It was the time when I bought a new house. I met this guy … and then we had sex but we did use condom. I was very cautious about this … then the next day, I had to pay the mortgage and he said he could pay it for me … and when I moved into the house, he bought me sofa, etc. … I was so moved … he was so nice to me, and then when we made love, we didn’t use [condoms].
Xiao Qing insisted that he always used condoms except for with this guy. He lost contact with him once he told him he got HIV/AIDS. These two cases, among others, seem to suggest that these men tend to blur the boundaries of work sex and personal sex. This puts them at risk when they have protected sex at work but unprotected sex with a loved one (Browne & Minichiello, 1995; Davies & Feldman, 1997; Joffe & Dockrell, 1995). In other words, having unprotected sex with a lover can become a dangerous sex act (Kong, 2011a, p. 190).
Clients
Male clients are mainly from other provinces in mainland China. Others are Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan; other Asians from Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and Korea; or Caucasians from the United States. Clients who do not live in Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen are businessmen or tourists. They range in age from 20 to 60, clustering around the thirties to forties, and most of them are married.
Browne and Minichiello (1995) interviewed money boys who identified four types of client: easy trade, rough trade, sugar daddy, and heaven trade. Easy trade clients are those who come quickly, do not require penetrative sex, act nice and caring, and treat workers with respect. Respondents such as Ah Yang (22, ambivalent about his sexuality, unemployed, worked for one or two years, was interviewed in Beijing in 2004) talked about this type of client: “What is a good client? He should have a good attitude, treats me like a friend. Maybe we don’t have to do anything, or he might give me more tips.”
The rough trade clients are demanding, impolite, rough, or even violent. Ah Jun (20, ambivalent about his sexuality, full-time brothel worker for three years in Shanghai) said to me in 2004:
Some brought you out and [you] had to drink [with] them and [take] pills with them, they wanted to get “high” and then brought you home and had sex with you … they could then do it many times … day and night … And they asked you to lick here or there, do this and that … a lot of demands … Sometimes they would say you didn’t give them a good blow job and accuse you of your low-quality service and rang to your
laolao
[agent] and asked him to bring another boy … I then went back without getting any money, and was scolded.
The sugar daddy type is an older man who temporarily supports a sex worker. Ah Lin (22, gay, senior-middle education, interviewed in Shanghai in 2004) worked for such a man:
I have no job right now. But I have a steady boyfriend, he gives me a flat and 6,000 yuan [approx. US$800] a month to live, he used to be my client. When he comes, he will call me and I can’t see anyone except him.
The “heaven trade” clients are the worker’s fantasy and symbolize a “potential happy future.” They represent something more than just money, a special encounter with the worker. This happens mainly to gay-identified money boys, such as Ah Jin (24, freelancer, university education, gay, interviewed in Beijing in 2004):
Well, that time, I met a guy … he came to Beijing for business, when I opened the door, I said to myself, oh my God, he was so gorgeous, I was instantly attracted to him. I worked very hard that day … ha … the next few days, I was so missing him … I called him out for dinner, I could sense that he also liked me … But … then I asked him why we couldn’t go out … he admitted it [that I am a money boy], that’s why we couldn’t [go out then] … I felt terribly sad and disappointed. I still keep the money that he gave to me, I didn’t use it, just keeping it … oh, it was really hard for me …
In general, apart from the occasional encounter with a bad client, the respondents have good relationships with their clients. It seems they can easily cross the boundary between work and friendship/love and are thus exposed to emotional tragedy and contracting HIV (Kong, 2010).
