Name: Atirek Bajpai

JGU ID: 22010434

Course: Gender and Society
BBA/LLB (2022-27) | Section - B

Invisible Threads of Existence

How the Struggles of Disenfranchised Sex Workers in
Sonagachhi Typify the Sexual Identity of Women in India.
The ‘Sex Worker’s Manifesto’1 published by NSWP (The Global Network of Sex Work Projects)
is a set of unified ideas put forth at the First National Conference of Sex Workers in India, held
between the 14th and 16th of November 1997 in Kolkata. The main focus is emphasizing the social
movement of sex workers not only across India but also addressing pertinent philosophical and
practical questions about the very profession itself. The discussion is realised through the lens of
a coalition of sex workers in the red-light district of Sonagachhi and its surrounding areas in
Kolkata. While the manifesto starts by defining the object of the movement through its genesis to
tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic and reduce the spread of STDs in the sex work industry, it goes
on to shed light upon a plethora of crucial tertiary externalities of being a woman in the sex
industry. It criticises the status quo of sexual philosophy, gender norms, patriarchal hierarchy,
female and male sexuality, disenfranchisement of employees in the sex industry, their resultant
stigmatization, the oppressive work environment and the lack of female sexual autonomy. A
broader discussion on the social construct of sexual morality which is heavily biased towards
heterosexual manhood and a call for social equality serve as the main purpose of the text. The
movement's main goals thus can be summarized as striving “for a gender just, socially equitable,
emotionally fulfilling, intellectually stimulating and exhilarating future for men, women and
children.”

It would be a mammoth task to analyse the entire manifesto in vivid detail in the little words I have
at my disposal today, as there are many equally important talking points to be had here. But I shall
try to do each of them justice. Firstly, when we think about the idea of sex-ed or sexual awareness,
we often presuppose that it is only the lack of knowledge that is preventing an individual from
being healthy, but when the individual has a very low sense of self-worth and their livelihood
depends on being promiscuous, the lines between human and financial survival are blurred. The
author highlights this by the lived experiences of the sex workers and their consumers. We see
how the most basic task of putting on a condom is a major financial and social decision for these
sex workers, as they have to think about abiding by the rules set by their ‘madams’ and pimps or
even worse still, about the requests put forth by their prospective consumers who often don’t want
to have the considerations of these ‘lowly non-conjugal’ women in their minds, when they are

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coming for the unadulterated and dangerous sexual pleasure which they have been denied prior.
Mostly, these men themselves lack self-worth and probably fall into the same financial
predicaments as their to-be concubines. Hence, poverty and the nature of employment create an
unhealthy environment of their own volition which cannot be tackled easily.

Then, we discuss the occupation of sex itself. The key takeaways here are the lack of recognition
of sex work as a legitimate occupation and some of the reasons why poor women find themselves
entwined in it. The main problem for me always has been the disregard of these sex workers as
able-bodied employees in their own right, as this opens up the route for so many different threads
of disenfranchisement for these workers. Painting them as morally corrupt characters in need of
rescuing deprives them of the agency as a group of self-sustaining workers, just like any other.
They are not sexual vagrants whose rights are not to be acknowledged, but rather financially
struggling women who have migrated from their homes in order to sustain their families and
survive. This is what the women of Sonagachhi feel as they commence their work each day. A
sense of pride that even though, being victims of the patriarchal and capitalist system, they
somehow found a livelihood they could call their own. However, I must disagree with the
viewpoint that this is entirely a ‘free choice’ and a desired or even standard financial recourse for
poor, unemployed and young women in our country. More often than not, we see such a decision
being made for them or being victims of trafficking, they get sold to a brothel. But this sense of
social isolation is derived from the construct of sexual morality and the resultant inequality.

Sexual morality just like every other facet of society, is a male-heterosexual-centric status quo.
The patriarchal system has linked sex to procreation and testamentary domination, by solely
viewing women as vessels for producing further male heirs to protect ownership of property.
Perhaps, the Sonagachhi workers feel some pride in not being reduced to such vessels. They view
themselves as equally exploited as their lawfully wedded counterparts, for they also lack sexual
agency. A viewpoint on female sexuality furthered by MacKinnon2 as well, as discussed in the
previous lecture. The idea that sexual pleasure must always flow from the man and subjugation be
the only object of a woman’s desire is not new. Often, women don’t even have such recourses of
commercialized infidelity or sexual gratification available to them. Furthermore, the institution of
family and the concubine nature of sex workers are all derived from the viewpoint of ‘good and
natural sex’ as well, as Gayle S. Rubin defined it. The idea of the ‘Charmed Circle’ was that sex
should “ideally be heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and non-commercial.”3
Tracking back to the ‘Geisha’ of the East, or the ‘Lorette’ of the West, it was always the women
expressing their sexuality who were portrayed as a threat to the sanctity of a conjugal relationship.
The ‘whore’ and the ‘madonna’ parallels instil themselves from the belief that a ‘domesticated’
wife cannot aspire to share the same sexual agency as an ‘undomesticated’ prostitute. Similarly,
motherhood, love and femininity are reduced to the capacity of a ‘chaste wife’, even when the

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‘whore’ provides therapeutic comfort to her customers, some of whom depend on it for their mental
well-being. Does this mean that sex workers can’t be feminine or care for their child, even though
it may be illegitimate and out of wedlock? Does it also then mean, that any woman expressing her
sexuality is deemed to be identified as promiscuous and unworthy? Unless you’re a famous bald-
headed misogynist with a thing for sunglasses, the obvious answer to both questions is no. Then
why is it, that we intuitively as a society jump to these conclusions, instead of understanding the
underlying nuances of sexuality? Well, at the risk of sounding like a radical feminist (ode to
MacKinnon), it is because our sexual morality has been constructed to always define a patriarchal
and heterosexual world.

I was recently watching the Netflix film, Lust Stories4 and I was immediately taken aback by the
truth. The truth is that the conversations we have in class or in academic discourse generally, even
though might seem dated in the ’80s or ’90s, they are still very much the lived reality of a huge
chunk of women in India. The depiction of a middle-aged wife being ostracized for wanting to feel
sexual pleasure by stimulating herself really showcases the state of female sexuality. The belief
that bearing children is the only pleasure that a woman should desire is nothing short of deplorable
and tells a wider story about the disenfranchisement that women, sex workers or not, face in Indian
contemporary society. To me, the manifesto rather than being a radical piece of revolutionary
thought, emanated as a distress call to protect the gender identities of both men and women from
becoming irredeemable in the not-so-distant future. I would like to end with an epigram about the
sex workers of Sonagachhi: In a world that blinds, their voices concealed. Forced to mask the truth,
their secret yet unsealed. Silent figures, society's hidden lore. With every silenced word, their
agency ignored. This is the reality that shapes life in the red-light districts of India.

1. NSWP (The Global Network of Sex Work Projects), 'Sex Workers' Manifesto' (Calcutta, 1997)
https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/Sex%20Workers%20Manifesto%20-
%20Meeting%20in%20India.pdf accessed 20 October 2023.
2. Catherine A. MacKinnon, 'Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: "Pleasure under Patriarchy"'
(1989) 99 Ethics 314-346.
3. Gayle S. Rubin, 'Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality' (1984)
Pleasure and Danger 267-319.
4. Lust Stories, Directed by Zoya Akhtar and others (Netflix, 2018)

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