledge 'for women and about women'. Moreover, I was always struggling translating Chinese into English. I very much appreciate the fact that Stevi could take time to clarify the meanings that I really wanted to express in my writing, and then help me to figure out the best translation. Without her help, this thesis would not be able to recount the vivid social world of Taiwanese sex workers. 4 Finally, I would like to thank my family, who give me so much support, emotionally and materially. Also thanks to the Universities UK who provided me with the Overseas Research Student Award, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, who offered me a Ph.D. dissertation fellowship to support my writing up year. 5 Author's Declaration Although all the research and writing in this thesis are original, the main argument of the Chapter 7 have been published as 'Les désirs sexuels masculins et leurs contradictions: Masculinité, style de vie et sexualité Le cas des clients de prostituées a Taiwan', Travail, Genre et Societes, No. 10, pp 107-128, Nov 2003, Paris: L'Harmatan & the CNRS 6 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Author's Declaration 6 Introduction 13 Multi-layered conflicts in prostitution debates 16 Researching prostitution in Taiwan 21 Chapter 1 Historical transformation of Taiwanese commercial sex Introduction 26 I. Policing prostitution in Taiwan 27 i) 'fl-dan 'and 'tu-chang' 27 ii) Comfort women in WWII 28 iii) Back and forth between prohibition and regulation regimes 30 1) The prohibition regime and its social effects (1946-1955) 30 2) Re-established regulation regime in 1956 31 3) The vicious circle of the government crack downs 33 Summary 36 Chapter 2 Approaches to Prostitution Introduction 38 I. The construction of prostitutes as sexual victims 39 7 i) Contesting the 'male sexual urge' 39 ii) Feminists theorizing prostitution 42 1) Prostitution and the intersection of gender and class 42 2) Prostitution and female sexuality 43 II. Pro-sex-work feminists theorizing prostitutes as sexual agents 48 i) The dichotomy of 'madonnalwhore' 48 ii) A vindication of the rights of whores 49 iii) Theorizing prostitution in terms of labour 51 iv) Bring the sex back in 53 v) What's wrong with queering prostitution? 56 Summary 59 Chapter 3 The 'whore' gazes back: reflections on knowledge, power and sexuality Introduction 61 I. Research Process 62 i) Research methods 62 ii)Sampling 70 iii)The field 73 1) Teenage girls in halfway centres 73 2) Former Taipei licensed brothels workers 75 3) Special bars 76 4)Tearooms and their settings 79 5)Observations on the streets 81 iv) Transcribing, analyzing data and writing up 86 II. Reflection on conducting interviews with female prostitutes 91 i) Thinking from prostitutes' standpoint 91 ii) Sexuality in the field 95 8 Chapter 4 Exploitation, autonomy and the organization of sex work Introduction 99 I. Structural violence against sex workers 104 i) gendered legislation and abusive execution 104 II. Forms of Taiwanese commercial sex 109 i) 'Body-selling' sectors 109 1) Independent streetwalkers 109 2) Internet yuan juhjiau jih 114 3) Employed call-girls 120 4) Employed licensed brothel workers 126 5) Just 'doing that thing' 129 6) Sounds sexy; acts high 131 ii) 'Pleasure-selling' sectors 134 1) Partnership between workers and the third party in loosely-organized tearooms and small-scale bars 134 2) Hierarchical and profit-orientated special bars 136 3) It's all about 'shoou wan' 139 III. The sexual hierarchy of Taiwanese commercial sex 149 Summary 155 Chapter 5 'It's my way of survival'—making sense of being 'working women' Introduction 157 I. The inter-dependence between the sex industry and gendered labour market 161 i) From factories to prostitution 163 ii)Drifting among low-paid service jobs 169 II.