ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the ways in which women are located within, and visually consume a range of sexualized experiences in both Thailand and the Netherlands. Many women expressed the pleasurable sensations of risk-taking, and it is clear that many women who visited the Red Light Districts found that engaging in transgressive activities was gratifying in some way, and the thrill that came with visually consuming the sexual commodities on offer was an important theme. Many of the participants, when asked about their feelings related to visiting a Red Light District or seeing a sexual performance of some kind invoked the term 'taboo'. Interactions with the sex industry are almost entirely visually oriented, and their engagements with sex workers must be understood as affective encounters, whereby women working in the sex industry as positioned reductively as either victims or whores. Women's reactions to sex work performances in Amsterdam were slightly more nuanced.
