Pruitt, M. V. (2005). Online boys: Male-for-male Internet escorts.
Sociological Focus, 38
, 189-203.
Quinlan, M., Wyse, D., & O’Connor, A.-M. (1997).
Men in prostitution
. Dublin: Gay Men’s Health Project and Eastern Health Board. Retrieved from
http://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/5268/
Royle, S. A. (1984). Constraints upon the location of a retail noxious facility: The case of the sex shop.
Area, 16
(1), 49-53.
Sanders, T. (2005).
Sex work: A risky business
. Cullompton, England: Willan.
Smyth, L. (2006). The cultural politics of sexuality and reproduction in Northern Ireland.
Sociology, 40
, 663-680.
Uy, J. M., Parsons, J. T., Bimbi, D. S., Koken, J. A. & Halkitis, P. N. (2004). Gay and bisexual male escorts who advertise on the Internet: Understanding reasons for and effects of involvement in commercial sex.
International Journal of Men’s Health, 3
(1), 11-26.
Ward. E. (2010). Prostitution and the Irish state: From prohibitionism to a globlised sex trade.
Irish Political Studies, 25
(1), 47-65.
Weitzer, R. (2005). New directions in research on prostitution
Crime, Law & Social Change, 43
, 211-235.
Weitzer, R. (2007). Prostitution: Facts and fictions.
Contexts, 6
(4), 28-33
Weitzer, R. (2010). Sex work: Paradigms and policies. In R. Weitzer (Ed.),
Sex for sale: Prostitution, pornography and the sex industry
. New York: Routledge.
Weitzer, R. (2011a). Male prostitution. In C. Bryant (Ed.),
Handbook of deviant behaviour
. New York: Routledge.
Weitzer, R. (2011b). Pornography’s effects: The need for solid evidence.
Violence Against Women, 17
, 666-675.
Whowell, M. (2010). Male sex work: Exploring regulation in England and Wales.
Journal of Law and Society, 37
(1), 125-144.
Wylie, G., & Ward, E. (2012). Submission to Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality on review of legislation on prostitution. In Houses of the Oireachtas (2013b),
Witness list: Joint Committee Public Hearings in Relation to the Review of Legislation on Prostitution
. Dublin: Houses of the Oireachtas.
Endnotes
1
This is the Irish Parliament.
3
The term “Celtic Tiger” refers to the rapid and aggressive economic growth Ireland experienced from the 1990s until the global financial crisis in 2008.
6
See Houses of the Oireachtas (2013b) for list and copies of submissions.
7
This project, funded by the British Academy (May 2013-May 2014), examines the policing and regulation of prostitution in four cities including Belfast, Manchester, Berlin, and Prague.
8
Interview with Belfast Health and Social Care Trust outreach worker conducted August 2013.
9
Outreach organizations such as Subway in Berlin (
http://www.subway-berlin.de
) and Projekt Šance in Prague provide services to mainly Romanian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian street-based male sex workers in these cities.
10
The data we use here were provided by E Designers Ltd., the parent company that owns and manages the
Escort-Ireland.com
website. We requested anonymized data on escorts from
Escort-Ireland.com
when we were contacted by them following publication of an opinion piece we wrote, in which we argued that criminalization of sex work was likely to do more harm than good to sex workers (Maginn & Ellison, 2013). We were subsequently supplied with de-identified raw data on the profiles of escorts, including gender, sexuality, date of birth, nationality, sexual preferences (male escorts only), and sign-ups (2009-2012). These raw data were “scraped” from the profiles of escort advertisements on
Escort-Ireland.com
by the web administrator from E Designers Ltd. and supplied to us in a series of Excel spreadsheets for male, female, transsexual, and transvestite escorts.
11
For example, in a recent UglyMugs.ie survey (2013), the largest specified age group for entry into sex work among Ireland-based escorts was 18-24. The study reports that “none of the participants reported entering sex work aged under 16 years old” (p. 2).
12
Romanian and Bulgarian citizens previously had to have a work permit in order to obtain employment in the ROI and were subject to a labor market needs test.
Victor Minichiello and John Scott
The aim of this book has been to open and clarify a new, conceptually broader perspective on the male sex industry. We hope that the chapters you have read will help put to rest some outdated and negative perceptions of male sex workers (MSWs) and their clients—that is, that both and each are morally deficient, deviant individuals. These dated perceptions would have us believe that transactional (for pay) male sexual acts are mediated by a power struggle and always involve an act of repression. Such a conclusion is simply not supported by the findings of social scientists and other informed observers working in this arena.
We also hope to have demonstrated that transactional sexual acts between men cannot be analyzed as isolated events. Rather, in analyzing them one must also consider the wider social and cultural umbrella under which the male sex industry is now based, including technological advances.
