Male Prostitution Research Articles

The compromised voice: a consideration of typography as a linguistic expression of gay identity in the silent film boy

This paper begins with a brief discussion of interdisciplinary connections between linguistics and typography. It then offers a consideration of how typography used in queer film has been employed to marginalise gay men. In doing so, the article examines recurring typographical profiles in promotional material that reinforce notions of gay men as the other. Within this consideration it locates typographical depictions of the internally discordant, the damaged threat, and the passive-aggressive. In discussing these specific approaches to the typographical depiction of gay men in cinema, the paper traces a development from marginalisation to self-assertion. Set against this discussion, the paper examines how typography designed for the short film boy (Note 1) looked beyond these precedents for inspiration. In doing this, the designer considered themes embedded in the argot of the New Zealand male prostitute. (Note 2) This language form is permeated by themes of detachment and ecclesiasticism. By applying these metaphors to the short film’s visual and typographical design, the director discusses how an alternative, distinctive, and arguably more authentic gay voice was created. The short film boy can be viewed at http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/boy-2004

The Compromised Voice: A Consideration of Typography as A Linguistic Expression of Gay Identity in the Silent Film Boy

This paper begins with a brief discussion of interdisciplinary connections between linguistics and typography. It then offers a consideration of how typography used in queer film has been employed to marginalise gay men. In doing so, the article examines recurring typographical profiles in promotional material that reinforce notions of gay men as the other. Within this consideration it locates typographical depictions of the internally discordant, the damaged threat, and the passive-aggressive. In discussing these specific approaches to the typographical depiction of gay men in cinema, the paper traces a development from marginalisation to self-assertion. Set against this discussion, the paper examines how typography designed for the short film boy (Note 1) looked beyond these precedents for inspiration. In doing this, the designer considered themes embedded in the argot of the New Zealand male prostitute. (Note 2) This language form is permeated by themes of detachment and ecclesiasticism. By applying these metaphors to the short film’s visual and typographical design, the director discusses how an alternative, distinctive, and arguably more authentic gay voice was created. The short film boy can be viewed at http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/boy-2004

An Investigation of the Incidence of Client-Perpetrated Sexual Violence Against Male Sex Workers

ABSTRACT This article discusses exploratory research investigating the incidence and context of client-perpetrated sexual violence against male sex workers. Four different methods (Web-based surveys, tick-box questionnaires, telephone, and face-to-face interviews) were employed in this study of 50 male escorts. The qualitative data were analyzed using an adapted form of grounded theory. It was found that client-perpetrated sexual violence within male sex work appears to be uncommon. However, when sexual violence did occur the cause was a disagreement over barebacking. Escorts’ explanations for the low level of sexual violence within this sector included (1) that gay men were non-confrontational, (2) their clients led clandestine lifestyles avoiding undue attention, and (3) comparatively, female sex workers were perceived to be more vulnerable resulting in the higher level of sexual violence within the female sex work industry.

The Pleasure of Your Company in Late‐Victorian Clubland

Come to the club with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes … —Lord Henry, in Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (111) About his iconic protagonist, Jules Verne need only write, “Phileas Fogg ...

Nocturnal queers: Rent boys’ masculinity in Istanbul

Recently, ‘rent boys’ have become increasingly visible in the queer social spaces of Istanbul. They come from impoverished areas of the city and engage in compensated sex with other men. In this article, I examine how these heterosexually identified rent boys assemble and perform exaggerated masculinity in order to negotiate the tensions between their local socially excluded environments and an burgeoning western-style gay culture while they conduct their ‘risky’ sexual interactions with other men. Exaggerated masculinity repairs and masks the subverting effects of compensated sex for rent boys’ heterosexual subjectivities and makes them closer to the hegemonic ideals of masculinity. Through intense participant observation and 20 recorded interviews with rent boys and their clients, this study demonstrates how rent boys perform an assiduous self-governance through symbols and implicit meanings vis-à-vis different and contradictory class positions, gender identities, and sexual acts.

