An Ethnographic Approach to Prostitution: When Sex Workers Talk about Customers

Abstract

In this paper I will rescue the customer figure from the oppresive scope of deviation, while looking for an approach to the sex trade without the prism of abolitionism or leading sexuality.

Based on the ethnographic methodology is has developed a set of 44 life stories of migrant sex workers, empirical material from which emerges the discourse of the protagonists is here subjected to analysis. It begins by questioning the usefulness of typologies, also criticized any socio-psychological determinism constrain the subjects, to then proceed to deconstruct the various stereotypes (women frigidity, hiper-sexualization of men, asymmetry in negotiating) that have come to consolidate that predatory archetype of male sexuality, and that usually as described sex workers, is does not match a more standard reality in the daily life of prostitution.

On the other hand, focuses attention on the professional learning process, negotiating inter partes, role confusion, ambiguities and conflicts that come together for any social interaction but that proliferate in clandestine settings, as well as own contradictions and prejudices of the subjects.