Abstract
This article explores desexualization in massage therapy as a complex interaction between therapists and clients wherein sexual subjectivities are co-constructed, reified and in one case revised to highlight how workers can create a professional sexual identity in the spaces between desexualization and re-eroticization. Findings suggest that organizational mandates for desexualization as well as therapists’ own framing maintains gendered subjectivities that paint men as aggressors and women as victims. It also offers, through the philosophy of one female therapist, an alternative to desexualization that seeks to encourage sexuality based on professionalism, respect and choice. A key implication of this study is that a more holistic and context-dependent view of work and workers is necessary for scholars and practitioners to understand the promise and perils of organizational desexualization.
The impulse to desexualize in organizations is pervasive, yet largely accepted as an ideal that can never fully be realized. Burrell’s (1984) landmark essay convinces that desexualization is neither a given nor a strategic necessity, but instead it has always been a socially constructed and political process stemming from multiple sources, such as civilizing efforts and bureaucratic as well as professional rationalities. Add to this feminist concerns with coercive and violent sexuality, and a relatively stable picture of modern organizational desexualization takes shape, each rationale revealing its own historical and cultural impetus to manage both real and imagined problems caused by sexuality in the workplace (Gherardi, 1995).
Two prominent features of Burrell’s essay are his attempts to show that sexual relations exist as a dialectic of control and resistance where impulses to control sexuality exist alongside the active presence of sexual desires and acts. Meaning, regardless of the strength of social impulses to desexualize, this feat cannot be accomplished in pure form. Further, he calls out the expulsion and suppression of sexuality as a form of managerial control and suggests that a re-eroticized experience of labour might signify resistance. This work has sparked stimulating debates, theoretical and empirical advances, and encouraged continued explorations of the (broadly defined) experiences of sexuality at work. Yet scholarship remains mixed when it comes to how to manage sexuality, with some scholars calling for its eradication and others proclaiming its pleasures. That said, sexual harassment literature makes up most of the scholarly articles about sexuality at work (Clair, 1994a, 1994b; Gherardi, 1995) and many organizations offer workers one legitimate option for managing sexuality and sexual advances, which is: ‘Say no’ (Allen and Ashcraft, 2001).
This research draws on Burrell’s (1984) work to argue that attempts to desexualize—or the conscientious work to expel sexuality from individuals, client relations, labour, occupations and organizations— creates, rather than mitigates, gendered problems. Namely, impulses to desexualize workers and organizations necessarily exist alongside the sexualization of bodies and places. Therefore, just as it is important to examine outcomes of the sexualization of work and workers, it is crucial to examine how gendered subjectivities are co-created in interactions meant to desexualize and how these attempts assist in the maintenance of heteronormativity, discrimination, and sexual harassment.
While I agree with Burrell’s view of re-eroticization as resistance, I encourage caveats and argue that in practice workers’ understandings of whether sexuality at work is coercive, pleasurable, strategic or dangerous are contingent on several factors such as the type of work they perform and how they believe their bodies are assessed. Ashcraft (2013) reminds scholars that public perceptions of labour and labourers will shape understandings of gender, race and sexuality. For instance, many occupations and professionals seek to disassociate with sexuality and sex work, often for the comfort and safety of their clients as well as to protect a professional image. Teachers, doctors or social workers might rely on being above suspicion and therefore purposively disavow sexuality. Other occupations such as bartenders, flight attendants or consultants might selectively employ sexuality to receive benefits without calling into suspicion their professional identities. Therefore, a more holistic and context-dependent view of work and workers is necessary for scholars and practitioners to understand the promise and perils of organizational sexuality.
This article utilizes feminist poststructuralist philosophies and ethnographic methods to look behind the curtain of massage therapy in the US to explore the gendered consequences of desexualization at work. Specifically, I explore the research question: how do members of an occupation (re)construct gendered subjectivities for their male and female clients in the service of upholding desexualized professionalism? Further, through the philosophy of one female therapist, this work attempts to provide an example of how workers can incorporate sexuality and professionalism in practice.
Massage therapy is certainly not the only occupation that navigates professionalism and sexuality. Body workers in general often face unique tensions based on the particular work they perform (Wolkowitz, 2002). Massage does afford a heightened view of desexualization because sexuality and gender are often defining and persistent features of this work. In particular, massage has long struggled with the public perception that it is sexual labour (Fortune and Gillespie, 2010; Oerton, 2004; Sullivan, 2012) and as a response has made strict calls for the desexualization of massage, including practices, therapists and clients (Polseno, 2000). Unlike many professions, massage operates on the margins of the private to perform public, non-sexual labour. Although the vast majority of professional massage is not sex work, its labour practices often ignite confusion as signifiers such as dim lights, soft music, candles, private rooms, touch and undress cause some to view it with suspicion and others to see it as an opportunity to fulfil sexual needs or fantasies (Fortune and Gillespie, 2010). Further, client expectations, desires and actions have the potential to unhinge therapists’ attempts to desexualize, indicating that despite this goal, there is a dynamic interaction between clients and providers that can take many forms.
As Mills (1997) argues, dynamic organizational practices and discourses have the potential to shape society. In this vein, it is important to take various reactions to sexualization and desexualization to heart. Workers and clients often give meaning to the body and materiality of gendered and sexualized working relationships, despite organizational mandates, bureaucratic policies or pre-existing cultural norms (Hodson et al., 2012). This article explores tensions between therapists and clients by exploring how many therapists seek to construct a desexualized professional identity via their constructions of clients.
Before turning to the analysis, the review of literature will briefly explore three impulses toward desexualization, foregrounding how desexualization reveals the gendered and heteronormative particularities of sexual inclusion (Hearn and Parkin, 1995). Next, noting that modern forms of organizational sexuality create much to resist, or, at the very least leaves many of us desiring, the focus turns toward scholarship aimed at redressing sexuality and desexualization as forms of control.