Personal Characteristics, Sexual Behaviors, and Male Sex Work

Male sex workers serve multiple groups (i.e., gay-identified men, heterosexually-identified men, and their own sexual partners), making them a unique source to test theories of gender, masculinity, and sexuality. To date, most scholarship on this topic has been qualitative. I assembled a dataset from the largest online male sex worker website to conduct the first quantitative analysis of male escorts in the United States. I find the geographic distribution of male sex workers is more strongly correlated with the general population than with the gay male population. In addition, I estimate the value of sexual behaviors and personal characteristics in this market to test sociological theories of gender and masculinity. Consistent with hegemonic masculinity, I find that male escorts who advertise masculine behavior charge higher prices for their services, whereas escorts who advertise less masculine behavior charge significantly less, a differential on the order of 17 percent. Results show that race and sexual behavior interactions exert a strong influence on prices charged by male sex workers, confirming aspects of intersectionality theory.

“This Base Stallion Trade”: He‐whores and Male Sexuality on the Early Modern Stage

Recent scholarship on early modern male sexuality has stressed the threat that sexual relations with women were believed to pose to manhood. Focusing on such plays as Middleton's Your Five Gallants (c. 1608), Fletcher and Massinger's The Custom of The Country (c.1620), and Davenant's The Just Italian (1630), this paper analyzes representations of male prostitutes for women to argue that cultural attitudes toward male sexual performance were more complex and self-contradictory than generally acknowledged. The patriarchal codes that warned against effeminating sexual desire and advocated parsimonious seminal “spending” are undermined by their own inherent corollary: the most masculine man is one who can demonstrate unlimited seminal capacity. Furthermore, it has been posited that the early modern period marked the beginning of a shift from “reproductive” to “performative” constructions of manhood, in which the manhood-affirming aspects of male sexuality gradually became unmoored from their traditional association with bloodlines and attached instead to penetrative sexual conquest. The class implications of this shift inform patriarchal anxieties about the superior sexual stamina of servant-class men and their bodily “service” to elite women. Representing a fantasy of empowering male sexuality that relies on detaching virile performance from effeminating desire—a physiologically absurd notion—and on providing sexual “service” while leaving intact both class and gender hierarchies, a successful he-whore like Middleton's Tailby or Davenant's Sciolto playfully challenges the dictates of patriarchal masculinity by fulfilling them in absurd and unorthodox ways. Ultimately, he illuminates just how untenable those dictates might be.

Safer Sex in the City: The Experience and Management of Street Prostitution

Contents: Foreword Sex and violence: the experience and management of street prostitution, David Canter, Maria Ioannou and Donna Youngs. Section I The Experience of Street Prostitution: The relationship between control strategies employed by street prostitutes and levels and varieties of client violence, Helen Selby and David Canter Prostitute homicide: the influence of prior relationship on perpetrator behaviour, Abigail Holden, Lynsey Gozna and Laura Richards Street prostitute homicide: an overview of the literature and a comparison to sexual and non-sexual female victim homicide, C. Gabrielle Salfati Comparison of single and serial killers of prostitute women, Jonathan A. Dudek, Devon D. Brewer, Christine Maguth Nezu and Arthur M. Nezu The personal safety of male prostitutes, Judith Connell. Section II The Management of Street Prostitution: They get what they deserve: labour rights for sex workers, Marjan Wijers and Marieke van Doorninck From entry to exit a tackling street prostitution, Marianne Hester Making the vulnerable more vulnerable? The contradictions of British street prostitution policy, Phil Hubbard and Jane Scoular To toe the line: streetwalking as contested space, Hendrik Wagenaar and Sietske Altink Violence and the outlaw status of (street) prostitution in Canada, John Lowman Prostitution control in America: rethinking public policy, Ronald Weitzer Index.

Advertising Health Status in Male Sex Workers' Online Ads

This brief report examines whether male sex workers mentioned any health concerns in their online ads. The analysis uses 203 male escorts' online ads collected from America Online chat rooms in 2001/2002. The results indicate that only 25 percent of male escorts explicitly mentioned any health-related words or phases in their ads. The results also show that whether a male escort mentioned health in their ad is correlated with the type of images they would like to portray and with the type of sex services they offer.

