By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. Given the proliferation of forms of commercial sex, the scarcity of researchexcept on 'prostitution'is remarkable. The focus is usually on personal motivations, the morality of the buying-and-selling relationship, stigma, violence and disease prevention.
Questions of desire and love are usually sidelined; relationships are rarely contextualised culturally or conceived as complex; concrete sexual issues are hardly dealt with. Commercial sex is usually Natalie Hammond PhD Thesis Commercial sex is an everyday occurrence across a range of contexts in South Africa.
In this paper we turn our attention to the often-marginalised role of the buyers of sex by drawing on narrative interviews with male clients of female sex workers recruited through online advertisements in order to explore the ways in which heterosexual men construct, negotiate and perform their masculinity and sexuality through talking about their experiences of paying for sex.
We highlight parallels between men's narratives of paying for sex and dominant discourses of gender and heterosexuality. We show how men draw on heteronormative sexual scripts in constructing and making sense of paid sexual encounters and how men are simultaneously able to construct and enact a particular idealised version of masculinity and male sexuality through their talk on paying for sex.
Finally, we discuss how online resources could be used more extensively in future research with the male clients of sex workers. A qualitative approach was used to explore the social and work contexts of the commercial sexual encounter between male sex workers and their clients. This study seeks to record and document the voices, experiences and representations of men who sell sex to men in London through advertising in queer media.
