Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (41 page)

2. Ine Vanwesenbeeck, “Another Decade of Social Scientific Work on Sex Work,”
Annual Review of Sex Research
12 (2001): 242–289.

3. See Chapter 1 in this volume, and Ronald Weitzer, “New Directions in Research on Prostitution,”
Crime, Law, and Social Change
43 (2005): 211–235.

4. Henry Minton,
Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and
Emancipatory Science in America
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002; H. L. Ross, “The ‘Hustler’ in Chicago,”
Journal of Student Research
1 (1959): 13–19.

5. Michael Smith, Christian Grov, and David Seal, “Agency Based Male Sex Work: A Descriptive Focus on Physical, Personal, and Social Space,”

Journal of Men’s Studies
16 (2008): 193–210.

6. Elizabeth Bernstein, “Sex Work for the Middle Classes,”
Sexualities
10

(2007): 473–488.

7. Jude Uy, Jeffrey Parsons, David Bimbi, Juline Koken, and Perry Halkitis,

“Gay and Bisexual Male Escorts Who Advertise on the Internet: Understanding Reasons for and Effects of Involvement in Commercial Sex,”
International Journal of Men’s Health
3 (2004): 11–26; Juline Koken,
Working in the Business of Pleasure: Stigma Resistance and Coping Strategies
Utilized by Independent Female Escorts
, Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2008.

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8. The Classified Project was funded by New Jersey City University, Jeffrey Parsons, PI, David Bimbi, Co-PI. The Lady Classified Project was funded by a pilot grant awarded to the Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training at Hunter College, Juline Koken, PI.

9. For related studies, see Juline Koken, David Bimbi, Jeffrey Parsons, and Perry Halkitis, “The Experience of Stigma in the Lives of Gay and Bisexual Male Internet Escorts,”
Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality
16 (2004): 13–32; Jeffrey Parsons, Juline Koken and David Bimbi, “The Use of the Internet by Gay and Bisexual Male Escorts: Sex Workers as Sex Educators,”
AIDS Care
10 (2004): 1021–1035; Jeffrey Parsons, Juline Koken, and David Bimbi, “Looking Beyond HIV: Eliciting Individual and Community Needs of Male Internet Escorts,”
Journal of Homosexuality
53 (2007): 219–240; Uy, et al., “Gay and Bisexual Male Escorts.”

10. Koken, “Working in the Business of Pleasure.”

11. Kathleen MacQueen, Eleanor McLellan, Kelly Kay, and Bobby Milstein,

“Codebook Development for Team-Based Qualitative Analysis,”
Cultural
Anthropology Methods
10 (1998): 31–36.

12. Janet Lever, David Kanouse, and Sandra Berry, “Racial and Ethnic Segmentation of Female Prostitution in Los Angeles County,”
Journal of
Psychology and Human Sexuality
17 (2005): 107–129.

13. Minton, “Departing from Deviance.”

14. Barbara Heyl, “The Madam as Teacher: The Training of House Prostitutes,”
Social Problems
24 (1977): 545–555.

15. Lisa Jean Moore, “I Was Just Learning the Ropes: Becoming a Practitioner of Safer Sex,”
Applied Behavioral Science Review
5 (1997): 43–60.

16. Heyl, “The Madam as Teacher.”

17. Smith, et al., “Agency-Based Male Sex Work.”

18. Smith, et al., “Agency-Based Male Sex Work.”

19. Quoted in Smith, et al., “Agency-Based Male Sex Work.”

20. Heyl, “The Madam as Teacher.”

21. Smith, et al., “Agency-Based Male Sex Work.”

22. Elizabeth Bernstein,
Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the
Commerce of Sex
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

23. Jan Browne and Victor Minichiello, “The Social and Work Context of Commercial Sex between Men,”
Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Sociology
32 (1996): 86–92; Roberta Perkins and Garry Bennett,
Being a
Prostitute: Prostitute Women and Prostitute Men
, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1997; Koken, et al., “Experience of Stigma.”

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24. Kevicha Echols, “The Price of Being Different,”
Spread Magazine
3

(2007): 30–35.

