14

Commodification of Intimacy
and Sexuality
J M

This chapter examines the growing global market for commodities that include some
form of intimate exchange for payment, with a particular focus on intimate labor
performed by migrant women. Intimacy is the state of having a close or personal
relationship. Common narratives in Western societies mark clear boundaries bet-
ween personal relationships, particularly those of a romantic or sexual nature, and
economic transactions. While narratives of “gold diggers” are often used to frame
intimate romantic relationships for money in contemporary society, many societies
have recognized the importance of economic considerations within marriages and
sexual relationships (Coontz 2004). In fact, marriage was viewed as a business trans-
action for most of recorded human history, demonstrating that economic consider-
ations are often an important component of long‐term intimate relationships.
Viviana Zelizer (2005) theorizes that society often presents the intersection of
economic and intimate relationships as contaminating the purity of relationships,
based on the false dichotomy that separates public from private realms. Her research
on court cases demonstrates that people utilize differentiated ties and forms of
payment in their various relationships with one another. All intimate relationships
are some form of negotiated exchange. Thus, this chapter examines the intimacy for
sale in domestic labor, sexual labor, and international marriage. Some scholars of
economic processes ignore the blurred lines between the public realm of the economy
and the intimate, but gender scholars are bringing to the forefront the importance of
micro‐level relationships of intimacy to larger macro‐level economic processes.
Feminist geographers term this interdependent relationship the “global intimate”
(Mountz and Hyndman 2006; Pratt and Rosner 2006).
Building upon theories of the global intimate and Zelizer’s work regarding the
relationship between intimacy and payment, Boris and Parreñas (2010) define inti-
mate labor as work that centers on the daily practice of intimacy, both emotional
and bodily labor that is centered within what is perceived of as the private realm. For
instance, donating sperm is considered a form of intimate labor, as it is private,

Companion to Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples.

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 259
genetic material that one is exchanging for payment, but this labor does not involve
interactions with customers per se. Intimate labor builds upon Hochschild’s (1983)
definition of emotional labor, which refers to face‐to‐face encounters in which a
worker displays certain emotions to induce feelings in clients or customers. By join-
ing the terms intimate and labor, Boris and Parreñas (2010) are problematizing the
separation of home from work, work from labor, and productive from nonproduc-
tive forms of labor that have characterized capitalist globalization.
The growing global industries commodifying intimate labor are intimate indus-
tries, which Parreñas, Thai, and Silvey (2016) define as transnational market
processes of commercial intimacy that are increasingly becoming formalized within
the larger global economy. Intimate industries commodify the labor of intimacy on a
global scale, and include surrogacy, sexual labor, international marriage, domestic
labor, call centers, hostesses, etc. While the commodification of intimate labor is not
new in the economy, the scope and scale of the global commodification of intimacy
is new (Parreñas et al. 2016). Social practices are increasingly moving into the mar-
ketplace, creating a new “commodity frontier” (Hochschild 2003) where elements of
intimate life are sold and valued lower than other forms of labor. Hochschild (2002)
calls the international transfer of love and care the new emotional imperialism, as
emotional resources are being drained from the Global South and shifting to the
Global North through women’s intimate labor.
Boris, Gilmore, and Parreñas (2010) elaborate upon notions of intimate labor by
redefining sex work as sexual labor, in order to expand the discussion surrounding
commercial sex as an economic and labor enterprise that can be exploitative for
workers. This is a departure from the terms prostitution and sex work, which origi-
nate in the debates concerning whether this labor is sexual slavery or a legitimate
form of labor (Alexander 1998; Clement 2006; Kempadoo 2004). The concept of
sexual labor moves past the moral acceptance of “sex work” and instead allows
scholars to focus on the race, class, gender, and sexuality struggles of workers without
the need to justify the legitimacy of their occupation.
Considering the gendered nature of intimate labor and sexual labor, I will be
adopting a transnational feminist framework that connects intimate, microprocesses
of relationships to the larger transnational processes of migration, globalization, and
economic development. Alexander and Mohanty (1997) argue that feminist theorists
also need to explore the role of states across the globe in erasing certain women’s
experiences, such as sexual laborers, out of their respective national memories in
both the Global North and Global South. They further contend that transnational
feminist scholarship should examine the most marginalized populations of society in
order to highlight the ways in which nationality, race, gender, class, and sexuality
influence systems of imperialism and capitalism within an increasingly transnational
framework. Examining commodified intimate labor allows scholars to highlight the
global economic importance of marginalized women’s labor within the current neo-
liberal capitalist manifestation of globalization. Intimate labor is typically performed
by women, and in particular, women on the margins of society: women of color,
migrant women, and poor women.
The majority of scholarly debate surrounding intimate labor regards how much
agency women who participate in intimate industries exercise, with most feminist
scholarship highlighting the different forms of agency that marginalized women
260 Julia meSzaroS
exercise in order to challenge perceptions that paint them as victims of trafficking.
Grewal (2005) points out that while feminist scholars often highlight marginalized
women’s ability to have agency and choice in selling their intimate labor, individual
choice is the main framework for neoliberal consumer practices. Choice is a key
discourse in neoliberal thought, since choice is necessary to participate in both
democracy and consumption. The feminist struggle is against, but often dependent
upon, neoliberalism. “Having choices” is the opposite of “being oppressed” and thus,
choice is increasingly portrayed as feminist agency (Grewal 2005).
However, this chapter moves beyond the common framing of intimacy and
economy as an issue of women’s agency and instead focuses on the importance of the
global market for commodified intimacies as a transference of labor across borders.
By recognizing the legitimacy of the intimate labor performed in various intimate
industries, I am challenging narratives that consider various forms of intimate labor
to be examples of involuntary labor trafficking, particularly domestic labor, sexual
labor, and marriage migration. The human rights issues of human labor trafficking,
in addition to sex trafficking, have increasingly been in the US national policy spot-
light. Numerous governments have imposed laws aimed at protecting victims of
trafficking, but these laws often do not consider intimate forms of labor to be legiti-
mate choices (Bernstein and Shih 2014; Hoang and Parreñas 2013). By studying the
growing global economy of intimacy, feminist scholars are shining light on the var-
ious forms of invisible intimate labor that are increasingly valuable in the global
market and challenging perceptions of intimate laborers as victims of human
trafficking.
The debate around human sex trafficking centers on ideas that identify the Global
North as a place of progress that protects innocent women, while identifying the
countries of the Global South as backward spaces that victimize vulnerable women
and facilitate the global sex trade. Policy debates surrounding sex trafficking bet-
ween countries portray all sexual laborers as women duped into sexual slavery
through coercive measures, such as taking their passports upon arrival in a new
country (Hughes 2004). The supposed inaccessibility of trafficked victims to
researchers justifies many unsubstantiated claims that human trafficking is occur-
ring within intimate industries that employ predominantly women migrants from
poorer countries, like domestic labor and sexual labor. However, Parreñas (2011)
did access Filipina migrant hostess laborers working in a Japanese club, challenging
the perception that vulnerable migrant populations are inaccessible slaves. Thus,
Parreñas (2011, p. 8) instead argues for adopting the more nuanced framework of
indentured mobility, which acknowledges migrant workers’ vulnerability to human
rights violations but also simultaneously rejects the prevailing discourses that por-
tray migrant workers as helpless victims in need of rescue. The movements against
human trafficking in the Global North often revive rescue narratives that portray
intimate laborers as victims of coercion, echoing colonial narratives of white slavery,
to characterize migrant women sexual laborers (Doezema 2010). Therefore, Bernstein
(2012) demonstrates that the antitrafficking movement in the United States is an
example of the transnationalization of carceral politics and the reincorporation of
these policies into domestic politics under the guise of benevolent feminist activism.
A number of societies, including the US, the Philippines, and China, have regu-
lated women’s mobility by passing various forms of antitrafficking measures that
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 261
limit women’s abilities to participate in various forms of intimate industries, from
international dating agencies to sexual labor. While antitrafficking laws gain a lot of
popular media and political support, these laws often victimize intimate laborers.
Despite the government policies surrounding human trafficking, many intimate
industries are still largely dependent upon marginalized populations’ labor and find
ways to circumvent navigation that limits migrant women’s mobility. These popula-
tions include migrant women from the Global South, and women of color and poor
women within the Global North.

