The Erotic Terrorist
It has been a while since we featured the ongoing work of feminist professors in what they like to call “intimate labor.” Felicity Shaeffer-Grabiel reminds us that there remains much scholarly research to be done in important fields such as sex trafficking and victimology. She explains:
In this paper, I explore the ways Latin American women who marry U.S. men via the cyber-marriage industry complicate their popular rendition as either manipulative “green card shards” (and thus criminals of the state) or as having to prove their innocence as victims of heterosexual marriage, global patriarchy and/or the sex trafficking trade. . . . Furthermore, while others have made important contributions in making visible the policing of sexualized, gendered, and racialized bodies that are deemed excessive (and thus threatening) to the (normative) state – such as in the case of lesbians, gays, sex workers and terrorists who attempt to migrate across borders, there has been no discussion about the opening of the erotic as central to migration and citizenship claims.
Those Latin American women sure can complicate things, especially when they marry rich white (patriarchal) dudes in the
Felicity is too modest in giving credit to others. She has managed to combine homosexuals, prostitutes, and terrorists into one general category, probably offending all of them simultaneously. This is the kind of stuff that merits tenure.
Next time you cross the border, remember to discuss the opening of the erotic, and have a laugh on Felicity.
