Paying For Sex In A Digital Age

Providing one of the first comprehensive, cross-cultural examinations of the dynamic market for sexual services, this book presents an evidence-based look at the multiple factors related to purchasing patterns and demand among clients who have used the internet. The data is drawn from two large surveys of sex workers’ clients in the US and UK. The book presents descriptive baseline data on client engagement with online platforms, demographics and patterns of frequency in different markets, information on smaller niche markets and client reactions to exploitation, safety and changes in the law. The book makes clear that a variety of situational as well as individual factors affect the willingness and ability to purchase sexual services. The view that emerges shatters the stereotypes and generalistions on which much policy is based and demonstrates the complexities surrounding who pays for sex and the contours of sexual consumption in consumer culture.

This book explores the lives of male sex workers living in Dublin, Ireland. It focuses on the stories of young Brazilian and Venezuelan migrants who use their micro-celebrity on social media to construct a brand that can be converted into financial advantage within the sex industry. The book focuses on two sites: Grindr, which these men use to build a transient pop-up escort profile that is linked to Instagram, which in turn provides followers with access to a curated digital identity built around consumption. Ryan explores how the muscular body acts as a form of physical and erotic capital providing the raw material of these digital identities as they are broadcast on new online subscription platforms like OnlyFans. Male Sex Work in the Digital Age offers fascinating insights into the role social media plays in (re)creating a new and more flexible understanding of commercial sex. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, gender studies, sexuality studies, LGBTQ studies, media studies and law, will find this book of interest.

This candid book reveals the enormity of the commercial sex-for-sale industry in the modern era. For those without direct experience with the seamy, real-life world of prostitution, it can be easy to accept the glamorized depictions of the sex-for-sale industry as it is often portrayed in fiction and Hollywood or sensationalized in the media. In reality, the business of sexual exploitation such as prostitution, sex trafficking, pornography, and sex tourism is far from attractive. This latest book from literary criminologist R. Barri Flowers updates the subject of prostitution for the 21st century, explaining why the commercial sex trade industry continues to flourish and exploring its proliferation in the digital world of the Internet, cell phones, and text messaging. The grim ramifications of prostitution—such as victimization, substance abuse, HIV, arrest, or even death—are addressed. Careful attention has also been paid to the various individuals involved: those who are prostituted (female and male), customers, pimps, traffickers, and other players in the sex trade.

Shifts in societal development resulting from economic and technological advancements have had an impact upon the development of human sexuality and behaviour, and with the expansion of developments such as the Internet and associated technologies, it is likely that further societal shifts will ensue. This book recognises the importance of new digital spaces for discourses surrounding sexuality, examining issues such as pornography; sex education and health; LGBTQ sexualities; polysexuality or polyamory; abstention; sexual abuse and violence; erotic online literature; sex therapy; teledildonics; sex and gaming; online dating; celebrity porn; young people and sexual media; and sexting and sextainment, all of which are prominently affected by the use of digital media. With case studies drawn from the US, the UK and Europe, Sex in the Digital Age engages in discussion about the changing acceptance of sex in the 21st century and part played in that by digital media, and considers the future of sex and sexuality in an increasingly digital age. It will therefore appear to scholars across the social sciences with interests in gender and sexuality, new technologies and media and cultural studies.

This book is a timely and innovative exploration of the vital relationship between sex and capitalism in the digital age. It provides a lively, provocative analysis of how specifically digital forms of capitalist accumulation and labour shape and discipline the contemporary sexual body. Rebecca Saunders focuses on pornography in order to investigate the impact of digital forms of capitalism on contemporary sexuality and reveals the centrality of pornography to the digital attention economy, affective economics, the information economy, the creative industries and neoliberalism. Saunders uncovers a fundamental shift in the aesthetics and meaning of pornographic film, from a genre concerned with representing sexual pleasure to one that has become focused on representing sex as labour. Contemporary pornographic film is therefore read as a sign and symptom of how digital forms of capitalism regulate the twenty-first century sexual body through digital interfaces and technologies. Bodies of Work analyses major porn studios, dominant streaming platforms, significant directors and performers and queer and alternative pornographies, and presents new and significant concepts such as sexual datafication, the labour of visibility and interventionist pornography. Discussing pornographic film, sexuality, digital culture, labour and capitalism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across gender studies, media and cultural studies, digital humanities and economics.

Israeli Masculinity, Sex Work, and Consumerism: Heteronormativity and Sexual Repertoires explores the inner world of Israeli sex work consumers and their use of digital technologies on which intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging create a localized form of homosociality and brotherhood. The first of its kind to offer an in-depth analysis of masculine sexual repertoires in the field of sex consumption, this book uses extensive data and observations of online ethnography among a community of Israeli sex consumers operating online. It elucidates the economics of demand in the field of sexual consumption, and highlights how the rise of the thriving online communities of sex consumers can function as a platform on which power relations between men themselves are publicly displayed and are constantly challenged. Israeli Masculinity, Sex Work, and Consumerism: Heteronormativity and Sexual Repertoires will be suitable for researchers in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology.

Panoramic and provocative in its scope, this handbook is the definitive guide to contemporary issues associated with male sex work and a must read for those who study masculinities, male sexuality, sexual health, and sexual cultures. This groundbreaking volume will have a powerful impact on our understanding of this challenging, elusive subject. While the internet has brought the previously hidden worlds of male sex work more starkly into public view, academic research has often remained locked into descriptions of male sex workers and their clients as perverse. Drawing from a variety of regions, the chapters provide insights into the historical, popular cultural, social, and economic aspects of sex work, as well as demographic patterns, health outcomes, and policy issues. This approach shifts thought on male sex work from a hidden "social problem" to a publicly acknowledged "social phenomenon." The book challenges myths and reconceptualizes male sex work as a discrete field. Importantly, it provides a vehicle for the voices of male sex workers and new and established scholars. This richly detailed, humane, and innovative collection retrieves male sex work from silence and invisibility on the one hand and its association with scandal and stigma on the other. The findings within have profound implications for how governments approach public health and regulation of the sex industry and for how society can make sense of the complexities of human sexualities. A compelling scholarly read and a major contribution to a commercial sector that is often neglected in policy debates on sex work, this handbook will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, and cultural studies and all those interested in male sex work.

Technology has significantly changed our world. Sexual imagery and encounters can now be accessed anywhere, anytime, using portable electronic devices. Users can generate a stream of graphic pornography, a wide variety of virtual sexual activities, and casual, anonymous, or paid-for sexual encounters with a click or a tap. We now have greater access to highly stimulating sexual content and potential sexual partners with much less built-in accountability. Porn addicts are especially vulnerable to the lure of digital technology and the seemingly endless array of stimulation it provides. Research suggests that cyber-porn addicts spend at least eleven or twelve hours per week online viewing porn. Today, all forms of sex addiction are technology driven—from porn websites to webcams to casual sex hook-up apps via smartphones. Sex addicts organize their lives around the pursuit of sexual activity with self or others, spending inordinate amounts of time viewing and masturbating to porn or planning, pursuing, and engaging in sex acts. At the same time, they neglect important relationships, work, and personal responsibilities. Overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse invade when the acting out ends. While it's complicated, recovery is possible. Always Turned On shows readers how to turn those temptations off while providing practical long-term solutions for recovery.