Trafficking

The United Nations defines human trafficking as the recruitment, transportation,

transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by improper means (such as force, abduc-
tion, fraud, or coercion) for an improper purpose including forced labor or sexual
exploitation. As intimate relationships become increasingly commodified, people’s
anxieties regarding the distinction between the world of the intimate and the world
of the economy become pronounced within government policies. For example,
Congress passed the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) in
response to the murders of marriage migrants, women commonly referred to as
“mail‐order brides”’ since they gain citizenship by marrying someone from the
Global North, and this law identifies women marriage migrants as potential victims
of sexual trafficking (Constable 2012). In addition to the US, both the Philippines
and China have strict laws regulating the matchmaking industry. The US Congress
also passed the Stop Enabling Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA) in early 2018,
which is a law that holds websites legally accountable for third‐party posts on their
websites. Many sexual laborers claim that this law dramatically puts them in more
danger, as it closes their access to attracting and vetting potential clients. Organizations
of sexual laborers opposed the bill, arguing that it would not help prevent human
trafficking in any significant way, and also took resources away from consensual
sexual laborers (Arnold 2018).
Antitrafficking legislation impacts the operation of the entire industry that has
developed to serve migrant laborers. The migration industry (Hernández León 2008)
is an ensemble of entrepreneurs, firms, and services, mainly motivated by financial
gain, that facilitate international migration. While some migrants are able to secure
their own employment (Hwang 2017), many migrants use agencies or middlemen
brokers for labor placement and often lose half of their earnings in the process (Chin
2013). Parreñas (2011) argues that no one monitors the middleman brokers, and
they often double dip on both the migrant and the client for various fees. Legislation
that monitors migrant women’s mobility, as an attempt to stop human trafficking,
makes vulnerable migrants more dependent upon third‐party brokers, which actu-
ally increases the likelihood of exploitative labor situations (Parreñas 2011). The
moral disciplining of women’s bodies occurs in many intimate industries, as policies
created to end trafficking create new forms of vulnerability.
Parreñas (2011) argues that migrant hostess workers’ increasing dependence
upon third‐party migration agents, which are part of the larger migration industry,
puts laborers into more vulnerable positions. Based on laws regarding trafficking in
262 Julia meSzaroS
the Philippines and Japan, Parreñas (2011) demonstrates that hostess migrants face
a form of indentured mobility. While migrant hostesses are increasing their social
mobility and earning potentials as migrants, they are also in a state of servitude with
migration agents and other third‐party brokers. The notion of indentured mobility
captures the state’s role in creating policies that monitor migrant bodies and increase
their vulnerabilities to third parties. Moving beyond the case of migrant women
hostesses, many women involved within the realm of intimate industries are victim-
ized by state policies that are in fact created to help or “rescue” them.
Sexual laborers, or willing participants in the selling of their sexual labor, are
most often described as victims of human trafficking in the media. However, num-
bers of scholars have challenged the notion that sexual laborers are victims of traf-
ficking (Brennan 2004; Kempadoo 1999, 2004; Hoang 2015). These scholars do still
highlight the fact that many sexual laborers are nevertheless a vulnerable population,
especially migrant sexual laborers, but that they have agency in choosing to perform
sexual labor. In addition to sexual laborers, women who participate in intimate
industries such as surrogacy, domestic labor, and marriage migration are also por-
trayed as potential victims of human trafficking, based on the ideological separation
of intimacy from the world of the economy.
Many societies and governments adopt a viewpoint regarding the commodifica-
tion of intimacy that places the realms of intimacy and economy into separate and
hostile worlds from one another (Zelizer 2005). This view also posits that commod-
ified relationships are morally contaminated, which ultimately devalues intimate
labor and questions in its legitimacy as economic activity. Laws such as IMBRA and
the Anti Mail‐Order Bride Law in the Philippines regarding the international
marriage industry demonstrate that many people in various societies view the com-
modification of intimacy as morally contaminated, even when consensual. Current
organizations committed to ending sexual trafficking portray women who partici-
pate in intimate industries as “victim‐subjects” and do not allow women agency in
their decision to enter into sexual labor as a viable economic choice (Bernstein
2007a). In narratives of sex trafficking created in the US, the victim narrative is espe-
cially prevalent when discussing poor women and women of color’s intimate labor
domestically, as well as in the Global South. The antitrafficking movements ulti-
mately “coalesced around the notion of violence against women, concentrating par-
ticularly on abuses suffered by third‐world women” (Soderlund 2005, p. 69). The
antitrafficking movement within US foreign policy garnered more attention and
resources during the George W. Bush presidency because of his increasing use of
faith‐based organizations to carry out both domestic and foreign policies (Bernstein
2007a; Constable 2012; Weitzer 2007).
Antitrafficking campaigns focus most on sexual labor, as it is often considered the
most morally contaminated form of intimate exchange. Moralistic views condemn-
ing sexual labor do not recognize the influence of corporate capitalism and the state
in promoting sexual labor, since both benefit from the billions of tourism dollars
spent every year on sex. As Bernstein (2007a, p. 144) argues,

In this way, the masculinist institutions of big business, the state, and the police are
reconfigured as allies and saviors, rather than enemies, of unskilled migrant workers,
and the responsibility for slavery is shifted from structural factors and dominant
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 263
institutions onto individual, deviant men: foreign brown men (as in the White Slave
trade of centuries past) or even more remarkably, African American men living in the
inner city.

