Veiling the image/framing 1 the body: The labour of enduring ephemerals 2 in the context of trans* male adult camming practices on Chaturbate

Opening Vignette

A little bit before midnight, I ³ register and set up a profile on Chaturbate. Last time I met up with one of my interlocutors, David, we spoke of broadcasting together. I upload a scan of my ID card, get age verified and set up my profile. I click on the button that says ‘broadcast yourself’, and then tilt the screen of my laptop as to show only a part of my neck, shoulders and torso. I am excited to get an idea of what camming feels like, curious to see myself reflected on the screen. Then I must have accidentally pressed the button ‘start broadcasting’: in a matter of seconds, dozens of users enter my room and start to chat. ‘What’s under that sweater?’ one user asks me, and I chuckle when another inquires about my favourite vegetable. As I navigate between two private chats, the public chat starts to flood with other users, some of whom leave my room in a matter of seconds, while others stay until the end of my session. I feel flattered by this unexpected rush of attention, all the more because I had not planned to perform any kind of ‘sexy’ show. After about an hour I say goodbye to the viewers in my room and fall asleep feeling excited about the idea of broadcasting together with David the following day. The next day, he tells me that he recently found his images spread out on third-party websites without his prior consent, adding that bots are responsible for this sort of business. I Google my Chaturbate user name and discover 176 results. ‘Sex is hot don’t you think, want to see my 29 year old body work its magic?’ one site proclaims. Slightly nervous I click on each individual link to check the amount of information made public and feel relieved to see that there is only a selective amount of screen shots of my show. Shaking off the feeling of unease I find a sense of humour at the thought of being ‘immortalized’ in my unsexy oversized blue sweater amidst an archive of eroticized naked bodies.

Introduction

The events described above triggered off our interest in the archival procedures and undesired forms of visibility that accompany Chaturbate (CB) broadcasting. The vignette above is an example of the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘capping’. This happens when a model’s real-time shows are (covertly) recorded by automated Internet bots or human viewers and redistributed on third-party web pages. ⁴ And indeed, it raises critical issues regarding the potential exploitation of camming labour and the undesired exposure repercussions we witness to in this context.

Entering the terrain of camming, this article explores matters of labour, archiving and in/visibility in the context of adult camming web page CB. Our analysis builds on the experiences of two male trans* ⁵ (transgender) interlocutors we encountered during ethnographic fieldwork. ⁶ The article explores the different forms of labour invested in camming, arguing that a large part of it is hidden behind the live screen. As we will show, camming models’ economic success is sustained by digital and partially automated technologies such as web applications and Internet bots. These technologies help cammers in creating highly interactive, entertainment and also ephemeral live shows. Whereas digital/online technologies have for the most part been celebrated as a major catalyst for trans* visibility, we will argue that the uncontrollable redistribution of CB’s live shows onto third-party platforms may, however, have undesired implications for trans* individuals. One of the most problematic implications, as we will show, is that cammers run the risk of becoming unwillingly visible. Losing control over the intended distribution circuit of their images, cammers run an increased risk of being identified and ‘outed’.

In the first section of this article, we will elaborate upon the politics and economies of visibility in the context of CB camming, addressing the tensions of these practices through the notion of the ‘enduring ephemeral’ (Chun, 2008). This notion renders the lives of digital objects at the same time transient and persistent. In the second part of this article, addressing the concrete experiences of two female-to-male trans* cammers, we will explore the possibilities for controlling and managing the (pre)production and distribution of images on CB. We contend that these two cases (emerging from a larger amount of ethnographic data) can function as windows onto critical issues regarding the tension between sharing and storing online materials. Through their experiences, we will shed light on the everyday rituals and strategies CB cammers may use in order to minimize the potential exploitation of labour and undesired identifiable visibility, while reaping the benefits of adult broadcasting. As we will show, controlling the scope of visibility on the live screen is crucial in this process and can be looked upon as a form of labour in and of itself.

