Prostitute Typology
July 30, 2008
I recently finished as book called Rent Boys, by French researcher and sociologist Michel Dorais. The book is a summary of his analysis of male sex workers and how they relate to their work. His findings are interesting to me because this was the first material of any depth I’ve read on the subject of male sex workers – almost all research on prostitution involves females, as you might expect. I was looking forward to reading the book primarily so I could relate the male experience to that of females in the trade. I’ve read a plethora of material on female prostitution, and conducted my own limited research on the subject, but with the possible exception of a brief discussion or two in a class, the subject of male prostitution was hardly referenced to any serious degree in my academic studies up to this point (other than to mention the dearth of research! lol).
One of the first things that caught my attention was a taxonomy Dorais developed to classify the male prostitutes he studied. He defined four types, and described them thusly (note that the descriptions are my paraphrasing/summary of the author’s work, not his original words, generally speaking):
Outcasts is the term assigned to those who are turning tricks to support a drug habit or forced by poverty to prostitute to make ends meet. Almost without exception these individuals are substance abusers and in many cases are addicts. It is not uncommon for these people to have started prostituting at a very young age (they were the earliest entrants to the sex trade), and many come from abusive family lives. Self esteem among this group is exceedingly low, and their despair is palpable. The group had by far the highest number of individuals sexually abused as children.
Part-timers are those who opt for sporadic sex work primarily to supplement other income and pay off debts such as student loans and car notes. This group typically began sex work at the latest of the four groups. Drug and alcohol use is rare in this group and is more or less absent as a motivating factor. They are comparatively well educated. Sex work is generally discreet, undisclosed to family and friends. Despite initial apprehensions, they may come to derive a degree of self-affirmation from prostitution.
Insiders are individuals who have grown up in and around the sex trade to the point where they come to view it as their primary social circle. They may have been encouraged by their families of origin, a (biological or foster) mother who worked as a prostitute, for example. They do not regard sex work as a desperate resort but as something natural, an honorable living, so to speak. The group uses drugs and alcohol to various degrees. Some have tried “other things” as occupations, but returned to the sex trade because they missed it, it seems like “home.”
Liberationists are those for whom prostitution is a way of living out fantasies, exploring new experiences and partners, and profiting from their discoveries. The age of entry is highly variable, from 16 to 30. The majority did not experience severe problems during childhood; they maintain good if distant contact with their families. They have significantly higher education levels than their colleagues, and exhibit high self esteem and an overall positive outlook on their activities and clients. All of them stated that they chose sex trade for the many personal and relational advantages it offers. They see their work as an opportunity to affirm their sexual orientation or preference and to grow as an individual.
If you’ve paid much attention to my writings on this subject, you’ll recall that I have broken female prostitutes down into three categories: Streetwalkers, itinerant prostitutes (part-time escorts and Craigslist prostitutes), and those who use it as their primary means of income. Those roughly translate into Dorais’ outcast, part-timer, and liberationists taxa respectively. I’ve not personally encountered anyone who would fit into the insider category, though I have seen them on documentary shows about prostitution (specifically women who followed their mothers or other relatives into the trade).
Dorais’ description of the types mimics what I’ve found to be the situation with respect to the three mirror types that I use, on almost a point by point basis. When I did my interviews with the streetwalkers, for example, every single one of them was either drug addicted or forced into prostitution to keep from losing their children or their homes due to financial insolvency. And to a person they’d all indicated they’d not be doing it if they had another way to make sufficient money to accommodate their needs.
Similarly, my interviews with the women who occupied the higher rungs on the escort ladder found that they were highly educated, had high self esteem, and had a positive outlook on their lives, their work and their clients. They enjoyed their work and used it to provide a robust financial base for themselves. Each of them indicated that they had no plans to get out of the business in the near term (though half of them were using the work to pay for post-graduate education).
Quite honestly, I was amazed at A) the fact that Dorais’ classification scheme was basically a mirror image of the one I had personally adopted, and B) the similarities between the two genders’ experiences within each type. The only real disparity between what he found with the males and what we see with females is the much higher prevalence of pimps or controlling individuals with women. The only time you generally see pimps with male prostitutes is where underage boys is concerned, according to Dorais.
His results basically reaffirm what I’ve found, and what many researchers have found about prostitution in general. Many who do it are forced into it through circumstances, but there are a great many people who go into it voluntarily, fully informed, fully cognizant of what the work entails, the opinions and “research” of the likes of Farley et. al, notwithstanding.
It is always irritating to me when someone who’s never worked in the sex industry opines about what it is like for those who do. They feel that they are able to characterize whether or not we enjoy the work, whether we are doing it consensually, and so forth. And they often go so far as to imply that the fact that we are paid for it removes the element of true consent. By their logic, when you pay a mechanic to work on your car, you’re actually forcing or coercing her to do it, since you’d be removing her consent as well. 
Rage Against the Man-chine effluviates on her blog:
Still, I would tend to argue that, since they’re being paid to fulfill a desire that comes out of someone else’s psyche, sex workers are exercising very little of their own sexuality and almost no real power.
This is where you can see that she’s never been a sex worker - she has no concept of the fundamental power dynamic that exists between an escort and the client. We get to select which clients we see (exerting control), what rates to charge (exerting control), how long the session lasts (exerting control), what sex acts, if any, we engage in (exerting control), and so on ad infinitum. But, then, these folks exist in a two-dimensional world, where anything that manifests itself outside of the X or Y axis doesn’t exist. Their argument in opposition to this is that we’re just under the illusion that we’re exercising power. I hope those deposits I’ve been making into the bank aren’t similarly illusory. 
