Male Sex Work and Society

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MALE
SEX
WORK
AND SOCIETY
HARRINGTON PARK PRESS, LLC

NEW YORK, NY • USA YORK, NORTH YORKSHIRE • UK

 MALE
SEX
WORK
AND SOCIETY

E D I T ED BY

V I C TO R M I N I C H I E L LO AND JOHN SCOTT

Copyright © 2014 by Harrington Park Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, or

transmitted in any form, by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage
retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.

Harrington Park Press

Box #350
511 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10011-8436

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Male sex work and society/edited by Victor Minichiello and John Scott
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 978-1-939594-00-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-939594-01-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-939594-03-7 (electronic book)
1. Male prostitution. 2. Male prostitutes—Social conditions.
I. Minichiello, Victor.
HQ119.M35 2014
306.74’3—dc23
2014008715

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my lifelong partner, Terrence, who has
always supported me.
Victor Minichiello

To Dr. Raymond Donovan, who introduced

me to new ways of thinking, for his integrity
and deep dedication to the craft of teaching.
John Scott
CONTENTS

P REFACE VIII

INTRODUC T I ON XII
Reframing Male Sex Work
John Scott and Victor Minichiello

MALE SEX WORK IN SOCIOHISTORIC CONTEXT

1. Male Sex Work from Ancient Times to the Near Present 2

Mack Friedman

2. Male Sex Work in Modern Times 34

Kerwin Kaye

3. Representations of Male Sex Work in Film 50

Russell Sheaffer

MARKETING OF MALE SEX WORK

4. Advertising Male Sexual Services 82

Allan Tyler

5. Economic Analyses of Male Sex Work 106

Trevon D. Logan

SOCIAL ISSUES AND CULTURES IN MALE SEX WORK

6. Clients of Male Sex Workers 150

John Scott, Denton Callander, and Victor Minichiello

7. Regulation of the Male Sex Industry 178

Thomas Crofts

8. Public Health Policy and Practice with Male Sex Workers 198
David S. Bimbi and Juline A. Koken

9. Mental Health Aspects of Male Sex Work 222

Juline A. Koken and David S. Bimbi
10. Gay Subcultures 240
Christian Grov and Michael D. Smith

11. Health and Wellness Services for Male Sex Workers 260
Mary Laing and Justin Gaffney

MALE SEX WORK IN ITS GLOBAL CONTEXT

12. Male Sex Work in Southern and Eastern Africa 288

Paul Boyce and Gordon Isaacs

13. Male Sex Work in China 314

Travis S. K. Kong

14. Male Sex Work in Post-Soviet Russia 342

Linda M. Niccolai

15. Male Sex Work from Latin American Perspectives 362

Victor Minichiello, Tinashe Dune, Carlos Disogra
and Rodrigo Mariño

16. Migrant Male Sex Workers in Germany 396

Heide Castañeda

17. Male Sex Work in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland 426
Paul J. Maginn and Graham Ellison

CONCLUSION 462
Future Directions in Male Sex Work Research
Victor Minichiello and John Scott

CON TRIBUTOR S 470

GLOSSARY 476

INDEX 490
 P R E FA C E

Every author or volume editor would like to think of his or her work as
timely, and we are no different from every other person who has had
a good idea for a book. However, the idea was not entirely the editors’
own. Back in 2010 we were contacted by an enthusiastic publisher in
New York City about several journal articles we had written on male
sex work. The publisher, Bill Cohen, had cofounded the Haworth Press
in 1978, building it from scratch to carry over 200 academic journals,
including eight in LGBT studies, and several thousand monographs
and textbooks in the behavioral and social sciences, health care, busi-
ness studies, and many other fields. Bill sold the Haworth Press to
Taylor & Francis/Routledge in 2007, but he retained the trademark
to Harrington Park Press, a Haworth imprint, which specialized in
LGBT topics, particularly psychology and health care. After some fur-
ther correspondence with Bill, we agreed to develop this volume, which
we hoped would capture some of the new understandings of male sex
work that have emerged in the 21st century.
Bill had eyed a noticeable gap in a field he knew well, and it is
fair to say that we are fortunate to have a publisher who is as enthusi-
astic about the subject matter as we are. To provide but one example
of his commitment and enthusiasm, a week hardly passed during the
first 12 months of this project when Bill did not forward to us newly
published peer-reviewed journal articles pertaining to male sex work,
as well as several new dissertations. So, while an investigation of the
subject matter is indeed timely, so too were the circumstances that led
to this book’s publication.
Saying something new about male sex work is a challenging task,
as there is only a small handful of scholars researching this topic.
Moreover, as a subject area, researchers tend to dip in and out of male
sex work, thus it often is seen as a sideline in the broader study of sex-
ual health, gender, or sexualities. Providing the sort of comprehensive
coverage of the topic we aspired to was not easy; apart from the paucity
of research to draw from, much of the existing research contained
significant gaps.