Therefore, while many women take advantage of being “freed” by prostitution raids
conducted by the masculinist state, many other women perceive rehabilitation pro-
grams themselves as a different form of slavery. Scholars examining antitrafficking
campaigns have noted that contemporary antitrafficking campaigns are often inter-
woven with moral agendas surrounding sexual labor, particularly from religious‐
based institutions (Agustín 2007; Bernstein 2007a, 2012; Cheng 2011). During a sex
trafficking tour in Thailand, Bernstein and Shih (2014) noted that tour guides
repeated the prevalent media narrative that equates sexual labor with poverty and
human trafficking and often did not distinguish commercial sexual labor from
human trafficking. Thus, dominant policy and media narratives surrounding sexual
labor within the US simply reduce all sexual labor to forms of human trafficking
(Hoang and Parreñas 2013). According to the organization Rights4Girls, women of
color in the US are more likely to be imprisoned for their sexual labor, demonstrating
the carceral undertone to antitrafficking enforcement both on transnational and
domestic levels that Bernstein (2012) observed.
The international dating and marriage industry is commonly linked to human
trafficking (Hughes 2004). Common media discourse in the US characterizes inter-
national introduction and dating agencies as facilitating human trafficking, which is
the reason that Congressional bipartisan support existed to pass the International
Marriage Broker Regulation Act in 2005 (Constable 2012). In fact, the Philippines
government began to heavily regulate the international marriage and dating industry
in 1990, but many bride agencies circumvent the laws by basing their offices abroad.
Hwang and Parreñas (2018) argue that both sexual laborers and brides are types of
intimate migrants, as both categories of women fulfill both emotional and sexual
desires. They find that intimate migrants are more often viewed with moral suspicion
than other types of migrants, based on the notion that the intimate realm is separate
from the realm of economics. Therefore, narratives of transnational human traffick-
ing often focus on intimate migrants.
In addition to intimate forms of migration, commodified intimacy in the realms
of domestic labor and commercial surrogacy are continually contested spaces as
well, with stories of trafficking common in both industries. Domestic labor brings
migrants and women of color into the intimate realm of the home, the supposed
sanctuary from the market. Commercialized surrogacy commodifies the mother–
child relationship and the process of pregnancy. Thus, the media often portray
domestics and surrogates as victims of exploitative practices, but the increasing
market for commodified intimate relationships continues to expand beyond geo-
graphic and moral boundaries. Since societies typically separate intimate labor from
the realm of the market, oftentimes intimate labor is not recognized as real labor that
should be paid. Thus, in the history of the US, women of color have largely been reg-
ulated to backstage reproductive labor, such as laundering and cleaning, and paid
very little for their labor, if they were paid at all (Nakano Glenn 1992). In the con-
temporary market of commodified intimate labor, most lower‐paid intimate labor,
such as elder care, continues to be performed by women of color, poor women, and
264 Julia meSzaroS
migrant women. There are examples of intimate labor that can be lucrative, but
Bernstein’s (2007b) study of middle‐class sex workers in the San Francisco area dem-
onstrates that intimate labor pays better than entry‐level work for college‐educated
white women. Therefore, the commodification of intimate labor has always reflected
the hierarchies of race, ethnicity, class, and nationality (Dodson and Zincavage 2007;
Duffy 2005).
Throughout history, women have been relegated within the labor market to
performing intimate labor. For example, in the early 1900s, many poor white women
and women of color in the US worked within wealthy households as maids, laun-
dresses, or cooks, as intimate labor performed within the household was considered
more appropriate work for women than work outside of the home. The hierarchies
of race, class, and gender remain within the domestic labor market to this day, as
most domestic laborers are still poor women, women of color, or migrant women in
the Global North (Nakano Glenn 1992). Domestic labor, which includes cooking,
cleaning, and laundering, is considered low‐skilled reproductive labor. Due to
domestic labor’s association with unskilled labor, most jobs in the industry do not
pay high wages. Yet, domestic labor is an important form of intimate labor, as
domestic workers are brought inside the home to work. Thus, they experience the
family’s intimate life by taking care of the home, particularly those working as live‐in
domestic workers.

Domestic Labor

Domestic labor, both paid and unpaid, is inherently a form of interchange between
the realm of the intimate and the economy, challenging the notion of separate and
hostile spheres (Lan 2003). Migrant and working‐class women’s domestic service
allows class‐privileged women in the Global North to use the labor of another
class of women in order to escape the gendered demands of the household, as most
men have not taken on their share of the reproductive labor (Duffy 2005; Parreñas
2001). This produces an international transfer of care, where class and racially
privileged women hire migrants to do their “dirty” work (Parreñas 2001). Beyond
performing the reproductive labor of the home, domestic workers provide love and
care to the families they work for. Thus, domestic work is an intimate industry that
has existed for thousands of years and still remains largely unregulated by states.
Historically, domestic work has been performed by ethnic and racial minorities,
and issues of citizenship status, ethnicity, and race formed the domestic worker
into an “other” who does not deserve better pay or working conditions (Browne
and Misra 2003).
Domestic labor brings intimate labor into people’s homes with little oversight
and regulation by the government, as this labor is hidden from the view of the
public and considered invisible since this labor does not occur in a public work
space environment, is largely unregulated by labor laws and is not formally recog-
nized as part of the labor market (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003). Since their
labor is unregulated by most governments and the work conditions are often
informal, domestic workers’ experiences vary considerably, based on the family that
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 265
they are placed with. Migrant women, particularly from Latin America, Southeast
Asia and the Caribbean, form the large reserve army of low‐wage labor for both
domestic service and institutional service work (Nakano Glenn 1992). Regardless
of their citizenship status, many migrant women continue to be constructed as
lesser citizens, based upon their employment in low‐level intimate industries (Bakan
and Stasiulus 1995).
Hochschild (2002) identifies both love and care as the new gold in the global
economy. In addition to resources and gold, European imperial countries extracted
both natural resources and intimate resources from countries in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America through systems of indentured and enslaved labor. The contempo-
rary extraction of love and care continues to move resources from the Global
South to the North. Media often present countries outside of the North as more
traditional, communal, and loving. Thus, many employers in the Global North
believe that their domestic laborers belong to a more loving culture, where warm
family ties and a long of tradition of patient maternal love for children still dominate
instead of the individualistic culture dominant in the US and Europe. By hiring
migrant women, people are hoping to replenish their own country’s depleted
culture of care (Hochschild 2002). Hochschild (2002) considers this a new form of
emotional imperialism, where care resources are taken from poor migrant families
and placed at the disposal of families in wealthy countries. This new imperialism
is evidenced by the fact that most migrant workers receive only partial citizenship
and their movements are highly regulated by receiving countries (Ong 2006;
Yuval‐Davis 1999).

