Constructing Desire in Space: Erotic Agency in Lesbian Exotic Dance

• In Event: 4261 - Queer Spaces/Queer Places

Abstract

Through the analysis of two years of ethnographic observations and 40 in-depth interviews with a collective of Black and Puerto Rican lesbian exotic dancers (referred to herein as “Divine Dancers”), this paper explores how spatial expressions of sexuality within the context of a lesbian-identified exotic dance venue enables both the resistance and reinforcement of circulating discourses of race, gender, and sexuality that construct sexual desirability under the male gaze. In contrast to literatures on exotic dance that center the hetero-masculinist arrangement of the U.S. gentleman’s club to analyze women’s experiences as exotic dancers, this study centers the construction of a lesbian exotic dance space that is deliberately absent of maleness and Whiteness. I situate this analysis within critiques put forward by the feminist sex wars to argue that space and place, in tandem with racialized sexualization, shapes women’s potential to enact sexual agency in the domain of exotic dance. This paper takes an intersectional feminist approach to disrupting binary understandings of exotic dance as either exploitative or empowering, focusing instead on dancers’ interpretations of agency as expressed through the body in space. I draw on dancers’ interpretations of their performances and exchanges with audience members and between one another to reveal and analyze how the spatial arrangement of Divine Dancer shows shape dancers’ potential to enact erotic agency. I find that the extent to which Divine Dancers find this spatial context sexually empowering is shaped through gendered sexualities and their experiences with racialized sexualization.

Author

• Cristina Khan, University of Connecticut