Uncovering the sexualization of desexualization
Burrell’s (1984) push for scholars to elevate sexuality to a place of theoretical significance is in part a desire for the acknowledgment that organizational sexuality is present (Burrell, 1992; Pringle, 1989), despite the abundance of discourses and practices calling for desexualization. It is the silent inclusion of sexuality that Burrell and Hearn (1989: 13) note as ‘one of the great success stories of the civilizing process’. Their theory drives home that sexuality and desexualization operate as a dialectic of control and resistance, and that policies, procedures and attempts at desexualization will always reveal sexuality as well as the presence of power, control and resistance attempts (Fleming, 2007). Given this, several scholars explore and make visible the dynamics of sexuality and power (Hearn et al., 1989) that often appear under the surface of desexualization attempts (Mills, 1997).
Although scholars widely recognize its presence, the predominant views of organizational sexuality stem from bureaucratic, professional and certain feminist discourses that publically support its eradication. These unlikely bedfellows put forth a common, yet unrealized, call for desexualization, albeit for seemingly different reasons (Gherardi, 1995). For instance, bureaucratic discourses, with their emphasis on rational, public work concerns, often treat sexuality as private and therefore not a legitimate work concern (Burrell, 1984). Sexuality is discussed as absent or in need of extraction. However, Pringle (1989: 162) claims that it is everywhere in public workplaces, as ‘it is alluded to in dress and self-presentation, in jokes and gossip, looks and flirtations, secret affairs and dalliances, in fantasy, and in the range of coercive behaviours that we now call sexual harassment’. The question is no longer if the private is in the public sphere, but how private interactions such as workplace sexualities function to maintain or resist gendered, heteronormative and patriarchal relationships.
A common way in which bureaucratic organizations allow for sexuality while maintaining gendered norms is through the purposive control and inclusion of sexuality. Fleming’s (2007) study of Sunray call centre offers an exemplary look at how an organization’s apparent openness to sexuality masks how only certain sexual expressions and bodies—those deemed managerially useful— are condoned. In fact, far from strict desexualization, organizations have long used sexuality to serve various purposes. In these instances, sexuality is literally ‘part of the job’ (Williams, 2002). For example, organizations often hire employees for their sexuality or at least their sex appeal (Adkins, 2000; Erickson, 2004). Other scholars recognize that jobs, and therefore the bodies performing the labour, are sexualized. This is often seen in positions of service like flight attendants (Abbott and Tyler, 1998; Murphy, 1998; Williams, 2003), waitresses (Erickson, 2004), body workers (Oerton, 2004) and certain social workers (Deverell and Sharma, 2000). Despite public avowals to desexualize, often organizations attempt to control and benefit from sexuality.
Professional discourses often share bureaucracy’s goal of controlling sexuality. Instead of formal organizational policies, the appropriateness of sexuality in the professions is often contingent and professionals are expected to monitor and (de)sexualize their own bodies (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007).
Organizational studies on diversity and professionalism commonly note that professions have historically been identified as patriarchal and gendered in ways that privilege men and masculinity (Arndt and Bigelow, 2005; Davies, 1996) while subtly casting other workers as ‘semi-professional’ or ‘unprofessional’ (Hearn, 1982). Yet perceptions of who gets to be a professional, and scholarly conversations around professionalization, are shifting as work, labour and gendered norms shift. Research on professionalism and gender claims that men hold numerical and structural advantages in the professions and most studies explore women’s experiences. However, recent studies, particularly those seeking to explore the complex dynamics between masculinities and femininities, recognize that men and women both might struggle to be viewed as professional, for differing reasons. That is, there are times when, due to men’s occupational choices, tasks, behaviours or attitudes, they struggle to be viewed as professional as well. This literature takes a contingent approach to the professions and argues that a professional identity is not available to all workers to the same degree (Fournier, 1999; Ibarra, 1999). When women enter professions or when men enter feminized labour, they must enact particular professionalization strategies, including desexualization, to maintain a professional identity.
Gendered tensions in the professions are revealed when the impetus to monitor and control sexuality rests on individuals. Overall, women must properly control their bodies and men must maintain their status as ‘masculine’. Studies that address the various ways in which women control their bodies to craft professional identities (e.g. Bartky, 1988; Haynes, 2012; Trethewey, 1999) suggest that common perceptions of women at work place them in a double-bind where they must avoid being seen as overly sexual, but still maintain feminized sex appeal (Bordo, 1989; Gutek, 1989). Bartky (1988: 57) notes, ‘… whatever else she may become, she is importantly a body designed to please or excite’. Such is the case in Ashcraft and Mumby’s (2004) study which found that public discourses of ladybird fliers focused less on their ability to fly and more on their lipstick and the wonders of how their hair stayed in pristine conditions during flight.
Male professional advantage may be as contingent as women’s professional advantage and there are costs to men who do not perform ‘traditional’ masculinity. A key characteristic of feminized labour is the intimate care of vulnerable others such as children, the elderly or the very ill. Since men are viewed as ‘natural’ workers, and ‘unnatural’ caretakers, men entering feminized occupations are often viewed with suspicion (namely, that they are predators, homosexual or both) (Lupton, 2000; Mills, 1998). For example, Sargent’s (2000: 416) study shows that male elementary teachers face greater institutional scrutiny than females because of the prevailing view that—‘women’s laps are places of love. Men’s are places of danger’. Regardless of the fact that their gender offers them greater inclusion as ‘universal’ professionals, men in feminized fields still struggle to be viewed as legitimate (Acker, 1990). Although masculinity provides general professional advantage, intimacy and masculinity do not appear to mix.