From Glass Clique to Tongzhi Nation: Crystal Boys, Identity Formation, and the Politics of Sexual Shame

This article proposes a historically and movement-wise contextualized reading of Pai Hsien-yung's Crystal Boys, known as the first “gay” novel in Taiwan. As the novel was taken up as a signifier in the new tongzhi politics in 1990s Taiwan, the article shows, its legacy as a historical representation of male prostitution culture was left out entirely. Through genealogical investigation, the article argues that tongzhi politics and subjectivity as articulated through Crystal Boys is founded upon the normative exclusion of the gendered prostitute subject and that such a repudiation is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order upheld by Taiwan's state culture. In querying this limiting continuity, this artcile demonstrates in particular that the novel represents a particular “state affect” of gendered sexual shame linked to prostitution, a shame that later came to be displaced by the emerging tongzhi_movement through its political praxis of “coming out.” By tracing the trajectory of identity formation process via the (re)articulation of Crystal Boys, this paper thus highlights the centrality of prostitution in the state production of heteronormativity in Taiwan as it argues for a queer politics that critically engages that normative condition.

Where Does It Hurt?

The junior doctor is back. But this time he’s traded in the stethoscope and white coat for a prescription pad and ripped T shirt. Making the transition from the ward as a first year foundation programme doctor to a drug and rehabilitation outreach officer was no easy move for Dr Max Pemberton, author of the best selling novel Trust Me, I’m a (Junior) Doctor. Max has taken on the streets of London—one rent boy, drug addict, and prostitute at a time. After a stressful year of getting yelled at by consultants and finding no time for sleep let alone time do his laundry, Max has opted to work in the suburbs for a year at the Phoenix Outreach Project in London. Here Max’s role is twofold: …

The Problem with <I>Pornoi</I>: Male Prostitution and the Law in Classical Athens

According to Athenian law, citizens who could be proven to have been prostitutes were barred from public activity, such as speaking in the Assembly or proposing litigation (Andocides, Mysteries 100-101; Demosthenes, Androtion 21-32; Aeschines, Timarchus 21). This punishment, called atimia, was a dishonorable banishment from politics which effectively disenfranchised these men. This paper analyzes accusations of prostitution within the genre of forensic oratory in order to determine the precise nature of the shame attached to male prostitution that rendered it incompatible with active public life. I argue that this shame arises chiefly from the desire for profit shown by the prostitute, and not, as most historians argue, from passive sexual positions. While submission to lust is a crucial factor, it is not submission to the sexual lust of another man, but instead submission to one’s own lust for material wealth. The mercenary greed exhibited by prostitutes was believed to translate into the political realm, making a man susceptible to bribery and corruption. Importantly, other crimes which were also punished with atimia are highly economic in nature: accepting bribes, owing money to the state, or squandering one’s patrimony (Andoc., Myst. 73-75; Aes., Tim. 30; Rainer 1986). Furthermore, each speaker emphasizes the amount of money earned by the accused, be it “not much silver” (Andoc., Myst. 100) or three hundred drachmae (Lysias, Simon 22-24). While the deeds performed are sometimes described as “shameful” (Andoc., Myst. 100), the speakers do not describe these deeds in detail but instead focus on their opponent’s greed and the extravagant uses to which the profits were applied (Dem., Andr. 60-65, 75; Aes., Tim. 42, 75). In all three of the speeches in which the speaker directly accuses his opponent of prostitution, he also insinuates a charge of bribery; this suggests that the main reason for the legislation against male prostitution was the close connection which Athenians made between taking money for a sexual act and accepting a bribe for a political act. Previous historians have usually looked at the evidence for male prostitution in studies of Greek homosexuality, resulting in a focus on sexual acts. Since the publication of Kenneth Dover’s landmark book, Greek Homosexuality (1978), research on male prostitution has worked largely within the paradigm of Dover’s active-passive binary. Michel Foucault refined this concept into a penetrator-penetrated phallocentric binary (1984), which continues to dominate scholarship (Winkler 1990; Keuls 1992; Halperin 2003). Consequently, the current scholarly debates focus on sexual position as the critical factor rendering prostitution dishonorable: anal (Hindley 1991; D. Cohen 2003) or oral (Halperin 1990) intercourse. Edward Cohen works outside the paradigm, focusing on the economic aspects of prostitution (2006), yet he underestimates the highly political nature of the surviving evidence. Recognizing that accusations of male prostitution in Athenian law were more concerned with material lust than sexual positions can help separate the legal aspects of male prostitution from the history of Greek homosexuality and move scholarship beyond the active-passive binary that dominates research on gender and sexuality in ancient Greece. Works Cited Cohen, David. “Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 151-166. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. Cohen, Edward E. “Free and Unfree Sexual Work: An Economic Analysis of Athenian Prostitution.” In Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World, edited by Christopher A. Faraone and Laura K. McClure, 95-124. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Dover, Kenneth. Greek Homosexuality. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Vol. 2. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Originally published as L’Usage des plaisirs, Paris: Gallimard, 1984. Halperin, David. One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: and Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Routledge, 1990. Hindley, Clifford. “Debate: Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens.” Past and Present 133 (Nov. 1991), 167-183. Keuls, Eva C. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Rainer, Johannes Michael. “Zum Problem der Atimie als Verlust der burgerlichen Rechte insbesondere bei mannlichen homosexuallen Prostitutierten.” Revue international des droits de l’antiquite 33 (1986), 89-114. Winkler, John J. The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Transnational Histories of Sexualities in Asia