Transnational Mothering

Much like class‐privileged women in wealthy countries, most migrant workers must
rely on their grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and other women kin to care for their
children, while some even hire nannies, creating a global chain of outsourced repro-
ductive labor (Parreñas 2008; Lan 2003). Studies of transnational mothering by
migrant women highlight the importance of technology, remittances, gifts, and
family members in maintaining familial ties transnationally (Parreñas 2008).
However, the maintenance of close relationships can be difficult, as migrant domestic
workers’ daily emotional labor is focused on their employers. In addition, most
migrant‐receiving countries do not allow family unification or the children of
migrants to join their family members (Lan 2003). Children left behind by migrant
mothers often struggle with the emotional strains of long‐distance mothering
(Hondagneu‐Sotelo and Avila 1997), particularly since women are often charged
with the nurturing role within the family, based upon traditional understandings of
gender roles (Parreñas 2001). Based on these gender roles, domestic workers remain
the main source of emotional labor and care within the family, thus creating a care
deficit (Parreñas 2001).
Domestic labor migrants are rejected as full citizens by their destination countries,
but are still accepted as cheap temporary labor (Parreñas 2001). Thus, migrant
domestic workers face a form of contradictory mobility, as they receive increased
266 Julia meSzaroS
wages but a decrease in social status and state protections (Parreñas 2001). Migrant
domestic workers’ partial citizenship places them in much more vulnerable posi-
tions, since in addition to often not being allowed to bring their families, they also
are often not allowed to apply for permanent residence. Thus, many governments
place domestic migrants into vulnerable positions by only allowing them partial
citizenship and placing stringent limitations on their mobility. Government policies
intended to stop human trafficking and labor abuses create increased risks for many
migrant domestic workers instead of alleviating them, in what Parreñas (2008) terms
the “moral disciplining” of migrant women.

Sexual Labor

Sexual labor is also an important form of intimate labor that often goes unrecog-
nized as actual labor since it is not part of the formal recognized labor market in
most countries (Cabezas 1998, 2009; Enloe 1990; Kempadoo 1999, 2001, 2004;
Law 1997) While common discourses surrounding sexual labor and prostitution
posit that male clients are seeking a physical experience centered upon emotionless
sexual release (Bernstein 2007b), many men are often seeking some form of emo-
tional connection beyond an orgasm. The rise of sexual tourism in the Global South
and the popularity of the “girlfriend experience” (GFE) demonstrate that men often
seek bounded forms of authentic intimate connections in which the intimacy they
pay for is authentic, but recognize that the exchange is temporarily and emotionally
bounded, or what Bernstein (2007b) terms “bounded authenticity.” The stereotype
of men is that they pay sexual laborers to “go away” and maintain emotional dis-
tance. However, Bernstein’s (2007b) study, as well as other scholars’ studies (Brennan
2004; Kempadoo 2004; Padilla 2007), demonstrate the importance of both intimate
and emotional labor to men that purchase sexual services. In Brennan’s (2004) study
of sex tourism in the Dominican Republic, she noted that Dominican women’s inti-
mate labor was the main draw for many men to purchase their services, as they can
purchase short‐term sexual encounters anywhere.
Sexual exchanges that are premised on bounded authenticity (Bernstein 2007b)
often include intimate and emotional interactions that resemble typical heterosexual
courtship scripts, despite the exchange of payment (Hoang 2015; Guidroz and Rich
2010; Lucas 2005; Milrod and Monto 2012), which supports Zelizer’s argument
that all intimate relationships contain complex negotiations of payment. Sharp and
Earle (2003) conducted a study of male customers’ online entries and found that
most men valued the GFE or sexual laborers’ personalities versus their physical
appearances, demonstrating that men are often seeking meaningful, personal con-
nections in their commercialized intimate relationships (Lucas 2005; Sanders 2008)
Sexual laborers, as well as strippers and phone sex operators (Frank 2002), are at
times engaging in a form of counterfeit intimacy, which is based upon a manufac-
tured emotional connection (Milrod and Weitzer 2012). The GFE moves beyond
transactional sexual labor and includes commercialized forms of bounded, but
authentic, intimate connections. Many men that purchase access to women’s bounded
intimate and sexual labor are searching for the fantasy of a mutually desired, special
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 267
encounter, even within a commercialized setting (Holzman and Pines 1982), that
Plumridge (2001) terms the “myth of mutuality.”
Intimate labor within the sex industry exists upon a continuum that includes host-
ess labor, erotic dancing, massage parlors, webcam work, the GFE, and phone sex
operators, in addition to transactional sex. The sexual labor that strippers and host-
esses provide does not necessarily include sexual intercourse, but instead is predi-
cated upon providing their clients with the fantasy of mutually desired flirtations
and the potential of sexual contact (Choi 2017; Frank 2002; Parreñas 2011). Allison
(2009) argues that hostesses in Japan make men “feel like men” and Parreñas (2011)
argues that migrant karaoke bar hostesses in Japan work to buttress men’s mascu-
linity by performing femininity through such things as aesthetic labor, emotional
labor, storytelling, and acting. Much like the hostess bars, the space of the strip club
is also a place where men “feel like men”, as women’s erotic dancing and emotional
labor reinforce their masculinity, even without sexual intercourse (Frank 2002).
Many workers in the transnational sex industry perform poverty (Hoang 2014;
Padilla 2007; Parreñas 2011) in order to gain sympathy from their clients and thus
garner larger tips, and to engender feelings of chivalry in the men participating. Male
purchasers of sexual services feel a boost in their own masculinity when interacting
with sexual laborers who evoke their sympathy. The emotional capital of sympathy
(Parreñas 2011) builds upon customers’ heightened masculinity, and many workers
within intimate industries utilize structural global inequalities to secure material
gains. In addition to increasing men’s feelings of desirability and masculinity, women
within various intimate economies must also cultivate their physical appearances in
order to attract men who can provide them with financial opportunities.
Moving beyond the commercial flirtations found in strip clubs and hostess bars is
the practice of commercial dating in Hong Kong and Japan, which is a mutually
agreed‐upon contract between a young woman and a relatively older man that
involves the exchange of intimate labor for payment. The woman provides emo-
tional labor, companionship, and potentially sexual favors to the older man, who in
turn provides some form of monetary benefit that can include cash, tuition, dinner,
temporary shelter, vacations, drugs, or luxury goods (Chu 2014). The practice of
commercial dating started in Japan during the early 1990s, and has since spread to
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and parts of mainland China (Kong 2003).
Much like the practice of commercial dating, male sexual laborers’ intimate labor
often follows the same heterosexual courtship scripts.

