2 - The commodification of the body: a disembodied “service”

Summary

The question of whether it is problematic or not to commodify sex as a product, which can be bought and sold as in any other market exchange, is central to the debate surrounding prostitution. As Agustin (2007) states “the two perceptions – that sex is incomparable to anything else and that it is comparable – lies at the core of the oppositional debate within feminism regarding sex work” (61). In sex work discourse the idea that “sex is uniquely difficult to commodify or that the process of doing so necessarily causes unique distress to the worker involved” is disputed (Chapkis 2009: 242). She acknowledges that there are “challenges in relation to client behaviour and boundaries, long hours, being treated with disrespect by some clients” but asserts that these should not be regarded as “unique to prostitution” but pertain to most forms of low status work (242). That sex work is “easy for some people and impossibly difficult for others” is conceded by Agustin (2007: 64) but, it is argued, this is the same for many forms of work. She recognizes that many women disclose difficulties including an absence of feeling when with clients and feelings of “disgust, fear, loneliness, sadness, or a sense of sin” (64). However, she also claims that people feel these emotions in other jobs such as cleaning bathrooms and other people’s bodies but that they will “seek out work sites where they can at least tolerate the acts required of them” and that the difficulties women encounter arise from the working conditions not the sexual nature of the work (70).

Thus, it is the similarities between the selling of sexual “services” and other forms of work that is consistently highlighted within sex work discourse and is increasingly compared to the selling of other services where the employer or client directly engages the body of the person to perform a personal service, including domestic labour, cleaning, beauty and health treatments. The similarities between the work of female massage therapists and sex workers is drawn by Oerton and Phoenix (2001) as both are “commodified activities concerned with specific forms of tactile contact between bodies” (395).