“It’s also a kind of adrenalin competition” – selected aspects of the sex trade as viewed by clients

Abstract

The main goal of the article is to describe selected aspects of the sex trade as viewed by clients who make use of the services provided by sex workers. We use data obtained through a content analysis of selected topics discussed on an erotic forum called Nornik.net. The topics were: Can a person stop “screwing”?; what was your first contact with the sex trade and how can a person hide their visits to sex workers? In the course of the analysis, we identified an additional category that featured in all the topics: “trophy collecting”. The discussants perceive sex workers as a commodity to be purchased and subsequently evaluated. The discussants tended to compete among themselves to visit the most sex workers or to be first to visit the latest sex worker. The discussion forum serves as a support centre and contains hints and tips on different areas of “screwing” and related issues. The forum also displays certain features of a community.

Policing Commercial Sex in 1970s France: Regulating the Racialized Sexual Order

“…Critical race researchers on policing have argued that policing practices constitute a form of ‘internal colonialism’ to the extent that they involve the exertion of power over racialized populations with the aim of control (Gutiérrez, 2004). With particular relevance to France, they have argued that the police treat North African migrants as internal enemies, employing colonial techniques of policing that outlived independence (Rigouste, 2014; Prakash, 2013). Especially during the Algerian war, the French police in the metropole employed extensive violence and torture against Algerians (House, 2004; House and MacMaster, 2006).…”

“…This scholarship, however, does not sufficiently explore the intersectional identities of those buying sex and the impact of these characteristics on regulation. Some work does look at sex buyers, but it focuses on their experiences and/or their objectification of people selling sex rather than on a critical race perspective on the law (Coy et al, 2019;Coy, 2008;Ondrášek et al, 2018). However, this article contributes to this area of research by specifically exploring how law enforcement has targeted sex buyers through regulation of the social order.…”

The Dark Tetrad and Male Clients of Female Sex Work

“…Across samples of arrested offenders and non-offenders from different cultures, a very consistent set of reasons regarding why men purchase sex from women have been identified (McKeganey, 1994;Xantidis and McCabe, 2000;Vanwesenbeeck, 2001;Cotton et al, 2002;Månsson, 2004Månsson, , 2006Pitts et al, 2004;Lowman and Atchison, 2006;Monto, 2010;Monto, 2012, 2017;Farley et al, 2017;Ondrášek et al, 2018). However, caution should be exercised when trying to extrapolate findings from offenders to non-arrested male clients of sex work because these individual differ in important ways (e.g., in terms of demographic characteristics; Monto and McRee, 2005;Monto and Milrod, 2014), which may affect the degree to which they express certain motives for buying sex.…”

“…Prostitution has been practiced across a myriad of different cultures since ancient times in sex-specific ways, whereby men have tended to be the primary consumers of sex work services offered by women and men ( Dylewski and Prokop, 2019 ). Estimates of the percentage of men who purchase sex cross-culturally vary widely from 9 to 80% (discussed in Farley et al, 2011 ); however, several investigators have cautioned that previous estimates are likely inflated due to methodological issues (e.g., sampling bias), and that a more conservative estimate below 20% likely typifies men who have ever paid for sex ( Månsson, 2004 ; Pan et al, 2011 ; Jewkes et al, 2012 ; Monto and Milrod, 2014 ; Ondrášek et al, 2018 ).…”