Male sexual laborers

The sex tourists that have received the majority of scholarly attention (Enloe 1990;
Fusco 1998; Kempadoo 2001; Manderson 1997) have been male sex tourists in the
Global South. However, increasing numbers of scholars are focusing on the
phenomenon of wealthy, most often white, women traveling to the Caribbean,
the Sinai, and Africa in search of sexual relationships. Pruitt and LaFont (1994) term
this phenomenon in the Caribbean context “romance tourism” in order to differen-
tiate women’s experiences from the sex tourism engaged in by men, which is often
portrayed as entirely transactional. Women participating in forms of sexual tourism
268 Julia meSzaroS
engage in “relationships”with local men and buy them gifts, dinners, and airfare
tickets. A large number of these women do not accept their participation in the
sexual economy, but instead view their relationships as based on mutual affection
and “helping” local men out of impoverished situations (Pruitt and LaFont 1994).
Due to this gendered power dynamic, early scholars studying this phenomenon por-
trayed the women as the “victims” of opportunistic men (Pruitt and Lafont 1994),
by highlighting local men’s dependence on the economic component of their rela-
tionship with foreign women. However, other scholars have demonstrated that
women sexual tourists are exploiting men’s sexual labor and, therefore, are not just
innocent victims of romance schemes (Sanchez Taylor 2001).
Despite scholars early portrayal of women’s participation in commodified inti-
mate relationships as different than men’s participation in global sex tourism,
Sanchez Taylor (2006) argues that deeming women’s adventures to be “romantic”
denies the fact that they engage in the same types of exoticization and exploitation
that men on sexual tours do. Kempadoo (1999) additionally argues that male sexual
laborers call themselves players, hustlers, beach boys, or gigolos, demonstrating that
men benefit from the patriarchal assumption that having sex with many women
enhances their masculinity, whereas women are considered damaged if they engage
in similar sexual labor practices. Many women tourists interviewed in the Gambia
believe that their relationships are based upon emotions of “true love” (Heinskou
2013). Thus, these relationships trouble clear boundaries between the realm of the
intimate and the realm of the economy.
Women who feel ignored in their local dating markets go abroad as sex tourists
to feel sexually empowered, as a result of being considered desirable by local men (de
Albuquerque 1998; O’Connell Davidson, and Sanchez Taylor 1999). Therefore,
many white women who engage in sexual tourism in the Caribbean and Africa act
as “ethno‐sexual adventurers” (Nagel 2003) who engage in liminal sex acts while
abroad (Meszaros and Bazzaroni 2014). Therefore, empowerment is an important
component of sex tourism’s appeal for both male and female tourists while the
potential of cultivating long‐term relationships and potential migration provides an
incentive for many workers to get into the industry.

International Marriage

In the current transnational configuration of citizenship and migration, marriage is

