The politics of everyday life as a sex worker: “Affect”,stigma and resistance

Abstract

This study involves an analysis and rethinking of sex workers’ perceptions of stigma, using Goffman’s theory of stigma management contrasted with Thirft’s non-representational theory (NRT). We begin with a discussion of sex work experience in a unique locale in Atlantic Canada, an urban area removed from the rest of the country by distance, policing history, religious oversight and custom. We chose examples from sex worker interviews of their ‘felt moments’ of criminalization and stigma which we will be discussing against a backdrop of theory of NRT (Thrift) and stigma management (Goffman) in order to better acknowledge the agency and resistance of sex workers. We propose to demonstrate that sex workers can be considered active agents, fully capable of informing and re-thinking the sociological concepts and theories that have traditionally been used to research them and their lives.

Keywords

Sex work stigma stigma management stigma resistance non-representational theory

A woman, a former sex worker, was shopping in the grocery store a number of years after she had left the trade. While examining produce, she looked up and caught the leering gaze of another shopper. Something about his gaze made her think ‘is he a former client?’ She couldn’t remember but was immediately uncomfortable as he continued to stare at her, expectantly. She told him she was no longer working and walked away. This incident occurred years after leaving the trade, yet she was still burdened by the stigma attached to her former occupation; she felt it in that look.¹

Introduction

Sex worker stigma has been addressed in the literature in various paradigms as hindering policy development (Jeffrey and Sullivan, 2009), as evidence of evolving police strategies (Krusi et al., 2016), as resistance (Weitzer, 2018), as occupationally situated (Benoit et al., 2020), as having a direct effect on health (Benoit et al., 2017; Treloar et al., 2021), as a response to ‘digital degradation’ (Lageson and Maruna, 2018) as theoretically necessary inclusion in queer theory (Beloso, 2017) and as a false dichotomy between agency and sex work (Bettio et al., 2017). All are useful contributions to the literature; however, sociological accounts of stigma theory have not necessarily evolved in response (Manzo, 2004).

Most sociological work on stigma has either relied upon Goffman’s (1963) theorizing in an uncritical fashion (Manzo, 2004; Page, 1984) or has been built on his work using his theorizing as foundation and moving it in new directions (Hannem, 2012; Link and Phelan, 2001; Parker and Aggleton, 2003). However, in what follows, we find that the underlying assumptions of Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma began to be challenged in some interesting ways in our analysis of sex worker reports. Goffman’s theory of stigma management, in particular, cannot account for the resistant strategies displayed by sex workers when applied to stigma. In sum, the strategies of people who find themselves in the small and tight spaces that stigma creates are far more complex than the simple management of information.

Both authors have conducted extensive research with and for sex workers in the Atlantic provinces (Jeffrey and MacDonald, 2006a, 2006b; MacDonald, 2009; MacDonald and Ralston, 2020; MacDonald et al., 2013; Winters, 2016, 2020, 2023; Winters and MacDonald, 2018) with foci on stigma and sex workers’ resistance in everyday talk and actions, understanding the social conditions in their respective communities. Upon reflection, we note that although there were many different experiences of sex work and stigma articulated by those involved, collectively, the voices of sex workers revealed some important things about stigma and its intersection with law in the specific cultural context of the Atlantic provinces. As a result, our theoretical understanding of the concept of stigma as social scientists began to be challenged in some interesting ways in this analysis of sex worker reports.

The first author’s PhD thesis (Winters, 2020), on which this paper is primarily based, involved interviews with 32 people who do sex work in St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) who worked in all areas of the sex industry including independent escort, massage parlour, street based and online cam presentations. The open-ended interviews, framed as an opportunity to “talk back”,² were both participant driven and structured as natural conversations, and were analyzed using a form of feminist discourse analysis (Miller, 2003) that prioritizes the resistance found in the everyday talk of marginalized people. This research led to the formation of the Safe Harbour Outreach Project (SHOP) Newfoundland and Labrador’s first support organization specifically for sex workers.³

How stigma operates: what sex workers say to theory

Like, same thing as you earning your degree, once you get a career in that, that's the normal job. It’s not illegal, it’s not criminal…that’s what separates it…because [if the law changed] I wouldn't feel like I’m having to sneak around, or, you know, be shady about what I'm doing…but no, like, *sighs* there's such a judgement on being a call girl or street worker. (Donna, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador)

This quotation assists us in understanding the process of how stigma operates in individual moments (the statement that the sex worker statement felt “shady”). We contrast this with the result of stigma, that is, sex worker experiences of/from clients, community, and police, and the responses to stigma by sex workers - including resistance - that occur in both talk and action. Such directions may help us in furthering theoretical conceptualizations that rely on Goffman’s (1963) understanding of stigma such as spoiled identity and stigma management, which we believe do not center the experiences of the stigmatized as central to understandings of the concept. In response, we use sex workers’ words on stigma as the foundation for theoretical discussion. Specifically, we ask, what is to be gained by centering the voices of the stigmatized in theorizing? How have current theories of stigma fallen short in accounting for sex workers’ understandings of the concept? And where might we look for a more inclusive theory?

