Male Sex Work and Society (28 page)

Read Male Sex Work and Society Online

Authors: Unknown

Tags: #Psychology/Human Sexuality, #Social Science/Gay Studies, #SOC012000, #PSY016000

TABLE 5.6
The Implicit Prices of Ethnicity and Sexual Behavior Interactions in the Male Escort Market on Site X
 
 
Note:
Robust standard errors in parentheses. Each column is a separate regression where the log of the price is the dependent variable. Each entry is the coefficient of the interaction of the row and column. For example, the “Black Top” coefficient is the coefficient of the black*top interaction term in the regression. All regressions include controls for ethnicity, city, sexual behaviors, other personal characteristics, and an intercept.
*
p
< .05; **
p
< .01 (two-tailed tests).
 
Limitations and Future Research
 
While this study makes use of novel data to test theories of male sex work, several limitations to the present analysis should be noted. First, I analyzed only the largest website for escort advertisements in the U.S., and the results might not hold for competitors’ sites. For example, if certain types of escorts are more likely to congregate at different websites, they would not be captured in my data, limiting my ability to describe the market in general. Second, information in the advertisements is posted by the escorts and therefore constitutes a self-report. While I exploited independent data to confirm the precision of the price measure, I cannot say with certainty that there are no omitted confounders in the data. Third, the dataset may be missing variables that could influence the price of escort services, such as endowment, an escort’s education level, or expertise in specific sexual conduct.
These limitations should inform future research. For example, future studies should analyze competing websites with a similar methodology to confirm or challenge results presented here. Similarly, detailed analysis of client-operated websites, which review escort services, could act as an independent check on the veracity of the information posted in escort advertisements. Future research should develop panel data on male escorts that would allow one to track escorts over time to see how and if their behaviors, identities, advertisements, and personas change, which would add an important dimension to this literature.
Discussion and Conclusions
 
This chapter has addressed important questions pertaining to male sex work. These questions relate to basic facts about male escorts, their geographic distribution, and the relationship between escort characteristics, sexual behaviors, and prices. Using a unique quantitative data source of male sex workers, the study uncovered a number of facts that should stimulate further research into male sex work and related areas of gender, sexuality, masculinity, ethnicity, and crime. In general, the results suggest that male sex work is markedly different from its female counterpart. It also shows how concepts from ethnographic, qualitative, and theoretical work in social science can be subjected to quantitative empirical approaches, including statistical tests of hypotheses.
The data show that escorts are present in cities with low and high gay concentrations; this result supports work that suggests a significant portion of the male escort clientele is not gay-identified. Personal characteristics, except for those pertaining to body build, are largely not related to male escorts’ prices. Muscular men enjoy a premium in the market, while overweight and thin men face a penalty, which is consistent with hegemonic masculinity and the literature on the body and sexuality. Conformity to hegemonic masculine physical norms is well rewarded in the market.
The premium to being a top is substantial, as is the penalty for being a bottom, again consistent with the theory of hegemonic masculinity. When intersecting these behaviors with ethnicity, it was found that black men are at the extremes—they have the largest premiums for top behavior and the largest penalties for bottom behavior. This is consistent with intersectionality theory in that gay communities prize black men who conform to racialized stereotypes of sexual behavior and penalize those who do not. While the sexually dominant black male is feared in heterosexual communities, he is rewarded handsomely in gay communities.
Given the quantitative results, the ways in which desire intersects with ethnic stereotypes should receive significant attention in future masculinity studies. Theoretically, these results should renew attention on the complex construction of masculinities among gay men, in which counter-hegemonic groups adopt and reiterate hegemonic masculine norms among themselves, explicitly reinforcing hegemonic norms. In particular, further work at the nexus of the construction of masculinity among gay men, hegemonic masculinity, and ethnic inequality would be a fruitful area of research.
Further research on ethnicity, sexuality, and commerce is needed to address issues unexplored here. For instance, due to data limitations, class dimensions inherent in male sex work have remained unexplored. An important question for intersectionality theory in light of the results presented here is how ethnicity and sexual behavior intersect with class masculinities to yield premiums and penalties in this market. Furthermore, causal estimates of male escort behavior on prices, which would be key for policy discussions such as the feasibility of sexual behavior change among male sex workers to minimize disease risk (Connell, 2002) also have not been explored. Implications for men involved in this market—socially, sexually, and health-wise—should certainly be investigated further at greater depth.
Research on male sex work needs to move at an accelerated pace. As the discussion in this chapter shows, there is much to be gained from an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to the subject. Future developments along this line would enhance and extend our understanding of sexuality and gender in general and male sex work in particular, shedding light on important issues in social research and public policy.
References
 