often the easiest route for migrants from Latin American, Southeast Asia, and coun-
tries from the former USSR to access the Global North. For this reason, migration
through marriage is seen as a tool of both social and economic mobility. The line
between migration for marriage or migration for employment is blurred, since often-
times marriage decisions are made based upon economic security (Piper and Roces
2004). Marriage provides security for families through cultural traditions surround-
ing family obligations and remittances (Mix and Piper 2003). Thus, many contract
workers utilized marriage as a strategy towards establishing secure citizenship and
employment status (Piper and Roces 2004). Marriage to a local man provides
migrant women with a potential means of escaping stereotypes, segregation, and
labor deskilling (McKay 2003). Most of the Filipina women migrant domestic
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 269
workers in McKay’s (2003) sample married Canadian husbands shortly after their
arrival, since many felt insecure about their legal status. Many Taiwanese employers
propose marriage to their domestic workers, but the women know that if they accept,
they will do the same work for no pay, as it will become a familial obligation (Lan
2003). For these reasons, scholars have argued that the marriage migration system is
an example of the larger outsourcing of care and reproductive labor to migrant
women. The boundaries between paid labor in domestic service and the economic
relations of marriage are difficult to draw (McKay 2003).
Domestic work is commonly viewed as a “labor of love” within the confines of
marriage (Kojima, 2001). Kojima (2001) argues that the state promotes the gendered
division of labor by creating policies that promote certain heteronormative ideals of
family. Therefore, women’s role in domestic work is naturalized and provides the
state a means of externalizing the reproductive costs of maintaining the labor force
(Oishi 2005). Despite the second‐wave feminist movement’s successful gains in the
workplace, the economic system is still dependent upon unpaid, and often gendered,
labor for social and human reproduction (Nakano Glenn 1992).
In addition to domestic workers, many migrant sexual laborers utilize romancing
and marriage to secure citizenship status. For many sexual laborers working to
service foreign clientele in “sexscapes” (Brennan 2004), marriage with a foreigner is
the goal, since many women fantasize about a financially stable man who will take
care of them (Cabezas 1998). Many sexual laborers opt to marry foreign men in
order to avoid becoming long‐term sexual laborers (Ehrenreich and Hochschild
2003). In one study, most women who had migrated as sexual laborers expressed
the desire to get married to a foreigner in order to secure residency status (Hilsdon
and Giridharan 2008). Thus, sexual laborers and domestic migrants’ insecure sta-
tuses often encourage them to search for secure citizenship through marriage to a
foreign man. While marriage is a desire for many marginalized migrant populations
to secure their statuses, most of these populations still want to marry for love as well
(Brennan 2004). Thus, considerations of love and legal status both play an impor-
tant role in migrant women’s marriage choices, demonstrating the constant interac-
tion between intimate and economic realms within people’s intimate relationships.
O’Rourke (2002) argues that economic factors in the Global South encourage
women to seek migration through marriage by joining introduction agencies that
charge men to correspond online with women in foreign countries. Although this
industry is often referred to as the mail‐order bride industry, numerous studies
have demonstrated that women involved in this industry are not bought and sold
commodities and that they in fact are choosing to search for potential foreign hus-
bands (Constable  2003; Johnson 2007; Schaeffer 2013). Those participating in
Constable’s (2005) research on the online cyberdating industry argued that, while
their images may be commodified online, they do not consider themselves to be com-
modities. Constable (2005) further argues that matchmaking is a deceptive name for
some of the larger international introduction agencies, as they only provide contact
information for correspondence and romance tours.
While many large introduction and correspondence agencies do not engage in
matchmaking, they often provide a litany of services to prospective husbands, such
as sending gifts, offering tours, providing housing, and teaching women English
through hiring tutors. Many agencies offer romance tours, which are packages
270 Julia meSzaroS
that include airfare, hotel accommodation, and arranged meetings with individual
women or groups of women at social events. Tours often also include legal assistance
for couples navigating the legal marriage migration process. Many men spend years
researching romance tours before embarking upon them by discussing various
topics related to the process online in forums such as planetlove.com (Schaeffer‐
Grabiel 2006).
Schaefer (2013) found that American men in online forums dedicated to interna-
