Introduction: Working outside the (hetero)norm? Lesbian,gay,bisexual,transgender and queer (LGBTQ) sex work

Recent scholarship on sex work has highlighted the diversification of the sex industry under late capitalism. There is now a wealth of research that interrogates and documents how sex is sold in a plethora of spaces, through multiple mechanisms and by a multitude of actors for diverse reasons (see for instance Agustin, 2007a; Cavalieri, 2011; Kotiswaran, 2010; Sanders, 2006). By exploring the complexities of commercial sex in analytical, empirical and normative terms, this literature has done much to expose and challenge the entrenched polarities – such as those between oppression and liberation, violence and pleasure, and victimhood and agency – that have long underpinned political and philosophical debates surrounding the sale and purchase of sex. For example, commercial sex has been theorised in terms of a wider discourse of ‘intimacy’ and central to this has been an emphasis on how understandings, experiences and performances of intimacy are not fixed but instead change over time and space (see especially Bernstein, 2007; Zelizer, 2011). It is thus surprising that much of this varied scholarship remains focused on the sale of sex by women to men, be it on the street, over the telephone, in a brothel, via escorting, on the internet or through a multiplicity of other means. While these debates are extremely valuable in terms of their academic merit and often in terms of their policy relevance, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) sex work is rarely treated as an object of substantive concern. Although there is undoubtedly an extant literature on men who sell sex to men (see inter alia Aggleton, 1999; Kaye, 2007; Kong, 2009; Logan, 2010; Mai, 2009; Morrison and Whitehead, 2007; Padilla, 2007; Whowell, 2010), other embodiments and performances of LGBTQ sex work remain largely unexplored.

The overarching aim of this special issue is to shine a spotlight on LGBTQ sex work and, in so doing, enrich the existing body of scholarship in four specific ways. First, we hope to contribute to the literature in empirical terms, in particular by self-consciously broadening the empirical focus beyond that of analyses which, whether explicitly or implicitly, are predicated on the imaginaries of the female worker and male client. The contributions to this special issue cover a whole diversity of empirical case studies – including lesbian exotic dance, male street work, transgender migrant sex work and gay hospitality services – that are drawn from a variety of social and political disciplines such as history, geography, sociology, criminology, and political science. As such, we aim to bring a multidimensional and multidisciplinary voice to debates about the sex industry that moves beyond preoccupations with commercial sex as a moral issue but rather attempts to document empirically ‘a rich field of human activities, all of them operating in complex socio-cultural contexts where the meaning of buying and selling sex is not always the same’ (Agustin, 2007b: 403).

Second, by exploring sex work through the lens of non-normative sexualities, we wish to interrogate the complex ways in which sexuality, intimacy and, importantly, ‘sex itself’ can be performed within the commercial sexual exchange. Our intention here is to broaden the multifarious ways in which ‘sex work’ can be conceptualised, not least with respect to heteronormativity. For example, in her article ‘Dancing for women: Subverting heteronormativity in a lesbian erotic dance space?’ Katy Pilcher explores how the performance of erotic dance by women for women reinforces and reproduces heteronormative prescriptions for femininity even as it challenges and subverts them. Conversely, in ‘Gay hospitality as desiring labor: Contextualizing transnational sexual labor’, Dana Collins discusses how ‘gay’-identified hosts in Malate are able to ‘negotiate the exclusionary relations of gentrification and neoliberal gay travel’ precisely by constituting themselves as active participants in the production of gay culture. Jody Miller and Andrea Nichol’s paper, ‘Identity, sexuality and commercial sex among Sri Lankan nachchi’, provides an important contribution to the literature on desire and subjectivities in sex work as they explore the nachchi, who are described to be ‘transgender’ and ‘homosexual’. Miller and Nichols explore the sexual desire of the nachchi for men, their need to be desired as men, whist being treated like – but not as – women. Some of the key themes explored demonstrating the complexity of commercial sex in this context include exploitation, violence and sexual desire through nuanced conceptualisations of gender and sexual encounter.

Third, a key motivation behind the special issue, and a prominent theme to emerge in many of the articles, is that of exposing invisibilities. This allows for a consideration of how and why LGBTQ sex work has tended to be rendered invisible in debates about commercial sex and it also encourages reflection on how current debates concerning sexuality, inclusion and exclusion might be reframed in the light of LGBTQ sex working. In ‘The fractal queerness of non-heteronormative migrant sex workers in the UK sex industry’, for instance, Nick Mai notes how the reproduction of heteronormative understandings of gender relations and identities serve to obscure the diversity of migrant sex workers’ experiences and identities, including those of ‘non-heteronormative people’. Drawing on in-depth interviews with male and transgendered people working as migrant workers in London’s sex industry, Mai discusses the complexity of their life and work experiences as they seek to navigate the queer, homonormative and heteronormative worlds that they traverse through migration. Similarly, in ‘Body issues: The political economy of male sex work’, Nicola Smith highlights the crucial contribution that feminist scholarship on global sexual economies has made to the study of globalisation and capitalism, but points to continued gaps and silences surrounding the existence, experiences and status of male and transgender sex workers. She then offers an example of feminist political economy research on male sex work through discussion of her qualitative fieldwork with men working as gay escorts in San Francisco.

Fourth, this special issue offers comment on the impact of formal and informal regulatory and punitive actions taken by communities and official bodies in areas of outdoor sex work. In Becki Ross’ and Rachael Sullivan’s incisive historical article ‘Tracing lines of horizontal hostility: How sex workers and gay activists battled for space, voice, and belonging in Vancouver, 1975–1985’ there is a discussion of the historical decimation of street beats in downtown Vancouver by local anti-prostitution campaigners. The article demonstrates the lack of cultural, political and social capital felt by street-involved sex workers as they were unable to fight back against the homonomative, masculine and neo-liberal politics at play in a gentrifying neighbourhood. Conversely in ‘Walking the beat and doing business: exploring spaces of male sex work and public sex’ Atkins and Laing explore a space of sex work which also operates as an area used by men for public sex. They offer a richly empirical conceptual analysis of how ‘beat’ spaces are created, exist and dissipate through embodied peripatetic and sexual practices.

With these four threads running through the special issue, we very much hope that it will be of interest not only to scholars who are specifically interested in commercial sex but also to a wider interdisciplinary audience, as the contributions featured consider the overarching themes of (in)visibilities, regulation, practice, sexualities in the city, spatial control, inclusion, exclusion, embodiment and sexual citizenship. We would very much like to thank Sexualities – and, in particular, Ken Plummer and Agnes Skamballis – for making this project possible, and special thanks must of course go both to the contributors themselves and to the colleagues who gave up their valuable time to act as referees for the articles included.