Gender performances as spatial acts: (fe)male Thai migrant sex workers in Denmark

Abstract

The objective of this article is to investigate how Thai migrant sex workers in Denmark understand normative heterosexuality and femininity/masculinity as they are reproduced in the Danish sex industry. To do so I analyse the ways that gender plays a part in sex work and the ways in which sex work plays a significant role in how Thai migrant sex workers understand their gendered subject positions in the spaces away from their sex work. Whether Thai migrant sex workers become intelligible gendered subjects depends on different spaces. Based on two case stories I focus on the space of domesticity, the space of sexual consumption and the quasi-public space of leisure.

El objetivo de este artículo es investigar cómo los trabajadores y trabajadoras sexuales inmigrantes tailandeses en Dinamarca comprenden la heterosexualidad y la feminidad/masculinidad normativas como son reproducidas en la industria danesa del sexo. Para lograrlo, analizo las formas en las que el género juega un papel en el trabajo sexual y las formas en las que el trabajo sexual juega un rol significativo en cómo los y las trabajadoras sexuales inmigrantes tailandeses interpretan sus posiciones de sujeto generizados en los espacios fuera del lugar de trabajo sexual. Si los y las trabajadoras sexuales inmigrantes tailandeses se vuelven sujetos generizados inteligibles o no depende de espacios diferentes. Basándome en dos historias de caso me centro en el espacio de la domesticidad, el espacio de consumo sexual y el espacio cuasipúblico del ocio.

Keywords:

• gender
• heterosexuality
• space
• sex work
• migration

Keywords:

• género
• heterosexualidad
• espacio
• trabajo sexual
• migración

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Associate Professor Hanne Marlene Dahl, Roskilde University, Denmark, and Associate Professor Christel Stormhøj, Roskilde University, Denmark, for highly constructive ideas and careful feedback. I would also like to thank the journal editor Beverley Mullings and the anonymous reviewers for their inspiring commentary on the manuscript.

Notes

 1. Sex work refers to selling sex at the massage parlours, the ordinary bars and the strip bars. Some of the migrants work at the bars as dancers and as hostesses where the sale of sex is a part of their task. Other women sell sexual services from ordinary bars. This kind of transaction takes place as a more concealed act.

 2. M-t-f is short for male-to-female.

 3. Kathoeys is a third group which is part of the gender hierarchy among female Thai migrant sex workers. They are not explored in this article.

 4. The objective of the social counselling programme is to inform about safe sex and offer support and counselling regarding social and health problems. A female SW contacted the sex workers on a daily basis. A part of her job was also to translate from Thai to Danish when the migrants contacted the Danish authorities. Such a counselling project is a part of the Danish social welfare work and reflects ideas on this marginalised minority group of female Thais selling sex.

 5. For an elaborated discussion and reflections upon my fieldwork, see my PhD thesis (Spanger 2010).

 6. Performance is subsumed within and is also connected to performativity (Gregson and Rose 2000, 441).

 7. By ‘follow’, Butler (1990, 24) refers to cultural laws and norms that establish and regulate the meaning of sexuality.

 8. Butler denies that any active human non-discursive agency takes place (Gregson and Rose 2000, 437). Instead, gender performativity underscores that gender is a doing without a being behind.

 9. SW is the short form of social worker.

10. Phi bum is an older sister in Thai. It is a Thai form of address that reflects a hierarchical structure.

11. The category of race is not explored in this article as I wanted to limit the number of categories brought into play. I have prioritised the categories of gender, sexual desire, heterosexuality, body and to a certain extent nationality, whereas I de-selected race. Nonetheless, I do not reject the relevance of race regarding how femininity/masculinity and heterosexuality are understood in the case of Thai migrant sex workers in Denmark.

12. According to Kulick (1997, 577), Prieur (1998) and transgendered sex workers within non-western societies, the boyfriends and/or clients of the transgendered are not necessarily defined as homosexuals. Their sexual identity depends on the sexual practice (whom is being penetrated) rather than the body of the transgendered person.