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<\/figure>ELENA ZAMBELLI is an ethnographer with interdisciplinary expertise on gender and sexuality, race, migration, and intersecting inequalities. She currently works at Lancaster University as Senior Research Associate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this exclusive article Dr Zambelli discusses her new book, Sexscapes of Pleasure<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n WEAVING WOMEN\u2019S EXPERIENCES TO NURTURE TRANSVERSAL SOLIDARITIES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 25 November was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Since 1991, its celebration is accompanied by the Global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence<\/strong> against women campaign (25 November \u2013 10 December, see below for a link), during which individuals and groups around the world get together to raise awareness and foster local and transnational dialogues, connections, strategies and solidarities among women\u2019s rights activists. Although statistics notoriously underestimate the real extent of gender-based and other forms of intimate and sexual violence, the recent WHO report estimates that 1 in 3 women will experience physical or sexual violence across their lifetime [see below for WHO link] constitute a compelling reminder of the importance of these and similar initiatives mobilising support to ending it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gender-based violence against women manifests itself differently in time and place. In my book<\/a>, which is set in Italy \u2013 the country where I am from \u2013 I explore one particular aspect of it, which pivots on male control of women\u2019s sexuality and the impact this has on women\u2019s gendered subjectivities. More specifically, I discuss how Italian and migrant women negotiate the tension between sexuality and status in a patriarchal and heteronormative context, where their use of the first jeopardizes the latter. At the core of my book lies the concept of the \u2018whore stigma\u2019, which Gail Pheterson (Pheterson 1996) coined from within an explicitly sex-positive framework. The concept describes and captures the many ways in which women\u2019s use of sexuality outside of patriarchal chastity norms \u2013 whether it be for their own pleasure and\/or for work \u2013 may be the cause of social disapproval, ostracism, denial of rights as well as physical and sexual violence. Women\u2019s ascription into the \u2018whore\u2019 category implies their dehumanization and intensifies their vulnerability to any form of gender-based violence. It is, hence, important to study why, when and how this pernicious device operates \u2013 including by bringing to the fore, as this book does, women\u2019s participation in the reproduction of hierarchies of female respectability and dishonour among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The concept of the whore stigma is intimately tied with but does not equate to \u2018sex work stigma\u2019. Although, globally, most people selling sex are women (Smith and Mac 2018), men and LGBTQI+ people also sell sex and may thus experience sex work stigma. On the other hand, a woman does not need to sell sex to experience the whore stigma. The occupational dimension of the whore stigma, that is, does not fully account for its broader functioning as a gendered device of social control and subjection \u2013 a device that, as I argue, partakes in the production of the very \u2018woman\u2019 subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book, I pursue the enquiry of the women\u2019s negotiation of the whore stigma by moving across a continuum of spaces of sexualised leisure and sex work: recreational pole dance schools, strip clubs and street sex work areas. I bring into mutual conversation the narratives of Italian and migrant women inhabiting these \u2018sexscapes of pleasure\u2019, as they negotiate their use of sexuality for pleasure and\/or for work. I also show the centrality of race and class in what, drawing from de Certeau (de Certeau 1984), I call the women\u2019s \u2018respectability tactics\u2019, through which many sought to disavow the stigma and pass it onto the \u2018other women\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what is the purpose of showing these processes of disavowal, displacement and othering? What social imagination underpins this enquiry? Why does it matter, and for whom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n By bringing the woman subject back front and centre in the analysis of the whore stigma and by showing the commonalities in the women\u2019s experiences of subjection to it across the non-\/sex working women divide, as well as their negotiations of it, I foreground the \u2018matrix of domination\u2019 (Collins 2000) under which women negotiate selves. This approach follows in the wake of recent sociological scholarship on stigma that weaves the individual level of experience with a structural analysis of power and inequality (Link and Phelan 2014; Tyler and Slater 2018). In so doing, it is my hope that this book may contribute to nurturing understandings and solidarities that traverse, rather than reproduce, the division between women who are in or out of sex work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I conclude this brief piece, I am reminded of what, in a different context, Nira Yuval-Davis called \u2018transversal politics\u2019 (Yuval-Davis 1997). The concept drew from the work of a group of feminist activists in Bologna (Italy) who in the 1980s (and beyond) engaged in practices of peace in conflict zones, such as Israel-Palestine, notably by contributing to dialogues among women inhabiting opposing fronts. Transversal politics, Yuval-Davis explained, is \u2018based on knowledge acquired by dialogue carried out by people who are differentially positioned\u2019 (Yuval-Davis 1997, 92). Whilst, strictly speaking, a mono<\/em>graph is by definition an author\u2019s mono<\/em>logue<\/em> rather than a dialogue, I hope that the nuanced, transversal and intersectional analysis of women\u2019s negotiation of the tension between sexuality and status I offer in this book will be of interest to feminists of any sex and gender seeking to retrieve the control of our sexuality, and ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SEXSCAPES OF PLEASURE: Women, Sexuality and the Whore Stigma in Italy<\/strong>, by Elena Zambelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hardback and ebook<\/p>\n\n\n\n November 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/title\/ZambelliSexscapes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Links<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Global 16 Days of Activism<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/ZambelliSexscapes-1-1.jpg\")
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