CB’s invisible digital labour

Before we begin, let us have a look at some of the core characteristics of CB. Upon entering CB’s home page, viewers are presented with a grid of cammers’ rooms, sorted by popularity. Each room is displayed as a clickable still image (grabbed from the live stream) along with captioned text and tags. Rooms can be accessed individually, and viewers (registered and anonymous) can further browse them on the basis of cammers’ self-declared ‘sex’ or ‘practice’ (female, male, couple or transgender). This feature distinguishes CB from other major camming sites such as MyFreeCams and LiveJasmin. The latter two are mostly catered towards female cammers and do not give transgender individuals an opportunity to broadcast. CB’s web platform does not distinguish between trans* female and male and, as a matter of fact, most transgender cammers on CB are female. Our interlocutor David pointed out that, despite its seemingly democratic features, to his knowledge there are currently only two male-identifying transgender cammers active on CB. This suggests that the overall ‘gender disparity in online work is representative of the broader gender dynamic evident in the sex industry’ (Henry and Farvid, 2017: 120). Reflecting this situation, most of the (already-limited) scholarship on adult camming focuses exclusively on female cammers (e.g. Jones, 2016; Nayar, 2017). In her research on the economies of sex work, Smith (2015) argues that the erasure of non-female gender identities ‘cannot be separated from the gender politics surrounding the status of female sex workers’ (p. 15, emphasis added).

The field of scholarship on adult camming has been characterized by debates on the nature of camming practices. Henry and Farvid (2017) argue that ‘camming presents a convincing case that body and/or emotional work are more appropriate terms than sex work’ (p. 121). What distinguishes adult camming from ‘offline’ sex work is the fact that workers ‘are protected through the buffer of the webcam’ (Bleakly, 2014: 901), hence functioning as a ‘psychological barrier’ (Jones, 2016: 247). Inquiries into the nature of labour in the context of adult camming reflect debates held in (offline) sex work research at large. Some authors in this field propose expanding the understanding of ‘sex work’ to (also) encompass ‘body/sex work’ (Cohen et al., 2013), ‘emotional labor’ (Cohen et al., 2013) and ‘aesthetic labour’ (Fazzino, 2013: 130). Because of its technologically mediated nature, adult camming has been approached as online labour or as ‘digital labor’ (Henry and Farvid, 2017: 123), rooted in the context ‘of Web 2.0 participatory cultures and amateur content creation’ (Nayar, 2017: 478). Similar to other Web 2.0 moving image-based practices such as YouTube vlogging, adult camming can be understood as a type of labour that blurs distinctions between amateur/professional, labour/leisure and private/public (Bleakly, 2014; Dobson, 2008; Jones, 2016). Nayar (2017) points out that adult cammers ‘cater (with variable success) to desires for “realness”’ (p. 485). They perform authenticity and build friendship ties with users ‘while at the same time also claiming forms of professionalism’. Many scholars in the field of sex work at large have also argued that sex workers always navigate between authenticity and performativity (e.g. Berg, 2015; Cohen et al., 2013; Fazzino, 2013).

In her research on the labour of pornographic performances, Hester (2015) argues that scholarship often ‘ignores contexts of production in favour of engaging with the text [i.e. the image] itself’ (p. 32). This has resulted in a ‘blind spot’ with regard to the labour processes surrounding sex work (Hester, 2015: 37). Likewise, the apparent spontaneity and ease of CB performances make the (digital) labour involved in camming invisible. Indeed, there is much more to CB’s images than meets the eye. In order to maximize pleasure and achieve monetary success, adult cammers rely on a set of creative digital production and distribution skills. Cammers commodify their digital ‘data’, such as their professional Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat accounts and/or their telephone numbers. This suggests that adult camming comprises an aggregate of (seemingly) authentic and affective digital objects in which attention, eroticism and intimacy are economically exchanged. Within the context of live shows, CB cammers also activate a number of partly automated digital technologies such as applications and bots in order to increase the degree of real-time interactivity and intimacy with viewers and to customize the ‘chat room experience’ (CB, n.d.). One of the most popular technologies adopted by cam models is vibrator ‘Lovense’, a WiFi-connected teledildonics device that is synchronized with apps and bots. This remote-controlled dildo responds to the input of ‘tokens’ ⁷ (i.e. money) tipped by viewers by activating low-to-high intensity vibrations and sounds audible for all viewers in the chat room. Other applications implemented during live shows generate a rather entertaining experience for viewers who, by tipping tokens, can participate in a number of contests and win prizes such as access to cammers’ private videos or nude photographs. Through these applications, viewers can also help cammers reach a token-based goal that is pre-announced by a text displayed right below the live-streamed video screen. This may consist in the removal of a piece of clothing at the preset goal of, just to give an example, 200 tokens. In addition to these app-driven contests, the amount as well as the speed and ephemerality of digital ‘data’ in the chat room seem to turn live shows into game-like experiences. The chat box on the right side, next to the video screen, materializes as a stream of coloured text, emojis, vibrant GIFS, automated notifications and sounds travelling between models and viewers. This creates a highly interactive and multisensory viewer/user experience.

