ABSTRACT
Following from our analysis in chapter 8, in this chapter we suggest that the ways in which individual prostitutes understand themselves, the work that they do and their relationships with clients, and thus construct and manage their identities, are at least partly informed by the discursive context of their labour. Attitudes towards sexuality, work, leisure, etc. may delimit or enable the possibilities that sex workers have for establishing and developing themselves as subjects. Here we discuss the range and variety of discourses which currently shape and organize prostitution in the modern West, extending themes we initially raised in chapter 7, and establish the different ways in which individual sex workers may engage with these discourses to make sense of their lifeworld, for example, whether they understand themselves as victims of patriarchy or as feminist activists. Here, our focus moves from the identity work which surrounds the client encounter to the prostitute’s career more generally, and issues of entrance to and exit from this occupational field are discussed, as well as that of continuing life within the occupation itself. Where in chapter 8 we explored the process of the negotiation and construction of identity within and around the commercial sex transaction, concentrating on the interactional features of identity construction, then, in this chapter we focus on the discourses which shape this process. In chapter 10 we will move on to consider material contextual effects, so as to round out our analysis of the double effect of placing, and to establish the key point that the sex industry, as a result, exhibits much of the variety in organizational structure and job content that other industries display, demanding a variety of skills of the woman who expects to make prostitution a successful career. These may include marketing, accounting, business planning, property management, financial control, promotion, entrepreneurship, knowledge of the law, political skills, education, acting, counselling and human resource management, even without considering those more specific ars erotica upon which the profession is founded. Differences in legal and cultural frameworks, policing practices, political pressures and social and cultural institutions (for example, education and health) provide a highly specific local context for the organization of sex work, and ultimately govern whether it becomes recognizable as an industry or not. Labour markets, economic forces and the development of horizontally
segmented and vertically stratified markets further produce an array of different possibilities for establishing and cementing professional identities.
