‘It’s just more,you know,natural’: The perceptions of men who buy sex in an emerging street sex market

Abstract

Despite recognition that a greater understanding of men who buy sex in illicit street sex markets is required for a holistic view of street sex work, research focused on this group remains scarce. The authors of this article recognize buyers of illicit sex as key players in the socio-spatial construction of street sex markets, and consider their inclusion in research vital to a holistic understanding of a street sex market. The article discusses key findings from interviews conducted with nine men who buy sex from female street sex workers as part of a broader ethnography of street sex work in Dandenong, Victoria. Observations provide insight into the nature of these men’s connection to the women they buy sex from, their perceptions of their use of commercial sex, and their preference for buying sex in this street sex market instead of other types of commercial sex. These observations contribute to our understanding of the value of the sexual capital clients attach to this street sex market and the sex they buy within it.

Keywords

Buying sex client punter street sex market street sex work

Introduction

Research on sex market clients, particularly in illicit contexts, is growing but still remains small in comparison to studies of people selling sex (examples include: Blevins and Holt, 2009; Hammond, 2010, 2015; Kingston, 2010; Sanders, 2008b). Recently, concern of a unitary view of commercial sex produced by the strong academic focus on sex workers without knowledge of the people who buy sex from them has sparked a concerted push for an increased empirical focus on sex buyers (Earle and Sharp, 2007; Hardy et al., 2010; Peng, 2007). For many, the inclusion of sex market clients in research is considered a necessary step in the development of a holistic account of commercial sex (Agustin, 2005; Hardy et al., 2010; Sanders, 2008b), and key to the development of policy designed to improve the welfare of some of the community’s most marginalized people (Hardy et al., 2010; Sanders, 2006a, 2008a). In this article, the authors discuss key findings from interviews conducted with men who buy sex in an illicit street sex market in Dandenong, Victoria. Observations provide insight into the nature of these men’s connection to this street sex market and the women they buy sex from.

Researching the punter

Public spaces appropriated as street sex markets are often highly-contested spaces in which sex workers, clients, police, local businesses and residents often wrestle for control (Hubbard, 1998, 1999, 2002; Hubbard and Sanders, 2003; O’Neill et al., 2008). Of these, the caricature of the ‘street prostitute’ in particular has a long-standing and influential history as the ‘quintessential sexualized figure of the urban scene’, and ‘the central spectacle in a series of urban encounters’ (Walkowitz, 1992: 233). As a result, research on commercial sex has often focused on the people who sell sex with less research on the men who buy sex from people working in these markets. The resulting unitary view of commercial sex, and its role in the development of inefficient policy and programme development has sparked increased calls for additional focus on clients in studies of commercial sex (Earle and Sharp, 2007; Hardy et al., 2010; Kingston, 2010; McLeod, 1982; Peng, 2007; Sanders, 2006b, 2008b).

Earle and Sharp (2007) cite three factors they believe contribute to the relative absence of sex-market clients from commercial sex research. The first is a generalized acceptance of men’s purchase of sex. Earl and Sharpe describe this as consistent with earlier ideas of the high sex drive of men, and of commercial sex as a necessary outlet to satisfy that drive. This approach positions the sex seller as the central figure in considerations of the problems of commercial sex (Maher and Pickering, 2009; Scoular and O’Neill, 2007; Weitzer, 2000, 2007). Second, it has been suggested that the academic focus has traditionally fallen on the body of the female sex worker because of its ‘doubly deviant nature’ (Sanders, 2008b). The female ‘sex worker’ presents a challenge to hegemonic forms of acceptable female sexuality, while also being considered the site from which disease spreads from deviant networks to mainstream society (Earle and Sharp, 2007; Sanders, 2008b). Finally and more practically, Earl and Sharpe cite the difficulty researchers often face when trying to gain the research participation of the sex market as a significant contributor to their historic absence from commercial sex research. The threat of being exposed as a commercial sex client invites association with stigmatizing labels such as ‘pervert’, ‘dirty’, ‘sexually repulsive’ or ‘sexually inadequate’ (Earle and Sharp, 2007; Sanders, 2008b; Soothill and Sanders, 2005), and in some contexts can carry the potential of legal sanction (Blevins and Holt, 2009; Brooks-Gordon, 2010; Campbell and Storr, 2001; Weitzer, 2009). While the increased use of information technologies in commercial sex and research methods provide greater opportunity for connection between client and researcher (Blevins and Holt, 2009; Hammond, 2015), this group still remains under-researched.

