From erotic capital to erotic knowledge: body, gender and sexuality as symbolic skills in phone sex work

In this chapter, I’ll discuss the concept of erotic capital and sexual capitalizing in the case of phone sex workers selling sex to male costumers, by looking to the micro-discursive practices and strategies workers use to successfully manage the call with the clients. By virtue of the absence of the physical body, in phone sex, workers have to translate the sexual and/or emotional intercourse in a competent narrative that fits clients needs and desires and whose success or failure (both in economic and interactional terms) depends on their professional ability to discursively mobilize the suitable corporeal, sexual and gender resources that makes the clients feel the interaction as “real”, despite the mediation of the phone.