Another predominant view of sexuality stems from feminist scholars who have taken a keen interest in the coercive nature of sexuality at work. Gherardi (1995) notes that almost two-thirds of the literature regarding workplace sexuality explores issues of sexual harassment. This view of sexuality reifies it as dangerous or potentially dangerous. Typically, attending to a particular agenda meant to eradicate coercive sexuality, studies of sexual harassment ignore the myriad of other ways in which sexuality might function. A key problem with discourses of desexualization that rest on narratives of danger is that given the gendered nature of organizations and professions, they unwittingly construct dichotomous subject positions for women and men (Hearn and Parkin, 1995). Stemming from heteronormative sexual understandings, descriptions and cases of sexual harassment and coercive sexuality are often highlighted as the only outcomes of sexuality at work. In these narratives women are nearly always constructed as vulnerable while men are always potentially willing to dominate (Brewis and Linstead, 2000). Historically, religious, medical and organizational narratives paint women as lacking, subjugated, hysterical, weak and above all reproductive (Ehrenreich and English, 1979; Foucault, 1980; Johnson, 2005; Laqueur, 1990). When organizational sexuality is at the fore, it appears that women can either be sinners or saints. Turner (1987: 102) clarifies this dichotomy when he states that the embodied sexual subject positions available to women give them a choice between being ‘God’s police’ or ‘damaged whores’. When organizational sexuality is linked only to danger with a heteronormative frame—women are always captive. One outcome of the construction of men as aggressors and women as victims is that if women begin to see themselves in this frame they may have difficulty responding outside of their designated subject position. It is not to say that workplace sexuality never holds danger. At times, it does (Brewis and Linstead, 2000). However, Hearn and Parkin (1995: 134) explain that when women live in fear of sexual harassment, organizations can be places of ‘relative captivity: women workers are not expected to roam throughout the workplace; they may be literally targets, virtual captives, for men’s sexual harassment through control of movement’.
Whether via bureaucratic, professionalizing or feminist impulses, there are key gendered tensions built-in to policies and practices that prompt workers to leave their sexuality at the door. Sexuality is often marked on women’s bodies more so than those of straight men (Acker, 1990; Butler, 1999; Bruni and Gherardi, 1995; Trethewey, 1999). If women are viewed as sites of sexuality then they will likely be seen as ultimately responsible for its eradication. Desexualization then becomes a women’s problem to manage. Men’s sexualities and bodies tend to be ignored. Further, desexualization functions as useful rhetoric meant to control sexuality, but how human bodies can accomplish this feat remains a mystery. Sexuality cannot literally be stripped from bodies, a proposition that many desexualization discourses appear to uphold, if only tacitly. When women receive instructions to desexualize (themselves, their work and their work relationships), it seems as though they are bound to (materially) fail.
Locating sexuality between coercion and pleasure
Tensions remain around the proper place of sexuality at work in large part because scholars recognize and care deeply about the gendered dilemmas organizational sexuality creates and reveals (Hearn and Parkin, 1995). As foregrounded above, a coercive view of sexuality underscores a desire for its suppression and eradication. This largely takes shape through formal policies meant to protect workers from sexual harassment. As they currently stand, however, sexual harassment policies offer workers only one frame from which to view workplace sexuality: coercive and unwanted. The action women can take is to say no, again and again, loud and clear (Allen and Ashcraft, 2001).
A growing number of scholars suggest that that a coercive stance does not take into account the actual role that sexuality plays for men and women. Re-eroticization of organizational sexuality is offered as an alternative that can reawaken bodies and senses (Burrell, 1992; Lorde, 1984; Rich, 1994). Without ignoring coercive sexuality or an individual’s desire for desexualized work interactions, many scholars argue that a wider conceptualization of how the erotic functions at work might expose how sexuality offers a break from mundane activities, how it could be empowering, exciting, confusing, ambiguous, frustrating or irritating (Bell, 2005; Lerum, 2004; Williams et al., 1999). Yet this can only occur if sexuality is freed from a coercive framework. For instance, Shultz (2001: 273) claims: It’s a mistake to try and outlaw sexual interaction in the workplace. The old Taylorist project of purging organizations of all sexual and other emotional dynamics was deeply flawed. Sexuality is part of the human experience, and so long as organizations still employ people rather than robots, it will continue to flourish in one form or another. And sexuality is not simply a tool of gender domination; it is also a potential source of empowerment and even pleasure for women on the job … It’s not impossible to imagine sexual banter as a form of playfulness, even solidarity, in a work world that is increasingly competitive and stressful.
Still others, without denying the pleasures and/or consequences of workplace sexuality, view it as highly dependent on context (Gherardi, 1995). Here, it is proposed that various embodied and occupational/organizational intersections collide to provide the particular meanings around sexuality (Ashcraft, 2006, 2013; Mills, 1997). As Dellinger (2002: 4) notes, ‘Men, women, and people of different sexual orientations are all held to specific social rules regarding sexuality which are highly dependent on occupational and organizational culture’.
Given this, one framework might not account for everybody’s desires (Brewis and Grey, 1994). Instead of viewing this as a problem, adopting a feminist poststructuralist perspective suggests that the important work is not to come up with a singular framework, but to examine various subject positions available to women and men, as well as whose interests these subject positions serve (Weedon, 1997).
Methods
This project explores desexualization in massage therapy as a complex interaction between therapists and clients wherein sexual subjectivities are co-constructed, reified and revised. I used a feminist poststructuralist framework and feminist ethnographic methods to explore massage therapy—an aspiring, yet marginalized, occupation that offers a vantage point from which to study desexualization. This project was inspired by many sources, namely scholars engaged in studying the lives of working women and men. Underscoring these commitments, I drew from feminist, interpretive and critical paradigms. Specifically, this multi-paradigmatic view acknowledges that reality is socially constructed and mediated through language; subjectivities are formed through language and struggle; while reality is socially constructed, it can become discursively fixed in ways that create material gendered inequalities; social reality, once fixed, can also be unfixed through language and repeated acts of resistance (Butler, 1999; Geertz, 1973; Harding, 1991; Reinhartz, 1992; Weedon, 1997).