Aggleton, P. (Ed.). (1999).
Men who sell sex: International perspectives on male prostitution and HIV/AIDS
. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Allen, D. M. (1980). Young male prostitutes: A psychosocial study.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 9
, 399-426.
Almeling, R. (2007). Selling genes, selling gender: Egg agencies, sperm banks, and the medical market in genetic material.
American Sociological Review, 72
, 319-340.
Anderson, E. (2002). Openly gay athletes: Contesting hegemonic masculinity in a homophobic environment.
Gender and Society, 16
, 860-877.
Arunachalam, R., & Shah, M. (2008). Prostitutes and brides?
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 98
, 516-522.
Atkins, D. (Ed.). (1998).
Looking queer: Body image and identity in lesbian, gay, and transgender communities
. New York: Routledge.
Bajari, P., & Benkard, C. L. (2005). Demand estimation with heterogeneous consumers and unobserved product characteristics: A hedonic approach.
Journal of Political Economy, 113
, 1239-1276.
Baldwin, J. (1985).
The price of the ticket: Collected nonfiction 1948-1985
. New York: St. Martin’s.
Bartik, T. J. (1987). The estimation of demand parameters in hedonic price models.
Journal of Political Economy, 95
, 81-88.
Bates, T. R. (1975). Gramsci and the theory of hegemony.
Journal of the History of Ideas, 36
, 351-366.
Beren, S. E., Hayden, H. A., Wilfley, D. E., & Grilo, C. M. (1996). The influence of sexual orientation on body dissatisfaction in adult men and women.
International Journal of Eating Disorders, 20
, 135-141.
Berg, N., & Lien, D. (2006). Same-sex sexual behavior: U.S. frequency estimates from survey data with simultaneous misreporting and non-response.
Applied Economics, 38
, 759-769.
Bernstein, E. (2005). Desire, demand, and the commerce of sex. In E. Bernstein & L. Schaffner (Eds.),
Regulating sex: The politics of intimacy and identity
(pp. 101-128). New York: Routledge.
Bernstein, E. (2007).
Temporarily yours: Sexual commerce in post-industrial culture
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bimbi, D. S. (2007). Male prostitution: Pathology, paradigms and progress in research.
Journal of Homosexuality, 53
, 7-35.
Bimbi, D. S., & Parsons, J. T. (2005). Barebacking among internet based male sex workers.
Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, 9
, 89-110.
Bird, S. R. (1996). Welcome to the men’s club: Homosociality and the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity.
Gender and Society, 10
, 120-132.
Black, D., Gates, G., Sanders, S., & Taylor, L. (2000). Demographics of the gay and lesbian population in the United States: Evidence from available systematic sources.
Demography, 37
, 139-154.
Black, D., Gates, G., Sanders, S., & Taylor, L. (2002). Why do gay men live in San Francisco?
Journal of Urban Economics, 51
, 54-76.
Black, D., Sanders, S., & Taylor, L. (2007). The economics of lesbian and gay families.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21
, 53-70.
Boyer, D. (1989). Male prostitution and homosexual identity.
Journal of Homosexuality, 17
, 151-184.
Brown, J. N., & Rosen, H. S. (1982). On the estimation of structural hedonic price models.
Econometrica, 50
, 765-768.
Calhoun, T. C., & Weaver, G. (1996). Rational decision-making among male street prostitutes.
Deviant Behavior, 17
, 209-227.
Cameron, S., Collins, A., Drinkwater, S., Hickson,, F., Reid, D., Roberts, J. et al. (2009). Surveys and data sources on gay men’s lifestyles and socio-sexual behavior: Some key concerns and issues.
Sexuality & Culture, 13
, 135-151.
Cameron, S., Collins, A., & Thew, N. (1999) Prostitution services: An exploratory empirical analysis.
Applied Economics, 31
, 1523-1529.
Cantu, L. (2002). A place called home: A queer political economy. In C. Williams & A. Stein (Eds.),
Sexuality and gender
(pp. 382-394). New York: Blackwell.
Carpenter, C. (2003). Sexual orientation and body weight: Evidence from multiple surveys.
Gender Issues, 21
, 60-74.
Carpenter, C. (2004). New evidence on gay and lesbian household incomes.
Contemporary Economic Policy, 22
, 78-94.
Carpenter, C., & Gates, G. (2008). Gay and lesbian partnership: Evidence from California.
Demography, 45
, 573-590.
Chauncey, G. (1994).
Gay New York: Gender, urban culture, and the making of the gay male world 1890
-
1940
. New York: Basic Books.
Clarkson, J. (2006). “Everyday Joe” versus “pissy, bitchy, queens”: Gay masculinity on
StraightActing.com
.
Journal of Men’s Studies, 14
, 191-208.
Cohan, D. L., Breyer, J., Cobaugh, C., Cloniger, C., Herlyn, A., Lutnick, A. et al. (2004, July).
Social context and the health of sex workers in San Francisco
. Paper presented at the International Conference on AIDS, Bangkok, Thailand.
Collins, A. (2004). Sexual dissidence, enterprise and assimilation: Bedfellows in urban regeneration.
Urban Studies, 41
, 1789-1806.
Collins, P. H. (1999).
Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment
. New York: Harper Collins.
Collins, P. H. (2000). Gender, black feminism and black political economy.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 568
, 41-53.

Other books

Death at Gills Rock by Patricia Skalka
A Last Kiss for Mummy by Casey Watson
Jump Start by Susannah McFarlane
Baking by Hand by Andy King
An Hour of Need by Bella Forrest
For Better or Worse by Delaney Diamond
Judas Flowering by Jane Aiken Hodge
Salida hacia La Tierra by George H. White