*Snort*

Wouldn’t surprise me.

God, he was so obnoxious. I kept wanting to shout, Shut up, stupid straight boy! Because you know what? In this context, he fucking well was.

The relentless sexualisation of the workers in Tranny Alley seems in some ways quite distinct from the forms of objectification at The Grove i.e. the male sex work strip, as do the assumptions of clients regarding the workers: the clihed confusion of sexuality and work satisfaction operates slightly differently, it seems.

At The Grove many if not most clients assume that at least some workers are ’straight’ and thus working solely for money, whereas ‘gay’ workers are assumed to be more ‘into it. and sometimes even to have desires in relation to work that exceed and transcend the financial. Thus the ’straight’ boys are not merely seen as different, but almost as liars by definition since some kind of double-think notion of public truth posits that working activities should correspond to non-work sexual identity. At the same time it is not unheard of for people to want to rent boys at The Grove who they believe are straight, which is given an erotic spin of buying the supposedly usually unattainable.

By contrast the workers at Tranny Alley are all assumed to be ‘authentically’ Tranny, meaning m-to-f and interested in ’straight’ boys, with a whole series of assumptions about what this means for work. Which is almost sort-of ironic given the prevalence of transphobic discourse founded upon what would seem a directly opposed set of assertions, not to mention medicalised and increasingly genetic-determinist ‘pro-trans’ which would, at least in theory, divorce transgender identity from any particular sexual preference.

I am writing this in a hurry because I am off to have dinner with someone I met at The Grove who I think has interesting things to say about these issues, but I think it is worth my hurrying becuase I wanted to get to the point of saying: if you are still interested in having a coffee, are you free anytime in the next three or four days? I can meet anywhere-ish, so e-mail me if you are up for it and where/when would be good.

Sorry to use you blog for e-mail type communication, but seem to not have your e-mail address, which seems odd since I am sure I have used it in the past.

Hope you’re well, with communist greetings
Benjamin

Do write about it… I was surprised not to find more reviews, although I guess it’s pretty new.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

It…yeah, it was an experience, watching that movie in an audience of self-congratulatory assholes.

interesting that you say the men who frequent ‘tranny alley’ are mostly younger, and also interesting that there’s a contextual difference in the way those johns are read: in one place, possible clients, in the other, possible threats.

there’s a marked division in melbourne between the mainly middle-class folks who constitite and represent the ‘trans community’ and lumpen transfolk who are doing sexwork… so, yeah, i would be interested in talkin’ sometime.

Quite a few of these clients are people who, if they came down to The Grove, would be assumed to have wandered in by mistake or be intent upon attacking boys who are working. But mostly they just wouldn’t consider coming down to where ‘the boys’ work.

The street scenes in St Kilda are not thriving economies, though the boys at The Grove are probably doing the worst, in terms of work and cash flow, and some of the trannies, at least sometimes, the ‘best’. The reasons for this are complicated I’m still thinking about them, but I’ve been doing some little interviews with street workers and clients in the last few weeks, and I’d like to talk about the St Kilda scenes to someone smart with an interest in intersecting issues and theory, so please let me know if you are interested.

Hope you’re well, give my love to Ange,

Benjamin