tional dating explain their use of international introduction agencies to find a more
“traditional” wife, based upon the belief that women in the Global South will
proudly provide reproductive labor to her husband, unlike American women who
have allegedly been ruined by feminism. Studies of men participating in international
dating demonstrate that they characterize American women as materialistic, spoiled,
masculine, and too career‐oriented (Meszaros 2018; Schaefer 2013; Taraban 2007).
On the other hand, international dating agencies and men using them define women
abroad as more feminine, family‐oriented and traditional (Constable 2003; Taraban
2007). Both Schaeffer (2013) and Constable (2003) found that many of the American
men participating in correspondence relationships and romance tours with foreign
women are older than 40 years old, and are middle‐class white men who are frus-
trated with feminist demands for egalitarian relationships. Constable (2003) claims
that international marriages provide a complimentary life, where women do the
domestic work of the home and men provide the economic support. Her interviews
with Filipina and Chinese women demonstrated that many of her interviewees would
prefer performing the reproductive labor of the home as a stay‐at‐home wife rather
than laboring in factories (Constable 2012). Meszaros (2017) found that men desire
the emotional labor of selflessness, which includes women’s maintenance of a
feminine and sexy appearance, as well as staying home to provide support and
quality time in addition to reproductive labor.
Filipina and Chinese women view correspondence marriages as a means of
increasing freedom and opportunities, as well as providing economic assistance to
their families and helping their children emigrate (Constable 2005). Mexican women
perceive men from the US as more equitable marriage partners who can potentially
offer a stable, middle‐class lifestyle (Schaeffer 2013). For women involved in the
industry, meeting an American husband is desirable for many practical reasons, but
these considerations do not necessarily preclude feelings of love (Constable 2003).
Constable (2003) further argues that correspondence relationships are often based
on ideals of romantic love, or at least reflect an attempt to define themselves in such
terms.
Schaeffer (2013) contends that many women’s pronouncements of love are col-
ored by the surveillance and repression of American immigration laws. In this way,
the state relies upon heteronormative ideals of the family (Bernstein and Naples
2010) to enforce its system of determining the “realness” of marriages involving a
migrant and US citizen. Men are very concerned about the legitimacy of cross‐border
marriages, applying different assessments of agency to women in different racial
groups (Meszaros 2018). Early scholarship on cross‐border marriages focused on
women from the economically developing countries who marry men from the US,
Canada, and Western Europe, but other recent scholarship has focused on cross‐
border marriages within Asia. For instance, scholars have noted increased cross‐border
 CommodifiCation of intimaCy and Sexuality 271
marriages between Vietnamese women and Viet Kieu migrants abroad (Thai 2008),
rural South Korean men who look for Filipina brides (Choo 2016; Kim 2014),
Japanese men who marry Filipina women (Piper 1997), Vietnamese women who
marry Taiwanese men (Bélanger 2010) and men in Singapore (Yeoh et al 2005), and
mainland Chinese women who marry men in Taiwan (Friedman 2006). In addition
to for‐profit introduction and matchmaking agencies, potential cross‐border spouses
meet through migrant networks established by migrant pioneers (Bélanger and Tran
2011). Most people assume that cross‐border marriages are hypergamous, and that
marriage is a strategy that women use to increase their social and geographic
mobility. However, a number of scholars have found that female marriage migrants
to the US often decline in class positioning upon migration (Constable 2005; Hoang
2013; Liu 2018), experiencing what Kimberly Kay Hoang (2013) refers to as a form
of “gender vertigo.”
The term “mail‐order bride” itself implies a level of commodification within the
introduction industry that does not exist; one cannot simply pay and “order” a bride
to one’s home. However, the term contributes to common media perceptions that
women involved in the introduction industry are more likely to be victims of human
trafficking and domestic violence. The perception that marriage migrants are actual
commodities sold and trafficked has influenced numerous governments to pass leg-
islation regulating the industry, such as in China and the Philippines. Much like
sexual laborers and migrant domestic workers, migrant brides are portrayed in
popular media as a victimized population, exploited and abused. Many scholars rec-
ognize the vulnerability of these populations to exploitation, but recognize that
nuances exist within various intimate industries. The sale of intimate labor is much
more complex, as it challenges the artificial moral boundaries set in place by sepa-
rate and hostile theories regarding the intersection of the economy and intimacy.

