Sex/Bodywork: Discourses and Practices

Abstract

Drawing upon theoretical work which locates the body, sex and sexuality as discursively constituted, this article moves towards a richer understanding of how such discursive formations are mapped on to, and yet simultaneously disavowed in, the narrative accounts of women engaged in sex work and bodywork. Based upon interviews with sauna- and home-based prostitute women and women therapeutic massage practitioners, the article examines those discursive interstices of the self, body, sex and sexuality that firstly, permit similar practices to become constituted as variously embodied and disembodied, and secondly, permit various self/other identifications to be deployed by the two different groups of women. We argue that for both professions, the effects of this are similar; such discursive devices allow the women to repudiate the taint of sex whilst simultaneously allowing them to be publicly re-inscribed as illicit, disreputable and, above all, sexy. This creates near-intractable difficulties for women involved in sex/bodywork.