Recreational sex not-at-home: The atmospheres of sex work in Tel Aviv

This chapter discusses the places where sex is bought and sold, theoretically far from the 'collective good, gift logic' of the pleasantness that supposedly characterizes the home. The author emphasizes the everydayness of commercial sex to reveal 'how our societies distinguish between activities considered normatively "social" and activities denounced as morally wrong. This means examining a range of activities that take in both commerce and sex'. Indeed, this chapter starts from the assumption that, under neoliberalism, some of these moral and spatial boundaries are shifting. A key element in the current moral geography of recreational sexuality is the erosion of the home/market dichotomy that has animated much of the modern sexual hierarchy. The first part of the chapter theorizes the concept of recreational sexuality. The analysis relies on my own visits to brothels, located in improvised Tel Aviv apartments, as well as journalistic reportage and photographic documentation.