Reading Sex, Sexuality, and Sexiness in Contemporary Capitalist Societies - Dana Kaplan and Eva Illouz, What is sexual capital? (Cambridge, Polity, 2022, 144 p.)

Dana Kaplan and Eva Illouz’s What Is Sexual Capital? is a clearly written, “accessible” book which leverages previous work by the two authors, and other sociological and feminist literature, to extend the availability of knowledge about sex and sexuality in contemporary capitalist societies beyond academic circles. The care the authors take to define employed concepts is admirable: the short Chapter 3, itself titled “What is sexual capital?,” discusses sex, capital, and sexual capital. The book’s key notion of neoliberal sexual capital is clearly presented from its first pages, although the concept is deepened throughout the volume.

It is once more from its very start that the book distinguishes sexual capital from Hakim’s “erotic capital,” which Kaplan and Illouz criticize along agreeable lines and taking a similar approach as that found in previous critical readings. ¹ This is a relevant distinction for two reasons. First, and obviously, because of the semantic terrain the sexual and the erotic share. Second, because “capital” is the actual core of the concept explored in the book. In fact, it is “through the lens of capital” that the authors “offer a detailed analysis of the effects of neoliberal capitalism on sex and sexuality” [4]. Capital is also at the roots of the historical dimension of the analysis, a dimension which is missing in Hakim’s “asociological” ² theory:

For a full-fledged sexual capital to emerge, sexuality needs to autonomize itself vis-à-vis religion [… which entails] the loosening of the norms and taboos that regulate sexuality, along with the increasing incorporation of sexuality in the economic field. When sexuality becomes structured by economic strategies, yields economic advantages, and becomes key to the economic sphere itself, we speak of sexual capital organized in a neoliberal culture, or neoliberal sexual capital. [5-6]

This longitudinal perspective makes sexual capital much more useful than erotic capital as a sociological concept—or “metaphor,” as the authors describe it at the very beginning of the book (the introductory Chapter 1 is titled “Sex and Sociological Metaphors”).

Kaplan and Illouz also give due consideration to the unequal distribution of sexual capital, a property which again descends from capital itself, the main conceptual component of the metaphor [cf.: 38–39]. Following Bourdieu’s field theory and Thévenot’s ³ call for the notion of capital to be extended, the authors propose “an expanded capital-based approach […] to reveal the ways in which sexualities and inequalities are currently linked together” [32]. The book does not dwell deeply on Bourdieu’s work, and could have gone further in distinguishing his conception of social and cultural capital from the concept of human capital, which comes from a different research tradition, one that Bourdieu and Passeron ⁴ criticized, among others. However, the authors’ discussion of sexual capital is clearly grounded in a sound knowledge of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, ⁵ one which is quite different from Hakim’s superficial reading of it. ⁶ Accordingly, inequality and social stratification are taken seriously in the book, which considers gender and sexual orientations (or “minorities”: 10), ⁷ but mostly focuses on class. Let me also mention that Kaplan and Illouz’s analysis—particularly when discussing the role of sexual capital for the creative middle class [96–08], the most original part of their contribution—owes much to the Bourdieusian concept and theory of habitus (although this is not explicitly acknowledged). ⁸ Toward the very end of the book, and coming back to Hakim, the authors write:

Unlike in her [Hakim’s] approach […] we believe that owners of sexual capital do not simply strategize in order to augment their capital or cash in on it in the job market. Employable sexual capital is not utilitarian. Rather, what motivates one to accrue it to use is not an interested behavior but habituation instilled by class dispositions. [103]

This also helps distinguish the proposed approach from that of human capital, as the former does not “assume […] a rational actor” [105, cf. also: 57–58]. Moreover, the habitual (vs. utilitarian) nature of such sexual capital entails a “connection between the private sphere of sexual experience and the public occupational sphere” [90], which is proposed as a topic for future empirical research (cf. further infra).