Your wives who receive a royal salary have recounted vociferously to others that you don't care for your children or them and that you have fallen head over heels in love with your dancers and performers. His Majesty is aware of this and understands that [you] have pref erences like those of the Lord of Peking (Daoguang), who loves the Chinese opera and some times frequents male prostitutes, sometimes female. If His Majesty had forbidden this and admonished you for engaging in these unsavory practices, the matter would have become too scandalous and publicly humiliated the royal family.1

Korea’s Vietnam: Popular Culture, Patriarchy, Intertextuality

As America’s closest foreign ally during the Vietnam War, South Korea sent more than 340,000 troops to active combat in central Vietnam over a period of nearly a decade. Motivations for and the aftereffects of Korea’s military involvement have been analyzed along the dual axes of economics (developmentalism) and politics (anti-communism), but South Korea’s involvement remains a matter of both shame and vainglory in popular memory today. At times reviled as no more than a species of government-authorized male prostitution and at other times celebrated as an example of Korean “toughness” and “ingenuity” on and off the battlefield, Korea’s Vietnam offers a fascinating intertext to the trauma of America’s Vietnam. This paper focuses on constructions of masculinity in representations of the Vietnam War in South Korean popular culture and identifies the latter as a site both of patriarchal alliance between the nation and the family, and of the dissolution of that alliance. Special attention will be paid to gendered revisions of Korea’s Vietnam found in two recent films, R-Point (2004) and Sunny (2008).

Redução de danos: estratégia de cuidado com populações vulneráveis na cidade de Santo André - SP

A Unidade de Redução de Danos (URD) da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde de Santo André, compreendida como instrumento do serviço de saúde em atuação avançada, tem por finalidade transformar a situação de saúde de sujeitos que fazem parte de grupos sociais estigmatizados e, portanto, vulnerabilizados; são indivíduos que circulam ou trabalham nas ruas - usuários de drogas, michês, mulheres profissionais do sexo, homens que fazem sexo com homens, adolescentes em situação de exploração sexual, transexuais, travestis, lésbicas e mulheres que trabalham em casas de programas. Nosso objetivo é assegurar aos indivíduos desses grupos o direito à saúde e, baseados no princípio de Integralidade do SUS, apoiar o acesso a outros direitos sociais. Desde 2002, através do trabalho de campo, foi possibilitada a vinculação de 240 profissionais do sexo, 120 travestis, 10 crianças e adolescentes, 28 usuários de droga injetável e usuários de crack, que até então não tinham acesso aos recursos e dispositivos de saúde do Município.

