The Fantasy Factory: An Insider's View of the Phone Sex Industry

Amy Flowers

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1998

The Fantasy Factory

An Insider's View of the Phone Sex Industry

Amy Flowers

In the series Feminist Cultural Studies, the Media, and Political Culture

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812200744

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Fantasy Factory explores the world of women on the other end of the phone sex lines advertised in magazines like Playboy and Hustler. The author's interviews with these women, as well as her own first-hand experiences as an operator, reveal the complex ways operators and callers negotiate the shifting borders between desire and disgust, fantasy and reality, deception and belief. The Fantasy Factory raises provocative questions about the manufacture of artificial intimacy and the technological mediation of intimacy, as well as about the social construction of sexuality and gender.

Flowers discovers that operators—who assume names like Tiffany and Corvette—create a virtual reality in which callers can act out fantasies that operators may find boring, disgusting, or even frightening. She also discovers that even those women who are skilled at keeping their "true self" and their phone sex persona separate find that they have to struggle to protect that self and to maintain the ability to experience real intimacy.

Author / Editor information

Amy Flowers is an independent scholar.

Reviews

"A careful, level-headed sifting of the costs and benefits that attend sex work."—Publishers Weekly

"A careful, level-headed sifting of the costs and benefits that attend contemporary forms of sex work. Having spent four months working as a phone-sex operator and having interviewed more experienced operators as well, Flowers lays out the contours of this world with a clarity that resists easy conclusions."—Publishers Weekly

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Researching the Fantasy Factory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
Chapter 2. Fantasy Girls Are Felt But Never Seen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
Chapter 3. Phone Sex Consumers: Husbands and Friends? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
Chapter 4. The Manufacture of Fantasy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
Chapter 5. The Real Product of Fantasy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	106
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 200
Keywords: Cultural Studies; Literature; Cultural Studies; American History; American Studies

eBook

Published: August 3, 2010
ISBN: 9780812200744