Male Sex Work and the Internet Effect: Time to Re-Evaluate the Criminal Law?
| Author | Chris Ashford |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2009.73.3.573 |
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| Published date | 01 June 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Male Sex Work and the Internet
Effect: Time to Re-evaluate the
Criminal Law?
Chris Ashford*
Abstract The criminal law relating to sex work was last modified in the
Sexual Offences Act 2003. Three years later in January 2006 the UK
government published a ‘prostitution strategy’ that set out four core aims:
challenge the view that street prostitution is inevitable and here to stay;
achieve an overall reduction in street prostitution; improve the safety and
quality of life of communities affected by prostitution, including those
directly involved in street sex markets, and finally, to reduce all forms of
commercial sexual exploitation. This framework prima facie failed to take
into account both the issue of male sex work and also the Internet effect
upon sex work. This article seeks to examine the intersection of techno-
logy and male for male sex work and reviews both the criminal law and
UK policy framework in that context.
Keywords Sex work; Prostitution; Internet; Technology; Cyber-
prostitution
It is common to start any piece relating to sex work or prostitution1by
referring to it as ‘the oldest profession’ or perhaps more controversially
as a ‘crime without victim’2. Yet the debate around prostitution3is all too
often dominated by traditional categorisations of sex work4, be it street-
based, brothel or ‘call girl’. With a few notable exceptions,5the subject of
* Senior Lecturer in Law, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Sunderland;
e-mail chris.ashford@sunderland.ac.uk.
An earlier version of this article was presented to the Joint Annual Meetings of
the Law and Society Association and the Canadian Law and Society Association at
Montreal, Canada in May 2008. The author is grateful to all those present for their
insightful and constructive comments.
1 This article will primarily use the term ‘sex work’ rather than prostitution due to
the connotations attached to prostitution. Nonetheless, the term is being used in
the same legal sense as prostitution as defined within s. 51(2) of the Sexual
Offences Act 2003: ‘“prostitute” means a person (A) who, on at least one occasion
and whether or not compelled to do so, offers or provides sexual services to
another person in return for payment or a promise of payment to A or a third
person’.
2 T. Thomas, Sex Crime: Sex Offending and Society, 2nd edn (Willan Publishing:
Cullompton, 2005) 11.
3 See J. O’Connell Davidson, Prostitution, Power and Freedom (Polity: Cambridge,
1998).
4 On the origins of the term ‘sex work’, see C. Leigh, ‘Inventing Sex Work’ in J.
Nagle (ed.), Whores and Other Feminists (Routledge: New York, 1997).
5 See, e.g., B. B. Chatterjee, ‘Pixels, Pimps and Prostitutes: Human Rights and the
Cyber-Sex Trade’ in M. Klang and A. Murray (eds), Human Rights in the Digital Age
(GlassHouse Press: London, 2005); D. M. Hughes, The Internet and Sex Industries:
Partners in Global Sexual Exploitation’ (2000) 19(1) Technology and Society Magazine
35; and K. Sharp and S. Earle, ‘Cyberpunters and Cyberwhores: Prostitution on the
Internet’ in Y. Jewkes (ed.), Dot.cons: Crime, Deviance and Identity on the Internet
(Willan Publishing: Cullompton, 2003).
258 The Journal of Criminal Law (2009) 73 JCL 258–280
doi:1350/jcla.2009.73.3.573
‘cyber-prostitution’ and the impact of the Internet on sex work and the
criminal law has been under-discussed whilst that literature which has
examined this phenomenon appears dominated by a gendered view of
sex work in which women are cast as ‘victims’ and men as the ‘op-
pressors’. The subject of male sex work in the Internet context and
particularly of same-sex male sex work6remains under-researched. This
article seeks to consider, through an examination of 562 escort profiles
on a well-known same-sex social networking website, the current legal
and political approach to sex work within England and Wales. It will do
so within a pro-sex work feminist framework,7questioning the focus of
current government strategy and seeks to shed some light on the little
examined intersection of same-sex male sex work and the Information
Society.
As recently as December 2007, Harriet Harman, the UK Secretary of
State for Equalities and Minister for Women called for a ‘ban’ on
prostitution during an interview on the BBC’s Today Programme,8asking
listeners: ‘do we think in the 21st century it’s right that women should
be in a sex trade or do we think this is exploitation and it should be
banned?’. She went on to state: ‘We’ve got to stop the demand side or
we’ll never be able to protect girls’. Throughout the interview Harman
continued to construct prostitution as a highly gendered practice with
clear power differentials. The men were cast as the dominant force in an
exploitative male/female relationship.
Henderson has noted that prostitution has become narrowly defined
and the comparatively scant focus on male same-sex prostitution9
within the academic discourse has been attributable to buggery historic-
ally being a capital offence itself.10 When, in the 1950s, the Wolfenden
6 The subject of males who engage in heterosexual or bisexual acts is also under
discussed but there has been some research conducted into this area over the last
40 years. See, e.g., J. Sandford, Prostitutes (Martin Secker & Warburg: London,
1975) 169–79.
7 A term utilised by Vanwesenbeek and followed by Koken et al. See I.
Vanwesenbeek, ‘Another Decade of Social Scientific Work on Sex Work: A Review
of Research 1990–2000’ (2001) 12 Annual Review of Sex Research 242; and A. Koken,
D. S. Bimbi, J. T. Parsons and P. N. Haltkins, ‘The Experience of Stigma in the Lives
of Male Internet Escorts’ (2004) 16(1) Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality 13.
For a theoretical overview of contemporary sex work, see R. Weitzer, ‘New
Directions in Research on Prostitution’ (2005) 43(4/5) Crime, Law & Social Change
211.
8Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 20 December 2007, 07.50.
9 Foucault has noted that in Ancient Greek culture it was the male who may have
prostituted himself who would suffer civic and political disqualification. Such a man
would be debarred from holding any magistracy in the city or abroad, nor could he
serve as a herald or ambassador: M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The
Use of Pleasure (Penguin: London, 1992) 217–18.
10 For a more general historical discussion, see T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in
Eighteenth-Century London (Pearson Education: Harlow, 1999) 3. For a further
historical analysis of these issues, see P. Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in
England 1860–1914 (Routledge: London, 2000); F. Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution:
A Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
1979); L. Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (Routledge:
London, 1990); P.McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (Croom Helm:
London, 1980); and J. R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 1982). For a historical consideration of male
prostitution, see J. Weeks, ‘Inverts, Perverts and Mary-Annes: Male Prostitution
Male Sex Work and the Internet Effect
259
To continue reading
Request your trial