Becoming Male Sex Worker, Doing Masculinities. Socio-Sexual Interactions and Gender Production in Men Selling Sex to Men in Italy and Sweden

Abstract

Although masculinity is a powerful concept in both sociology and gender studies, previous research forgot to analyse sex work under this perspective. Even though the actors involved are men, and previous studies have highlighted the importance of masculinity not only in the relation man-to-woman but also in the “gay world”, there is a lack of attention in male sex working. Then, the aim of this paper is to analyse sex work under the perspective of masculinity in order to understand what type of relationships are created between sex workers and their clients and which role it is played by masculinity, how the relation is shaped by it. Moreover, we explain how doing sex work is also a way to do masculinity, a mean through which sex workers can elevate themselves under different perspectives: socially, economically, and culturally. Thanks to a sample of 45 male sex workers interviewed between Italy and Stockholm and that use the internet as a mean to find clients, we show how the job of selling sex to other men cannot avoid the categories of masculinities. This is true for both “heterosexual” and gay escorts. At the same time, we also find “space for resistance”, where some gay sex workers are able to establish relations that go beyond the standard concept of masculinity