I took seriously the ways in which language influences gendered norms and prioritized the lived experiences of participants. This was made possible by ethnographic methods where I spent extended time observing and participating in massage school classes and doing interviews with working male and female therapists in the Western United States. Ethnography is, by its very nature, thick description, and it requires a depth of observation and analysis (Geertz, 1973). I took notes on everything I observed, and did not limit my observations to things pertaining directly to sexuality. I worked to capture both description of events, dialogue (as closely as possible) and my subjective thoughts on the research process. In the notebook I carried I used the centre of the page to write description and the right hand margin to capture my thoughts and feelings about what I was observing. I kept the left hand margin open to make exclamation marks for events or conversations that seemed particularly important or pertinent to my research. When my role shifted to a participant, I also captured my sensual understanding of the field to include smells, touches, sounds and my embodied and reflexive feelings (Csordas, 1994; Stoller, 1997).
I was a participant observer in five massage courses, meaning that I went through the courses as if I were a student, took exams, practicums and both gave and received massage. Some classes were lecture-based such as Professional Practice Building (20 hours) and Therapeutic Principles (20 hours). Other classes were hands-on and practical and focused nearly entirely on doing bodywork such as Swedish massage (60 hours), spa techniques (20 hours) and spinal touch (20 hours). The data utilized in this article stems primarily from lectures on professionalization and the instructor’s conversations with students during bodywork classes. Professionalization classes offered me an opportunity to learn about how students were formally socialized through textbooks and articles and how the instructor informally guided them to be ‘good’ massage therapists. During bodywork classes I took field notes in real time and typed longer descriptions after each class meeting. When I was observing a class that was lecture-based I used an audio-recorder to capture discussions.
In-depth interviews also facilitated a format of data collection where participants were able to tell me their stories in their own words. I conducted 16 in-depth interviews with working massage therapists, 11 women and five men. Therapists were recruited via snowball sampling (Baxter and Babbie, 2004). Participant’s job tenure ranged from 2–17 years; most had been practicing between 4–5 years. Interviews lasted approximately one hour and were conducted at public places such as coffee shops or the massage therapists’ off-site or home office. Interviews were a combination of semi-structured and unstructured research questions comprised of questions related to sexuality, desexualization and professionalization.
In line with a feminist research philosophy that holds individuals’ perspectives in high esteem, my interview guide was fluid and participants were encouraged to discuss topics they found important (Reinharz, 1992). Participants in this study did not appear to be uncomfortable discussing issues of professionalism and sexuality. I would often follow participants’ leads, as many of them started the interview themselves by launching into their own stories of massage. When participants did not start the interview themselves, I would begin by asking them how they became massage therapists, then shift to broader questions about professionalism and clients, before moving to more personal questions about sexuality and labour. In order to offer therapists my full attention, I did not take notes during the interview; instead I relied on the audio-recorder.
To analyse the data I followed and adapted a method of ethnographic data analysis outlined by Hammersly and Atkinson (1995). These authors advocate that data collection should be done as an iterative process where data collection, analysis and writing work in dialectic interplay. They do not put forth specific steps; instead, they offer guidelines for how researchers can begin to develop themes that will guide their writing. In particular, they advocate that researchers use the data to think with as a first step in developing theoretical understanding.
The ultimate goal of analysis was to develop categories of meaning that emerged from both patterns and contradictions in the data. During my first few readings of the data, I made notes in the margins paying particular attention for any mention of sexuality or professionalism, yet also tried to keep my mind open to other topics that emerged (Madison, 2005). I worried that if I read my transcripts only for incidences that aligned with my research questions then I might miss something important. These notes in the margins were commonly key words such as professionalism, gender, body, client’s sexuality, therapist’s sexuality.
Next, I worked to capture how therapists shifted their conversations around professionalism and sexuality throughout individual interviews. So for example, in one interview a therapist might tell various and contradictory stories about professionalism and sexuality. This way of organizing the data proved useful because it offered me a view of how therapists often change their view of professionalism depending on how they are framing it, and importantly, whether or not we were discussing professionalism and sexuality specifically. This also offered glimpses of how therapists’ understanding of professionalism and sexuality is contingent on gendered dynamics. Here, I began to pose questions in response to the data to keep my theoretical questions at the forefront of inquiry. For example, I would ask what larger discursive frames mirror therapists’ constructions of professionalism and sexuality and whose interests these frames appear to serve.
Desexualization and massage therapy
Massage therapy is an occupation that strongly encourages desexualization as a necessarily way to shed a stigmatized and sexualized identity. The links between massage and sexual labour have historical roots, which include massage parlors as a cover for prostitution (Bryant and Palmer, 1975; Oerton, 2004), a labour force predominantly comprised of women (Couch and Sigler, 2001), doing feminized work such as the care and nurturing of bodies (Trethewey et al., 2006; Wainwright et al., 2011; Wolkowitz, 2002) and engaging in labour practices that mimic private encounters such as touch, dim lighting and various levels of undress.
In response to the ‘problem’ of sexuality, several institutional and occupational voices in massage have advocated desexualization (Benjamin and Sohnen-Moe, 2003; Calvert, 2002; Cant and Sharma, 1995). Formal responses include attempts to lobby for increases in licensing and regulations (Fortune and Gillespie, 2010). Individual tactics to ‘professionalize’ the practice vary, yet like Giuffre and Williams’ (2000) study of how medical workers invoke gendered strategies for desexualizing physical exams, therapists in this study talked at length about how they seek to control the massage interactions by only taking clients in pain (noting that clients in pain are less likely to think about sex), never working in a client’s home or hotels, turning away suspicious clients, or through various marketing techniques that make clear the massage is professional.
