This article draws on fourteen in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with men who hire female escorts to examine the role of intimacy in their interactions with sex workers. Using the concept of social scripting, we examine the cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic meanings that shape the commodified sexual interaction. Focusing on the clients' intrapsychic scripts, we argue that previous typologies of client behavior ignore the role of intimacy and the meaning that individuals ascribe to their own experiences and actions. We suggest a typology of clients that goes beyond previous classifications of “regular” and “non‐regular”—the latter referred to as a “hummingbird” client from the perspective of one sex worker. Our four‐part typology of committed regulars, hybrids, searchers, and industry insiders takes into account the role of intimacy along with the client's perception of frequency and motive, even in seemingly casual sexual encounters. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/IK_UiGzWT_E.
Rope bondage is a social world positioned underneath the broader umbrella of pansexual BDSM subculture. When rope bondage is depicted and explored in research and media, it is often represented as just one among many expressions of kink and sexuality. This chapter utilizes interviews with rope bondage practitioners to illustrate how people’s experiences of rope can often exceed this simplistic framing and be an intensely social and personal experience; it can also be an activity around which kinksters build focused, distinct communities and subcultures across the globe. Next, this chapter demonstrates how racialized and disabled rope bondage practitioners’ experiences ideologically and literally shape the nature of the subculture; their accounts of oppression, alienation, and resistance provide a narrative that is critical to understanding these spaces. Last, this chapter will highlight stories of pleasure to help explain the drive behind people’s engagement with and commitment to rope bondage community.
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