Work Identity
My respondents viewed their engagements in sex work in various ways. As I argue elsewhere (Kong 2011a, pp. 185-186), some adopted a sexual-victim identity, arguing that they were losers, seduced and cheated by the false love of pimps: “I love him [the pimp] but I also hate him. I hate him because he dragged me into this circle. He made me become an MB [money boy] … my life is ruined” (Ah Jin). Another insisted, “This is not a job, it’s just a tool to make money” (Ah Gang). Still others stressed that it was simply a way to meet “friends” and have fun, downplaying the basic logic of the exchange of their body for material rewards: “You meet a lot of people, from all walks of life, making friends … I never treat it as a job, it’s just an entertainment” (Xiao Bin). Some others treated it as an ordinary job, with gains and losses: “This is just like any other job, plus earning a bit more money. That’s it, really” (Ah Tian). Some viewed themselves as entrepreneurs, treating sex work as a business and a platform from which to reach higher goals: “This is just a springboard for me, it’s not just about earning money. In this job you have a lot of opportunities. If you know how to grasp the chances, you can jump out of the loop” (Xiao Jin).
Most of them tended not to treat sex work as work and did not identify themselves as sex workers. Their weak work identity may be a coping strategy to deal with a highly stigmatized job that takes an intense emotional toll.
2
However, it also undermines the claim that sex work is work at all, and so makes any collective fight for sex worker rights (e.g., legalization or decriminalization of prostitution) difficult. They continue to suffer from all sorts of occupational violence, such as robbery, rape, fraud, and theft by clients, triad members, police, and government officials, with no legitimate channel for protest (Kong, 2012).
3
Money boys remain silent and invisible in labor protests, in contrast with other migrant workers, who do not shy away from making public appeals about mistreatment (O’Brien & Li, 2006). Moreover, while most money boys do not come out to their families and friends due to the stigma, they have a dilemma in the gay community. They cannot hide their money boy identity because gay men are their potential clients, but due to the prevalent anti-money boy atmosphere in the gay community, most choose to keep their distance, carefully choosing friends whom they can come out to. Xiao Hao (35, bisexual, divorced, senior-middle education, freelancer), for example, said to me in 2009 in Shenzhen, “People from society look down upon us … the gay circle is the same … they discriminate against us. They don’t think we are proper. I think people should make their own choice, live their own lifestyles.” Doubly closeted, money boys thus live in a closed circuit of secrecy.
Conclusion
In contrast to the traditional construction of the male prostitute as deviant, the respondents in this study suggest that money boys are average young men who have realized that their bodies are a means of gaining economic rewards and have made a conscious and rational choice to enter this occupation; no forced prostitution was observed. They come from rather conventional and traditional family settings and do not seem to have ever suffered from homelessness or sexual abuse. They usually regard their clients as genuinely nice and friendly, even though they sometimes encounter bad clients. Indeed, most of them are second-generation rural-to-urban migrants who come to the big cities not just for work and for experiencing cosmopolitan life but also to experience sexuality, especially for those who identify themselves as homosexual or tongzhi.
Prostitution provides a way for these rural-to-urban migrants to escape from the path of the average worker and offers material and nonmaterial rewards, such as sexual pleasure, flexibility, freedom, higher self-esteem, and self-improvement. These aims seem to be hard to achieve in other jobs, where the education requirements are low and the remuneration poor. However, prostitution exposes them to a range of risks: job instability, being caught by the police, occupational violence such as robbery, rape, fraud, and theft, and even threats to their life, such as contracting HIV/AIDS.
Labor disputes, strike actions, and protests are becoming more common in China, but the stigmatized nature of sex work means that money boys are not anxious to get organized to try to improve their migrant status, labor benefits, or sexual rights. Urban citizens shun them as rural migrants, provincial, and of “low quality.” They are stigmatized for sexually servicing other men, and are seen as vectors of sexually transmitted diseases and victims of exploitative capitalism. The gay community rejects them for being “bad” homosexuals. Money boys are thus triply discriminated against and live within a complex web of criminalization, stigma, and queer disapproval. The life of money boys reflects a more general picture of many rural-to-urban migrants caught up in China’s pursuit for globalization: they are passionately seeking freedom, happiness, and wealth in the opportunities opened up by China’s quest for modernization and urbanization in the reform era. While they search for independence, control, and empowerment, however, they also face displacement, alienation, and dislocation.
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