Limits, excesses and pleasures: practices and discourses on sexual work in a Mexican rural community

In Tomatlán, a small city on the Mexican Pacific Coast there is a tolerance zone in which a group of sex workers, separated from the rest of the city by a garbage dump, offer their services to local men. The women present themselves materially and symbolically as agents of regulation with respect to male sexuality, itself constructed as overwhelming and insatiable, which, were it not for services provided by the sex workers, would threaten the family-based social order. Through in-depth interviews with 19 sex workers and 5 municipal officials, this paper discusses how the sex gender system results in a series of borders that are both geographical and subjective. Such borders have to do with periphery and control, body and intimacy, and the boundaries of animality.