In this section, we have argued that, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of CB camming, we need to address the practices it involves in terms of labour. This responds to contemporary calls by scholars in the field of sex work research to address adult camming (and sex work at large) as proper forms of labour. As we have seen, difficulty remains when it comes to defining what exactly these labour practices are made up of. Adult camming, we contend, is a form of ‘body/sex work’ (Cohen et al., 2013) that simultaneously contains elements of emotional, aesthetic and online/digital labour. The spontaneous and ephemeral impressions viewers gather when faced with the CB screen veil the laborious preparations that accompany the act of camming itself. It is one of the ambitions of this article to unveil this dynamic. Now, before delving into our ethnographic material, let us have a look at the fraught relationship between trans* identities, visibility and archival practices in online/digital spaces.

Online trans* archives and its enduring ephemerals

As noted above, the number of male trans* cammers on CB is rather limited. Confirming David’s account, we have only encountered two other male trans* cammers on CB. However, it would be impossible to figure out exactly how many male trans* cammers are active there. Indeed, ‘quantifying this market [of internet sex] is difficult’ (Sanders et al., 2018: 153), if not downright impossible. At the same time, some scholars argue that the empirical focus on, and the conceptual understanding of, sex work as essentially female (and heterosexual) runs the risk of erasing the experiences of those who do not fit into these hegemonic frames (Berg, 2015; Smith et al., 2015). It replicates hegemonic gender dualisms based on the idea ‘that there is a “natural” gender order in which women are sexual objects and men are sexual subjects’ (Smith et al., 2015: 1, citing Smith, 2012). Furthermore, it downplays ‘the political agency of queer and trans* sex workers’ (Smith et al., 2015: 1). We therefore have to be careful in not replicating the binaries that queerness aims to unsettle. Keeping this in mind, let us now turn to the vexed relationship between trans* identities, digital/online technologies and visibility.

By and large, digital technologies and online platforms have been considered a major catalyst for trans* visibility. Marciano (2014), for instance, claims that ‘the Internet is an unprecedented source of information, support and consultation’ (p. 828) in the everyday lives of trans* individuals. More generally (and especially from the late 1990s to the early 2000s), researchers have celebrated the positive implications of the Internet in the lives of marginalized users, especially in the context of sexual and gender minorities (Hegland and Nelson, 2002; Whittle, 1998). Whereas earlier literature focused predominantly on text-based communication, more recently scholars have devoted increased attention to images in online/digital representational practices. In his research on trans* male video blogs on YouTube, Raun (2015) points out that ‘YouTube has become an important archive for trans people; it houses one of the most vivid visual cultures of trans (self-)representations’ (p. 701). In such domains, online as well as offline visibility appears to be one of the main missions and outcomes of trans* people’s digital practices. Yet, it is often overlooked that online visibility ‘might [also] mean exposure, suspicion, the forced outing of certain bodies’ (Fischer et al., 2018). Haimson et al. (2016), for instance, note the complexities involved in trans* people’s management of their online data on Facebook, showing that ‘[d]igital artefacts on social media can challenge individuals during identity transitions, particularly those who prefer to delete, separate from, or hide data that are representative of a past identity’ (p. 2895). What is perhaps most at stake here is the tension between the ephemerality of users’ online data on one hand, and their easy circulation and endurance on the other. This is what Haimson et al. (2016) label ‘the persistence of digital footprints’ (p. 2895). Gieseking and Cockayne (2018, in Fischer et al., 2018) similarly question the unanimous desirability of being seen. They argue that an ‘LGBTQ person’s out-ness is presumed to feed into a “politics of visibility”’ and that ‘queer visibility online has led to a distinct cultural backlash’. The question remains, thus, whether online visibility of trans* bodies is necessarily and invariably desirable. For exploring this issue, we need to open up a window onto the importance of the archive in online settings.

