Samenvatting

Drawing on original empirical data with men who buy sex, this book takes a fresh look at the relationships clients have with female sex workers. The core questions that form the backbone of the research are not only the expected inquiry into ‘why men buy sex’, but also into the sociological and psychological processes that men encounter in order to enter an assumed ‘deviant’ sexual behaviour as part of their everyday lives.

These sociological processes of finding, negotiating and buying sexual services are complicated by the stigma directed towards men who buy sex. Exactly how do men behave with sex workers; what are their relationships like; what emotions are involved and can intimacy be bought?

Recent online virtual relationships that have established a sex work community, identifies a growing group of men who communicate and create networks through the sex industry. Their experiences of entering a semi-legal activity are influenced by the increasing criminalisation of the ‘kerb-crawler’ and a message from government that buying sex is morally deplorable. Questioning the dichotomy made between commercial and non-commercial relationships, the data suggests that intimacy and commerce are compatible. Managing secrecy, stigma and the consumption of intimacy takes this book into some of the more challenging theoretical areas of masculinity and emotional consumption in contemporary society.

Finally, drawing some parallels from the author’s earlier book Sex Work: A Risky Business, the book offers insights into why engagement in commercial sex is prolific as sexual culture is transformed in late modernity.

Contents:
Preface

1 The genesis of the study
The politics of researching 'punters'
The traditional absence of the male client
Why include men in research on the sex industries?

2 Researching men who buy sex
Locating the population
The empirical study
Recruitment: the procedure
Recruitment: me, men and motivation
Turning a secret story into a public testimony
Emotional labour and the therapeutic interview
The data sources
The participants

3 Client conduct: motivations, markets and morality
Evidence from surveys
Motivations
Trajectories of being a client
Markets, exploitation and morality
Rules, etiquette and benchmarking

4 Buying sex online: virtual regulation
Technology meets the sex markets
Accessibility and intimacy in the virtual arena
Learning to be a 'punter'
Community, identity and friendship
Theorizing Internet usage by male clients

5 Buying intimacy: pleasure, commerce and the self
Intimacy meets the sex markets
Becoming a 'regular' client
Vulnerability and emotional attachment
The contradictions of marriage
Commerce and the 'transformation of intimacy'

6 Against respectability: stigma, secrecy and the self
Human difference and the origin of stigma
Guilt and 'crossing the line'
Managing stigma
The normal deviant

7 Criminalizing the customer: moral messages
Re-emphasis on who is the problem
The policy and political agenda
Kerb-crawler 'rehabilitation' programmes
Male sexuality, 'respectability' and New Labour

8 Moral panic: the 'punter' as danger
Applying the concept of moral panic
Male sexuality as danger
Men who act violently towards sex workers
Consequences of the social reaction
'Risky' male sexuality as a system of social control

9 Shifting sexual cultures, moving masculinities
A changing sexual morality?
The push factors
The pull factors
Take what's on offer, but be damned if you do

Appendix: list of interviewees
Bibliography
Index

Rubriek / NUR

Straf- & strafprocesrecht

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