Several broad lines of enquiry exist in the current body of literature on commercial sex clients. Some attempt to measure the demand for commercial sex by identifying the number of people who buy sex. While early studies based in the USA suggest that up to 80% of men buy sex in their lifetime (Kinsey et al., 1948), most contemporary accounts are much lower. In Australia, a small population study conducted in 1986 found 19.2% of respondents reported ever having paid for sex; 2.5% did so in the preceding 12 months (Dickson et al., 1995).

Other studies attempt to provide insight into the contexts and motivations that inform men’s purchase of sex. While some frame the purchase of sex as gendered abuse (Dworkin, 1981; O’Connell Davidson, 1998), sexual exploitation or conflate it with human trafficking (Farley, 2006; Weitzer, 2007), empirical research often identifies a range of more immediate motivations. In Australia, Pitts et al. (2004) found that there was a belief that paying for sex was less troublesome than obtaining sex in other ways (36.4%) and the use of commercial sex as a form of entertainment (35.5%) motivated most men in their sample to buy sex. Alternatively, Atchison et al. (1998) approaches the issue of buying sex from a deficit approach, and constructs a model of men’s motivations by considering their perceived social and physical deficiencies. In this model, men’s motivation for buying sex is a product of their physical unattractiveness, poor social skills, impaired sexual development, manifestations of gendered role expectations and avoidance of traditional masculine responsibilities. Sanders (2008b) develops a more holistic model in which the motivations for buying sex fall into ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors. Factors that ‘push’ men into commercial sex include aspects of their intimate or sexual lives which they perceive to be lacking, and which they think they can satisfy through purchased sex. ‘Pull’ factors include the perceived attractiveness of the sex industry and its increasing association with leisure and entertainment. While each of these projects provides insight into motivations for paying for sex, what can be gleaned from this body of research as a whole is that people’s reasons for buying sex are varied and complex.

Research has also drawn from sex-worker accounts to develop client typologies that highlight the spectrum of characteristics of men who buy sex (Brewis and Linstead, 2000; Minichiello et al., 2001; Sawyer et al., 2001). Vanwesenbeeck et al. (1993) develop a typology that breaks clients into three distinct groups. These include the ‘business type’, described as clients who understand the nature of the sexual–economic transaction and approach it in a business-like manner, the ‘romantic-friendship’ type whose purchase of sex is motivated by a desire to form a type of non-commercial relationship with the sex worker, and the ‘misogynist type’ whose purchase of sex provides him with a context where he can play out a gendered dominance over the female sex worker. While the misogynist type was associated with violence and a reduction in condom use, it is the romantic type and their desire to break down the boundaries of the sexual–economic encounter that sex workers experienced as most problematic.

The phenomenon of ongoing sexual–economic arrangements formed across various commercial sex contexts is increasingly observed in commercial sex research (Bernstein, 2001; Peng, 2007; Sanders, 2008a; Walby, 2010). Arrangements such as these have been seen to last anywhere between a few months to a few years, with longer-term associations often blurring the lines between commercial and non-commercial intimacy (Sanders, 2008a). Men seek out these arrangements to satisfy a desire for ongoing social connection, intimacy, and companionship, but they can also allow some clients to reframe payment for sex as gift-giving or the provision of direct financial support (Bernstein, 2001; Peng, 2007; Sanders, 2008a; Walby, 2010).

Considered in total, these studies suggest that men who buy sex are a heterogeneous group who have been studied through their comparison with men who don’t buy sex, by measuring their prevalence in the broader community, and through the creation of typologies developed from the perceptions of the women who sell them sex. Despite a recently increased research focus on this group, the body of research on sex buyers remains small in comparison to sex sellers. While researching men who buy sex presents a range of significant challenges to researchers, their inclusion in relevant research is integral to the development of a holistic view of commercial sex, and street sex work in particular.