Conclusion

The increasing commodification of intimate labor across global spaces demon-

strates that the realm of the intimate, of the human body and family, are inherently
interconnected to the realms of the economy and the nation‐state. Despite the fact
that most economists have viewed these scales as separate and hostile to one
another (Zelizer 2005), historians such as Cole and Durham (2007) demonstrate
that intimate relationships played an important role in shaping modernity and
capitalism. Contrary to the hostile worlds viewpoint, many feminist theorists argue
that intimate relationships between individuals are the building blocks of social,
economic, and political worlds (Ahmed 2004; Freeman 2001). Therefore, many
transnational feminist scholars encourage one another to be attentive to micro‐
level politics of context and subjectivity, in addition to macro‐level analyses of
global economic and political processes, thereby connecting intimate and global
processes across borders (Alexander 2005; Grewal and Kaplan 1994; Mohanty
1988; Silvey 2004). Feminist geographers employ the concept of the global inti-
mate (Mountz and Hyndman 2006; Pratt and Rosner 2006) to theoretically ana-
lyze the ways in which intimate and global processes are in a constant process of
shaping one another.
272 Julia meSzaroS
States often monitor participants of intimate industries closely, especially indus-
tries that include sexual, reproductive, or domestic services. However, states create
vulnerable intimate migration populations through their policies that restrict and
limit noncitizens’ mobility and access to citizenship. The narratives of human traf-
ficking that are often applied to intimate migrants (Hwang and Parreñas 2018)
allow the state to regulate the movement of migrant women in order to “protect”
them from exploitation. Andrijasevic and Mai (2016) argue that tougher state
actions aimed at combating human trafficking, developed after major public out-
cries against sexual slavery, are in fact creating more stringent anti‐immigration
measures and shifting migration patterns towards irregular channels managed by
third parties and agencies. The strict laws passed against human trafficking make
migrants more vulnerable. These laws make migrants dependent on third parties to
cross borders, allowing ample space for abuse and profiteering from low wage and
irregular work.
Thus, populations performing commodified intimate labor often overlap with
other vulnerable populations, including women, migrants, poor people and people of
color. Due to intimate labor’s association with women’s work, it is often considered a
form of unskilled labor, if it is even recognized as labor at all. Processes of economic
globalization have increased the demand for intimate labor and formalized this
labor within the global economy, yet this labor is often performed by marginalized
populations for low pay.
Despite the vulnerability that many women intimate laborers face in the domestic,
sexual labor, and marriage industries, participants are often denied agency in making
economic choices to better their lives. Intimate laborers are often judged through the
lens of Zelizer’s hostile and separate worlds view, which posits that intimate relation-
ships are polluted by economic considerations. Many people feel anxious about the
increasingly blurry line that exists between the intimate and economic realms within
intimate industries and turn to the state to regulate intimate labor and workers.
While the state presents its antitrafficking policies as a means of protecting vulner-
able populations, these policies often place women and migrants in more vulnerable
positions, as their dependence upon third‐party actors increases.

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