To show and to make oneself seen online today is to be archived. We saw this at the opening vignette of this article, when E.T. described how she found images of her live show on CB, redistributed on third-party platforms in what she called ‘an archive of eroticized naked bodies’. Catering to real-time, interactive performances, the images in CB camming are expected to disappear once the model goes offline. Yet, as we have seen, this is often not the case. Camming models as well as scholars involved in the field suggest that capping is an inevitable side effect of adult camming (Jones, 2016). It reveals the extent to which online ‘audience[s] today [also] includes machines’ (Rettberg, 2014: 87). Behind the surface of the images that travel on these web pages ⁸ lies algorithmic automation, which captures, stores, organizes and re-shares not only the visuals but also their associated (meta)data across a range of third-party platforms. The ‘secret’ behind capping builds on the fact that bots can be hidden behind what looks like an anonymous viewer. Owners of third-party platforms employ these bots in order to commodify and thus exploit the live shows of (unaware) CB cammers. Gehl (2011) points out that Web 2.0’s economic model is in fact based on repetitive archival practices and routines, what he calls ‘affective processing’ (p. 1228). The archive, an agglomerate of datafied user interactions to be sold and bought, is ultimately in the hands of Web 2.0 site owners (Gehl, 2011: 1229).

Whereas interfaces on Web 2.0 platforms at first glance appear catered to immediacy, newness and ‘nowness’ (Drakopoulou, 2017; Gehl, 2011), its associated archival practices foreground permanence and duration as well. According to Chun (2008), things online constantly disappear and reappear, evoking ‘archival nightmares’ (p. 149). In her words, ‘if our machines’ memories are more permanent, if they enable a permanence that we seem to lack, it is because they are constantly refreshed so that their ephemerality endures’ (Chun, 2008: 167). The messy temporalities that we witness to here result from the degree of automation and real-time capture built into our machines. Kinsley (2015) argues that such ‘quasi-autonomous systems’ (p. 155) in fact ‘suspend the possibility of distinguishing between an “event” and its “capture,” its induction into memory’ (p. 166). Hence, they collapse the distinction between the voluntary act of sharing digital content and their (automated) storage.

This is what E.T. experienced when she found her CB images circulated across a range of third-party platforms. The simple act of clicking the button ‘start broadcasting’ seemed to have activated bots to execute a number of basic computer commands, such as copy–paste, virtually ad infinitum. The textual data accompanying the images (sexual orientation, age, location), scraped from their original source (CB), signalled the automation involved in the process. The logics of such forms of involuntary image redistribution seem to be ‘consent once, circulate forever’ (Chun, 2016: 172). For E.T., the fact that she suddenly became ‘exposed’ and ‘framed’ in an archive bore no serious consequences. This was the case because she had no far-reaching stakes in CB camming to begin with and more importantly, perhaps, that she never revealed her own face on camera. The latter, it is worth pointing out, is perhaps the most crucial factor in this case. Nevertheless, her performance became copyrighted by an external web page called ‘Megacams.me’, whose logo can be seen on the bottom right of the screenshot (Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

E. T. during her camming test.

MegaCams is a web platform that promotes itself as a ‘live sex search engine’, and features shows of cammers from eight major adult camming sites in real time. In 2016, the platform implemented a facial recognition tool, which has been widely criticized because ‘the feature does not respect the privacy of the webcam performers themselves, who risk of being outed by someone they know IRL’ ⁹ (Lomas, 2016). The key word ‘outed’ is vital here. As Chun (2016) points out, new media networks operate through a ‘logic of leaking and outing’ (p. 13) and the ‘forced exposure of open secrets’ (p. 141). Looking at a number of contemporary instances of slut shaming and similar forms of online harassment, she contends that this logic ends up blaming and shaming Internet users for their own ‘bad behaviour’. Perhaps, however, users should not be shamed. What should be shamed instead are the ‘promiscuous’ and ‘leaky’ (Chun, 2016: 51) digital networks in which users are inscribed.

