Faked or Felt? Sexual Pleasure of Female Sex Workers in Poland During Commercial Sex Acts
摘要
Although sex work is designed around providing sexual satisfaction to clients, there is scant research on pleasure experienced by the sex workers themselves during commercial intercourse. The media, popular culture, and academic discourse all portray sex workers using binary stereotypes: either the “happy hooker” or the victim. This simplistic dichotomy falls short of reflecting the complex nature of sex workers' bodily and sexual experiences. This article examines how female sex workers (escorts, erotic masseuses, and cam girls) describe their sexual pleasure during commercial sexual intercourse. The aim is to chart the full range of sex workers' strategies: from avoiding pleasure deliberately and only maintaining its pretense, to incidental arousal, and even embracing pleasure and guiding the client to stimulate her arousal. The discussion revolves around the prerequisites for sex workers to experience customer interactions as pleasurable. The article draws on qualitative interviews with women providing sexual services in Poland. The data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology procedures.