We believe that uplifting the voices and expertise of people who are stigmatized must occur at the theoretical level; a combination of Goffman (1963), newer interpretations (Parker and Aggleton, 2003) and Thrift’s (2008) NRT are explored. NRT gives us the tools to explore stigma and its resistance by sex workers, within a framework that prioritizes the explanatory power of the embodied experiences of affect and sensation, felt intuitively and momentarily in the body. As a result, Thrift’s work may be better suited to explain the discourse of these workers, particularly in their focus on the intersections of law and stigma when contrasted with their strategies of discursive resistance.

In our opening quote, we discern how the sex worker sits ‘outside’ of the normative boundaries of what is considered ‘proper’ sexual behaviour; she literally and figuratively transgresses the boundaries. For the observer, the sex worker is (pick the category) morally deviant, a law breaker, a victim to be pitied or worse, an agent to be feared.⁴ Simply put, the status of the sex worker then becomes a question of power, of ability and of agency. Missing from this understanding, however, is the minutiae of the power dynamic between the seen and the observer, and the marginalization such observations evoke, create, and continue to inflict in the life of the sex worker, especially in a small city. It explains the line from the opening quote of this section,

“I wouldn’t feel like I’m having to sneak around, or, you know, be shady about what I’m doing…but no, like, *sighs* there’s such a judgement on being a call girl or street worker’.

To explain the felt sensation of this anecdote, Thrift (2008), in his focus on affect, provides tools to analyze the feeling in that moment.

The main discussion that follows explores specifics of Thrift’s (2008) NRT for its utility in building upon Goffman’s stigma theory in a way that allows us to prioritize and to respond to the voices of sex workers. We begin with a brief overview of the research study, followed by an overview of Goffman’s theorizing and select contemporary reworkings of it. To consider the utility of Thrift (2008), we first explore the shadow of Goffman’s theory of stigma and how subsequent understandings of stigma may differ (Parker and Aggleton, 2003).

The study

While both authors have extensive experience in research both with and alongside sex workers in community-building endeavours, the specific quotes used throughout this article draw on thirty-two interviews from PhD research study conducted in 2013 with sex workers in and around St John’s⁵ (Winters, 2020).

At the time of this research, there was no sex worker outreach community program or agency in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. To access people working in many types of sex work, diverse sampling methods were used, including posters placed in the washrooms (bathrooms/WCs) of community organizations and other public spaces, as well as sex work-specific locations such as the dressing rooms of massage parlours and erotic dance clubs. Information about the research project was posted on three websites where workers advertise sexual services, and some participants were referred by community organizations. Other participants learned about the project through word of mouth, and it should be noted some were incarcerated at the time of interview.⁶

The research was advertised both as an opportunity for sex workers to “talk back” (Jeffrey and MacDonald, 2006a) both to the ideas and perceptions that others hold about them and their lives and as a platform for sex workers to have their say about what was important to them. There was no strict definition of sex work provided; rather, it was stated in recruitment that the research was for anyone involved in the provision of sexual services. The interviews were qualitative, open-ended, and participant-driven; framing sex workers as the experts of their own lives. The interview transcripts were analyzed using Miller’s (2000, 2003) method of discourse analysis, which examines routine talk as a “claims making enterprise”.

Due to concerns about confidentiality and anonymity, there was no specific demographic questionnaire included as part of this research. For example, rather than use specific prompts or questions, participants were encouraged to share whatever details of themselves and their lives they wanted, at their own discretion. Thus, the information in this demographic section is based on what people voluntarily brought up in conversation. Any statistics described here are in no way to be extrapolated as comments about the general population of people who do sex work; they only exist to provide a little more context about the individuals interviewed. Men and women who do sex work reported a vast range of experiences, across a broad sector of sex industry involvement.

