ABSTRACT
Women organize different systems of sex work and the material items and relationships that inform these exchanges into their lives in ways that are complex and mutable over time. The dual biographies at the heart of the discussion are part of a rich history of writing by women in sex work, which began in the ‘Western’ cultural context during the eighteenth century alongside the rise of the European novel and erotica focusing on prostitutes and courtesans. Women have long written about their lives to assert or insert themselves within larger social narratives about gender, race, sexuality, class and family life. Sheila Jeffreys’s work is an agential expression of her complex, fluid subjectivity and it functions as potent gift within the moral economy that structures our relationship and gives it meaning. Alongside the traditional interpretation of M. Mauss’ seminal work in 1950, it is important to remember the magical spirit and transformative force that gifts can also contain, transmit, and symbolize.
