What it feels like for a whore: The body politics of women performing erotic labour in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the complexity of the working experiences of female prostitutes in Hong Kong, using an oral history approach. Based on 13 in-depth interviews, I depict my respondents as performing the skilled emotional labour of sex in exchange for their client's money. Looking at the ways in which the women manage the job, the self and the business, I argue that their major problem is not with the commercial transaction (that is, the content of the work itself), nor with the 'conflict' between their personal and work selves, but with the social stigma, surveillance and dangers at their workplaces. Inspired by a post-structuralist conception of power and identity formation, I propose a women-centred lived-experience feminist approach in the hope of filling the gap between the bipolar imageries of 'sexual slavery' or 'sex radical' that have been thrown up in the feminist debate over the meaning of prostitution. This approach emphasizes the inter-relationships among women's lived experiences, the micro-sites of social surveillance and the macro-condition of wider society. Although Hong Kong female prostitutes are not 'political' in fighting for their rights and benefits, they have tended to take the path of micro-resistance in combating societal domination. They negotiate an identity of the 'prostitute' that is sensitive and flexible to different institutional areas that seems to jeopardize the neat binaries of madonna/whore, good girl/bad girl, victim/warrior, conformist/radical. This allows them to create their own space to work and survive. © 2006 The Author(s); Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.