“This Is Me, This Is What I Am, I Am a Man”: The Masculinities of Men Who Pay for Sex with Women

Hammond, Natalie; Hooff, Jenny van

doi:10.1080/00224499.2019.1644485

Cited by 24 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 107 publications

(104 reference statements)

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“…A recent systematic review of the qualitative literature about MWPWS suggests that their diverse experiences are at once gendered, sexual, intimate, consumerist, and related to power relations, and social stigma (Prior & Peled, submitted for publication B). Thus, for example, studies show that SFP enables MWPWS to fulfill their sexual desires (Huysamen, 2019), and boost their sense of masculinity (Hammond & van Hooff, 2019;Lahav-Raz, 2019a). However, other studies have found that MWPWS may also experience a sense of compromised sexual potency and flawed masculinity when paying for sex (Prior & Peled, 2019).…”

Section: The Experiences Of Mwpwsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paying for Sex During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experiences of Israeli Men

Prior

2021

Sex Res Soc Policy

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Introduction This qualitative study explored the experiences of men who pay women for sex (MWPWS) during the COVID-19 pandemic, which poses radical and profound challenges to various aspects of people's intimate, sexual, and financial experiences. Methods The study was based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 10 Israeli MWPWS who regularly visit various prostitution venues. The interviews were conducted between April and July 2020, between the first and the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Israel. ResultsThe findings focus on four major aspects of the participants' experiences: the participants' inability to pay for sex, the difficulties imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic to participants' sex-for-pay experiences, the positive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their sex-for-pay experiences, and the insignificance of COVID-19 pandemic to their sex-for-pay experiences. Conclusions I conclude that COVID-19 pandemic triggers various sexual, emotional, and gendered experiences for MWPWS. Accordingly, MWPWS may reevaluate their engagement in sex-for-pay, and their experiences of it may be reshaped in light of the pandemic. I discuss the findings' contribution to sexuality and masculinity studies, and the methodological possibilities that they raise for qualitative scholars studying social phenomena during the COVID-19 pandemic. Policy Implications The study highlights the significance of developing ad hoc prostitution policy that supports the individuals involved in the sex industry-both MWPWS and the women who are paid for sex-during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, it suggests that prostitution policy should address the diverse experiences of MWPWS, beyond viewing them as merely offenders who should be punished, or re-educated.

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Section: The Experiences Of Mwpwsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paying for Sex During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experiences of Israeli Men

Prior

2021

Sex Res Soc Policy

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“…Birch 2015; Huysamen 2019; Kong 2015Kong , 2016McKeganey and Barnard 1996;Monto 2010). The motivation to purchase (or sell) sex can be understood in terms of push and pull factors and paying for sex involves a complex range of motivations beyond sexual pleasure and relief (Hammond and van Hooff 2020;Sanders 2008b;Vanwesenbeeck 2013). In a study on men who purchase sex, differences were identified between one-time visitors and regulars in the motivations for purchasing sex and in the dynamics of the commercial relationship (Sanders 2008a).…”

Section: The Purchase Of Sex and Intimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sanders, Brents, and Wakefield 2020). Practices such as the purchase of sex, are often associated with unequal power relations (see Hammond and van Hooff 2020), and combining sex and money is commonly considered problematic and morally objectionable (Rubin 1998;SOU 2010, 49). The political and legal approach to commercial sex has been handled differently in different national contexts (Sanders, Brents, and Wakefield 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The construction of intimacy in long-term commercial relationships in Sweden

Grönvall

Holmström

Plantin

2021

Culture, Health & Sexuality

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Previous research on commercial sex has described fluidity between different forms of relationships, whereby commercial sexual relationships can be both long-term and viewed as intimate from the buyer's perspective. This article explores the construction of intimacy in long-term commercial relationships. More specifically, it examines the meaning of transactions in long-term paid sexual relationships in Sweden. Interviews were conducted with 23 Swedish men with experience purchasing sex as 'regulars'. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted. Findings show that the emotional experience is a key focus for these men when they purchase sex. The emotions involved are not delimited in time and space but are experienced both within and outside of the actual sexual encounter. Such emotions can be understood as the very precondition for the experiences of intimacy, while at the same time they create difficulties for the men who purchase sex. Experiences of intimacy are experienced in the ambiguity between unbounded and bounded authenticity and by not drawing a clear line between emotional subjectivity and consumer subjectivity.

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“…A man may start a relationship with a sex worker as a client through a casual encounter intended to meet sexual desires, and then develop a long-term relationship (Hammond and van Hooff 2020). Such relationships are challenging for both the woman and the man, as they attempt to define their relationship differently from that of the woman's encounters with clients (Bhattacharjee et al 2018;Warr and Pyett 1999;Mbonye et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hegemonic masculinity has been implicated in men's pursuit of paid sex (Hammond and van Hooff 2020;Shumka, Strega, and Hallgrimsdottir 2017). When clients become lovers they cannot expect to have a monopoly over sex with a woman, something that may be challenging to dominant forms of masculine identity (Huynh et al 2019;Jewkes et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflicted masculinities: understanding dilemmas and (re)configurations of masculinity among men in long-term relationships with female sex workers, in Kampala, Uganda

Mbonye

Siu

Seeley

2021

Culture, Health & Sexuality

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This ethnographic study explores the experience of men in longterm relationships with sex workers and their construction of masculine identities in Kampala, Uganda. Data were collected in 2019 and comprise in-depth interviews with 13 male partners and two group discussions of women with long-term male partners. Thematic analysis used an intersectional lens to frame reconfigurations of gender and masculinity in the context of relationships with sex workers. All men had been clients of sex workers before progressing to become long-term partners. We discuss the complex ways in which men participated in value systems of respectability and reputation to (re)configure gender relations that made sense of their long-term relationships with sex workers. Men viewed their relationships with women through the normative lens of traditional masculine roles associated with monopoly over a partner's sexuality, provider and father. However, poverty, HIV, the failure to have exclusive sexual rights over a partner, and the shame associated with sex work intersected and disrupted masculinities. Despite this, men found meaning in these relationships through the woman's commitment to the relationship, her financial support, her help in accessing HIV services, and the children from the relationship, thereby attaining respectability and avoiding a crisis of masculinity.

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“This Is Me, This Is What I Am, I Am a Man”: The Masculinities of Men Who Pay for Sex with Women

Cited by 24 publications

References 107 publications

Paying for Sex During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experiences of Israeli Men

Paying for Sex During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experiences of Israeli Men

The construction of intimacy in long-term commercial relationships in Sweden

Conflicted masculinities: understanding dilemmas and (re)configurations of masculinity among men in long-term relationships with female sex workers, in Kampala, Uganda

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