REGULATORY DISCOURSES AND THE HISTORIC CONFLATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY AND MALE SEX WORK

While scholarship indicates that male sex work is likely as historically entrenched as female sex work (West & DeVilliers, 1993), sex work has generally been conceived in the sociological imagination in relation to heterosexual norms, with women as the providers of the sex acts and males as the consumers or organizers of the sexual exchange. Reviewing existing literature, this paper explores the myriad discourses that have served to regulate male sex work, categorizing modes of regulation through a discursive lens. Although male sex workers were historically exempt from the formalities of the criminal justice system and regulatory techniques such as mandatory medical examinations and licensing, the prohibition of homosexuality constituted a symbolic act that discursively constructed and reinforced notions that male sex workers were sexually deviant, pathological and contributed to the spread of HIV.