Provocation as Agentic Practice: Gender Performativity in Online Strategies of Transgender Sex Workers.

PROVOCATION (Behavior); PERFORMATIVE (Philosophy); GENDER bending (Gender expression); TRANSGENDER people; SEX workers; SEX discrimination; FETISHISM (Sexual behavior); PREJUDICES

Fluid performances of gender online by gender-diverse individuals facing discrimination and fetishization raises questions about whether these acts are a source of empowerment or reinforce prevailing prejudice. We combine virtual ethnography and interviews with transwomen sex workers in Singapore (n = 14) to explore the dynamic between sociostructural oppression and agentic resistance. First, heterosexual power relations manifest online via digital practices of access, surveillance, and intervention to discriminate against and objectify respondents' identities and bodies. Second, the online response can be categorized into specific digital practices of avoidance involving privacy and anonymity, accommodation via subtle practices of submission, and collaboration via community mobilization. Finally, gender performativity on sites for sex solicitation manifests in the presentation of both essentialist (submissive femininity) and provocative (hyper-sexual) embodiments, defying simplistic characterization into the structure-agency dynamic. We discuss the co-constructive nature of socially situated gender performances and the potential for challenging normative regimes of gender. Online spaces allow people to perform their gender more fluidly. We studied how gender-diverse people's online media use can lead to both personal empowerment and social oppression. Social forces oppress gender-diverse people through online harassment and abuse. We classify these progressively intrusive digital practices as access, surveillance, and intervention. However, gender-diverse people also respond to such oppression through digital strategies such as avoidance, accommodation, and collaboration. Transwomen sex workers in Singapore perform femininity online in submissive and hyper-sexual ways. Our material suggests that they do this to both affirm their transgender identities and also to attract customers. These nuances blur the line between individual choice and compliance with social demands. Indeed, the informants' quotes suggest that the digital strategies that seem to accommodate client desires may in fact empower these transwomen sex workers. Yet, it is uncertain if this individual empowerment leads to broader social change for gender-diverse communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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