Mobile Bodies

Practicing Cell Phone-Based Transactional Sex

in Gujarat, India

Mitali ThakorSelf, Selves, & Sexualities Conference

Dublin, IrelandMarch 20, 2010

Overview

• Introduction • Methods • Results:

Transactional Sex Mobility Entrepreneurship?

• Conclusions

Introduction

How do cell phones offer new ways of conceptualizing ‘transactional sex’ distinct from current definitions of sex work dictated by the HIV/AIDS and sex trafficking discourse?

What role do cell phones play in the day-to-day lived experiences of women doing transactional sex in a ‘modern’ Indian state?

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Introduction

Before cell phones, I used to have to wait to pick up customers on the street corner by the train station. It was risky, because the police could easily catch you and all the people passing by would see you there every few days and figure out who you were.

Now my life is much easier—I give customers my cell number, they ring me up when they want to meet, and then they come to my house or we meet at a hotel…

Nobody’s going to bother a woman talking on her phone in public.There’s nothing wrong with that.

“

”-- Radha, 28 year-old woman, Baroda

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Methods

• Locations in Gujarat: o Vikas Jyot (Baroda)o Jyoti Sangh (Ahmedabad)

• Interviews:o 24 women (18-60)o Semi-structured

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Last day at Vikas Jyot (Baroda)

Methodologies

• Loca-lization • Subterranean methods 

• Why are feminist methodologies necessary?o Situating the researcher: what knowledge will be obtained?o Stigmatized field: must equally privilege direct info + the

unspoken

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Discussion of Results

• Transactional sex

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

• Entrepreneurship?o Performing classo Self-invention

• Mobilityo Spatial & social

Sex work

Overwhelmingly defined by dual discourses:

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Spectacle of Trafficking Specter of AIDS&

Brothel-based sex work in Kolkata, India

Conflating disease and state control (Kolkata AIDS rally)

Transactional Sex

Diversity of practices & purposes

Moving away from victimizing discourses

Mobility

• Cell phones: transformative global technologies

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

• Spatial mobility:o Speech & stanceo Performance theories o Dissemblance

Mobility

Entrepreneurship

• Social mobility:o Performing class & modernity

• Sex workers as entrepreneurs o Autonomy afforded by cell phone useo Peer educators & brokers

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Conclusions

• New forms of subjectivity and knowledge-productiono Elastic notions of transactional sexo Performing entrepreneurship & modernity

• Paradox of Gujarat: Neoliberal state & Hindutva movements

Methods Results ConclusionsIntroduction

Thank you!