VIII PREFACE
 Since emerging as a socially troublesome population during the
19th century, men who trade sex for money or other compensation have
assumed many roles in research and popular culture, most notably, as
psycho-pathological agents, vectors of disease, and, most recently, as
sex workers. This is an exciting time to be researching male sex work-
ers (MSWs), as new understandings of male bodies and masculinity
have emerged in recent years that have allowed us to reassess what we
thought we knew about male sex work.
On another level, advances in telecommunications have trans-
formed the way male sex work has been structured and organized
during much of the modern era. Two immediate effects of this trans-
formation are that male sex work is now part of the global economy, and
that the strict demarcation between public and private space—which
had previously structured the sex work environment—has been erod-
ed. However, just as new communications technologies have expanded
the reach of male sex workers, they also have provided new opportuni-
ties for researchers of this stigmatized activity, making it easier to con-
tact a broad range of MSWs and their clients, as well as to disseminate
their research and make contact with each other.
This book is one example of the opportunities new technologies
provide, as it would have been almost impossible to conceive and as-
semble even 20 years ago: the research that forms the backbone of this
book simply did not yet exist. The research at that time focused largely
on the health of street-based sex workers in Western urban settings.
While the research in this book does not ignore that group, it also ex-
plores the other spaces where men sell sex. Moreover, although this
compilation does not ignore the impact sex work has on the health of
MSWs, the contributors are also more broadly interested in how the
health of these men is impacted by contemporary social, cultural, and
environmental forces.
So where to begin with such a book? From the outset we wanted
this book to be distinct from any other writings on male sex work and
sex work more generally. For one, we thought it curious that much of
the literature on male sex work failed to capture the erotic and physical
nature of its subject matter. There seemed to be a near palpable gulf
between the sex-charged popular cultural representations of male sex
work and the drier academic literature, which in striving for objectivity

MALE SEX WORK AND SOCIETY IX

 often made the male sex work encounter seem sterile and mechanical.
Reading such works, it is difficult to comprehend why anyone would
want to be employed in such an industry, let alone pay money for such
services. And yet the industry was growing, and MSWs were increas-
ingly telling researchers that they had chosen their work and enjoyed
what they did. Furthermore, the clients of sex workers were increas-
ingly being presented in studies as a broad cross-section of the male
population, rather than as the deviant subpopulation that had charac-
terized their presentation in the past. Therefore, we were prompted to
consider the male body as an object of agency, pleasure, and desire.
Thus it was that from the outset we wanted this book to provide
broad coverage of male sex work. We sought to include multiple disci-
plinary perspectives, moving well beyond the public health or sociolog-
ical 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 to-
gether 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 stud-
ies 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 re-
searching this important topic so we can gain—and provide—a better
understanding of masculinities, sexualities, and men’s health, specifi-
cally 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

X PREFACE
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 man-
ager 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 so-
ciety 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 col-
leagues 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

MALE SEX WORK AND SOCIETY XI

 INTRODUCTION

Reframing Male Sex Work

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 het-
erosexual event in which the male client is invisible.* The female sex
worker is ubiquitous in popular culture, appearing frequently in litera-
ture 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 obvi-
ous: 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. Neverthe-
less, male sex work has been present consistently in most societies; in
fact, the number of MSWs at particular historical junctures has been
relatively high.

* We have adopted the term “sex work” throughout this book to describe commercial sexual exchang-
es. We consider the term “prostitute” to be an ideological representation that stigmatizes people
labeled as such. To address this, liberal factions of the feminist movement and sex industry ad-
vocates have sought to counter-construct the prostitute as sex worker, arguing that those involved
in the sex industry are no different from other workers. This industrial or occupational focus
has gained much currency since the 1970s, despite the categorical limitations of the term “sex
worker,” which has become an umbrella concept for a range of behaviors, not all of which would
traditionally be considered prostitution. While we have favored the term “sex worker” in this col-
lection, prostitute/prostitution have been adopted when describing ideological representations of
commercial sexual exchanges or when referring to historical examples. In this respect, we adopt a
constructionist position with regard to the use of terminology.

XII INTRODUCTION
 The lack of research on the male sex industry may indicate some-
thing 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 re-
search 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 approx-
imately 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, com-
mercial sexual contact between men occurred frequently in European
metropolitan centers, such as London (Norton, 1992). As Mack Fried-
man’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 dedi-
cated 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 pub-
lic 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 centu-
ries because it appeared to be a contradictory activity in which het-
erosexual males engaged in homosexual activities. This raised sever-
al 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, under-
standings of male sex work have been linked to popular and official
accounts of sexuality.

MALE SEX WORK AND SOCIETY XIII

 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 tradition-
ally 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 nu-
anced 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 pow-
erful 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 in-
distinguishable 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

XIV INTRODUCTION