Read Male Sex Work and Society Online
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Tags: #Psychology/Human Sexuality, #Social Science/Gay Studies, #SOC012000, #PSY016000
Male Sex Work and Society (4 page)
Thus it was that from the outset we wanted this book to provide broad coverage of male sex work. We sought to include multiple disciplinary perspectives, moving well beyond the public health or sociological focus of much of the earlier literature. We also wanted to capture a sense of the cross-cultural variations in the male sex encounter. Rather than simplifying or condensing our subject matter, we have brought together varied voices that can testify to its complexity and rich diversity. We hope and trust that this book, which presents original research from both young and well-established scholars in the field, brings both breadth and depth to the study of male sex work and gives coherence to the emerging voices of MSWs who are telling their stories. It also provides a broad overview of the literature on MSWs, including studies that have emerged over the last 20 years, and identifies areas for future research.
Acknowledgments
Producing this international collection has been both a challenge and a privilege. The privilege lies in working with scholars who are researching this important topic so we can gain—and provide—a better understanding of masculinities, sexualities, and men’s health, specifically those who are involved with male sex work and their clients. The main challenges were to bring together a diverse group of researchers from around the globe, and to meet our publication deadlines. As noted above, we are most appreciative of the publisher’s dedication, patience, and confidence in our ability to bring the project to a conclusion. The volume is the collective effort of the editors, all the contributors, and the publisher, working as a team. We greatly appreciate the determination of both Bill Cohen and senior book editor Richard Koffler to make this book successful, and one of the most comprehensive on the topic. We leave it to reviewers and readers to judge whether we have achieved this objective.
We owe special gratitude to the intellectual contributions of all the authors, whose research has provided numerous contemporary insights into men’s lives.
We also want to acknowledge the very valuable input of Patrick Ciano, who designed the book, and various personnel working with Harrington Park Press, including associate editor Dody Riggs and operations manager Art Lizza, permissions editor Adele Hutchinson, lexicographer Katherine Isaacs, proofreader Jane Gebhart, and indexer Dan Connolly.
We have included illustrations in the book to highlight the visibility of the male sex industry in popular culture and to show how we as a society portray male escorts. We are grateful to all the public and private organizations that have given us permission to reproduce these images.
Finally, we have been most fortunate to have the support of our colleagues for this project, in particular Denton Callander, Robyn Rogers, and Sandra Coe.
Thank you all—you have allowed us to produce a book that not only is timely but has something new to say about a very old topic.
Victor Minichiello and John Scott
John Scott and Victor Minichiello
Think of sex workers and one usually thinks of women. Indeed, the term “prostitute” has remained closely identified with female behavior, and sex as a commodity for exchange is typically constructed as a heterosexual event in which the male client is invisible.
*
The female sex worker is ubiquitous in popular culture, appearing frequently in literature and film. Dennis’s (2008) analysis of 166 research publications on sex work produced between 2000 and 2007 found only 10 percent to be exclusively concerned with male sex workers (MSWs). In fact, many studies cited by Dennis imply that the very idea of a male prostitute or male sex worker is a linguistic impossibility. Dennis explained this bias as being grounded in heteronormative assumptions, with male-male liaisons presenting as aberrations in the wider literature on sex work (see also Gaffney & Beverley, 2001).
*
The female sex worker is ubiquitous in popular culture, appearing frequently in literature and film. Dennis’s (2008) analysis of 166 research publications on sex work produced between 2000 and 2007 found only 10 percent to be exclusively concerned with male sex workers (MSWs). In fact, many studies cited by Dennis imply that the very idea of a male prostitute or male sex worker is a linguistic impossibility. Dennis explained this bias as being grounded in heteronormative assumptions, with male-male liaisons presenting as aberrations in the wider literature on sex work (see also Gaffney & Beverley, 2001).
