‘성판매 여성’ 섹슈얼리티의 공간적 수행과 정체성의 (재)구성

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This research intends to examine the problems concerning the performance of sexuality and temporal-spatial fragmentation and the continuance and hierarchy of identity based on the experiences of women who have been selling sex as ‘work’ (for 10 to 30 years and more) in red-light districts. Although the work of selling sex is performed mechanically in accordance with the pre-structuralized procedures of the red light districts, the work is often accompanied with emotional labor and stress due to buyers’ hierarchical and belittling attitudes, which result in the distancing of identity from the sex selling ‘work’. The performance of selling-sex as ‘work’ is not totally integrated into the identification as prostitute or to the dominant order in the sex trade space. Rather, it involves the process of reconstructing identity to make partial trades of body/sexuality possible. This fragmentation and continuance of identity explains the way how women with various inclinations and backgrounds co-ordinate their identity and selling sex as ‘work’. The experience of selling sex produces a gap or distance between social stigma and typical female identities. Typical gender roles can be reinforced while denying and escaping the stigma, even though there also is the possibility of resistance derived from the gaps of identities. When accumulated, experiences of exclusion in the form of stigma can bring about impoverishment and as well as restriction of their women’s lives to a particular space and relationships. The problems of identity reconstruction in selling sex as 'work' show that the practice issues should be based on the complexity of experiences of the women selling sex.