ABSTRACT
Sexual-economic transactions have been foregrounded in the foregoing chapters as a prism through which Caribbean sexuality is organized, regulated, and experienced. The transactions rest upon embodied resources that are used strategically for material gain and are highly mobile, temporary, and often part-time. In economic transactions, sexuality is commonly self-organized but may also be organized by and through third parties. Sexual-economic transactions and relations, however, do not necessarily produce a social identity of sex worker or prostitute; only some women and a handful of men publicly self-identify as such, but rather a number of activities are interwoven in people’s lives. Sexuality is strongly linked to survival strategies of making do, as well as to consumption, which in itself is often seen as a prerequisite for survival. It is not always conflated with intimacy or love, nor necessarily, when economically organized, seen to violate boundaries between the public and private. Moreover, although many sexual-economic transactions reconfirm the dominant ideology of the Caribbean as a heterosexualized place, sexuality is not always cross-gender oriented. Same-gender and bisexual practices are everyday practices in the region. We have also seen throughout this study that sexual agents transgress boundaries of what is considered decent womanhood or respectability in many Caribbean countries and contest dominant constructions of female sexuality that support the hegemonic heteropatriarchal regime. Similarly, configurations of sex work often confirm racializing and exoticizing ideas about the hypersexual nature of the Caribbean, while they transform racialized, exoticized bodies into resources for freedom, betterment, and economic development.
