Sexing the City: Sexual Labour, Intimacy, and the Internet
Geeta Thatra
INTIMATE CITY by By Manjima Bhattacharjya Zubaan, New Delhi, 2022, 216 pp., INR 495.00 / $ 20.00
January 2024, volume 1, No January 2021, volume 1, No January 2024, volume 48, No 1

Intimate City by Manjima Bhattacharjya is a fascinating exploration of the new and discreet forms of sexual labour in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The book traces the changing ‘sex work geographies’ in the metropolis by exploring the intersection of gender, sexuality,
space, and the internet (p. 4). How the internet is reconfiguring sexual labour and intimacy in contemporary Mumbai is the central question addressed in the monograph (p. xv). Who are the new actors, where do they operate, and what are their experiences?
The book is divided into four sections. The first section introduces new theoretical frameworks and methodologies to study sexual labour in the post-globalization, neoliberal ‘world cities’. The second section traces the ‘decline’ of Kamathipura, Mumbai’s famous red-light district. We enter the world of online sexual commerce in the third section, and the fourth focuses on the experiences of those who provide and access online escort services.
Outlining the intense and polarized feminist debates on prostitution as ‘violence’ or ‘work’, Bhattacharjya situates her research within the growing corpus of literature that addresses the wider context in which sex work takes place. She goes beyond the rhetoric of coercion and human trafficking, which reifies prostitution as violence. Bhattacharjya’s ‘geographies approach’ illustrates how sexual labour is intertwined with issues of gender, space, urban development, capitalism, and gentrification of neighbourhoods. Examining how sexual labour mediated by digital technology is reorganizing local geographies, Bhattacharjya offers an interesting perspective.
The second section of the book maps the consolidation of prostitution in Kamathipura during the colonial period, then jumps to its contemporary ‘narrative of decline’. It offers a glimpse into the lives of sex workers and the neighbourhood through the lens of activists and a photographer in the last three decades, especially since the beginning of HIV/AIDS prevention work in the 1990s. Notably, Bhattacharjya observes that the decline of Kamathipura parallels a global trend, which is ‘the beginning of the end of red-light areas’ (p. 48). The hotels, lodges, bars, dhabas, parks, and cruising spots, where sexual services are transacted contribute to the dispersal in Mumbai. Bhattacharjya suggests that the internet has facilitated a wider dispersal and diversification of sexual labour.
While the mid-twentieth century spaces and experiences of sexual labour in the city represent a significant gap in the book, Bhattacharjya examines the more recent phenomenon of dance bars in Mumbai and the controversy surrounding it, including state regulation and feminist contestations. It incorporates the reframing of sexual labour as a caste question in the Indian context. More local forms of sexualized performance, like the Bhojpuri sangeet in the outskirts, are also discussed, which indicates the changing landscape of sexual labour in the metropolis. According to Bhattacharjya, the sex work geographies in Mumbai are expanding and changing yet coexisting with the older forms and spaces.
Surprising, the author does not refer to my research on the tawaifs’ kotha opposite the actual Congress House, which historicized the performance of mujra before the rise of dance bars in Mumbai (Thatra, 2016). From the 1930s until well into the 1960s, the kotha was a major centre of entertainment, where the courtesans performed and supported the musicians who came to Bombay, enriching Hndustani classical music. Moreover, Tejaswini Niranjana’s (2020) fascinating ethnographic account of the neighbourhood of Girgaum, which nurtured the earliest music schools, music clubs, concert halls, and wadis in Mumbai, also fails to find its due mention.
In section two, Bhattacharjya also investigates the legal framework regulating sexual labour and presents an ethnography of Special Court No. 54 in Mazgaon, which handles crimes under the anti-trafficking law. She passionately debunks several assumptions underlying the anti-trafficking discourse and its impact on women picked up during raids and rescue operations. While this chapter is a significant intervention to understand what happens to the women, it seems out of place in a book that seeks to examine how the internet has influenced sexual commerce in Mumbai. Moreover, citing the example of a Simplex building raid in 2012 that virtually emptied the entire chawl in two nights, Bhattacharjya argues that the raids are often ‘carried out in connivance with real estate sharks’ (p. 49), leading to the gentrification of sex work neighbourhoods. This theme requires a deeper investigation.
