In this chapter, the author explores the experiences of male sex workers in a midsized Canadian city. He critiques the legal and political perspectives that portray prostitution as exploitative, regardless of what sex workers say or feel, re producing gendered stereotypes of masculinity and femininity and naturalizing a certain type of heterosexual behavior. This, the author argues, overlooks how intersectionality shape s autonomy and vulnerability.
Through their stories, the author addresses the structural violence that these men experience. For every hundred girls peddling their wares on street corners, there are a hundred unobtrusive male prostitutes, of all ages, offering their services to both heterosexual and homosexual clients. Students, university graduates—some married, some with other jobs—they are almost invisible, and the police hardly know of their existence.
Taylor , Nevertheless, sex work and the people involved remain misunderstood, marginalized, and devalued. Between to , I conducted ethnographic research with forty-three male sex workers in London, Ontario, Canada.
Through semistructured interviews they shared their life stories while also giving insight into the sex industry in the region. These stories help inform this text.
All names are pseudonyms, and descriptors of occupation, activity, or behavior are self-identified labels. London is a midsized city located two hundred kilometers miles from Toronto and Detroit along the Quebec City—Windsor transportation corridor. With a metropolitan population of close to a half million people, it is the eleventh most populous municipality in Canada Statistics Canada I chose London for study in part because it has served as a historic epicenter of female-centered research and advocacy in Canada since the s and s.