In this research, twenty-five cis gendered women and seven men were interviewed. Of thirty-two people interviewed, 21 worked independently, without the involvement of a manager or agency either inhouse or in outcalls. Service provision included work in massage, paid companionship, and explicitly sexual services. Most advertised online via third party websites or their own professional web pages. Two people who worked together did not advertise, focusing only on regulars (i.e. former) clients. Of the 21 who did independent sex work, 10 of those worked alone, whereas 11 had at least one working partner. Five people worked for massage or escort agencies, had managers and did not do their own service- advertisement. One person did online cam work, for which she was paid via a tipping system for live shows involving both sexual and non-sexual acts. Six people were engaged in street-based sex work, 3 alone, 1 with a friend and 2 did not specify. Over the course of their lives, 6 of 32 workers had engaged in more than one type of sex work, all six had begun working on the streets but now worked either at an agency or independently. Most noted that the use of online advertising/cell phones meant finding clients no longer happened on the street. Eleven of the 32 people were incarcerated at the time of interview. Two of 32 were post-secondary students. Fourteen had a history of drug use that they identified as significant in their lives. Seven of 21 individuals referenced another job (a “straight job”) in an area other than sex work, including convenience store cashier, oil industry worker, photographer, cook, florist, waiter, garage door installer.

Overall, the findings included:

“The ways in which sex workers in St. John’s, NL resist stigma, by “talking back” to power, challenges conventional sociological understandings of the concepts of stigma and stigma management” (Winters, 2020).

The next section explores the historical and more contemporary theorizing that has produced those conventional understandings.

Stigma’s schtick in the social sciences: an historical overview

Goffman traced the origins of the term stigma back to the Greeks, who used the term to refer to “bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier” (Goffman, 1963: 1). He defined stigma as an attribute that is deeply discrediting, with a distinction between the discredited - one who assumes their difference is known - and the discreditable, or one who assumes their difference is not known or easily perceivable. Elaborating further, he identified three “grossly different types… abominations of the body, blemishes of individual character, and the tribal stigma of the race, nation, and religion” (Goffman, 1963: 13).

A dominant theme in Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) was a dramaturgical understanding of ‘agency,’ whereby the self ‘performs’ in everyday life. Key to this concept is ‘impression management’, which is central to a performative understanding of impression, in which ‘actors’ in everyday life try to ‘perform’ so as to manage ‘impression’ for the benefit of others. The major difference, of course, is that much of his conceptualization of stigma is concerned with how the ‘stigmatised’ manage their interactions with ‘normals.’ Goffman defines those who do not possess an undesired differentness, those who “do not depart negatively from the particular expectations at issue... normals” (1959: 5).

Goffman’s discussion of ‘agency,’ despite its breadth of examples and diversity of individuals, is concerned primarily with different strategies for ‘managing stigma,’ rather than, as we would argue, the agency of the stigmatized as resistance to stigma. This precludes the stigmatized person from any form of stigma resistance, as the agentic tools at their disposal only include different forms of stigma management. Goffman also explicitly adopts a specific research standpoint; the analytic perspective of “we normals” (1963: 5). This positioning of the researcher as “normal” versus “stigmatized” supposes the two as distinct identities, this assuming stigma as a fixed identity rather than process.

Further to this, feminist analyses of Goffman point to the apolitical nature of his work, as well as the sexism and patriarchal views inherent in his early writing (Deegan, 2014). However, the apparent partiality in his standpoint did not prevent subsequent researchers using the concept of ‘stigma’ in an uncritical fashion. Indeed, Manzo (2004) argues that the concept of stigma has become ‘under-defined’ and ‘over-used’ in the social sciences. Similarly, Page (1984) notes that while “the term is often used to describe any disreputable person or socially discredited group, the concept of stigma itself remains a relatively imprecise concept” (1984: 1). In contrast, Link and Phelan (2001) put forth a conceptual model of stigma, acknowledging that its inner workings are made possible by the differential distribution of distinct types of power including social, economic, and political by outlining five interrelated components, the convergence of which produces the pre-conditions necessary for their retheorizing of stigma.

Encouraged by Link and Phelan’s argument, Parker and Aggleton (2003) highlight the functions of stigmatization in relation to the establishment of social order and control. Drawing on Foucault’s work (Foucault, 1978) regarding the relationship between knowledge/power and notions of difference, Parker and Aggleton’s work emphasized the cultural production of difference in the service of power, highlighting stigma “not simply as an isolated or interpersonal phenomenon, but as central to the constitution and maintenance of social order” (2003: 17). This line of inquiry has been expanded by Hannem (2012) who uses a Foucauldian post-structural perspective to integrate individual experiences into macro-structures of power, to explore both the symbolic and structural aspects of stigma. But she also acknowledges that Foucauldian analysis needs the fine-grained micro-interactionist approach that a Goffmanian analysis provides (Hannem, 2012). The following section explores what an alternative micro-approach, Thrift’s NRT (2008) might contribute to these discussions.