Historically, male sex work has been of significantly less public concern than female sex work. One reason for this may seem obvious: promiscuous males in public locations are not as likely to draw the degree of scrutiny that women do. This relative lack of attention might also be explained by the smaller numbers of MSWs. Nevertheless, male sex work has been present consistently in most societies; in fact, the number of MSWs at particular historical junctures has been relatively high.
The lack of research on the male sex industry may indicate something about its size, as the number and geographic distribution of MSWs is largely unknown. While research data on the size of the male sex industry are lacking, estimates are that a single sex worker services approximately 20 different clients per week (Klinnell, 2006). The research also has noted that MSWs comprise about 20 percent of those arrested in America each year for selling sexual services, and 30 percent of those in France (Dennis, 2008). Therefore, male sex work is not as insignificant a social phenomenon as the paucity of research on the topic suggests. Research from the Netherlands has found that approximately 3 percent of men (and women) in the adult population have reported receiving money for sex (Vanwesenbeeck, 2013).
Historical evidence indicates that, as early as the 18th century, commercial sexual contact between men occurred frequently in European metropolitan centers, such as London (Norton, 1992). As Mack Friedman’s chapter in this book explains, male prostitution was also found in ancient and pre-modern cultures. Male brothels existed in Ancient Greece and Rome, and there was even a Roman public holiday dedicated to male sex workers. However, in the pre-modern period, such behavior was often conflated with same-sex desire more broadly and was not recognized as prostitution. As such, male sex work was not considered a distinct social problem at the time and there was no public debate about its causes and consequences, which contrasts with the attention given female sex work (Weeks, 1992).
Kerwin Kaye, in
chapter 2
, argues that male sex work caught the attention of some sexologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because it appeared to be a contradictory activity in which heterosexual males engaged in homosexual activities. This raised several questions—Could heterosexual males derive pleasure from same-sex activities? Was an MSW engaged as an active partner considered a homosexual?—that continued to influence thinking on male sex work well into the 20th century. Notable here is the significance of scientific understandings of sexuality in shaping both research and the popular discourse associated with male sex work. If much of what we know about female sex work has been shaped by gender, understandings of male sex work have been linked to popular and official accounts of sexuality.
chapter 2
, argues that male sex work caught the attention of some sexologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because it appeared to be a contradictory activity in which heterosexual males engaged in homosexual activities. This raised several questions—Could heterosexual males derive pleasure from same-sex activities? Was an MSW engaged as an active partner considered a homosexual?—that continued to influence thinking on male sex work well into the 20th century. Notable here is the significance of scientific understandings of sexuality in shaping both research and the popular discourse associated with male sex work. If much of what we know about female sex work has been shaped by gender, understandings of male sex work have been linked to popular and official accounts of sexuality.
Rather than presenting male sex work as a social problem to be resolved or eradicated, this book examines how male sex work has been understood, both historically and cross-culturally. Moreover, it attempts to move away from “scientific” understandings of male sex work that have painted sex workers and their clients as at-risk and/or pathological populations. One issue here is that research has traditionally been conducted on the more visible and accessible population of male street sex workers, who are estimated to comprise only 10 percent of the overall male sex work market (Perkins, 1991; Smith & Grov, 2011; Weitzer, 2005). As a result, less is known about the more numerous and expanding subpopulation of male sex workers who work indoors. While this book will address street workers, it also draws attention to indoor forms of sex work, especially escort services, which have grown considerably in recent years through the burgeoning social media and telecommunications.
As discussed, there have been a number of important shifts in the way male sex work is understood. Before the last decade, research had focused predominantly on male sex work in highly urban settings, using the characteristics of street-based sex work to present male sex work as a social problem. The difficulty of constructing a more nuanced and complex picture of male sex work was largely a product of its double stigma as a form of sexual and gendered deviance, and the powerful adverse influence of homophobia, which disallows a legitimate discourse about male-to-male sexual relations, let alone commercial sex between men. As a result, certain spaces (suburban, regional, and rural) have been difficult to articulate, see, or imagine. To some extent, even the complexity of indoor forms of male sex work lay undiscovered. Gendered and sexual norms also have meant that less is known about the clients of MSWs than about those of female sex workers (FSWs). Unlike the clients of female sex workers, clients of MSWs have been represented as a socially problematic, deviant subpopulation, often indistinguishable from homosexuals. However, some pioneering studies have emerged during the last decade, giving greater visibility to these spaces and populations.