Locating the punter

This article draws on data gathered through interviews with men who buy sex from female street sex workers in a suburb called Dandenong, which is 38 km from the Melbourne Central Business District. Dandenong provides an interesting backdrop to the exploration of a street sex market, and the experiences of men who buy sex in it. Dandenong is a predominantly working-class suburb characterized by both a high degree of cultural diversity and a range of pressing social issues, such as unemployment, problematic gambling, illicit drug use and instances of drug and non-drug related crimes which are all reported as higher in this area than in any other region across metropolitan Melbourne (City of Greater Dandenong, 2013). Dandenong is not known as a key site of street sex work in Victoria. Existing policies, attempts at intervention and study of street sex work in Victoria often focus on the larger, established and better known market in St Kilda. Academic research suggests between 200 and 500 women, men and transgender people solicit and sell sex on the streets of St Kilda (Rowe, 2006). Street sex work in Dandenong presents some key differences to this larger market. The authors’ studies provide the only documented research on street sex work in Dandenong (Couch and Durant, 2013; Durant, 2010, 2016). These studies observed a small market in which a group of highly marginalized women sold sex to men to fund problematic drug addictions.

In this article the authors consider data collected as part of an ethnographic PhD study into the experience of people selling sex in Dandenong, Victoria (Durant, 2016). The following discussion is the product of the ongoing consideration of these data by the study’s researcher and principal supervisor. The focus on ‘punters’ in this article contributes to the small but growing body of research into the experiences and perceptions of men who buy sex in illicit street sex markets. This research and article draw upon Agustin’s (Agustin, 2005, 2007) cultural approach to commercial sex research, through which the experience, action and perspective of participants are understood within the social, cultural and economic contexts in which they are ultimately embedded. By trying to understand the way these men think about their use of commercial sex, their participation in this market, and their connections to local sex workers, the article contributes to an understanding of a group whose participation in street sex work is often reduced to a desire for sex, and manifestation of patriarchal social structures.

Punter recruitment and ethical practice

Conducting empirical research in the commercial sex landscape requires considered ethical practice through all stages of the study (Agustin, 2005; Liamputtong, 2007; Sanders, 2006b; Weitzer, 2005). The illegality of many commercial sex contexts, the vulnerability of participants, and the stigmatization associated with commercial sex creates highly complex research settings that require ongoing, reflexive ethical practice. For male clients, the potential of being identified as a person who buys sex has often provided the most significant barrier to their research participation (Blevins and Holt, 2009; Hammond, 2015; Pitts et al., 2004; Sanders, 2008b). Ensuring the anonymity of commercial sex clients has remained a priority throughout the data collection and to the presentation of data here.

The recruitment strategy for commercial sex clients developed out of some women’s suggestions to include their clients in the research in order to provide further insight into the workings of this street sex market. Through discussion between the researcher and local sex workers, a strategy was developed in which sex workers were provided with research information forms containing the contact details of the researcher, which they were invited to give to potential interviewees. Sex workers were provided with no financial incentive from the researcher to participate in this process. The motivation for participating sex workers was informed by a shared desire to include the men who buy sex from them in a holistic account of their daily lived experience. This snowballing process proved successful and allowed the research to conduct interviews with nine clients over a three-week period.

Client interviews were conducted in various public and private locations. Conducting interviews on the topic of commercial sex required the development of specific strategies to ensure ethical and safe research practice. In most cases the interview was conducted on the first meeting between the researcher and interviewee. In each case the researcher worked closely with participating sex workers and the principal research supervisor prior to and during each interview. Prior to meeting the interviewee, the researcher sought information from participating sex workers about the length of their connection to the client and the client’s temperament. Interview’s conducted in public spaces were undertaken in highly visible populated areas around Dandenong. One interview was done in the private residence of a sex worker at a time when other people known to the researcher were also present. In addition, the researcher maintained phone contact with the principal and co-supervisor during the client interview process.

Potential interviewees were provided with both written and verbal explanation about the research, the interview process, use of collected information, responsibilities of the researcher, and rights of participants. Particular attention was paid to confidentiality anonymity, the protection of sensitive information, and how these were addressed in the research process. Interviewees were advised that they could cease their participation in the interview at any time, or have the researcher remove the interview from the research after the interviews completion. They were also advised of the requirement of the researcher to report information about the prostitution of minors, acts and threats of violence, and other activities resulting in direct harm to others, to relevant authorities. Written and verbal consent to participate was required from the interviewee prior to the commencement to each research interview.