Yet scholars who study massage note that one of the key dilemmas of desexualization is that it exacerbates the links between female bodies and sexuality, rather than addressing or mitigating them. Oerton’s (1994) study of professionalization in massage does an exemplary job of pointing out how female therapists often seek to disassociate themselves from sex workers by creating identifications that ‘rise above’ the stigmas of sex instead of acknowledging and managing this public association. Although she does not offer specific alternative solutions, Oerton argues that ignoring the links between massage and sex merely perpetuates female therapists’ positions as ‘non-professionals’. Similar to Oerton’s focus on therapists’ professionalization strategies, yet with a focus on gender as co-constructed, I argue that that male and female therapists’ strategies for managing a marginalized identity often reinforce sexuality as something women must work to monitor and control while men, no less impacted by the stigmatization, focus their attention on image management techniques meant to link massage to medicine (Sullivan, 2012).
Both cases recognize that desexualization is a rhetoric that, while not practically feasible, is nonetheless seen by the occupation, massage organizations, and many therapists as vital to uphold. Massage therapy entails acute pressure to socially construct and maintain the image that sexuality can be expunged. To craft this image, it is crucial that everyone plays along, and therefore, therapists monitor and control their clients.
Constructing a vulnerable client: gendered rationales behind desexualization
Mirroring broader discourses of professionalism and danger, most massage therapists in this study suggest that the presence of sexuality, regardless of the type or source, poses a threat to their vulnerable clients, more so than to their vulnerable reputations. In line with arguments for the control and elimination of sexuality, desexualization is heralded as the ‘professional’ solution (Durkheim, 1957/2001) to protect clients who are undressed and often lying in a prone position (Wolkowitz, 2002). However, therapists in this study recognize that it is a rare occurrence that a client is sexually vulnerable and far more likely that clients will be the solicitors. The construction of a vulnerable client offers workers a socially unquestioned rationale for desexualization, one that also acts as a platform for professionalization.
Consequentially, therapists’ stories reveal that desexualization is not doled out equally. Instead, it is developed in nuanced fashions that rest on gendered bodies and acts to further (re)construct sexual subjectivities. This section will address how therapists craft gendered rationales for both clients and other massage therapists to make sense of sexuality, to navigate sexual tensions, and to claim professionalism.
Female clients as victims or vixens
Female massage therapists did not talk about female clients as sexual beings, except to suggest that they feared being touched by their male colleagues. Male therapists did have stories about female sexuality, but in all accounts sexual displays by female clients were coded as a clear indication and symptom of sexual abuse. Although female sexual agency is present, it is deficient, and women are regularly framed as victims in need of compassionate reeducation. For example, during a bodywork class, a male instructor told students that it is important to be careful of women who show signs of sexual interest. He recalled a story of working on a female client who, as he said, ‘would not have been upset if something inappropriate would have happened’ in the massage session. The woman kept exposing herself by moving her sheet down. He reacted by telling her that massage is a ‘safe place’.
To explain this woman’s sexual behaviour, he shared with us his suspicions that the woman had been a victim of sexual abuse. Noting that molestation often begins with innocent ‘grooming’ touch, similar to the touch found in massage, he proposed that clients who cannot distinguish the difference would give the ‘green light’ for something sexual to happen. His read of the female client’s behaviour highlights that female sexual desire is often tainted by abuse. I experienced a similar coding when I received a pressure point treatment on my back from a female massage student. There was nothing remarkable about the interaction, except that, for reasons I cannot explain, every time the woman’s index finger neared my spine my muscles tensed, causing me to twitch. The woman summoned the instructor to ask if this was ‘normal’. The male instructor watched for a moment and noted aloud that there were tiny red marks where the therapist had touched me. What happened next was both startling and embarrassing. Without saying anything by way of explanation, the instructor described my reaction, the physical markings and my ‘jumpy’ movements as signs of abuse that manifest themselves physically. Before walking away he casually offered the mantra, in this case mistakenly, that many abused women react this way. A massage textbook furthers this view when it cautions students: A person with poor boundaries may seem like a well-adjusted individual comfortable with nudity while in actuality her lack of boundaries comes from a history of sexual abuse. You will probably never know. Taking a chance breaches the tenets of professional ethics (Benjamin and Sohnen-Moe, 2003: 124).
Sometimes any bodily response, regardless of whether it is overtly sexual in nature, is coded as a signal that a woman has issues with touch and sexuality.
Therapists’ constructions of female clients as victims (or potential victims) of sexual abuse were common, but so were constructions that female clients were ‘vixens’ or lawsuit seeking seductresses eager to destroy male therapists, and commonly these constructions are woven together. During an interview, a male therapist explains that he used to ‘freak out’ and almost quit massage because he feared that his female clients would seduce then sue him. He further observed, ‘There are gender generalizations; I hate to go there and put that out there, but it’s true. Women are more seductive and subtle. Men are more obvious. They’ll just come right out and say, ‘I’m on your table for more than just a massage’. Masculinity and heterosexuality are often called into question when men perform intimate or care-based work (Sargent, 2000; Seidler, 1997) and therefore male therapists might create the subject positions of ‘tease’ or ‘dangerous vixen’ for female clients as a way to manage both masculinity and professionalism.
Of note, this also stands as an example of how instructors socialize students into the profession by using stories meant to convey messages about appropriate—albeit gendered— behaviours. For instance, a male instructor declared to his class that his greatest fear was being seduced and sued by female clients. To explain the importance of this problem, he related a story of a male therapist whose career had been ruined when he worked on a woman who seduced him. The instructor passionately explained that the man had a ‘momentary lapse’ in judgement when he went along with the female client’s advances. Her advances were a ruse, however, because at the very moment the therapist succumbed to desire, a man threw open the door to the massage room and snapped a picture. The instructor noted that the therapist lost his license and marriage. It was left open what either party actually did. Yet the instructor’s ‘moral of the story’ was clear. He did not address breaking codes of ethics or committing adultery; instead, he left us with a warning that male therapists need to watch out for women who act seductively. As he said, ‘they’re out there’.
