Female and male escorts in the UK: A Comparative analysis of working practices, stigma and relationships

The majority of sex industry research focuses upon the female seller and the male
consumer. When research strays from this blueprint to include men as sexual service
providers, it tends to be under the pretext of ‘homosexuality’; the client gender remains
stable – male. Furthermore, very little research in this area compares the experiences of
women and men working in the same sector of the sex industry (Weitzer, 2005b). I
therefore seek to address these issues by asking ‘what are the experiences of female and
male escorts (who work heteronormatively)?’ Using narrative research and storytelling,
twenty in-depth interviews with escorts were conducted, from the perspective that sex
work is work.
Analyses are divided into four areas: working practices; the role of power in the
escort-client dyad; ‘stigma’, and lastly, interpersonal relationships. I suggest that the
‘straight’ male escort market occupies a more ‘casual’ position in comparison to the
‘professionalised’ female sector, and this is reflected in the struggles male escorts
encounter trying to secure a steady income stream from escorting alone. I argue that
although women and men discuss similar escorting experiences, women benefit from the
well-established female market (with its associated ‘unwritten rules’ of standard
practice), whereas men are more likely to enact their work in non-standard and sometimes
ambiguous ways. Stigma, when discussed, is most often attached to the female body
(hence the female sex worker), although I mount a more theoretical challenge toward the
academic tendency to assume the presence of stigma in sex workers’ lives. I then position
participants’ experiences within their broader networks of relationships, and offer the
suggestion that attitudes toward sex (not necessarily toward sex work) in society and
interpersonal relationships are instrumental in how escorting is negotiated relationally.
Lastly, I locate my findings within the recent shift toward recognising women as
sexual consumers, set against a political backdrop of potential movement toward the
decriminalisation of sex work in England and Wales.