Vectors

: Dystopian futures hacked by feminist sex workers

Abstract

The figure of the whore embodies forms of oppression, transgression, exploitation and liberation in feminist and left speculative fiction. Although the voice and fate of sex-working characters diverge in relation to the historical context, in prominent works of the late-20th and 21st centuries fictional whores often labour as victims and vectors of capitalism, patriarchy and apocalypse. The absence of trans migrant whore narrators from such speculative fiction emancipation efforts is deeply rooted in protectionism, colonialism and the binary construction of gender, and constitutes a gap in feminist knowledge and imagination. This is at times reflected in discourses of Sex Workers Exclusionary Feminism (SWERF) and Trans-Exclusionary Feminism (TERF), prevalent in the present-day UK. Such tensions engendered the key research question of this project: Which alternate futures might be stirred by a feminist dystopic novel centring trans and migrant/racialised whores?
The creative output and accompanying critical reflection tackles this timely question from a localised perspective, in conversation with prominent authors of this literary genre, particularly Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood and William Gibson. Vectors poses a creatively critical intervention in feminist and left story-making, while problematising the labours of whores in cyberpunk and feminist dystopias, It engages with feminist speculative fiction’s attempt to fight patriarchal objectification, capitalist exploitation and pollution of women through objectifying and exploiting sex worker characters, simultaneously problematising the contemporary UK sex-worker movement’s focus on material realities and demands for the decriminalisation of sex work, which valorise the figure of the sex-working mother while eroding the potent figure of the whore. The novel, Vectors, aims to unpack and fill this feminist knowledge gap through two sex-working protagonists with diverging positionality and personalities: a masculinised migrant and a racialised trans femme. Testing the tensions between the affective and effective, materialist and symbolic. The critical reflection, ‘Whoring the End of the World as We Know It’, critiques the ways in which rapidly escalating crises and shifting discourses shaped the creative process, situating this experiment in a wider body of literature, theory and transformative history. Together, the critical intervention and novel point towards new world ends and beginnings, passions and fears that may be conjured by imperilled trans whores.

Thesis embargoed. Available: 25/03/31

Date of Award	Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Stephen Maddison (Supervisor) & Bea Hitchman (Supervisor)