25. Echols, “The Price of Being Different.”

26. Teela Sanders, “It’s Just Acting: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Capitalizing on Sexuality,”
Gender, Work, and Organization
12 (2005): 319–342.

27. Siobhan Brooks, “Exotic Dancing and Unionizing: The Challenges of Feminist and Antiracist Organizing at the Lusty Lady Theater,” in F.

Winddance and K. Blee, eds.,
Feminism and Antiracism
, New York: New York University Press, 2001; Echols, “The Price of Being Different”; Jill Nagle, ed.,
Whores and Other Feminists
, New York: Routledge, 1997.

28. Patricia Hill Collins, “New Commodities, New Consumers: Selling Blackness in the Global Marketplace,”
Ethnicities
6 (2006): 297–317.

29. Nickie Roberts,
Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society
, London: HarperCollins, 1992.

30. Bimbi, “Male Prostitution”; Koken, et al., “The Experience of Stigma.”

31. Gail Pheterson, “The Category ‘Prostitute’ in Social Scientific Inquiry,”

Journal of Sex Research
27 (1990): 397–407; Bimbi, “Male Prostitution.”

32. Erving Goffman,
Stigma
, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963.

33. Rhoda Unger, “Positive Marginality: Antecedents and Consequences,”

Journal of Adult Development
5 (1998): 163–170; Rhoda Unger, “Outsiders Inside: Positive Marginality and Social Change,”
Journal of Social Issues
56

(2000): 163–179.

34. Edward Morse, Patricia Simon, Howard Osofsky, Paul Balson and H.

Richard Gaumer, “The Male Street Prostitute: A Vector for Transmission of HIV Infection into the Heterosexual World,”
Social Science and Medicine
32 (1991): 531–539.

35. Bimbi, “Male Prostitution.”

36. Parsons, et al., “The Use of the Internet”; Victor Minichiello,

“Commercial Sex between Men: A Prospective Diary-Based Study,”

Journal of Sex Research
37 (2000): 151–161.

37. Michael Smith and David Seal, “Sexual Behavior, Mental Health, Substance Use, and HIV Risk among Agency-Based Male Escorts in a Small U.S. City,”
International Journal of Sexual Health
19 (2007): 27–39; Bimbi, “Male Prostitution”; Moore, “I Was Just Learning the Ropes.”

38. Moore, “I Was Just Learning the Ropes.”

39. Jan Browne and Victor Minichiello, “The Social Meanings behind Male Sex Work,”
British Journal of Sociology
46 (1995): 598–622.

40. Teela Sanders, “The Condom as a Psychological Barrier: Female Sex Workers and Emotional Management,”
Feminism and Psychology
12

(2002): 561–566.

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JULINE KOKEN, DAVID S. BIMBI, AND JEFFREY T. PARSONS

41. Michael Smith and David Seal, “Motivational Influences on the Safer Sex Behavior of Agency-Based Male Sex Workers,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior
37 (2008): 845–853.

42. Smith and Seal, “Sexual Behavior.”

43. Bimbi, “Male Prostitution.”

232

H A P T E

C

R

10

PROSTITUTES’ CUSTOMERS:

MOTIVES AND MISCONCEPTIONS

Martin A. Monto

On February 14, 2008, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, the defendant, received a
call from “Kristen.” Lewis asked Kristen how she thought the appointment
went, and Kristen said that she thought it went very well. Lewis asked Kristen
how much she collected, and Kristen said $4300. Kristen said that she liked
him, and that she did not think he was difficult. . . . Lewis continued that,
from what she had been told, he (believed to be Client 9) “would ask you to
do things that you might not think were safe.” . . . Kristen responded: “I have
a way of dealing with that. . . . I’d be like, ‘Listen dude, you really want the
sex?’”—Excerpt from a federal complaint filed in New York. Client 9 is
former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.1