More than a feeling: Exploring non representational theory

Thrift’s NRT offers specific ideas within an interdisciplinary blend of critical geography, anthropology, feminist sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy which are very well suited to address the politics of everyday life. As Vannini (2009) discusses, Thrift theorizes the intimate relationship between senses/emotions and the political. In exploring the politics of affect, Thrift notes: “I will not be making the silly argument that just about everything which now turns up is political, in some sense or the other, but I will be arguing that the move to affect shows up new political registers and intensities” (2004: 58).

This point has serious implications when applied to stigma; it encourages us to “give weight to intuition as thinking-in-movement, to foreground the ‘underlanguage’ of gesture” (Thrift, 2008: 14). Non-representational theory enriches the concept of stigma by accounting for social processes that are continual yet felt in specific moments, which are formed and shaped through social structures, yet experienced in social, cultural, and embodied spaces. In theorizing a “geography of what happens” (Thrift, 2008: 2), Thrift attempts to

[D]evelop a body of work that emphasizes the development of sensitivities (or disclosure), rather than knowledge, per se, toward all of the everyday practices that usually go unnoticed in the background of our lives, practices which take place in an intermediate and indeterminate in-between what we currently frame as behaviour or action. (2008: 71)

Using Thrift’s (NRT), an unconventional geography of what happens, opens a way to acknowledge the agency inherent in resistance. In Thrift’s understanding, resistance as agentic is possible to explain using an emphasis on the interaction between affect/sensation and embodied practices (1997). These small interactions occur in the politics of everyday life.

Importantly, for Thrift, affect is not simply another word for emotion. In NRT, affect is a socio-spatial, fundamentally geographic phenomenon that is about the relational bodily capacities that emerge and develop in moments. Affect is expressed by bodies and has multiple registers of experience. Movements of affect are expressed through visceral shifts in bodies and, being relational, occur in the in-between moments rather than being registered in the mind of the individual (as we generally think of feelings). Affect is theorized differently than ‘felt stigma’ as it is assumed that responses to ‘felt stigma’ are limited to the internalization of that stigma and resulting ‘management’ of ‘spoiled identity’ (Jiao and Bungay, 2019). In contrast, affect draws attention to the unconventional agency found in momentary interactions. In doing so, NRT demonstrates its relationship to the alternative forms of agentive resistance displayed by sex workers in the study.

This intrigues us—to look at the ‘in between’ of stigma, the moments where stigma operates, to see what exists there that is not captured by our traditional theorizing on the concept. In the following, the fact that one can’t publicly acknowledge each other or that the client was married, all contributes to a moment of interaction where everything is understood but nothing is said:

Go to Walmart or wherever, you’d always run into the guy and his wife and feel…[pausing] I would just look at him and half smile and go on. You know?…. Make sure the wife didn’t see! (Tanya)

In the quotation above, we are interested in the ‘half-smile’ of recognition, the ploy of ‘making sure the wife didn’t see’ and how theory can explain this interaction. Thrift focuses on what is present in experience by focusing on the intricacies of momentary experiences of the stigmatized.

Thrift (2008) prefers descriptions of the bare bones of actual occasions, which move away from sociology’s “dependence on the performed subject” (5). Thus, for a theory of stigma to focus on lived experience⁷ (Smith, 2012) of momentary interaction, we must move away from Goffman’s (1959) performed subject. For these considerations, most pieces of NRT revolve around Thrift’s (2004, 2008) attention to varied and unconventional forms of agency.

NRT is concerned with capturing the ‘onflow’ of everyday life, or life as a becoming in a time-space that transcends consciousness. Thrift emphasizes the power of the pre-cognitive as an instrument of sensation—indeed, in the opening anecdote, sex worker “felt” the interaction between stigma and law before she thought it. She noted that she ‘felt’ shady before explaining that the criminalization of sex work⁸ means those engaged in it receive judgement. This account marries the focus on interaction with a consideration of structural power as the woman linked the ‘affect’ of the moment directly to her perception of the illegality of her job.