Looking into scholarship on archives from a queer perspective, many authors have elaborated on their paradoxical nature. Muñoz (2009), for instance, argues that ‘queerness has an especially vexed relationship to evidence’ (p. 65). As he writes elsewhere, ‘leaving too much of a trace has often meant that the queer subject has left herself open to attack’ (Muñoz, 1996: 6). In Rodríguez’ (2015: 222, in Arondekar et al., 2015) words, ‘we are entering a moment of such intense saturation of images, text, and video that our relationship to documentation and the archival is transforming’. The role and weight of images of trans* people are of fundamental importance for addressing the dispersal of ephemeral data in these unintended distribution circuits.

Engaging with ethnographic material, in the coming section we will look at the ways in which two male trans* cammers attempt to manage and control the (pre)production and distribution of their images on CB. We will explore the everyday rituals and strategies they use in order to minimize the potential exploitation of their labour and the undesired exposure outside CB live shows, while reaping the benefits of adult broadcasting. As we will show, controlling the scope of visibility on the live screen is crucial in this process and can be understood as a form of labour in and of itself.

Veiling the image: ‘it’s like a mask’

Of course I’m having concerns about being recognized. [But] I also have this kind of persona, the wig, and the make-up, I think it’s more difficult to recognize me in real life.

These are the words David uses when we asked him about the noted ‘risks’ of capping. The use of a ‘manufactured identity’ (Sanders, 2005, in Jones, 2016: 232) is a common management strategy among adult cammers that allows for a protection from the ‘potential psychological harm of selling sex’ (p. 232). Indicating that he was well aware of the potential of being capped even before he started broadcasting, David says that he was still a little ‘shocked’ when he found his images on third-party websites: ‘I didn’t realize actually how bad it would be’. While he could ask CB to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint, he explains that such interventions are ultimately fruitless because his images will ‘reappear somewhere’. David deems his deliberate self-commodification as a CB model ‘empowering in a way’. In his words, ‘I could do something myself, you know, I could figure out how to act in a financially difficult situation’. Yet, the unconsensual leakage of his images shook the sense of control over his CB camming activities. There is here a core tension between a self-chosen act of commodification and an inflicted ‘grab’ (Senft, 2008). The ‘grab’ characterizes Web 2.0, a context in which ‘once an image begins to travel (. . .) it is impossible to control where it will wind up’ (Senft, 2008: 47).

As we have seen, ‘capping’ is generated by automated bots or human viewers. David, however, does not differentiate between these two agents. For him, the results are equal: the images, subject of his copyright and his self-made source of income, are in both cases commodified by others. David acknowledges the ‘friction between liberating and oppressive forces’ that according to Favero (2018: 2) makes up the political economy of the Web 2.0. David says,

We are [also] giving our information to Facebook, and Facebook is making money out if this. I was very aware of the Internet like in 97, and yeah, I had my own blog, I was putting out my art from time to time, and sometimes my pictures, and so I was very much aware of this kind of attention, so to say.

Interestingly, David here describes the leakage of his images with the word ‘attention’. Testifying to the above-mentioned co-presence of liberation and oppression, this is for just part of the game: ‘on the Internet you are a public figure so to say, and everything you put online is downloaded, interacted with or shared. So I’m just used to this idea’.

At the time of our fieldwork, David had been active on CB for 2.5 years. Whereas camming today is his main source of income, he started broadcasting, as he puts it, ‘for fun. It used to be my big fantasy, in a way, to be watched by many people (. . .) but without having them around. Yeah, to be on [a] distance’. He currently broadcasts with two profiles and is only ‘himself’, in other words male, on one of these two. His monetizing profile is the one where he performs as a woman. Stressing that ‘sometimes it’s easier to play a role than to be yourself’, David suggests that performing as a woman allows him to establish a distance from the risks and identity-exposing implications of capping. Cross-dressing as a woman on CB also grants him access to a wider market. He explains that ‘I’m making money as a female and I have a lot of viewers because [of it], and without this mask it would be some kind of problem for me’.

