Sex and Surveillance on the Highway

Big rig work culture includes a growing population of transwomen, many of whom call themselves T-girls. Working within a dense network of company and legal rules, and reaching for the autonomy and isolation associated with the open road, these truckers find stigma, resistance, and self-respect. Many identify with the cowboy ideal of trucking and with the truck itself to both fit into, and rebel against, the changing workforce dynamics of surveillance and technology. Ethnographic data suggest that sex is one form that rebellion takes.