The ‘Intimate City’ by Manjima Bhattacharjya is an account of the transformation of sex work (the world’s oldest profession) into ‘post industrial sexual commerce in a rapidly globalized world’. Thank you for the review, Devika Rajesh.
The “Intimate City” by Manjima Bhattacharjya, a feminist researcher, writer and activist based in Mumbai, attempts to reveal narratives never heard before and looks at how intimacies are re-configured in the digital age. The study was conducted as part of her post-doctoral research in Mumbai, the ‘maximum city’. Bhattacharjya aims to look beyond sex work research undertaken in the red light areas of Kamathipura and dance bars in Mumbai by looking at other forms of sexual consumption that has gained prominence with the internet.
In the first section of the book, Bhattacharjya points out the ‘big business character’ of the sex work industry, while linking it to transnational organized crime which in turn has furthered the global obsession to address ‘trafficking’. In the last two decades, sex work and trafficking have often been conflated. This had led to the belief that women have no agency and they need to be protected and rescued and sent back to the very dire conditions that they had managed to escape. The neoliberal system has indeed pushed women to migrate across borders to sell their domestic and sexual labor to maintain their already precarious lives, but it is important to understand that not all of them are victims of ‘trafficking’.
The assumption that feminine sexuality should be subjugated under the ambit of a monogamous procreative relationship has restricted women’s access to public spaces forcing them to work out of sight in brothels, in private flats or massage parlors,etc.The non-existence of male brothels doesn’t imply that there are no male sex workers. Male and transgender sex workers operate in different kinds of spatial arrangements. The exchange relations concerning sexual services are greatly influenced by the politics of race, class and gender as the sellers of sex are the poor and marginalized whereas the buyers of sex are in a relatively better position. At the same time, certain commercial sexual encounters mirror non-commercial ones. The changing forms of intimacy could be attributed to the affordable, accessible and anonymous character of the internet.
In the second section, the author delineates the history of Kamathipura during the colonial period and also points to the ‘narrative of decline’ in the present times. Bhattacharjya also looks at localized forms of sexual labor such as the Lavani dance form, the Devdasi system and Bhojpuri songs in Mumbai through a lens of caste and cultural meaning. The Devdasi system legitimized and institutionalized men’s access to lower caste women’s bodies. Bhojpuri songs were intensely erotic and laden with double entendres and the migrant population found solace in them to cope with the loneliness of city life, while their spouses or lovers lived far away.
In the third section, Bhattacharjya looks at the narratives around online sexual commerce in Mumbai in the absence of any existing studies on escort services in India. In her study, the author categorizes the websites offering escort services into three different groups. The first category consists of websites claiming to supply escort girls to provide clients with companionship. The other category appeared to be of ‘independent escorts’ that seem to be unaffiliated with any particular agency. The rest comprised of networking sites for the consumers of sexual commerce to share their intimate experiences and also served as a platform providing information relating to places in Mumbai where one could fulfill their sexual fantasies and desires.
The author points to the escort agency’s claim as a professional service provider, fulfilling a lifestyle-related need concerning the male global traveler. The ‘Girlfriend Experience’ (GFE) was guaranteed by almost all the websites. These websites are often loaded with phrases hinting to the wealthy and hardworking clientele to realize his fantasies. Also, the websites distinguished themselves from street-based prostitution by preserving the upper-class and upper-caste status of it by using names that are feminine sounding and surnames that are always upper or middle caste hindu titles.The escort agencies are specifically designed and created to fulfill the needs of the ‘gentlemen’ only.
The rest of mankind seems to be left with classifieds, the online forums and chat rooms devoted completely to sharing about conquests and curiosities. The networking sites provide ample information on sexual encounters and detailed intimate experiences.The classifieds section offers a much more diverse picture of sexuality and sexual practices online. Unlike the agency websites where the audience is presumed to be strictly male, the audience here is more diverse.
In the last section, the author relies on data from 12 in-depth interviews with people involved in online sexual transactions to understand their motivations and experiences. The author finds that the line between paid and unpaid sex was not always clear. These paid/unpaid/unclear sexual transactions were better placed in a conceptual category of their own: the ‘casual encounters’. Also, there exists a distinct category called the ‘cruisers’, where the transaction between a service provider and client is not very clear. This category consisted of men of different ages and men advertised themselves for women clients. However, the book does not include experiences of women seeking sexual services.
With the internet, middle class men could easily bypass the stigma of being visible in sex work landscapes and at the same time the internet provides access to not just any women but women from upper or middle class backgrounds. The online space is segregated along the lines of gender and class by constructing images of the ideal client and escort. Despite the presence of a few female escorts, the ‘digital space of sex work in India seems to be a strictly male space, very heteronormative in character, and controlled by third parties’.
While street-based sex work falls within the ambit of the informal sector, escort services operate akin to the platform economy, characterized by precarity and complete absence of labor rights owing to its unorganized nature. The sample of study is dominated by middle and upper-class male respondents and the discussion on intimacy lacked female and transgender narratives. Also, the author does not delve much into the world of dating apps as the study was undertaken during the 2012-13 period. Despite these factors, the book is an important contribution to the domain of sexual commerce on the internet.