We contend that new telecommunications technologies have done much to increase awareness of the diverse and dynamic nature of male sex work. Moreover, these technologies have challenged the barriers of stigma and extended the reach of researchers, just as they have extended the reach of sex workers. This new terrain of male sex work also creates challenges, especially in terms of globalization and rapid economic growth. Several chapters in this book highlight the growth of male sex work in metropolitan areas in developing countries and the struggles of migrant sex workers in developed countries, while others examine male sex work in terms of the structural challenges associated with changing technological, economic, political, and social landscapes.
Rethinking Male Sex Work
Because understandings of male sex work shift with technological, conceptual, and social changes, we consider this a timely book. When we began researching male sex work in the 1990s, the telecommunications revolution, driven largely by the Internet and mobile telephones, was still in its infancy. Moreover, the structure and organization of male sex work had not changed all that much during the 20th century. While other broader social changes had an impact on female sex work, male sex work tended to be geographically restricted and relatively invisible in both official and popular discourse. During the last century, what we knew about male sex was largely restricted to Western contexts, and male sex work was largely limited to urban environments. While there was some sense of the growing significance of escort work, most research remained focused on the streets, which ensured that the deviance or pathology paradigm that had dominated understandings of male sex work continued to be influential throughout the 20th century.
The changing understanding of sexuality and the increasing power of the Internet are both important forces behind recent changes in the structure and organization of male sex work. The increased visibility and reach of escorts have created opportunities to form an occupational account of male sex work that accounts more fully for the dynamic and diverse nature of the MSW experience in the early 21st century.
MSWs are in a unique social position because they provide services to numerous groups of people, including gay men, heterosexual men, women, and their personal sex partners (Logan, 2010). However, MSWs service a predominantly male clientele. Because participants in this exchange are of the same gender, MSWs have been difficult to conceptualize in social, economic, and gender theories of prostitution (Bernstein, 2005; Edlund & Korn, 2002; Marlowe, 1997). Popular accounts of sex work tend to present prostitution as a product of economic necessity or individual pathology, lending support to a representation of sex workers as passive and disempowered victims who have been exploited and coerced into sex work (see Bimbi, 2007; Scott, 2003; Smith, Grov, Seal, & McCall, 2013). An alternate, somewhat romanticized narrative suggests that male sex work is inherently less exploitative than female sex work because interactions between two men have a certain equality missing in interactions between a male client and female seller (Altman, 1999). Indeed, sex work has largely been considered through the lens of patriarchy as exploitative and degrading to women. Female sex workers have been presented in research as a passive “supply” population, whereas male sex workers have been presented as more active. Current limitations as to how we understand male sex work suggest an inability by researchers and a wider audience to consider the male body an object of possession, objectification, and consumption.
On the other hand, male sex work has challenged the gay liberationist rhetoric, which has sometimes presented gay communities as being free of exploitation. It also has challenged simplistic narratives of human sexuality by disentangling sexual identity from sexual practice. We know, for example, that a high percentage of male sex workers and their clients identify as straight. In fact, male sex work has always existed ambiguously on the margins of gay culture as an object of erotic appeal and fantasy, and of stigma and embarrassment, as is highlighted in
chapter 10
by Christian Grov and Michael Smith.
chapter 10
by Christian Grov and Michael Smith.
In short, we can learn a lot from the study of male sex work, which on a broad level provides vital insights into the construction and social organization of gender and sexuality, especially masculinities and the commodification of the male body. The research in this book draws much from the scholarship on masculinity that has emerged over the last 20 years and has been informed by major theoretical works by scholars who have put men’s studies at the forefront of their thinking (see, e.g., Connell, 1995; Gagnon & Simon, 1974).
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