Sex, Media, and Precarious Female Individualization in Cambodia

• In Event: 363 - Section on Sex and Gender Paper Session. Gender and Sexual Politics: The States of Neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper explores the tensions and intersections between sex and intimacy, media and consumption and the precarity of female individualization in Cambodia. With a focus on “professional girlfriends” and women employed in the western-oriented hostess bar scene, I illustrate how sex and intimacy are used as a means to consume material goods, and how desires for consumption and individualization are heavily influenced by media and globalization. Due to the collectivist nature of Cambodian culture, however, this growing emphasis on autonomy creates a new arena of anxiety for the women, who are left negotiating both the liberatory and constricting forces of globalization and neoliberal capitalism. I conclude that despite experiencing constant contradictions around individualization, and relentless stigma for the decision they make, the women transgress the boundaries of respectability, challenge gendered double standards, and reconcile individualism and collectivity through subactivism, and by becoming proud patrons and providers for their families.

Author

• Heidi Hoefinger, National Development and Research Institutes