As noted above, adult camming is a form of labour that upsets the boundaries between amateur and professional and that simultaneously displays the performativity of authenticity. During our conversations with David, one theme that strongly emerged was the tension he experienced between being himself and wearing a ‘social mask’. Suggesting that his personality always ‘shines through’, he indicates that CB broadcasting is a very personal and intimate affair. On the contrary, it is also very much about ‘creating interest [and] value’ and hence making oneself marketable. The tension between professional performativity and everyday authenticity recurred throughout many of our conversations. ‘It’s like a real job, it’s like an investment’, David clarifies as we go over the technological equipment, garments and props he purchased in order to make his shows both aesthetically appealing and profitable. He says, ‘you have to put a lot of money in it, in a way, but also it will bring you a lot of money’. This suggests that, in such contexts, self-representation becomes a ‘brand’ (Senft, 2008: 9).

David was ‘blown away’ when he was able to actually monetize his CB shows. For him, camming is not just a matter of income but also of enhancing his self-esteem: ‘It’s also about body image, so it improves, so you feel more comfortable in your body and things like that’. The desire to go online is hence the result of the positive affirmation he receives from his viewers, which suggests that camming also revolves around existential matters. Blurring the boundary between life online and offline, David constantly uses his online experiences to show the ‘shortcomings’ of life offline. On one occasion, talking about the way in which viewers sometimes address him as an object, he states,

I’m very aware of myself as an object . . . I don’t have a problem with it because I think everybody is some sort of product. People have this discussion about sex workers. They say, you are selling yourself, you are selling your soul. But isn’t that what you are doing for any other job you do?

The sense of pleasure that David gets while camming is generated at the interface of his capacity to exercise control upon the image, and hence at the tension zone between visibility and invisibility. David is careful about which body parts he shows in the context of his live performances. Initially, he did not show his face on CB:

I liked the idea at first that I could be anybody, anyone, they don’t know me, they don’t see me, but only see some things I want to show . . . and yeah, then I started to show my face. It was difficult to go to this point because I thought that it ¹⁰ would be visible, a transgender or something.

In addition to the ‘veiling’ intervention he accomplishes by broadcasting as a female persona, David further employs a number of real-time strategies for increasing his sense of control in terms of viewer interactions. On one occasion, his double identity on CB got him into trouble. When he was broadcasting with his female persona, a viewer recognized his face from his male-identified profile and commented on it in the public chat. David immediately ‘silenced’ and blocked the viewer, thereby making the entire conversation invisible to other viewers in the room. David points out that ‘silencing’ and blocking those he calls ‘trolls’ is a mundane occupation: ‘looking in the chat and paying attention to what they say and what I say and what’s in the picture, it’s very close to the meaning of life’.

In this section, we have shown how David mitigates the difficulties of broadcasting. On one hand, he takes these to be inevitable elements of his profession and deploys a number of strategies for toning down their consequences. On the other hand, he softens the potential ‘dangers of camming’ (Jones, 2016: 228) by indicating that such phenomena are simply part of a wider technocultural reality. Pointing out that ‘everybody is putting a mask on when they go to work’, David further implodes any qualitative difference between online and offline labour. He suggests that his self-chosen online commodification is an issue of mundane labour at large. We could interpret such accounts as merely rationalizing strategies. Yet, perhaps, they show the extent to which for David, online and offline dynamics of human labour are not distinct. Using common-sense human interaction skills, David creatively and carefully tackles the potential drawbacks of broadcasting. Doing this he creates a two-way flow between the online and the offline. For him, camming teaches valuable life lessons:

camming is not for everybody because you have to have some certain qualities as a person . . . primarily in my opinion it’s being strong . . . be ready to tolerate a lot of comments . . . you grow a thicker skin . . . It teaches you a lot.

Framing the body: ‘it’s hard to try out something like this in real life’

In 2015, Chris registered on CB. He discovered the website through a friend, who regularly watched shows on CB. Chris began broadcasting because he was ‘excited’ by the idea and also for gaining a sense of control in his everyday life:

it was in a period of my life I felt somewhat restricted, in terms of relationships and all that. On Chaturbate I felt like I could determine . . . It gave me a sense of control in terms of what I could show to others, which was an exciting feeling.