The most anticipated is the third section, almost halfway through the book. We enter the online world of sexual commerce, and Bhattacharjya zooms into the niche area of online escort services. She examines the content of 105 websites offering escort services to see how they construct the ‘escort girl’ and the ‘client’ and the ideas of masculinities and femininities they espouse. The narrative that emerges from these websites, Bhattacharjya suggests, is premised on ‘“male needs” [that] are established as natural, global, and classy’ (p. 112). In effect, the internet has ‘democratised’ the accessibility of female sexual labour for male consumption by normalizing and legitimizing ‘male needs’. The escort girl is typically represented as a middle-class woman with an upper-caste name who is well-groomed, cultured, and knows how to present herself at parties, and business meetings, or provide what is called the ‘Girl Friend Experience’. On the other hand, the client is represented as an affluent and ‘discerning gentleman’, a hard-working businessman or traveller seeking ‘companionship’. Besides these broad strokes, Bhattacharjya underlines the cracks in the narrative that reveal racial prejudices and anxieties about women’s consent and the legality of the enterprise (p. 96).
The last section focuses on the voices of those who provide and access online escort services and their sexual encounters. Bhattacharjya suggests that the pool of men seeking female escorts is growing with the internet, as ‘middle-class men could bypass the stigma of being visible in sex work landscapes and slip easily into anonymous negotiations online for a price that suited their pockets’ (p. 120). She also notes interesting differences between online and offline sexual transactions. While escorts are more visible online, hijra and trans sex workers are most visible and accessible in offline spaces. While male brothels are unheard of, it is possible to find male service providers in online spaces.
Narrating the experiences of male escorts (whom she refers to as ‘the cruisers’), Bhattacharjya highlights the blurring of lines between a service provider and client and, more significantly, between sexual labour and intimacy in the contemporary digital age. She contends that the emergence of female clients represents an ‘unusual pushing of boundaries’ (p. 165). However, the experiences of women seeking sexual services are unexplored, and a deeper analysis of ‘intimacy’ (as the title of the book implies) could have been conducted. Notwithstanding the marginal presence of female clients, as Bhattacharjya argues, the ‘digital space of sex work in India seems to be a strictly male space, very heteronormative in character, and controlled by third parties’ (p. 164).
While the labour of brothel and street-based sex workers is often situated in the informal economy (see, for instance, Shah, 2014), Bhattacharjya suggests that online sexual service providers are comparable to other workers in the gig economy (p. 169). Based on the interviews with female escorts, she draws our attention to the precarity that has come to characterize the lives of sex workers in the platform or gig economy. However, the language of labour and rights has not yet entered the world of escort services, as it remains unorganized (p. 168).
The book is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debates on sexual labour, especially for its focus on the internet, changing forms of sex work, and local geographies. Given the paucity of academic literature on sexual commerce on the internet, it could have been the primary subject of the book. Bhattacharjya acknowledges that she does not delve into the world of dating apps and social media, which were not a trend in the early 2010s. Still, they remain a potential area for future investigation. Bringing to the fore the voices and experiences of women, trans, and queer persons seeking sexual services online may offer new insights into the contentious issues of consent, agency, bodily autonomy and intimacy. The book notably introduces the world of online sexual commerce in India and identifies some interesting research questions.

Reference:
Niranjana, Tejaswini, Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious. NC: Duke University Press, 2020.
Shah, Svati P, Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
Thatra, Geeta, ‘Contentious (Socio-Spatial) Relations: Tawaifs and Congress House in Contemporary Bombay/Mumbai’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 23.2 (2016): 191-217.

Geeta Thatra holds a PhD in History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her areas of interest include Gender Studies, Urban History, Partition Studies, and Dalit Studies.