Male Sex Work: Exploring Regulation in England and Wales

Abstract

Whilst sex-work policy in England and Wales claims gender-neutrality, local and national prostitution strategies primarily focus on female street-based sex workers. Men who sell sex are generally absent or inadequately considered in such policies, and measures to regulate commercial sex markets are rarely considered in terms of their impact on male working practice. Drawing on the Coordinated Prostitution Strategy for England and Wales, this paper has two aims: first, to offer a gender-based critique of the current policy framework for England and Wales by arguing that sex-work policy is infused by a gendered understanding of sex work in which male identities are neglected or assumed deviant; and second to explore the notion that understanding sex work as it is performed locally is valuable when generating local and national policy. Informed by gendered readings of policy, social understandings of masculinity, and the (in)visibility of male sexual commerce this paper explores male sex work in the context of Manchester, England.

Drifters, Party Boys and Incumbents: The Life Patterns of Male Street-based Sex Workers

“…Observational techniques have been used to good effect in the past to study marginal and hidden populations, including sex worker populations (Calhoun & Weaver, 1996;Dorais, 2005;Davies & Feldman, 1999;Atkins, 2013;Whowell, 2010 MSWs if they would like to be interviewed for the study and providing they gave verbal consent arrangements were made to conduct the interview at a later date. This usually took place in a nearby coffee shop, a bar in the Village or sometimes in a McDonald's restaurant.…”

“…Certainly there is a long history of research in this area dating back to the Chicago School of sociology in the 1920s and 1930s which noted the ways that deviant behaviour can be shaped by the social and physical environment of the city (Shaw & McKay, 1942;Reckless, 1933) More recently, notions of space and place have been used to good effect by urban geographers and sociologists to explain the role of prostitution in the making of 'urban orders' (Hubbard & Sanders, 2003;Hubbard, 2000) but also to explore the social organisation and ecology of red-light districts (RLDs) (Weitzer, 2014 (Keith & Pile, 1993). Indeed, other studies of male sex work in Manchester have gone some considerable way in highlighting how 'place' -the Villageprovides the environmental backcloth for MSWs to engage in a range of sexual choreographies (see Whowell, 2010 for a discussion). In terms of the dynamics of this spatiality, place and identity are bound to each other and 'are co-produced as people come to identify with where they live, shape it, however modestly and are in turn shaped by their environments, shaping distinctive environmental autobiographies' (Gieseking et al, 2014: 234.…”

“…Historically male street prostitution in Manchester operated from an area referred to by locals and promoted by the city council as the 'Gay Village' (Figure 1) (Atkins, 2013;Atkins & Laing, 2012;Whowell, 2010)). …”

“…Historically the political and policy emphasis on the regulation of female sexuality meant that the boundaries and particular working practices of male sex workers (henceforth MSWs) remained relatively hidden and under-scrutinised (Dennis, 2008;Minichiello & Scott, 2014;Weitzer, 2009;Whowell, 2010). Early research into male prostitution emphasised its psychopathological nature.…”

The impact of different regulatory models on the labour conditions, safety and welfare of indoor-based sex workers

“…Although the language of recent legislative measures has become gender-neutral, male and transgender sex workers continue to be absent from most UK policy measures (Whowell, 2010 (Daalder, 2002). The current article 273f CC 9 criminalizes coercion, (threat of) violence, deceit or abuse of authority with regard to both conditions of recruitment and work.…”