In making this move to sensation and affect, which embraces flow, change, and adaptation, we are opening space in our theorizing for the aforementioned idea of resistance. “Individuals are generally understood as effects of the events to which their body parts (broadly understood) respond and in which they participate [emphasis ours]” (Thrift, 2004: 60). Thrift points to the importance of affect and sensation; we take this idea further as we understand the role of affect and sensation as potentially a recognition of resistance. A focus on affect and sensation can begin to explore how resistance shows up in embodied experiences as a political act. For example, a female participant spoke to the fact that the relationship between stigma and subjectivity is mediated by resistance:

You just know in your heart after years of teaching yourself that when someone looks at you and calls you a whore or a prostitute or a slut, you know in your heart that you're not that, you know? You just...you build it, you build your own character, you build who you are. And part of street working made me who I am. Made me determined, made me stubborn, it made me strong. (Bridget)

In this way stigma does not map onto identity which leads to restricted agency in one neat, tidy process of determination. Rather, stigma is messy - like life itself -, the ways that it operates are complex, and are resisted in ways that are varied and not always recognized as forms of resistance, as the lived experiences of individuals who experience stigma reveal.

Given the propensity for agency in critical geography (Thrift’s mother discipline),⁹ it is therefore not surprising that his theory speaks to us in our attempts to re-conceptualize the inner workings of stigma; what is surprising are the steps Thrift takes on the path to agency. Theoretically, Thrift gets at both agency and resistance through a concentration on small moments, and on the interaction between affect and practices in those moments. In terms of the moment of experiencing stigma captured in our opening anecdote, this approach offers the possibility to unpack agency, which can certainly include stigma resistance. The concentration on the ‘in between’ of small moments opens a space for thinking about agency as resistance.

As a further example, Vicky speaks to how her previous harmful experiences led her to finding power. She recounts using the wisdom gained from those experiences in small moments in her current life, and doing so in a way that resists sex worker stigma:

Well, like, I could have used my experiences like during the pornography and the pimping ring, like my pimp was not a nice person, the photographer was not a nice person; they were nasty, mean people, they had no problem smacking you upside the face if you didn’t do what they said, right? But I could have used those experiences negatively and made myself go downhill even more and go deeper into drugs and deeper into everything to the point where I’d probably be dead. Or I could use it and benefit myself and learn from it. And make myself stronger... I have the power -after using what I’ve been through -as positive experiences. I’ve learned the power to not let people walk over me, not let people use me, but still be respectful and caring… like, the person that I am, right! (Vicky)

Vicky’s agentive perception of ‘having the power’- using her negative experiences to benefit herself and becoming stronger-shows up in momentary interactions with individuals, where she states she doesn’t ‘let people walk all over her’. There is also resistance linked to her agency, as her negative experiences haven’t changed who she is, even when she is exerting her power.

In stating that she is a respectful and caring person, she is resisting the stigma of those who have had experiences similar to hers as ‘bad people’; people who use drugs, for example, or who do sex work. All of that redefining shows up in her momentary interactions with individuals when she feels she is able to be agentive, exercise her power, and do it in a caring way. At the base of her quotation above is her perception of the power dynamic in small moments and how her lived experience shapes how she responds, in other words, how she experiences affect and sensation in her everyday life.

Thrift believes that affect and sensation should be as important as are signs and significations in the social sciences. He views “the senses and emotions not as subjects for micro-sociological empirical attention but as the engine of political regeneration” (Vannini, 2009: 284). Here, fleeting moments become political, and affect and sensation become important players in these politics. To explain, Thrift (2008) sees affect as non-discursive, somatic practice, the precursor to the active outcome of an encounter, which arguably changes the ability of the lived body to act. He sees this preconscious frontier, this fleeting space of time, as highly political, due, in part, to his re-definition and expansion of what counts as political, with more room for explicitly affective interventions. Thrift states it this way:

“a microbiopolitics of the subliminal, much of which operates in the half-second delay between action and cognition, a microbiopolitics which… is increasingly susceptible to new and sometimes threatening knowledges and technologies that operate upon it in ways that produce effective outcomes, even when the exact reasons may be opaque” (2008: 186).

We argue that the fleeting but crucial moments of affect and sensation are sites of productive power, at once susceptible to and generative of the political. For Vicky, the politics of sex worker stigma showed up in the ‘in-between moments’ of her interactions with people in her life. That stigma was in turn resisted, demonstrating agency in that same small moment, registered as sensation by Vicky’s feeling of being powerful and kind. This type of resistance is political.

