Previous research on client motivations to purchase sexual services in the UK has predominantly focused on the experiences of men. Women who buy sex have largely been overlooked as it is commonly assumed that women provide, rather than purchase, sexual services. In addressing this empirical absence, this article examines data gained from 49 interviews with women clients and sex workers. It examines the reasons why women decide to purchase sexual services in the UK. We argue that the increasing importance of contemporary capitalism and consumerism has shaped women's engagement in the sex industry as clients. We show how women's sexual agency and assertiveness as clients, inverts the female sex worker/male client binary assumed to characterize commercial sex and illustrates the overlap and convergence of male and female sexuality. Our research thus contributes to an understanding of female sexuality more broadly, as exemplifying the hallmarks of ‘transformational sexualities’ in cosmopolitanism (Plummer, 2015).
This article explores the final words of condemned prisoners who were executed in England between 1840 and 1868. Drawing on a sample of just over a hundred accounts of executions from the provincial press, we show how, although the majority of those sentenced to death died penitent, appearing resigned to their fate and offering warnings to others should they risk a similar demise, there was some deviation from this script. In particular, we focus on the role of chaplains in encouraging, if not cajoling, suitable contrition and penitence from the prisoners from the condemned cell to the gallows.
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