In a separate class on ethics, another male instructor shared a story of a woman who kept ‘splaying her legs open on the table’, expounding that the woman did not overtly ask for anything sexual, yet she was acting seductively by ‘touching’ his hand, running her hand up his arm, looking him in the eye, and making ‘yummy noises’. The instructor told her, ‘I’m going to spend a little more time on this muscle, sometimes this can make people uncomfortable or nervous, and you can tell me if you are feeling nervous’. He quickly followed this up with, ‘She wasn’t. She wasn’t nervous at all. She definitely wanted something to happen’. He pointed out that by talking to her as if she were nervous, he could send her the message that her actions were inappropriate without judging her or making her feel embarrassed. This story highlights that for male therapists, construing female clients as victims even when they exhibit the behaviours of ‘vixens’ enables the maintenance of heterosexual masculinity. Although this client touched him in a so-called solicitous manner, he did not directly respond to her advances physically or discursively, as advocated by the general wisdom of professional codes of conduct and the path many female therapists claim to take when male clients behave suggestively.
These stories raise several issues about male and female sexuality in a professional context. To understand why someone, either the man who can be duped or the woman who is damaged, should be frightened in the face of female sexuality it is necessary to see the construction of masculinities and femininities as co-constructed. As approached below, stereotypes of women as ‘victim’ or ‘vixen’ are upheld and used to construct a particular (heterosexual) masculine identity for male therapists.
Male clients: boys will be boys
Both male and female therapists in this study view male clients as potent and sexually desiring agents. Yet, female therapists often claim that when male clients publically express sexual desire it is because they have not experienced enough healthy, non-sexual touch. When men act solicitously, female therapists code it as a type of false consciousness in which the client does not ‘really’ desire sex, but the touch and closeness he fails to receive in society. One female therapist explains how she views her desiring male clients: I can kind of feel sorry for men because of our society. Because there is so much perversion out there men are often the most untouched. They can’t, they hardly ever touch anyone unless they are having a sexual relationship with that person. But we all need physical connection and we all need love, desperately. So if you are a man, and you don’t have a relationship, you are pretty much alone. You know, and I think that a lot of men go for sex or sexual stimulation because they are just looking for something. And lots of men feel loved when they are having sex, and sex has nothing to do with love … Healing touch can do more for the soul and for the body than sex can. But a lot of people don’t know that, they don’t understand that.
The therapist expresses sympathy for men. She paints them as alone, untouched, and vulnerable. In a slight twist from heteronormative claims that men are sexually aggressive and needy (Brewis and Linstead, 2000), her claim that men seek sexual stimulation because they lack nurturing places the female therapist in a position to perform a ‘higher calling’ work. Her discourse mirrors that of the ultimate care-taking role where she works with the untouched and unloved because someone must. If the client should ‘act up’, it is understandable given his gender. The therapist’s role is then to teach male clients about appropriate sexuality and to offer forgiveness for their ‘indiscretions’. Many female therapists echoed these sentiments as a way to deny claims that massage is sexual.
Another female therapist shares this view about male clients: If a man has never known healing touch, if he doesn’t come from a home where there is a lot of hugging, a lot of close contact, a lot of love, that kind of man, even his whole body has been so pre-programmed, that ‘nobody touches me, unless, this’ [referring to sexual contact] that even giving a man a massage on his shoulders alone can make him react. It’s not really his fault. It’s the preconditioning of his body. So yes, a man can get an erection, it’s not you, and you don’t have to go there. A man who has been very loved, very nurtured in his family, who has experienced massage before, can have healing touch, can lie there completely peacefully, fall asleep, and you can work the whole body, up to the inner thigh, and he’ll never go there, because he’s experienced healing, loving touch.
She uses emotional conjectures to explain an embodied response. In her view, the body of a touch-deprived man will react sexually to any touch, administered to any part of his body. This man’s reaction is framed as a deficiency in his life, and thus again, his sexualized response becomes ‘normal, given his situation.’
Her quote also denies the possibility that men who do receive adequate touch might experience sexual desire. In her construction, even if a therapist were to work his inner thigh, this man would not react. This argument ‘unsexes’ male sexuality. Sexuality only shows up for men who seek and need to be nonsexually cared for, and it hibernates when men have been sufficiently nurtured. Although it initially appears that male sexual agency is present, a closer read shows that it is complicated by female therapists in much the same way that female sexuality is complicated by male therapists. Both male and female therapists discursively desexualize their gendered clients when they strip them of untainted sexual agency. Through this kind of desexualization, therapists can claim that sexuality is not part of their labour, and the client’s ‘broken or misguided’ sexuality appears to act as a platform upon which several claims to professionalism and higher calling work can be made. In regards to clients, when either sex goes for sex, something is wrong; they have a troubled, albeit differently, sort of past.
In a way, these constructions of male sexuality also mirror discourses of ‘boys will be boys’. Clair (1994a, 1994b) explains that this attitude is often linked with biological explanations for sexual harassment. Even though Clair denounces the ability of biological theories to explain sexual harassment, one can see lines of this argument (as well as cultural arguments) picked up by female therapists in this study.
Male therapists also acknowledge that male clients are often ‘naturally’ more overtly sexual than female clients. One male participate notes, ‘My friend and I have talked about the difference between sexuality in men and women. And women are more internal and come from a deeper place, and men, if the wind blows right, they [men] get horny’. In nearly all of the male therapists’ stories male sexuality is commonly framed as heterosexual, potent and ‘natural’. For example, in one professionalization class the male instructor discussed male sexuality in a seemingly biologically and culturally deterministic manner. The following instructor/student interaction explains further:
What if I’m a guy and I haven’t been touched in ways that are nurturing for a long time? What am I going to feel? If I haven’t been touched, I might take it to another degree where touch means sex.
What if someone gets aroused?
If you are massaging a woman, do you worry? No. What if a man is massaging a woman?
No.
