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Book Review: Queer Fictions of the Past: History, Culture and Difference

in the presentation of grounded empirical observation. The third chapter is a particularly useful description of types of phone sex consumers – ‘candymen’, ‘psychos’, ‘gomers and goobers’, and ‘turners’ – terms used among phone sex workers when referring to various callers. Through these descriptions, Flowers raises significant related issues that confront the phone sex worker, such as the implications for participating in a caller’s rape fantasies. The discussions of the psycho caller and the ‘turner’ (the client who falls in love with the worker) are especially interesting. Flowers’ book joins a spate of new publications based on empirical studies of sex work industries. These case studies are similar in approach and intent to the studies of drug users, gangs, and other ‘deviants’ that made for popular sociological reading a couple of decades ago. The studies are of interest because of the details they provide in domains that have traditionally been understudied and/or pathologized. At the same time, I find the general trend frustrating to the extent that potentially useful insights remain bracketed in uncritical traditional assessments and theories. Flowers subtitles her book An Insider’s View of the Phone Sex Industry. As I read the book I found myself musing repeatedly on her use of the phrase ‘insider’. Her empirical descriptions suggest a great deal of personal engagement with the material during the time in which she was conducting the research. At the same time there are comments throughout the book intended to remind the reader of her status as ‘observer’. For instance, early in the book she locates herself, along with the reader, as a definite outsider when she notes, ‘You or I might never call a phone sex line, but apparently others do’ (p. 3). This tone separating ‘us’ from ‘them’ permeates the book. Flowers is not as guilty as some authors of fetishizing and objectifying her subjects. Still, her interpretations, particularly of the behaviors of the callers, take the form of judgment and pontificating more than understanding and theoretical insight. My own inclination is to read this as a reflection of the general lack of compelling theoretical frameworks for comprehending fantasy and reality, anonymity and intimacy, and issues of trust in commercial sexual communication (notable exceptions include Chapkis, Pheterson and Stone). In the dearth of such theory, it is not only likely, but probable, that these ‘insider’ studies will continue to reveal as much about the judgmental biases of our own subject positions as they will tell us about the phenomena that we seek to understand.