Affiliation:
1. King’s College London, UK
Abstract
The invisibility of online sex workers in gig economy discourse over the last decade taps into the historic absence of women from public spheres of debate. Despite this erasure, ‘camgirls’ are the original gig economy workers, with online sexual markets dating back to 1980s. By adapting feminist analysis of the male gaze, I offer workerist inquiry into the politics of seeing. This draws much needed attention to the experience of both women and ideological power in class composition analysis. To account for the absence of women from gig economy research and definitions, the focus of this article is on the gendered and feminised dynamics of invisibility. Specificity of the top-down function of ideology offers more detailed theoretical understanding of the political tensions between invisibility and visibility in the sex industry. This shifts the methods of workers’ inquiry to a more level focus on both top-down and bottom-up dynamics of class struggle. I argue the neoliberal sexual agenda controls a politics of seeing with three dominant gazes: the carceral gaze, the paternal gaze and the algorithmic gaze. Where the gaze is directed has a significant impact on the {un}freedom and {in}visibility of neoliberal subjects in the sex industry. However, class composition analysis from-below exposes a radical politics of visibility and freedom. Sex workers struggle tirelessly to be seen and creatively recentre the value of pleasure in the human experience. These struggles are critical given the United Kingdom’s current drive towards criminalisation. FOSTA-SESTA and the Online Safety Act 2023 will continue to make sexual services difficult to market and sell safely online. This has violent consequences for the lives and freedoms of this extremely marginalised population.