Veiling the image/framing the body: The labour of enduring ephemerals in the context of trans* male adult camming practices on Chaturbate

Abstract

Focusing on male transgender cammers on adult web page Chaturbate, this article goes into depth with issues of labour, archiving and in/visibility. The article starts by examining the production processes that characterize adult camming and argues that much of the labour involved is hidden behind the live screen. Next, we will look into the archival procedures that accompany camming shows. We suggest that adult camming is characterized by a tension between the ephemerality of live-streamed images and their ‘endurance’ caused by automated archival procedures. The second part of the article focuses on the strategies two male transgender cammers deploy for navigating these tensions. Their experiences highlight how, in this context, pleasure and personal gain can only be achieved by exercising a degree of control on the dialectic between human agency and machine-driven automation. Controlling the scope of visibility on the live screen is crucial in this process and can be understood as a form of labour in and of itself.

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