Contemporary politicization: Femininity and sex work

Abstract

This article examines two groups in the city of Puebla: the vestidas –homosexual sex workers who transform parts of their bodies and dress as women– who call themselves “La locas de Reforma”; the teiboleras –dancers, strippers and sex workers– who work in table dance clubs. We examine how the processes of proletarianisation and racialisation in their relation to gender subsume both groups into the networks of capital, understood in terms of the possible impact of neoliberal hegemonic projects. The analysis of everyday life in the configuration of the subjectivities of the vestidas and the teiboleras help us to understand how processes of classification and declassification take place within the framework of capitalism.