“If it was my account with my name, I would be scared for my life”: queer online sex work in Turkey

Online violence against queer sex workers is a growing research field and societal problem. This article explores modalities of violence against queer online sex workers in Turkey, a context characterised by homophobic and anti-queer politics. Based on narrative interviews conducted with queer online sex workers in Turkey and grounded in a feminist understanding of violence, the article illustrates how different forms of violence travel between the online and offline by identifying three spatiotemporal patterns: the offline experience of online violence, the threatening offline, and the merging of online and offline. The article concludes that while the violence is often banal, mundane, and normalised, the impacts are both felt and embodied in the offline context. Further, broadening the conceptualisation of violence benefits the investigation of how violence(s) travels between the offline and online contexts and where they intersect, thereby contributing to the fields of violence studies, feminist studies, and queer sex work studies.