Las economías morales del comercio sexual “tolerado” en la ciudad de Oaxaca, México

• In Event: Sex(ualized) Work

Abstract

The paper I propose is based on an ethnographic research conducted during 12 months with women engaged in different types of sex work in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. In Oaxaca, prostitution has a semi-legal status, tolerated by the local authorities who demand to the women involved in this activity a weekly medical examination. My aim is to analyze the central role played by motherhood in the definition of self among sex workers, and in the attribution of meaning to the prostitutional experience. The motherhood claim turns out to be an important strategy of inclusion, in a social context in which being a mother and acting accordingly represents a fundamental aspect of individual, social and political identity. This identitarian element is often denied to sex workers, represented most of the time as perfect antithesis of the “good mother”. Therefore, portray and recognize themselves as mothers implies a request for recognition as full members of the Mexican society. At the same time, I suggest that it is an ambiguous claim, because it establishes an explicit distinction between women who work for their own children and women – without children or with already grown children – who work for themselves, and whose legitimacy to live with the earnings of prostitution is questioned even by other sex workers.

Author

• Lidia Donat