Client Power and the Sex Work Transaction: The Influence of Race, Class, and Sex Work Role in the Post-Apartheid Sex Work Industry

Vaughn, Michael

doi:10.1007/s12119-019-09594-7

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In another examination of sex-buyer power, Vaughn (2019) conducted a quantitative analysis of condom use among clients of sex workers to investigate the relationship between the structural power and subsequent behaviour. Vaughn (2019) then describes how systems of power such as race and socioeconomic status influence client-sex worker interactions including how actors perceive the interaction, and summarises that male clients determine their power based on their perceptions of sex-worker power. Monto and Milrod (2019) and Vaughn (2019) examined male clients and not the relative power of female sex workers, in efforts to begin to investigate the multiple power structures which underwrite feelings of power by individual actors.…”

Section: Being In Control: Power and Confidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Vaughn (2019) then describes how systems of power such as race and socioeconomic status influence client-sex worker interactions including how actors perceive the interaction, and summarises that male clients determine their power based on their perceptions of sex-worker power. Monto and Milrod (2019) and Vaughn (2019) examined male clients and not the relative power of female sex workers, in efforts to begin to investigate the multiple power structures which underwrite feelings of power by individual actors. These studies demonstrate that power in commercial sex is not drawn from gender alone, and further, power in commercial sex is not necessarily harmful or destructive.…”

Section: Being In Control: Power and Confidencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Women's experiences buying sex in Australia – Egalitarian powermoves

Caldwell¹,

Wit

2020

Sexualities

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Evidence in this article addresses two popular political and scholarly concepts, female sexuality and sex-worker rights, which limit gender equality. Through description of interviews with 21 diverse women buying sexual services in Australia, and examination using interpretative phenomenological analysis, we introduce new ideas about women's therapeutic and pleasure-based motivations to buy sex and their concerns about their safety, money, laws, and stigma. Interviewees of the study described feeling transformative powers in pleasure as they gained skills and confidence to initiate, negotiate and control sexual activity. The experiences of the women who bought sex in this study directly challenge concepts of female sexual passivity and objectification generally and specifically in commercial sex settings. This article also promotes aspects of the sex industry as beneficial to society and demonstrates that destigmatisation and decriminalisation of the sex industry has potential to reduce harms experienced by sex workers and their clients.

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Section: Being In Control: Power and Confidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Being In Control: Power and Confidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Women's experiences buying sex in Australia – Egalitarian powermoves

Caldwell¹,

Wit

2020

Sexualities

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“…Both studies emphasise different aspects of hegemonic masculinity. Vaughn (2019) show how clients tended to discuss outdoor sex workers as objects one purchases rather than an individual providing services, hence suggesting that clients' perception of their own (structural or interpersonal) power within the sex work transaction may empower clients to enact violence to achieve their desired end. Shumka et al (2017) argue that the purchase of street-level sex is motivated by a sense of failure to successfully align with classed and gendered 1 3 "Hunting on the Streets": Masculine Repertoires Among Israeli… norms of hegemonic masculinity in which the purchase of sex was an attempt to "feel like a man again".…”

Section: Street-based Sex Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Hunting on the Streets”: Masculine Repertoires Among Israeli Clients of Street-Based Sex Work

Lahav-Raz

2019

Sexuality & Culture

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In this article, I discuss the unique masculine repertoire of Israeli clients of streetbased sex work. In doing so, I aim to reveal the deep meaning of sex consumption on the street while reflecting on the way in which universal and local masculine repertoires are negotiated and contested. Based on a discourse analysis of online sexual reports, the article focuses on clients' metaphoric language of themselves as hunters when describing sexual encounters on the street, arguing that the hunting metaphor has become a channel through which a community of "warriors" has been built. The sexual script of the hunter is a mixture of intersecting characteristics from the universal dominant repertoire of hegemonic, heteronormative hyper-masculinity with characteristics from the two Israeli masculine hegemonic repertoires: the combat soldier and the Halutz (pioneer). The sexual script of the hunter thus functions as a platform on which other relations of power, especially between men themselves, are played out and contested.

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“…In some cases, paying for sex is seen as a cost-effective behaviour of rational men, compared to (unpaid) courtship rituals and romantic interactions with women . Some scholars have argued that men's consumerist arguments for purchasing sex ignore sextrafficking, and that treating women who sell sex as a service or product dehumanizes them and entrenches men's powerful position (Cornforth-Camden, 2018;Prior & Peled, 2021;Senent Julián, 2019;Vaughn, 2019). Others have suggested that a neoliberal consumerist discourse is inherent in commercial sex as a social phenomenon, and may thus shape the self-perceptions of men who pay for sex into seeing themselves as legitimate service consumers in ways that are unrelated to any need to dismiss moral accusations (Pettinger, 2011).…”

Section: Understanding Individual Experiences Of Purchasing Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Purchase of Sex: Perceptions, Experiences, and Social Work Practices

Grönvall

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The aim of this study is to explore sex buyers’ perceptions and experiences of purchasing sex, and to study how the purchase of sex is constructed as a social problem in Swedish social work practice. The empirical material consists of interviews with 30 men with experiences of purchasing sex and with ten social workers conducting counselling or outreach work with men who purchase sex. The dissertation is a compilation thesis that consists of four papers, that have been published in international peer-review journals. The first paper focuses on how men who buy sex as one-time visitors navigate between commercialization and intimacy in a national context criminalizing their actions. The paper explores the construction of meaning and intimacy in commercial relationships for Swedish men buying sex, and how these men describe relational practices and strategies used when they purchased sex. The second paper explores the construction of intimacy among men engaged in longterm transactional relationships with women. The paper focuses on the meaning of transactions for intimacy in long-term paid sexual relationships. The third paper explores how men who purchase sex in a context in which their activities are criminalized understand and perceive risk. The paper focuses on individual assessments of risk in relation to experiences of crime, exploitation, and stigma. The fourth paper aims at exploring social workers’ understanding of the purchase of sex as a social problem. The study focuses on social workers’ approaches to the purchase of sex in relation to values, professional practices, and political goals, and how they navigate these aspects in their encounters with individuals who purchase sex. The four papers show how individual experiences are understood, navigated, and conceptualized in relation to social interaction and social norms. The participants in both sub-studies navigate between their own experiences and perceptions, moral values, and social norms in regard to the purchase of sex in Sweden. Both the sex buyers and the social workers conceptualize and make sense of the purchase of sex based on their individual experiences as sex buyers or as social workers meeting sex buyers, but they also relate to normative ideas about the purchase of sex and about ‘sex buyers’.

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Client Power and the Sex Work Transaction: The Influence of Race, Class, and Sex Work Role in the Post-Apartheid Sex Work Industry

Cited by 4 publications

References 19 publications

Women's experiences buying sex in Australia – Egalitarian powermoves

Women's experiences buying sex in Australia – Egalitarian powermoves

“Hunting on the Streets”: Masculine Repertoires Among Israeli Clients of Street-Based Sex Work

The Purchase of Sex: Perceptions, Experiences, and Social Work Practices

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