Being able to decide which body parts to show his viewers on CB, Chris addresses the unease he felt in revealing his genitals to intimate partners in everyday life situations: ‘I felt like I had the ugliest thing ever. But apparently, they [the viewers] don’t feel that way, that’s what they told me’. Saying that viewers helped him accept himself more, he points out that while ‘it doesn’t look like what most other people have . . . there are many people who like this even more and find it more exciting, so what do I worry about?’

Chris, who keeps his transgender identity mostly concealed in his everyday life, points out that he is in fact rather anxious and insecure about ‘how everything looks down there’. He says that ‘having sex with me . . . seems for many people a nice research, something like a project. Often it starts out like “what will this be like, what would it look like?” It makes me so sad sometimes’.

While Chris mostly broadcasted as a transgender male, he would often leave the ‘sex’ column blank altogether. Testifying to the influence camming platforms exercise upon their users, Chris’ capacity to switch gender is also made possible by the platform of CB, which allowed him to change at all times or to leave the ‘sex’ column blank altogether. Whenever he left his ‘sex’ column blank, viewers would, in Chris’ words,

Often discuss what they were looking at and then I thought, I might as well pass for intersex . . . It’s hard to try out something like this in real life. If I can tell people that it looks this way because I’m intersex, that’s fine. This way I don’t have to admit that I’m trans*, you know, because people will wonder what I looked like [in the past] and I don’t want that.

It is striking that Chris pointed out the benefits of utilizing his CB audience as a testing ground for, in his own words, ‘real life’, that is, for life offline. Indeed, it is important to take into account that, in contrast to the ‘talking head’ (Horak, 2014) ingredients of, for instance, YouTube vlogging, CB allows for increased opportunities of partial or fragmentary visibility, identity performance and role-playing, which clarifies the emphasis Chris puts on testing out new gender identities and expressions. Similar to David’s account, part of the pleasure of CB camming for Chris derived from the control of which body parts to (or not to) reveal. One important distinction between David and Chris is, however, that Chris’ camming activities were not primarily economically motivated, even though, as he suggested, money was a nice ‘bonus’. Chris’ motivations for CB camming were associated with having more control and freedom in expressing his gender identity.

Besides being concerned with which body parts to reveal, Chris was also concerned with his own audience. While camming, he was often afraid that his images would be ‘saved’, stored and circulated, and that his ‘future self’ would come to regret having broadcasted altogether. In order to prevent the risks of capping, he employed a set of body/image framing strategies. One of these resembles what Jones (2016: 232, citing Sanders: 2005) calls ‘bodily exclusion zones’, which ‘forms a psychological barrier that opens up the potential for more pleasure’. Chris explained,

most of the time I didn’t show my face . . . I bought a webcam specially for it [broadcasting] because with my built-in camera I couldn’t read what was on the screen when I tilted it . . . On a few occasions I did show my face, only when I really felt safe with my viewers. But then I . . .

At this point, he interrupts himself; he then mimics the gesture of panning from his lower to his upper body and explains how he would attempt to insert a mechanical, hand-driven cut into the image. He put his hand in front of the lens in order to interrupt the live image flow, so that viewers would not be allowed to connect his face to his body. ‘I never showed everything in one piece’, he says. Explaining that he devised a number of theories around his broadcasting activities in anticipation of the risks of being capped, Chris notes, ‘If so [if the live show would be capped and redistributed] I could always pretend somebody else edited it’.

Chris also used other strategies to prevent identification and exposure. He blocked, for instance, certain geographical regions: ‘I just didn’t want to run the risk. But you [viewers] can always set something so that your IP cannot trace your region, so in the end you [viewers] can bypass it. It’s never a hundred percent waterproof’. Chris told us that he Googled his CB user name multiple times. Fortunately, he states, his images were never ‘leaked’. ¹¹ In spite of his overall pleasant and positive experiences, the potential and anticipation of being ‘discovered’ were Chris’ main motives to stop broadcasting altogether. After approximately 6 months, he decided to put an end to his camming activities, noting that

I really enjoyed doing it, but . . . I could never really shake off the feeling of doing something that is somehow ‘wrong’ or ‘dirty’. So in the end I could never take the most pleasure out of it . . . and surrender myself fully.

