Gay hospitality as desiring labor: Contextualizing transnational sexual labor

Abstract

This critical ethnographic research explores gay hospitality as a 'testimony of desire' by working-class and 'gay'-identified Filipino sexual laborers who 'work' as companions for foreign tourists in a gentrifying tourism district, Malate, the Philippines. I analyze gay hospitality as informal sexual labor by applying the concept of identity work, which involves hosts' construction and maintenance of their 'gay' identity and connection to urban place. I argue that their testimonies of desire are subaltern development discourses, which speak to significant lived experiences of work and place and, which offer alternative configurations of identity, relationships, and economic exchange.

Sex counts: An examination of sexual service advertisements in a UK online directory

“…Although advertisements to clients clearly cannot be assumed to translate into client numbers, it is nevertheless performatively significant that cis female, trans, gay, bi, and couple clients are being positioned as potential consumers in this way. It also supports previous research that has noted that women and couples buy sex (Lee-Gonyea et al, 2009), as well as studies on male-to-male escorting (see, for instance, Collins, 2012;Minichiello & Scott, 2014;Morrison & Whitehead, 2007;Walby, 2012).…”

Touching intimacy: Bodywork, affect and the caring ethic in erotic gay massage in Taiwan

“…To challenge the opposition between affective and economic activity in gay sexual commerce, a small but growing body of research has postulated intimacy as a conceptual tool, exemplified by Dana Collins' () notion of desiring labour among working‐class Filipino gay men. Excluded from gentrification, they perceive ‘gay hospitality’ as neither sexual nor commercial labour but as identity‐enhancing work that enables them ‘to become a new kind of urban “gay”’ (p. 539).…”

“…My focus on same‐sex engagements extends studies on what Paterson (, p. 162) terms the potentially ‘empathetic and transformative capacity’ of touching in massage work and the provision of alternative intimacies for the marginalized outside normative gay desire. By extending feminist insights into an under‐researched dimension of male sex work, my work contributes to an emerging literature on intimate and embodied labour in sexual commerce and meaningful relations in male‐for‐male sexual transactions (Collins, ; Hoang, ; Walby, ). Also, by situating the cultural significance of gay sexual labour in Taiwan and framing it as a righteous practice through popularized Buddhist rhetoric of ‘merit accumulation’ ( zuò gōng dé ; Ting, , p. 177), my ethnographic study extends scholarly understanding of societal forces that regulate the male sex industry into underexplored social–geographical locations and sociocultural variations outside a western setting.…”

“…This paper unpacks the bodywork of erotic gay massage in Taiwan, examining the underexplored intersection of corporeal and affective dimensions in research on male sexual labour. While previous studies of male sexual labour focused disproportionately on social control of street workers and their deviant behaviours, a growing literature has begun to explore the experience of workers outside the deviance framework, including strippers, porn stars, male‐for‐male online escorts and companions in transnational gay tourism (Collins, ; DeMarco, ; Escoffier, ; Morrison & Whitehead, ). This literature represents a conceptual departure from an emphasis in earlier studies on characterizations of male sexual labour as pathological and workers as vectors of disease transmission.…”

Welcoming the World? Hospitality, Homonationalism, and the London 2012 Olympics

“…Yet despite the existence of a substantial body of work on the class relations of such processes (Vanwynsberghe et al ), and some attention to questions of race and age (see Kennelly and Watt ; Rutheiser ; Watt ), the sexual landscapes associated with the Olympics and other sporting mega‐events remain under‐explored . This is surprising given the attention devoted to gay tourism and the mobilities of the “global gay” (Binnie ), as well as emerging literatures on sexual commerce which hint at the importance of sexuality in the leisure and hospitality industries so integral to the Olympics (eg Collins ; Thurnell Read ). Hence, in this paper we argue that sexuality—so often marginalized in urban studies—is not just a side issue in the politics of urban development and spectacle, but is integral to the making of “safe spaces” for capital accumulation.…”