You really can’t blame them, though. I mean, what they know about prostitution they gleaned from the media, and when you see stories about prostitutes in the media, you invariably see the streetwalkers, the outcasts. For many people, this is the totality of their exposure to and understanding of the concept of prostitution. Quite honestly, my assessment of the trade was similarly aligned until I began to get into the serious exploration and research I’ve done over the past couple of years.
The reality is that those on the street represent only 10% of the total prostitute population. The only time you hear anything about the other 90% is when someone like Eliot Spitzer or Deborah Jeane Palfrey gets busted, or when the local fuzz conducts a sting of prostitutes operating off Craigslist. And then to “color” the news reports, you have the likes of Tracey Quan, Amanda Brooks, and other women who, you know, actually worked as escorts and enjoyed it, on television stating that they enjoyed it. And yet, still, no one listens, or no one believes them, because it completely flies in the face of what you’re supposed to believe about hookers.
Sadly, even when the other types are addressed in the media, the stories are often colored to force them into the mold cast as the streetwalker. So, the entire industry takes on the visage of the poor, drug-addicted woman walking the streets at night offering blowjobs for $5 a pop or a half-and-half for $20. The reality, of course, it much different. I lost faith in the ability of the mainstream media to provide us with honest reporting a long time ago, though. Gone are the days when once respected journalists like Diane Sawyer could be relied upon to provide us with a legitimate look into the world of the “other” prostitutes. In her 20/20 show on prostitution, she went to great lengths to find an actual courtesan escort, and when that woman had the audacity to tell the viewers that she thoroughly enjoyed her work, Sawyer called her a liar. There’s nothing like forcing a story to fit through your own narrow, stereotyped prism. So much for journalism. *sigh*
Plenty of research by real sociologists, plenty of books and treatises by current and former prostitutes, plenty of prostitutes out there blogging and writing about their satisfaction with their work, and yet we still have people who don’t have the mental depth to be able to comprehend that some people do legitimately enjoy the work. You’d think we’d gotten past all of that at this stage in the development of our society, but I guess some people just can’t grasp anything beyond their narrow, two-dimensional existence. That Z axis can be a bitch sometimes.
Anyway, this sort of diverged from where I had intended to take it. The original intent was to point out the results of someone else’s research - research that focused on male sex workers (which, along with transgendered sex workers, are hugely under-represented in all research on sex work), and ended up with a typology that corresponded with those on the female side. There’s always been this big issue over whether or not the male sex workers were different from female sex workers, and it would appear that they aren’t to any large degree. I found that terribly interesting and thought I’d share it with you.
Posted by Alexa | Filed Under Sexuality, Work
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14 Responses to “Prostitute Typology”
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Always informative Alexa…
Tho, I’m just tickled pink to see the word…
effluviates
… used in such a correct manner!
xoxo,
nina
Goddess,
Tho, I’m just tickled pink to see the word…
effluviates
… used in such a correct manner!
Isn’t that a neat word?
Boo! I had to look it up and now I feel left out.
(I haven’t gotten a chance to read the full article, I skimmed it and read the comments so expect another comment!)
At least you’ve added a new word to your vocabulary, Keel. This *is* supposed to be an educational blog as well, and so now I feel as though I’ve done my good deed for the day.
The headline misled me a bit. Being in the creative field, Typology for me is typically associated with Fonts and Typeset.
So you can imagine my curiosity at which fonts were preferred by prostitutes!!
FYI: it’s Helvetica.. thats the sluttiest of all fonts.
Hey, Jeff.
Sorry for the confusion.
So you can imagine my curiosity at which fonts were preferred by prostitutes!!
FYI: it’s Helvetica.. thats the sluttiest of all fonts.
I learn something new every day. I hope I’ll be able to use this information at some point in the future.
And, just as an FYI, this one prefers Calibri for regular writing.
Just so you know where I’m coming from with this, I work in the accursed “mainstream media” and my entire staff refers to me as “The Grammar Nazi.”
So I have to ask. I’m pretty sure it comes from Latin, so isn’t the plural “effluvia?”
Scott,
Just so you know where I’m coming from with this, I work in the accursed “mainstream media”
I won’t hold that against you.
I’m pretty sure it comes from Latin, so isn’t the plural “effluvia?”
Yes, the plural of the singular noun “effluvium” is effluvia. And then the term “effluviate” is a verb meaning to issue forth effluviam.
Sugo! (Latin for “I suck!”)
Ah, of course! My regional accent was making me think it was a plural noun. “Effluviate” with a long a sounds like a verb. In my mind I was pronouncing it with an “et” at the end instead of an “ate” and that left me thinking of nouns. Guess where ’bouts I’m from, y’all! 
When I first found your site, I would not have imagined that one day I’d be getting Latin lessons from you. I learn all kinds of things here!
Alexa,
The catergories for male workers is interesting, I think I started out a part-timer and then became a liberationist. I was at the Desiree Alliance 2008 conference in Chicago and there was a male worker forum on Saturday. Did you make it there?
Roberto
Roberto,
I was not at Desiree Alliance this year. With my move and trying to get settled in, I just couldn’t be sure I’d be able to make it, so I didn’t go. I will definitely be at a future one. I understand it was incredible.
What’s wrong with $5 blowjobs?
Kidding!
Brilliant post.
Raquel,
What’s wrong with $5 blowjobs?
I didn’t say anything was wrong with them.
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