Laid to Order: Male Escorts Advertising on the Internet

This exploratory study was conducted to gain information on an emerging form of prostitution—online prostitution. Additionally, this study focused on male prostitution, as it is the type less likely to gain attention in prostitution research. This study used 83 websites that advertise male escorts to explore the type of information provided to potential customers. The results indicate that these male escorts provide a variety of information (e.g., prices, services). In addition, some differences were found between sites depending on the potential customer (e.g., male, female). The importance of sex research and implications for future research also are discussed.

Afghan custom prevents access to health services

The shortage of female health professionals in Afghanistan and its custom of only allowing women to go out when accompanied by a male escort means women are having difficulties accessing midwifery services.

Associations with multiple male groups increase the energy expenditure of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) female and calf pairs on the breeding grounds

AbstractIn mammalian mating systems, where operational sex ratios are male skewed and males must compete for access to females, increased levels of male attention may amount to harassment of females and their offspring. To evaluate how male associations affect the behaviour of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) female and calf pairs in breeding regions, we compiled time budgets and monitored calf breathing regimes for females with calves in a range of associations, with (N = 71) and without (N = 19) males, in Hawaiian waters. We found that, while associations with a single male did not significantly change the behaviour of female–calf pairs, associations with multiple males led to increases in the time spent traveling (median increase 35%; p < 0.001) and decreases in time spent at rest (median decrease 29%; p < 0.001). Additionally, calves spent less time at the surface (median decrease from 10% to 0; p < 0.001) and the frequency of intermittent breaths between dives increased (median increase from 16 to 22%; p = 0.006). We show that these behavioural changes would require increased energy expenditure, which could impact calf fitness, and we speculate that the association between a female–calf pair and single male escort comprises a female counterstrategy that offsets male harassment, consistent with Mesnick's (1997) bodyguard hypothesis.

Selling Gender: An Alternative View of ‘Prostitution’ in Three French Novels of the entre-deux-guerres

‘Prostitution’, in literary texts, is often (re)presented as a domain of particularly extreme—and at the same time, particularly transparent—mises en scene of sexuality, but also of gender identities: the literary approach to prostitution constitutes a privileged object for the analysis of gender ‹masquerades’. ‘Prostitution’—usually equated with female prostitution, the traditional discourse on prostitution not providing any conceptual frames for phenomena of male prostitution—is often seen as a consolidation of the female status of an object of male desire and/or/as male violence. But prostitution—at least, in some rather privileged forms—and its literary (re)presentations may also display a considerable potential of gender subversion, radically de-naturalizing the ‘professional’ gender identity of the prostitute, finally involving also gender identities that are ‹not for sale’, dragging them into a symbolic economy of exchangeability. This paper discusses these questions on the example of three French novels of the Interwar period: Colette’s Cheri (1920), La Fin de Cheri (1926), and Irene Nemirovsky’s David Golder (1929). Prostitution, in these texts, does not lead to the consolidation of traditionally gendered power structures; it rather seems to encourage their dissolution, de-essentializing gender identities, breaking up binary oppositions as ‹femininity’ and ‹masculinity’, ‹homosexuality’ and ‹heterosexuality’.

Sexual Behavior, Mental Health, Substance Use, and HIV Risk Among Agency-Based Male Escorts in a Small U.S. City

Relatively little research has examined the personal sex lives of indoor male sex workers (MSWs) or possible connections in this group between sexual behavior and factors related to HIV risk. As part of a larger project, this study collected data from 30 agency-based indoor MSWs (mean = 22.4 years) about their sexual behavior, mental health, and substance use. Few HIV risk behaviors with clients occurred. Drug use and mental health problems were relatively frequent, but not related to increased risk behavior. Instead, MSWs appeared to employ rational decision-making and harm-reduction strategies. Conceptualization of MSW sexual behavior may be required where HIV risk is not attributed to sex work per se, but to other influences such as economic and relational factors.