Another relevant contribution made by this book concerns the role of singularity in contemporary capitalist societies, which underlies its discussion of identities, subjectivation processes, and what Paul Beatrix Preciado—quoted early on by Kaplan and Illouz—has described as “the invention of a subject” for the benefit of the “pharmacopornographic” complex. The thesis, in short, is as follows: with the “gradual autonomization of sex,” “[m]odern sexuality is characterized by a dual process: sex becomes rationalized and objectified in scientific bodies of knowledge; and sex becomes a personal attribute, an identity” [26, passim]. Drawing from previous analyses from the field of classical sociological theory, ⁹ Chapter 2 briefly discusses how modern sexual liberation(s) followed a path that would lead to its serving capitalism even better than the earlier “repressive bourgeois morality” had done [31]. Later in the oeuvre, Kaplan and Illouz illustrate how this has come about, with self-identities becoming means of production (as Lisa Adkins noted) while sex and sexuality have become means for performing singularity [98–99], thereby fostering the consumption of sex-related commodities. Singularity is understood as the key figure of neoliberal culture [18 ss.]; the book shows how “sex has become a significant part of the normal production of culture and self” [88], and thus reveals what sexuality offers in terms of the construction of (middle-class) identities which will be well received in the contemporary (creative) labor market.

The typology the authors propose in Chapter 4, the core (and largest part) of the book, similarly takes a historical perspective. They identify and discuss four “forms,” or “categories” of sexual capital, acknowledging that this typology “is partly historical, partly analytical” [42]. The categories are the following: (1) sexual capital by default, that is, chastity and domesticity; (2) sexual capital as surplus value of the body, that is, sex work; (3) embodied sexual capital, that is, sexiness/attractiveness and sexual know-how; and (4) neoliberal sexual capital, pointing to the fact that in late modernity, “for many people, some sexual recreation may translate into a feeling of social competence, self-efficacy, and self-appreciation that can in turn feed into a proactive and entrepreneurial stance sought by employers” [44–45]. As already mentioned, the categorization is motley, but still useful. Historically, the excursus starts from early modernity, a period with a heavily gendered moral economy “producing well-adjusted workers whose sexual desires are confined to the private sphere” [107] and, particularly, chaste women whose counterparts are the sex workers. Chastity, here, equals sexual capital in the marriage market, bourgeois and otherwise; and, utterly in keeping with the reproductive/productive divide, “good domestic sex” is opposed to “bad commercial sex” [49]. ¹⁰

The latter, or category (2), “includes prostitution, pornography, and erotic dancing” [64], with amateur porn, legal brothels, “soft” prostitution, and women-only clubs coming into the picture later (but the list goes on, cf. e.g. Plummer). ¹¹ This form of sexual capital plays out in its own market and related niches. Culturally, sex work, like chastity—as its properly dichotomous counterpart—has foregrounded gender roles in a kind of semiotic quadrant (the sexually self-controlled man and the chaste woman vis-à-vis the sexually uncontrolled man and the feminine ¹² prostitute), and most importantly, it did and still does entail a gendered, that is, differential moral order (being a sex worker of any sort is a worse threat to a woman’s reputation than to a man’s ¹³). Kaplan and Illouz also underline how “regular service work,” such as waitressing, has become more and more sexualized in late modernity [74], with “increasingly blurring boundaries between sex work and so-called legitimate work in which the body functions as a sexual surface” [73] and sexiness is monetized [91–92]. They seem to see this as the mirroring of another recent development: that is, what we might call sex-work-as-service-work. I believe this claim is misleading, with respect to its recency. There is a variegated history, in the Western world and beyond, of monetized activities entailing both “mechanical” [66] sexual services and “emotional intelligence, people skills and even cultural capital” [68]—think, for example, of hetaerae in ancient Greece, or geishas (and earlier courtesans) in Japan.

The third category, embodied sexual capital, is conceived as including two dimensions, sexy bodies and know-how in sex, whose respective social visibilities are clearly very different. Sexiness and aesthetic attractiveness are dimensions that apply to the bodies of women and men, whether they are sex workers, chaste and self-controlled people (in some times and places), or liberated autonomous subjects (in other times and places). To put it differently, the aesthetic dimension of the (sexual) body is ubiquitous. Indeed, “‘sex sells’ not only within the sex industry itself” [44]. What the book offers, here, is a discussion of how bodily attractiveness “extends to the realm of relationships” [ibid.], or the “relationship market,” ¹⁴ and is unevenly distributed, thereby leading “sex consumers [to] co-create big capital” [87]. Kaplan and Illouz leverage literature from the sexual fields approach—there are “local ranking systems” [80], each with its own “social organization of desire,” ¹⁵ and “some people may fall on the wayside of such markets” [44]—and then expand the approach in two ways. First, they take it beyond utilitarianism via a theory of habitus, as I mentioned. Second, they expand it to cover the advantages that sexual capital also provides outside specific sexual fields and in society more broadly, entrenching “gendered, raced, and classed” [80] hierarchies with “collective, classed schemes of valuation” [88]. In this competition for both sex and “sexual status” [e.g.: 3, 54, 75], “[c]onsumers nowadays purchase a whole panoply of sexual commodities” [86, cf. also: 16], ranging from sex toys to plastic surgery to self-help products. ¹⁶