Ok, Ladies, how many of you think that sex-crazed young men are jerks? You are contributing to the problem. Don’t judge. Testosterone is a sex drive; the guy doesn’t understand what’s going on. Women think that men are dogs when they just want sex. Come on, women are like crock pots and men are like microwaves—push a button and they’re ready.
Can you tell me where your button is?
Um, I know where my button is, but I’m not sharing. But listen, we have mental processes where we develop ideas of what’s normal, and it’s normal for women to think that men are dogs.
Well, men also need to know when to stop.
If you tell someone ‘no’ they want it more.
This brief interaction, which shifted to a different topic just after this statement, exudes biological determinism when the instructor tells students that testosterone dictates behaviour. He starts by drawing on the same justifications that female therapists use to explain male advances—that men act sexually because they have not been nurtured enough, or ‘boys will be boys’—but quickly shifts the discussion to suggest that underneath it all, women might be the problem. It is unclear exactly how he thinks women are acting as provocateurs when they view ‘sex crazed young men’ as problematic. His message seems to be that women should not judge men for their ‘natural’ desires. In response to the female student’s caution that men must also know when to stop, the instructor sends the message that a female’s attempts at saying ‘no’ will only fuel the flames.
In this particular construction, female therapists are left with the message that they have little room to resist sexual advances and stories of a male’s ability to dominate are kept in place. Interestingly, the female student in this interaction did exhibit sexual agency when she playfully engaged the instructor’s analogy to ask where she can find his ‘button’. The instructor confirmed his sexuality by acknowledging that his button is present but off limits. The pairing of an active and potent male sexuality and the ability to graciously deny it in service of professionalization appears to be crucial in the construction of a professional male sexuality. What is unclear is if he thinks saying ‘no’ will make her desire more, because female sexuality, even when enacted in class, is left unaddressed. Perhaps the female student has been slow cooking, or perhaps the instructor’s analogy for female sexual agency missed the mark.
Reframing professionalism and reclaiming sexuality
We learn from these two sections that through desexualization, therapists construct their client’s sexuality in ways that reproduce gendered norms. Both genders are stripped of real sexual desire when their wishes are coded as displaced actions stemming from psychological or physical deficiencies. The sexual subject positions available to female clients are often that of ‘victim’ or ‘tease’. Male clients are often viewed as child-like, unable to control their bodies, and reliant on women to care for their needs and magically— since ‘no’ won’t do the trick—regulate their behaviour. Therapists’ constructions of vulnerable clients can be read for how they assist therapists in negating their own vulnerabilities in crafting professional identities. Against misinformed men, female therapists perform higher-calling, care-based work. Yet they are always subject to the desires of men. Against the victims and vixens, male therapists also get to perform as protectors, while at the same time assuring that their (hetero)sexuality and masculinity are intact. Yet it is this presumed ability to dominate that makes clients suspicious of men in care-based work. All in all, these constructions appear to leave everybody vulnerable.
One female therapist in this study offered a different view of professionalism by including sexuality as a natural response that does not have to be managed, fixed or taken up. The client is not offered the subject position of ‘misinformed’ or ‘lacking’ and the therapist is not seen as a victim or professionally suspect.
She explains: Arousal, in any form, that’s a natural response. If I relax, if I really relax, if a man really relaxes on my table, then there’s a chance that he is going to get an erection. Is that because he is attracted to me, or he wants some kind of sexual relationship with me? No, I don’t think so. I don’t see it that way at all. I see it as the body’s natural response to stimulus. And for me, it’s like, okay, that’s what happened. For me, it’s like I coughed and farted. That’s like, I, you know, I pee’d on the bed a little bit. I’ve had mothers whose breasts leaked on the table; I’ve had women who have spotted on the table, that isn’t anything but the body’s natural response. I’m not worried about it. It all cleans up. So, I think you can go overboard with anything. I think we have a tendency to do that in our country. Well, it happens, you know. There are times when a cold breeze hits me and my nipples become erect. Does that mean that I’m sexually aroused and thinking of taking on the wind?
Not only does she posit that bodies are allowed to react, she offers something new when she adds ‘sexual responses’ as normal in a professional setting without claiming that they need to be monitored and controlled. She also talks about how she works to reeducate clients about touch and sexuality: If someone gets an erection and they bring it up, you say, ‘You know, that happens sometimes when people really relax, you know. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that’. You know, I just don’t have an issue with it at all. And I understand that the institution is trying to say, ‘This is not what we’re about, we are not undercover for prostitution rings; we are here strictly as a healthcare profession’. So, I get that part. But it’s also in how you handle it. If I’m uncomfortable with it, I’m going to make other people uncomfortable with it.
In her view, educating clients involves a conversation instead of a cessation of the session or admonishment and shame placed on the body of the client. In her practice of educating clients she sends the message that bodies are reactive agents and that reactions are acceptable without placing blame on therapists for ‘causing’ a reaction.
She claims to keep this vision even when she is sexually solicited: I’ve had men approach me with, you know, um, with a statement like, ‘This just feels so good. You know what would be the perfect ending to this massage; ejaculation would be the perfect ending to this massage’. And I’ve said to them, you know, ‘I don’t think that I’m going to, but you’re welcome to do whatever you want on your own time. But I’m not involved, thank you very much. And for me, I do six massages a day and I’ve never once thought that ejaculation would be the perfect ending’. It’s all in how you approach people.
Her reaction to solicitation differs from the other therapists in this study when she invokes her own agency and lack of desire as a response to sexual requests. Her philosophies offer a glimpse of a professional sexuality that can exist between the (constructed) poles of desexualization and re-eroticization. Key elements of this position include the right to express one’s sexual desires, including choosing sexual inactivity, thereby removing the pressures that men and women face to conform to current sexual norms (hooks, 2000). This shift holds importance beyond this study because it acts as a standpoint that is outside of current sexual harassment discourses. In other words, it invokes the question, what could happen if therapists, or other labourers, invoked their sexual agency in response to sexualized interactions?