Relatedly, Thrift’s NRT is also concerned with practice, action, and performance. Thrift is wary of the rigidity of the structuralist heritage in the social sciences and is suspicious of attempts to uncover symbolic meaning when more practical forms exist, such as those informed by affect and sensation. He states ‘our ways of living, thinking or writing change according to the plane upon which we find ourselves’ (2008: 13). Thus, to get in touch with the full range of registers of agency, affect and sensation must be given appropriate weight. This point has serious implications when applied to stigma and law, as our next section indicates; it encourages us, in Thrift’s words, to ‘give weight to intuition’ (2008: 14).

Conceptualizations of stigma that are informed by Goffman’s (1963) seminal theorizing cannot always capture the agency of individuals in response to stigma; by contrast, Thrift’s theory of affect and sensation (2008) may be better suited. This is relevant for sex workers interviewed for this study, as the majority alluded to laws on sex work as linked to their perception of the roots of stigma. The sex workers’ critique of the legal circumstances surrounding sex work in Canada demonstrated how lived moments of stigma, experienced as affect/bodily sensations, link to larger political structures and institutions. As a result, resistance to sex work stigma in the research can also be understood as resistance to the socio-political context in which stigma happens. The next section explains further.

Affect, stigma and the law

Many participants in the current research spoke about feeling different from other members of society due to the stigma created by the continued criminalization of their clients. Sex work laws in Canada were named as problematic, as they reinforced the illegality of their work. These sentiments are echoed in sex work research across Canada (Durisin et al., 2018; Jeffrey and Sullivan, 2009; McBride et al., 2021; Ralston, 2021). Further, many participants expressed the desire for society to view their occupation as a “legitimate” form of work:

I don't think it should be illegal. What you do with your body is your choice. You can go and get tattoos; you can go and do.... I just think you should have control over what you want to do with your body. (Vanessa)

Experiences of stigma have very real consequences in the lives of sex workers, specifically with police, as negative interactions challenge a worker’s perception as to whether or not the police serve to protect or to harm them (Smith et al., 2020). The intersection of the stigma of sex work, law and affect can be seen by focussing on the ways in which sex workers “feel” criminalized; that is, the perceived ‘weight’ of the interaction between law and stigma in momentary interactions. What helps us to understand the resistance to police by sex workers in Smith et al. (2020) is an emphasis on affect which Thrift’s (2004, 2008) work offers, an analysis of the momentary interaction in which stigma is experienced by the sex worker, her reaction to it and how her behaviour is understood in this context. That fluidity of explanation regarding momentary interactions of stigma translates into different scripts, different pragmatics of being, and as such, alters perceptions of what works for the sex worker who is both trying to make a living and trying to avoid repressive detection.

Returning to the opening anecdote, the woman’s intuition, her sensation of the criminality surrounding sex work, and the associated effect of stigma in the small moments of her life are of the utmost importance; they are part of the “biological-cum-cultural gymnastics” (2008: 71) Thrift describes in his discussion of affect. In contrast, Goffman states that “the information of the most relevance in the study of stigma has certain properties. It is information about an individual. It is about his more or less abiding characteristics, as opposed to the moods, feelings, or intentions that he might have at a particular moment” (Goffman, 1963: 43)

Stigma can also be related to affect and sensation, rather than behavioural characteristics, as Goffman would have it. Thrift states, “how things seem is often more important than what they are” (2008: 116). This quote could be interpreted as implying that we are simply concerned with perception here; or it could relate to the power involved in who defines ‘how things seem’ (as Thrift indicates ‘how they are experienced’), noted by his weight to the importance of affect. To state that the quotation is only about perception would mean that the only role affect plays is in defining the situation; we would argue that it (affect) is related to stigma, agency, and resistance.

To illustrate, Natasha spoke about an example where affect played a direct role in both agency and resistance in this scenario of her friend’s handling of a violent client:

He was like “I’m gonna fucking cut you up, I’m gonna cut off your clothes, rape you, whatever,” and she goes “hold on a minute, I wanna enjoy this too and I still need my clothes”.... and he just stopped. And he didn't know what to do - right? Like most people if they're gonna get raped, they're like *squeals* “Oh no, I'm sorry! Don't do it! I'll do anything!” ... Agree with him, go along with it, and they're just gonna be like... what now? It’s awesome knowing how and having the power to turn negative situations around so then you have the power instead of the trick. it is... it makes you feel more safe. (Natasha)

To think about the possibility of facing such a violent client would normally be terrifying, it’s chilling even to read. However, the sex worker in this example flips the script, her clever use of the momentary shift in ‘affect’ …“hold on a minute, I wanna enjoy this too and I still need my clothes…” changes the reaction of the client. This quick thinking not only shifts his perception of the situation (it appears he froze, not expecting agency in her answer) simultaneously both resisting and flipping the power balance of the entire encounter. Further, this type of agency in a potentially dangerous situation completely defies the client’s (apparent) expected response of the sex worker as a victim.