If such consumption has a direct role in the relationship market, it also enhances employability in labor markets, which have come to require individuals to be “one-(wo)man brands” [88]. That is how the book moves to the fourth category and the core of its contribution: sexual capital produces “specifically neoliberal ‘desirables’” of the subject that are other than sexiness and sexual competence, “‘such as autonomy, esteem and capacity for self-expression’” [Crompton, cit. in ibid.]. The main component of this form of capital is the experiential dimension of sex, with the affectivity it brings in. Therefore, the authors ask, “beyond the monetization of sexiness in the workplace, how can sexual experiences be useful for employment?” [89]. As I mentioned, they suggest that this should be empirically explored in future research, and they theorize and propose four possible lines of inquiry.

First, it “could be that sex increases self-esteem, [and hence] self-confidence, which in turn projects competence” [90]. Kaplan ¹⁷ found similar dynamics in the Israeli creative middle class. The second direction hypothesizes that sexuality expresses some kind of domination. Illouz ¹⁸ found some evidence in the heterosexual one-night stand “format” (one of the two forms of “unloving,” according to her theory). Third, “sex may be a way to exercise social competence, [and … ] mastery of social skills” [90], which can be easily transferred to the labor sphere. This, in my view, is the most convincing line of inquiry, especially when considering the following: it is casual sex with strangers in particular which allows the individual to develop social skills, and that is a kind of encounter (although not “directly” sexual) which is typical of several sectors of contemporary (service) work and urban life more generally. Fourth and finally, “good sex leads to greater job satisfaction” [91], as a recent study on domestic/marital sex has shown [Leavitt et al., cit. in ibid.]. Here the questions would be, for me, firstly, whether casual sex also engenders such an outcome ; and secondly, whether feeling desired and experiencing pleasure contribute to satisfaction more generally, and whether this then spills over into the workplace, or specifically affects the labor sphere. ¹⁹

In positing sexual experiences as the principal component of neoliberal sexual capital, Kaplan and Illouz emphasize how the latter is productive only “for those with a middle-class habitus” [96]; they maintain that sexual experiences “are not specifically gendered” [92], and that the same goes for “the ability to perform sexual autonomy […] and to capitalize on it” [95]. Although I understand the emphasis on class, I would not rule out gender as a factor, as I believe that, particularly when considering heterosexual relations (as the authors do), autonomy is differently expressed, conceived, and socially (e)valuated depending on whether it is an attribute of women or men. The very existence of the “figure of the sexually agentic, empowered ‘alpha’ (young) woman” [93] in the contemporary cultural imaginary, whereas the (ageless) male counterpart is taken for granted, is a case in point.

Let me close with a (minor) critical remark concerning the understanding of bodily and embodied sexual capital that emerges from the book. Kaplan and Illouz envision only two “terrains of sexual action,” namely “external attractiveness of a sexual body or the realm of intrinsic sexual experience” [47]. The adjective “external,” particularly as opposed to “intrinsic,” makes me think that the first terrain entails physical appearance and bodily decoration only, hence excluding the performing body, which has its own aesthetic dimension and its know-how; the second terrain, on the other hand, seems to point to (personal) experience and its affectivity more than to embodied skills. The latter dimension, in fact, is the least developed in the volume: it is briefly considered in terms of the consumption of self-help sexual products (to enhance ones’ position in the relationship market); surprisingly, it is not mentioned with regard to sex workers. Most importantly, I would have expected a deeper discussion of (a) how sexual experience allows sexual know-how to be developed and put to use, and (b) the latter’s role in producing that sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem on which neoliberal sexual capital is based. To put it differently, although sexual skills are definitely embodied, they are not visible (nor knowable beforehand in the one-night stand); hence I would have discussed the matter (also) within the neoliberal category, in terms of the production of a Self.

That being said, corporeality is not the main topic of this book, which is an important and accessible contribution to the field.