Most literature on prostitution centres exclusively on street and female sex workers. Considering the lack of inclusion of trans sex workers within research agendas and public policies, in this article I analyse websites where trans women offer their services in Portugal and the UK. I examine the way trans women escorts present themselves to potential clients through detailed descriptions of their bodies’ sizes, physical attributes, personal characteristics and lovemaking skills, and how they negotiate gender, nationality, race, ethnicity and sexuality in relation to the cultural and socio-economic demands of the market. An intersectional framework provides the critical perspective from which to consider how certain trans narratives are displayed through these online advertisements while decentring hegemonic notions (mainly, white and middle class) of representing trans experiences. This exploratory research aims to better understand the online trans sex industry as a place of empowerment where ‘beautiful’ trans escorts can strategically position themselves in order to succeed in a competitive market and, simultaneously, lay claim for a certain degree of (finite) recognition.
ResumenEn el presente artículo me propongo reflexionar acerca de los procesos transmigratorios que intervienen en la construcción de las identidades de género travestis. Me centraré en las experiencias migratorias de las travestis brasileñas que han viajado y viajan a Europa para insertarse en el mercado del sexo local. Emplearé el concepto "migración trans" para hacer referencia a la especificidad de sus proyectos migratorios: no sólo migran buscando un mayor bienestar social, simbólico y económico, sino que también sus movilizaciones geográficas inciden en la manera de transformar y embellecer sus cuerpos. Las identidades travestis son creadas en estos tránsitos continuos. Al mismo tiempo, se analizará que sus identidades son reconfiguradas en el contexto europeo pues resaltan particularmente su brasileñidad como una estrategia para sobresalir y distinguirse del resto en un mercado del sexo cada vez más limitado por las políticas públicas y la crisis económica.
This article offers an exploration into the ways in which the researcher's body enters into a permanent dialogue with the practices and the discourses of the research participants, and is transformed into an essential investigative tool. Based on my ethnographic experience amongst a group of Brazilian travesti sex workers, I will show how my own 'imperfect' body, according to the travesti canons of feminine aesthetics, became an element that awarded me visibility and served as a bridge to interaction with them. At the same time, I was accidentally interpreted by the group as the 'photographer'. From this corporeal interaction, and via the medium of the camera, I was able to legitimize my position amongst travestis and open a new field of theoretical enquiry, developing, therefore, Wacquant's proposal (2004) on a 'corporeal sociology' in the understanding of the active role that the body takes in the research process.
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