Author Manjima Bhattacharjya explores the many aspects of sex—its gender roles, how it changes with the internet, and what do women and men actually want
Kamathipura, like most red light areas, was created to service the needs of soldiers and sailors. Pic/Getty Images
Sociologist Manjima Bhattacharjya sought a “real, grounded” conversation about the choice of women, in India, choosing sex work. “The idea of women consenting to sexual labour is often equated with Western countries,” says the 46-year-old, “But in India, the conversation is focused on poor women in red light areas—the framework of ‘majboori’ dominates it. It was a niggling unresolved question for me: What about women who are middle class and do transactional sexual labour? What are the circumstances in which people “choose” to transact sexual experiences?”
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The answers and much more in the form of the sexual geography of Mumbai can be found in her book, Intimate City. Bhattacharjya has a PhD in Gender and Labour from JNU, Delhi. She has been part of the movement for rights of sex workers since 1997, and works in the development sector. Research on a former book, Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry also “brought her deeper into the question of labour and sexuality”.
Among the many shapes and forms that sexual transactions take place in the metropolis, Bhattacharjya makes interesting observations about male sex workers, the names of escort girls, the way sex-work has changed with the Internet and the Girlfriend/Boyfriend experience. The crucial assertion is that people entering these transactions are ordinary folk. Not just the shady lanes of Kamathipura, “the beach, local trains, the internet are also spaces where intimacy is sought and transacted. The erotic is embedded in the everyday. The intimate city co-exists with the industrial city.” With this, she uncovered subterranean strains of desire, loneliness, and fantasies.
The book is dotted with many epiphanies—both for the author and some of the sex professionals she interviewed (both providers and buyers). “I didn’t think they’d be such nice people,” exclaimed one escort after a job. Sex work offline is a tangle of consent, middle-men, dubious dealings, constrained physical places and fear of violence. Online is far more liberating, especially for women who are buying the service. It gave them an avenue to articulate desires and seek ways to fulfil them.
Interestingly, it’s not pure sex that women want; it’s what is being called the Boyfriend Experience—a simulation of intimacy and comfort that comes from an established relationship. One woman wanted to enact the excitement of the wedding night, complete with flowers on the bed and the man in a sherwani. Another wanted someone to watch TV with and cuddle. While websites also advertised The Girlfriend experience for men, Bhattacharjya says it is more to distance it from the crude transactions in alleyways and raise to “escort level”. She scoured a hundred escort websites where an idea of a “girlfriend experience” was promised, but the clients only one wanted one-time sex. “I suspect what the agencies intended was to disguise the monetary aspect, and distance it from what would happen in a red light area.” The women were also given “upper class” names that align with the gentry and sound “Bollywood-ish”—say, Natasha Oberoi or Tanvi Mishra.
During the course of her research, Manjima Bhattacharjya uncovered subterranean strains of desire, loneliness, and fantasies among ordinary people. Pic/Shadab Khan
The difference was where men sought sex, women sought attention and companionship. “It was about not being heard,” says the Andheri resident, “Not having the voice or the language with which to articulate their desires. Not having an attentive and caring companion, whether to spend time with, or travel with, or just fulfil fantasies with.”
It may be why while women sex workers feel like commodities, the men sex workers see themselves as service providers. Though this might also be influenced by the fact that historically, prostitution catered to male clients. “Their intimacies are mediated by the internet and transactional relations where payment is not always in cash, but through gifts, holidays, and meals at some restaurants,” she says. For men, the service seems like a side-hassle and non-permanent; while women—even those working independently through the internet—may have to face the consequences of neighbours and relatives finding out about their work.
Soliciting or advertising on the Internet also differs among the genders. Fewer women advertised themselves, “they were almost invisible,” she says. “It was much more common to find men advertising services, or having conversations on sex work online. The men also had a fluid identity—they were service providers, but also often clients. They also played a third-party role (like a pimp). So they were less attached to the idea of having a fixed role in the world of sexual transactions. Women sex workers saw themselves in their fixed role as sex workers or escort girls.”
Unsurprisingly, male consorts’ talk about their work was based on internalised social mores—they saw it as an achievement or hat tip to their sexual prowess, whereas women would speak of it as something shameful and entered into due to constricting circumstances and life trajectories.
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