Abstract
Despite the individualization of workers by the neoliberal and capitalist state, friendships form in the workplace – wonderful friendships, fleeting friendships, fraught friendships, lasting friendships. I draw from interviews with sex workers to place friendship as a mode of meaningful resistance to our modern systems of work, particularly within feminized labor. Sex workers share stories of forming meaningful supportive networks and fostering friendships with other sex workers, both within and outside their own workplaces. I argue that these friendships are a crucial part of resistance in the face of a hostile labor market and are an especially important tool for communities that are marginalized, stigmatized, and overwhelmingly feminized. Though individual friendships may not always be revolutionary, and may even at times reproduce dominant norms, friendships exist as a collective and relational activity that resist movements towards individualism and competition between workers. I draw primarily from Friedman (1989), Foucault (1994), and Scott (2011) to displace individualistic accounts of friendship, and instead name friendships at work as a site of communal resistance against dominant social norms and structures.