This article examines the narratives of men who purchase sex from street-level providers in a mid-sized city in Western Canada. These men narrated their purchase of sex as attempts to exercise or lay claim to male power, privilege, and authority; at the same time, research reveals how tenuous this arrangement is for men. Study participants drew on conventional heterosexual masculine scripts to rationalize their actions and behaviors.
We conclude that hegemonic masculinity is not only injurious to some men, but also to the sex workers on whom it is enacted. However, while it is true much less is known about buying than selling sex, there is a growing body of literature that attempts to understand who purchases sex, and for what reasons.
This scholarship has started to address a range of questions concerning the men that purchase sex, including understanding the demographic features of this population, as well as the socioeconomic determinants and psychosocial motivations for purchasing sex. Most of this research has focused on the experiences of men who buy sex in off-street venues, including escort agencies, massage parlors, and through online or print ads. This focus on off-street venues reflects in part the fact that men who purchase street-based sex comprise a hidden and hard-to-access population.
This article addresses this gap by reporting from the results of a qualitative research study that had two purposes: first, to develop and pilot strategies to recruit members of this hard-to-reach population, and second, to use a narrative approach to uncover and map the complex social relations and discourses of men who buy sex from street sex workers. The interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory approach; this approach revealed, first, how hegemonic notions of performative heterosexual masculinity shaped how the respondents themselves understood their motivations to buy sex, and second, the important role that feelings of inadequacy, failure, and vulnerability play in motivating men to purchase sex.
For those respondents that provided complete narratives we did a secondary narrative analysis which takes the story as the object of investigation. We then provide a high-level overview of the findings of the study, including a discussion of recruitment and interview strategies. We then present three of the stories of our respondents, selected as being representative and emblematic of the narratives provided by the men that we interviewed. We conclude with a brief discussion that highlights how masculinity is discursively negotiated in relation to sex work, and street sex work in particular.