Since I had heard several other female therapists invoke their professional standing when they discussed sexual encounters, I asked this therapist if she felt that solicitation was a threat to professional identity. She replied: No, what would be a threat to my identity is if I participated in that. And remember, the one thing he’s not saying to me is ‘I’m incredibly attracted to you as a woman’. He’s saying, ‘My body would like to do this at this point’. And I’m just going, ‘Well, sorry, but not on my time’.
She keeps the material marker of participating in sexual activity as ‘unprofessional’ behaviour. She broadens the discursive scope of professionalism, however, by allowing for sexuality (her own sexual agency included) to be a part of the session. This is in line with Deverell and Sharma’s (2000) study of how gay HIV outreach workers, labourers hired for their specific sexuality, also find ways to reframe professionalism. They found that, ‘it was possible to be professional while being naked, wearing jeans or drinking a pint of beer’, depending on the type of labour necessary to meet their goal of talking to other gay men about safe sex. Ultimately, when one sees therapists diverging from bureaucratic conceptions of desexualized professionalism, or feminist discourses that uphold sexuality as only and always dangerous, one is left with novel ideas of what it means to be a professional.
Conclusion
This analysis shows that therapists selectively draw upon and use discourses of desexualization to co-construct gendered sexual subjectivities that have the potential to limit or broaden sexual agency and possibilities for both men and women. While not denying the potential dangers and dilemmas of organizational sexuality, this work seeks to broaden scholarly discourses of sexuality by asking, what issues and problems stem from desexualization at work and what options do workers have to bring sexuality in?
As an organizational strategy, desexualization—or the conscientious work to strip sexuality from individuals, social relations, labour, occupations or organizations—is counter-productive to ‘solve’ the problem of sexuality at work. In part, desexualization falls short as an intervention because sexuality cannot be stripped from working relations. Moreover, the analysis shows that desexualization is a key driver in the reproduction of gendered, sexualized norms and it reinforces that sexuality is always and primarily dangerous. Therapists engage in this logic in order to assist them in the development of a professional identity. Yet constructions of sexual, vulnerable clients do little to aide in massage’s struggles to shed a stigmatized identity, to create more liberating or safe conditions for therapists, or to educate clients and the general public about the particular ‘sensual’ nature of massage.
Scholars in favour of widening conceptions of sexuality and opening up potentials for pleasure often suggest re-eroticization as an option, yet they also warn of the potential dangers around sexual coercion and violence should re-eroticization be mistaken as re-sexualization (Burrell, 1992; Burrell and Hearn, 1989). Many acknowledge that re-eroticization theories do not pay enough attention to the contingent nature of eroticism and desire or how the erotic is already caught up in male norms, and can therefore also function as a form of control (Brewis and Grey, 1994; Fleming, 2007; hooks, 2000).
Although the analysis points to how male therapists can bolster professionalism and masculinity by playing up the existence of vulnerable female clients, most therapists, it seems, do not wish to be sexually solicited. Instead, many view re-eroticization as a continued threat to the development of a professional identity. Many actively seek to shed a stigmatized identity or associations that place them as sex workers and note that re-eroticization may be misunderstood or counterproductive.
A key contribution this article seeks to make is to argue that how organizations, occupations or individuals attempt to desexualize will impact gendered subjectivities for workers and clients. This empirical work suggests that therapists can productively navigate professional sexuality that lies somewhere between re-eroticization and desexualization. One way, advocated by a therapist in this study, is by acknowledging the naturalness of sexuality while being clear about a lack of interest in participating in activities that cross the boundaries of professional massage. Here, a key shift is that the therapist invoked her own sexual desires to articulate her choices. When solicited, instead of saying ‘I can’t because it is against the rules’, she implies to the desiring client, ‘I understand your wants, but I’m not interested in participating’. The former response, advocated within sexual harassment discourses, teaches employees to simply say no (Allen and Ashcraft, 2001). This response is pointed, yet does not address desire. Sexual harassment and other forms of coercive sexuality may continue to plague organizations in part because many clients feel that bureaucratic rules are meant to be broken or at the least not taken overly seriously (Hodson, et al., 2012).
The latter response does not guarantee a particular outcome or protect individuals in dangerous situations. It does allow for the erotic and for desire to be part of the conversation. Individual sexual agency is invoked. At the very least, this willingness to acknowledge desire or a lack of desire elevates the role of sexuality out of a place of shame and danger, as advocated by Burrell (1984) yet keeps sexual inactivity on equal footing as a valid celebration of sexual liberation. As hooks (2000: 157) notes, A liberatory sexuality would not teach women to see their bodies as accessible to all men, or to all women, for that matter. It would favor instead a sexuality that is open or closed based on the nature of individual interaction … Asserting their right to choose, women challenge the assumption that female sexuality exists to serve the sexual needs of men. Their efforts enhance the struggle to end sexual oppression. The right to choose must characterize all sexual interactions between individuals.
With an eye toward occupationally grounded solutions, a first step toward bringing organizational sexuality into conversations and interactions might necessitate new questions. Instead of asking how sexuality can be framed as professional—which seems to engender a defensive stance in this occupation—one might ask how professionals can interact with others as sexual beings. The difference is discursively subtle, but impactful. The former suggests that professionals are capable of separating themselves from sexuality. Even if this were possible on an individual level, scholarship has long noted that this separation is the outcome of masculine and heteronormative privilege. It is not doled out equally. The latter suggests that sexuality is present and professionals, although still subject to discourses, have options for how they engage in interactions.
The options available in this article are for therapists to free their clients from the positions of misinformed or sexually damaged and instead educate them about touch and massage. Educating their clients on sexuality may also function as a starting point for how massage therapists could reframe both professionalism and sexuality as a viable and valued part of the public world of work and to assure scholars that in the tensions between sexuality (or eroticization) and desexualization there are alternative avenues for agency and practice.