Queering the brothel: Identity construction and performance in Carson City, Nevada

In an attempt to examine the brothel as a queer space, this article investigates identity construction and performance within the Cookie Guest Ranch, a legal brothel in Carson City, Nevada. This analysis is supported by the interviews of eight sex workers and seven staff members about the everyday social relationships within this space. A primary finding of this research is that brothels are not bastions of heteronormative domination but are spaces of fluid sexualities, heteroflexible performance, and negotiations of power. Additionally, identity performance is negotiated in unique and sometimes contradictory ways. These findings suggest that queer theory can be utilized and expanded to reconceptualize the social dynamics that are assumed to take place within such spaces, as well as complicate our understanding of identity performance within queer spaces, more generally.