Until the last decade, efforts to deal with the problems caused by prostitution consisted primarily of arresting prostitutes, sometimes providing them with programs to support their exit from the street. Research on prostitution focused mostly on prostitutes, giving scant attention to the demand side, the customer.2 Feminist organizations, impassioned by their concern about violence against prostitutes, argued that the lack of attention to male customers was both unfair and ineffective. This led to new policies and research in the 1990s that targeted customers. Feminists and other supporters of these new efforts argued that, while prostitutes were often compelled to participate due to dire economic circumstances, fear of violence at the hands of a partner or pimp, or drug addiction, customers were more clearly choosing
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to participate.3 Police began to conduct stings in which female officers posed as decoys to lure and arrest prospective customers. Special diversion programs designed to convince arrested men not to re-offend were started in several cities. And research focusing on customers and their motives led to a wealth of new information about these men.4

The recent prostitution scandal involving New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who had prosecuted prostitution-related crimes while serving as Attorney-General, has drawn renewed attention to customers and their motives. It is undeniably perplexing when public figures like Spitzer, who have so much to lose, risk patronizing prostitutes. Some argue that their power leads to a sense of invulnerability. Others argue that the challenges of public life motivate men to seek a space in which they can drop their public persona and show a different side of themselves.5 Fortunately, recent research has allowed us to move beyond the commonsense explanations and anecdotal accounts that often follow such an incident, and we now have a significant body of research available to assist us in understanding customers and their motives.

This chapter takes advantage of a range of recent studies in order to identify and correct some misconceptions about customers and explore their motives.

There have been a number of insightful qualitative, interview-based studies of customers.6 At least two nationally representative surveys have included questions about prostitution use, the National Health and Social Life Survey and the General Social Survey.7 Internet bulletin boards and websites featuring the opinions and experiences of customers provide a potentially important, although as yet underused, source of information about customers.8 This article also reports original findings based on two samples of arrested customers gathered from men attending “john schools” in 1997–2000 and 2007. Johns schools are intervention programs designed to educate customers in the hopes of discouraging re-offending. Before delving into these findings, a number of misconceptions about customers and prostitution need to be addressed.

MY TH S A B O UT P R O STITUTI O N

There are several popular myths about prostitution and the men who buy sex from prostitutes. I review these myths now.

Prostitution is a Natural Aspect of Masculine Sexual Behavior

There is a widespread, unexamined assumption among some scholars and the general public that prostitution is the “world’s oldest profession” and is
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essentially inevitable, and that buying sex is something that men naturally do as an expression of their sexuality. Path-breaking research by Alfred Kinsey and his associates in the 1940s contributed to a new cultural awareness that there was a great deal of variety in patterns of sexual expression among men and that a surprisingly high number (69%) of America men had visited prostitutes.9 Based on Kinsey’s work and their own impressions, Benjamin and Masters argued that the number was closer to 80%.10 Unfortunately, the original Kinsey research was characterized by a flawed sample that probably led to an overrepresentation of more sexually active men, making such generalizations problematic. However, the assumption persisted that prostitution is something men naturally pursue. More recent efforts to legalize prostitution argue that, since prostitution is inevitable, we should avoid marginalizing prostitutes and regulate the practice instead. Even some activists strongly opposed to legalization seem to assume that men, at least those in patriarchal cultures, are naturally motivated to seek out prostitutes.

There is no sound basis for this assumption. Bullough and Bullough argue that prostitution has not existed in all societies,11 and recent studies using nationally representative samples indicate that most men do not seek out prostitutes. In fact, these studies suggest that the proportion of young men who patronize prostitutes may be declining over time. The 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS) and the more recent General Social Survey both revealed that fewer than one-fifth of men in nationally representative samples had ever had sexual experiences with prostitutes, and fewer than 1% had done so during the previous year. Additionally, the NHSLS data indicated that men coming of age in more recent decades were less likely to have had their first sexual experiences with prostitutes than men from earlier generations.12

Prostitution is Monolithic

Contemporary dialogues about prostitution often do not differentiate between its various manifestations. Feminist perspectives, as described by Davis13 often treat prostitution as either a civil rights issue in which women choose prostitution as a form of sexual expression or economic advancement or as an issue of sexual exploitation in which women are oppressed by men. In any case, there is little emphasis on the dramatic differences in the activities that fall under the heading “prostitution.”14 The term “prostitution” includes the streetside blowjob, the high-priced escort featuring a “girlfriend experience,”