Putting together the experiences of David and Chris, we find a number of commonalities as well as differences between them. Both interlocutors engage with CB simultaneously for economic and existential reasons. And both of them exercise control with regard to their online and their offline visibility, their body and their image. While both are well aware of the risks of capping and leaking (and hence of the risks for undesired invisibility) that accompany CB camming, their strategies for minimizing these risks are significantly different. As we have seen, David exercises his control upon CB mainly at the level of his body (both online and offline). Using the web pages’ possibilities for broadcasting with different profiles, he alternates between a male (himself) and a female persona. While the latter guarantees more economical success, the former allows him to act upon his (offline) identity and to realize his existential agenda. As mentioned above, cross-dressing as a woman helps David keeping his everyday and offline life separated from the roles he performs on the live screen. This indeed also explains why David is not acutely concerned about being recognized in offline contexts, given that, as we saw, he started camming by hiding his face, wearing a wig, applying make-up and so on. This is a proper way of veiling one’s image.

Chris, on the contrary, has been more concerned about the risks of being recognized by his viewers. In the end, he has decided to put an end to CB camming altogether. During his CB broadcasting activities, his core investments consisted in ‘editing’ his live-streamed images. As we just described, he engaged with the camera in creative ways in order to interrupt the ‘natural’ flow of images. His manual montage prevented viewers from being able to reconstruct the connection between his face and his body. As we quoted above, ‘I never showed everything in one piece’. Chris also intervened at the level of the metadata. He blocked certain geographical regions as to prevent (potentially) familiar viewers to identify and expose him. At times, switching between CB’s ‘sex’ columns, he omitted information about his gender identity altogether. In this way, Chris used his CB audience as a testing ground for crafting different gender identities, something that, as he (rightfully) mentioned, is rather difficult to do ‘in real life’ (i.e. offline). Carefully framing his offline body, and by extension his online images on CB, Chris materializes his gender identity and expression as a fluid and fluctuating performance.

Both Chris and David deploy a set of creative and carefully designed strategies to tackle the potential drawbacks of CB broadcasting. Yet, they never renounce the possibility of bringing together, in this terrain, their existential and economic needs. Acknowledging the above-mentioned frictions between liberating and oppressive forces that make up the political economy of Web 2.0, the experiences of Chris and David are generated at the interface of a desire to fully engage with (and capitalize upon) their presence on CB, while also exercising control upon their image, body and identity. A friction that also mirrors the tension between the professional labour and ‘everyday’ authenticity of live camming, this remands us to the title of this article, ‘Veiling the image/framing the body’. Referring to David’s and Chris’ respective camming strategies, it speaks of that thin line they walk on, where visibility and invisibility entangle.

Conclusion

In this article, we have shown how CB can provide transgender individuals with an opportunity to craft out a space for pleasure and personal gain. This is a space where to realize both economic and existential aspirations. It is important to remember, however, that CB is also a platform in which the voluntary image-sharing choices of individuals are constantly negotiated with automated mechanisms. This is the story of the interlocutors we have introduced the reader to in this text. While they exploit this space for reasons of pleasure, identity building and economic gain, they nevertheless face the limitations built into these digital infrastructures. As E.T. also experienced, one’s own images may end up being reproduced, archived and endlessly shared beyond the control of adult cammers. Arguing that CB camming builds upon proper and multifaceted forms of labour, we have suggested that making oneself visible on the live screen also implies vulnerability and potential exposure to exploitation. CB cammers such as our interlocutors are confronted with an undesired and potentially ‘enduring’ visibility, which can become detrimental for their everyday lives. In order to reap the benefits of CB broadcasting, cammers, as we have seen, cleverly negotiate and manage the scope of their visibility on the live screen. The experiences that Chris and David have kindly shared with us offer an accurate window unto this dynamic.

Aiming to deconstruct the ‘entrenched polarities (. . .) between oppression and liberation, violence and pleasure, and victimhood and agency’ (Smith et al., 2015: 1) that dominate debates on sex work, we contend that, in order to take full advantage of CB camming labour, performers need to exercise a degree of control at the dialectic between human agency and machine-driven automation. The world of CB camming is characterized by tensions and contradictions, visibilities and invisibilities, ephemeralities and endurances. And as we have shown, the very administration of this tension is a practice that needs to be understood within the framework of labour.