The postmodern view presented in this book is that sexual pleasure involves intensely personal erotic acts and interactions. We have drawn from insights into the broad range of sexualities (varieties of sexual roles and perceptions of these roles) offered by the work of philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault (1926-1984) of the Collège de France, and of interactionist sociologists such as Erving Goffman (1922-1982) of the University of Pennsylvania and Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) of the University of Chicago.
1
These chapters have offered a well-rounded understanding of how male sex work unfolds and evolves in the everyday lives of MSWs and their clients, and how we can conceptualize transactional sexual intimacy between men more realistically and sympathetically. Walby’s (2012) research highlights the fact that interactions between MSWs and their clients involve not just sex and an economic transaction but also a human exchange. This can include camaraderie and, indeed, authentic, albeit mostly temporary, companionship.
We must not forget the powerful social and economic forces that shape how commercial male-to-male sex is viewed. Our knowledge about the male sex worker has been constructed over a historical arch and has changed from era to era. The broader conceptualization of sexualities and gender in current studies of male sex work has provided new insights into how men negotiate or parlay their sexuality in terms of what is sexually possible or “on the menu” when they engage the services of MSWs, or what the immediate chemistry permits, as opposed to what is legitimate or not in the public domain.
Researchers who painstakingly examine the sale of the male body as a commercial transaction have offered enormously useful insights into introspective concepts that have an impact on our lives, such as the role of masculinity, sexualities, and individual agency. They also have examined the impact of gender, age, race, and sexual orientation on the sexual choices and careers of MSWs. The structure and organization of male sex work have indeed undergone significant changes, which in the world of research has been accompanied by ever-changing cultural discourses and academic theorization.
This volume also has outlined specific research opportunities and social concepts that might be considered by new and future scholars working in the field of male sex work. Particularly urgentis an understanding of the critical roles played by race and ageism, and much more work also must be done empirically and conceptually within the public policy, legal, and public health spheres.
The role of race in the context of this volume is highly problematic. Race is commonly considered by social scientists to be a socially constructed identity, the meaning of which is highly variable according to place and time. In general terms, race is the categorization of people based on physical characteristics, the most prominent of which is skin color. Because race is associated with social stereotypes, it can act as an important marker of sex roles and sexual performance. Cultural norms and values play an important role in determining what men find attractive and what they do not (Wilson et al., 2009). We have seen that some sex workers regularly promote their services with specific reference to their race and sex role identity (Han, 2006; Logan, 2010). For example, black MSWs have been shown to be less likely to self-identify as gay (i.e., they indicate that they are “gay for pay”). They also are more likely to engage in higher-risk sexual behaviors and less likely to disclose their status as MSWs (Solorio, Swendenman, & Rotheram-Borus, 2003).
In the African American community, homosexuality is often perceived as a sinful, unnatural weakness, and often is an embarrassing or taboo subject that clashes with racial and gender role expectations, masculinity, and community norms relating to sexuality. This can lead African American men to avoid using condoms because “safe sex” may be perceived as a threat to their masculine prowess or viewed an admission of having a sexually transmitted infection. In a study in which we examined the safe-sex practices of 1,236 escorts from a male sex worker website, we found a significant association between race and safe-sex practices. Black male sex workers were more likely than other MSWs to be ambiguous about their desire to engage in unsafe sex. However, the study found that, statistically speaking, when escorts mentioning that they would have unsafe sex was combined with an analysis of escorts making ambiguous sex intentions (e.g., indicating to clients that anything is sexually possible) in their descriptive website profile, the odds of black male sex workers reporting the intention to consider unsafe sex increased significantly more than the other groups. (Minichiello, Scott, & Saifur, 2012). Other questions to explore that have important public health implications include whether male clients have a racial preference when choosing a sex worker, and whether race has an impact on expectations around safer sex.
There also is a pressing need for research that examines how age influences the interactions between MSWs and their clients. For example, the impact of ageing and ageism in the male sex industry needs to come under the microscope. Studies of the ageing process of both escorts and their clients could provide useful insights, for example, into the sexual performance expected from older MSWs. From a gerontological perspective, the notion that the older male sex worker can be considered less attractive or inviting and possibly have a flaccid penis can lead to sex work that involves mainly desexualized touching, or cuddling. These would be interesting concepts for future study. It also would be fascinating to explore whether older clients who have less toned or otherwise less appealing bodies perceive themselves to be sexually inferior. Would they therefore be more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors with MSWs? What would this say about men and their bodies? Ageism, culture, race, and masculinity are not only socially constructed from an academic point of view, they are concepts that have real-life consequences and the potential to create risky health situations for both MSWs and their clients. These are questions that merit future public health studies and funding as our population ages.