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Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work

Book by Kimberly Kay Hoang · 11 quotes · Niche Markets, Sex, Sex Work

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Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work Quotes

“All these women were, however, careful to distinguish *sexual commerce*, in which women view sex work as skilled labor and their chosen occupation, from *sex trafficking*, described by governments, NGOs, and activists as forced sexual labor. Key to this distinction is a labor process that depends heavily on workers' consent and the establishment of trust in relation to both the clients and the madams/bar owners who regulate the workers' labor.”

WomenTrustConsentSex WorkSex TraffickingSkilled LaborChosen OccupationForced Sexual LaborLabor ProcessSexual Commerce
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“Within their distinct niche markets, sex workers employ competing technologies of embodiment that in turn reveal how desire reflects and constructs different national formations in the global imaginary.”

DesireEmbodimentSex WorkersTechnologiesNiche MarketsGlobal ImaginaryNational Formations
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“In these spaces of leisure, powerful local elites, Viet Kieus from the diaspora, business executives, and marginal tourists enter into niche markets that never overlap. Instead, each niche market operates with a unique logic of desire that has important implications for how we think about that place of sex work in the global economy.”

DesireLogicImportanceLeisureUniquenessImplicationsGlobal EconomySex WorkSpacesNiche Markets
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“Western men hear about girls who are sold and forced to sell their bodies, but no one here is forced to do anything. I come to the bar to work, …and if I want to have sex with a client, I have sex with him. If I don't, then I won't. No one forces me to do anything I don't want to do. [NGO workers} come here trying to give us condoms or save us, [but] how can they help me when I make more money than them?' —Vy, twenty-two-year-old hostess in Naughty Girls”

ForceSexMoneyHelpAutonomyCondomsClientHostessNgo WorkersWestern Men
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“Can you go back to America and tell all your friends that I do NOT want to be rescued? All these Americans and Viet Kieus who come here thinking that they need to save us are so stupid. If you had to choose between working in a factory for twelve hours a day with bosses who don't let you rest and [who] look at you like they are raping you with their eyes, or working in a bar where you have a few drinks and sometimes spread you legs for a man, which would you choose? Why don't people go rescue factory workers? We are the ones who were not scared to leave factory work for sex work. We are smart hustlers [*nguoi chen lan*], not dumb, scared factory workers! —Trinh, twenty-four-year-old hostess in Lavender”

AmericaSexSex WorkBarSex WorkersFactory WorkersMisconceptionsFactoryHostessFactory Work
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“Therefore, while changes in the global economy structure relations of intimacy between clients and sex workers, intimacy also serves as a vital form of currency that shapes economic and political relations.”

StructureIntimacyCurrencyClientsChangesGlobal EconomySex WorkersEconomic RelationsPolitical RelationsRelations Of Intimacy
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“Although the four niche markets rarely came into contact with one another, the very existence of these separate niche markets enabled the clients and workers in the them to construct competing masculinities and technologies of embodiment that simultaneously projected pan-Asian modernity, nostalgic cosmopolitanism, ad Third World dependency.”

ExistenceWorkersClientsNiche MarketsCompeting MasculinitiesNostalgic ComsopolitanismPan Asian ModernityTechnologies Of EmbodimentThird World Dependency
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“But while women were able to capitalize on Vietnam's rapid development, it is important to situate their mobility as constrained within structures of patriarchy.”

WomenSituationDevelopmentImportanceVietnamPatriarchyMobilityStructuresCapitalizationConstrainment
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“Dealing in Desire takes seriously the labor of the women I studied. This book views women as, in the words of Caitrin Lynch, 'creative agents in their own lives, not simply as pieces in some global monopoly played by capitalists and state representatives.”

BookWomenPiecesLaborLivesCapitalistsCaitrin LynchCreative AgentsGlobal MonopolyState Representatives
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“The multiple niche markets in Vietnam's global sex industry offer insight into some of the larger macroeconomic shifts that reframe our understanding of the coproduction of gender and global capital.”

UnderstandingInsightGenderVietnamReframingNiche MarketsGlobal CapitalCoproductionGlobal Sex IndustryLarger Macroeconomic Shifts
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