Thrift’s relational materialism can also be used to explain how this scenario is so powerful. Thrift’s concept that material objects (i.e. the clothes) are endowed with what he deems “relational agency” which, applied in this example, rejects the usual separation between corporeality, materiality, and sociality. In this case, the woman’s clothes played an important part of the encounter. At first, they were part of what the client was using to threaten her “I’m gonna cut off your clothes” to deny her agency. In stating ‘I still need my clothes’ she focused on them to flip the script and take back her power and agency in the situation. Viewed this way, the clothes actually become a pivotal point in her negotiation of the (potentially dangerous) encounter; and a symbol for her agentive resistance.

She can’t be resisting …or can she? Resisting the stigma of sex work

Questions over what constitutes resistance (rather than stigma management) have been raised explicitly in sex work literature (Chapkis, 2018; Phoenix, 2018; Sanders, 2018; Van der Meulen et al., 2013; Weitzer, 2018). Benoit et al. (2018) took this discussion of resistance a step further, and situated it primarily not in texts, but in collective action by sex workers and their allies. For them, resistance can be found at the level of some form of community political action (466-7). In other words, resistance is only understood in the traditional terms of overt political action rather than in the actions of single individuals.

Alternatively, most resistance techniques in oppressed groups (Scott, 1985) exist below the surface and are exemplified in conversation with sex workers who describe using their deviant ‘identity’ as a form of ‘sticking it to the man’, both in terms of refusing waged labour and the ‘boss’ identities that accompany such jobs (Jeffrey and MacDonald, 2006a, 2006b). A manifestation of this genre renders her ability to stay ‘independent’ of the strictures of normative work life, to be ‘her own boss’ and to make decisions on when, how and with whom she will work. Goffman’s (1963) theory implies that sex workers can only manage information about their ‘spoiled’ identity; in direct opposition to this, the sex worker cited below is using that ‘spoil’ to her advantage. She is not ‘managing’ stigma but gaining power by playing into stigma.

Christine, a woman in the current study, spoke to this:

I'm a good person, but when it comes to men, I can be very deceiving and make ‘em believe what I want them to believe. I do feel powerful actually, it’s just, I feels like I have more control than they do, and that I'm smarter than they are. Well, I don't really like what I’m doing, but I feel like I can do or say what I want to get what I want. At the time it makes me feel a bit too confident... a lot of people would say it’s not a good thing, it’s a bad quality to have. Actually, part of me is glad I got that quality about myself. I find men like innocent women, like younger women, so a lot of times I lie about my age. I play it up like “Oh I never done this kinda thing before, you're just gonna have to ease me through it” - I dunno, it just seems to get the guy more excited. They're buying it. (Christine)

When you're putting out the bull shit and they're buyin' it, how does that make you feel? (Researcher)

Cocky! *Laughs* It makes me feel pretty smart, though, for coming up with something like that (Christine)

Further, sex workers resisted the very idea that sex work should be denigrated in any way. Such a shift imagines stigma as fundamental to a shift in law/criminalization, which they believed would create increased safety (Armstrong, 2019; Pivot, 2014) and autonomy on the job. Herein, it is not only sex worker stigma that is being resisted, but also the criminalization of sex work:

But, no like, [sighs] there's such a judgement on being a call girl or street worker, um, as when I’m working at [convenience store], everyone's like all friendly and happy go lucky, but if they knew [laughs], about what I'm doin' on the side, [laughs] they'd be like... right, like, hidden away, ‘run away from her’ type thing! But [I think] instead of having negative images on it, turn that image of that lonely face of the street worker or the call girl, turn that into something positive, because it will better the future for them… It would keep girls safer, it would keep clients safer, like, cuz when it’s a legal business when it’s being run by the government, you have rules and regulations you have to follow by, you know? So, there's none of this worry about a client beating the crap outta ya, or a client freaking out because he has to wear a condom. You don't wanna wear a condom? Get the Fuck! Ya know? (Donna)

We aim for a theory of stigma that gets at these ‘small moments of resistance’ that often go unnoticed. Further, Law and Raguparan (2020) explore the application of creative problem solving by sex workers to “conform to, bend and resist the normative expectations of their occupational roles” (425). This work not only positions sex workers as skilled workers, but documents the ‘creativity’ of stigma management in ways that highlight the multiplicity of embodied responses of sex workers.

