“You Always Make More Money as a Girlfriend”: Strategies of Sexual-Affective Exchange Among Sex-Working Women in Rio de Janeiro

• In Event: Between Labor and Love: Sex Workers Navigating Personal Relationships

Abstract

Based upon ten years of fieldwork, we analyze the often shifting and ambiguous line between sex work and the construction of formally reciprocal sexual-affective relationships between carioca women and foreign men in Rio's principal sexual tourism district. Here, we show how it is misleading and, indeed, dangerous to presume that “separate spheres” of commercial and affective sexual behavior necessarily exist in Rio, or that the women involved in these relationships are necessarily deluded or exploited. We also show how certain social, labor and market conditions can favor or restrict the possibilities for the transformation of commercial into affective relationships.

Presenters

• Ana Paula Silva, FIOCRUZ

• Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Macaé