Our research has not been able to capture the true embodied resistance of sex workers; however, research focused on sensation and movement could do just that, and the idea of the bodily engagement in sex work could be explored as a form of stigma resistance in and of itself. For example, we find this type of resistance in the writings by individuals who identify as both sex workers and academics. Their unique positionality as both sex workers and academics becomes an integral part of their analysis. Love (2013) outlines her own lived experiences in sex work, her changing interpretation of those experiences, and the impact all of this has had on her sense of self. In so doing, she talks back to more traditional views of sex work and speaks to her own sex work as a form of resistance. In other words, she is putting forward a much more sophisticated understanding than that of simply ‘managing’ a stigmatized identity. In revealing how all parts of her experience impact who she is, she is resisting sex work stigma that paints sex workers as one-dimensional, reduced to their sex work. Further, her framing of the work expands definitions of resistance to include engaging in sex work as a form of resistance in and of itself. Through her embodied activity, she is demonstrating that resistance may exist outside of the realms of conventional political understandings. Indeed, whom better to explore how stigma and resistance play out in the ‘interstices of interaction’ than the sex worker herself?

Conclusion

Thrift’s (1997, 2004, 2008) attention to the unconventional agency found in momentary interactions suggests another way of studying the small moments in which stigma is experienced, as a sensation. In addition, it provides an avenue to move beyond the idea of resistance as located in everyday talk as a focus for sex worker research to explore the ways in which similar types of covert and hidden resistance show up in the minutiae of embodied activity.

In attending to ‘talking back,’ we see that sex workers are also using their interpersonal interactions (i.e., everyday talk) as a form of resistance to stigma.

In this paper, we argue that resistance happens in the interaction between affect/sensation and practices; but also occurs in the politics of everyday life as momentary interactions as theorized in Thrift’s work (2008). In demonstrating the unconventional agency found in those momentary interactions, sex workers themselves are providing a new, deeper conceptualization of stigma that moves beyond the current sex work and sociological literature. Thrift’s conceptualization of affect and sensation as the engine of political regeneration speaks to an expansion of the idea of talk as political to embodied experiences as political. This approach certainly opens space to include embodied resistance as an area within sex work stigma research. To go further with this analysis, we do need to pay attention to work such as that of Love (2013) cited above.

The foregoing has been an attempt to create new theoretical space for understanding stigma and how it operates. The value of this for sociological accounts of stigma is that we are better able to both capture the lived moments of people who experience it and honour their strategies of stigma resistance in our theorizing. What needs further study, of course, are more and varied studies of how stigmatized individuals resist in the small and tight spaces that stigma creates. Love (2013) may point a way in this direction, as does work by other academics who uplift their own lived expertise as sex workers in their analysis (James, 2018; Page, 2018; Porth, 2018).

The capturing of sensation and affect, we admit, may not always be the first ‘go-to’ for identifying stigma, for as to do so implicates the intimacy of exchange in sensation, affect, behaviour and resistance that are felt rather than seen. To experience an attempt to stigmatize/to shame can be met in very powerful ways if we can ascertain how and in what ways those who are the target of stigma respond, actualize and live their lives despite or perhaps more accurately with, through, and in resistance to attempts to stigmatize their actions. But that is the stuff of another paper.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Laura Winters

Notes

Laura Winters, PhD, is a sociologist and adjunct professor as well as a research fellow. Laura researches stigma resistance, especially in the everyday “talk back” of people who do sex work. She believes there is a need to think critically about research ethics in the context of research as advocacy with marginalized populations. Laura has been working with community organizations in her home city of St. John’s for over a decade, currently as Lead Executive Officer of Stella’s Circle.

Gayle MacDonald, PhD has been in university life for over 30 years in Canada, 11 as an administrator in the AVPResearch portfolio and as faculty member. Throughout her faculty career she has specialized in questions around deviance, stigma and has focused her research and teaching the sociology of law, feminist jurisprudence and on those deemed marginal, people living with AIDS and sex workers. In her administrative career she focused on mentoring faculty, at all stages of their research careers. She is now Professor Emerita, as granted by Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2023.

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