The researcher began each interview with a set list of questions but the sensitivity of the topic often required a flexible approach that allowed the interviewee to explore their participation in commercial sex and connection to street sex work in Dandenong in the context of the interview. Interviews ranged between 30 and 60 minutes in length and were recorded by the interviewer on a digital audio recorder. The interviews were later transcribed by the researcher, and the digital recordings destroyed. The names of interviewees, other people and potentially identifiable data were altered through the transcription process to ensure anonymity. The fictional name of ‘Curtis Street’ was used by the researcher in all resulting material in reference to the site of street sex work in Dandenong. All interview commercial sex clients were remunerated with $50 cash at the conclusion of the interview. Payment of interviewees was consistent with the process used earlier in the broader research when conducting interviewees with sex workers. This article draws from a selection of relevant statements captured in sex-worker interviews conducted during the broader study to support and expand upon information gathered during client interview.

Dandenong’s street sex market

The research that informed this article found the street sex market in Dandenong to be a small, emerging market (Durant, 2016). Although fluid, the market centres around a public phone booth on a small intersection that divides Dandenong’s central business district and its surrounding residential area. The market itself is relatively concealed from mainstream public view. Its concealment is shaped by the small number of women soliciting on Curtis Street at any one time (between 1 and 5), and the shared use of a casual style of dress among local sex workers as a strategy to minimize police interference. Most women soliciting on Curtis Street sell sex to fund problematic drug use. While poly-drug use was common, it was a heroin addiction that tied most people to this market. Current addictions demanded that women generate between $200 and $1500 per day in the market; in some cases this also helped to fund the drug use of a male partner. The market is predominantly heterosexual in which men buy sex from young and adult women who solicit on the street, but the increasing use of mobile phones as a point of contact between buyers and sellers pushes the transactions further out of public view. The only other role men occupy in this market is that of ‘Spotter’ who is a person who acts as a type of informal bodyguard to a sex worker on the street and in the market’s social network. In many cases these men are also the sex workers’ non-commercial intimate partners, whose connection to the market is also informed by a need to fund a drug addiction.

Buying and selling sex in a street sex market in Australia is illegal (State Government of Victoria, 1994). Participation in the market in Dandenong therefore runs some risk of police charges for all the markets participants, but consistent with shifts in policy in comparable contexts (Brooks-Gordon, 2010; Campbell and Storr, 2001; Hammond, 2015), the focus of much front-line policing in this context falls on men purchasing sex. The risk of police detection for clients in this market is heightened further by the relatively small number of women who solicit in comparison to the number of the prospective clients. This creates a context where male clients often need to spend considerable time in the space of the market in search of a sex worker, which significantly increases their risk of police detection. Despite this increased risk for clients buying in this market, client demand for the services of women who sell sex on the street in Dandenong remains strong (Durant, 2016).

Findings

At first glance, the immediate reason that men engage with the street sex market is relatively straightforward. They want sex, and assess commercial sex to be the most appropriate option available to them. But their decision to buy sex from women working on Curtis Street rather than from other commercial sex options is not simply a product of convenience or chance. The most common theme to emerge in discussions with men who had bought sex from women working on Curtis Street was that they found its proximity to their home particularly convenient.

It’s just easy, man. It’s like five minutes from my house, and I can just come down here, see someone I like, and well, you know. (Elvin)

Men, or ‘punters’ also described the familiarity with the practices of the Curtis Street market and the sex workers themselves as significant in their decision to buy sex from women working in this location. This contributed to a sense of security for both their purchase and their physical safety. Distinctions were often made between buying sex on the street in Dandenong and what they had either experienced directly or heard from other men about buying sex on the larger and more widely known street sex market in St Kilda:

I’ve been to St Kilda a few times, but it’s all fuckin’ chaos down there. This one time I had this girl in the car and she’s told me to drive into this sort of carpark thing that was like, in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere … So we’ve parked and, you know, we’ve sort of started up, then I notice this bloke sort come out of nowhere. It was pretty lucky really, ‘cos’ I only just saw him coming up to the car in the side mirror. So I just thought, ‘fuck this, man’. I reckon this chick’s taken me to this fuckin’ real isolated park thing so her and her bloke can fuckin’ rob me. Fuck that, man. I just pushed her off me, started the car and just fuckin’ sped off out of there. He coulda been coming to stab me, for all I know. (Carl)

I just like it down here I guess. I pretty much know everyone around here and what goes on, and what not … so I know no one’s gonna fuck me over or anything. (Rashid)

While proximity and familiarity were both valued, most men considered the lower fee for sex in the area in comparison to other markets to be a significant draw card for buying sex on Curtis Street. Fuelled by the high number of working-class and unemployed men that made up this client group, the ability to purchase sex for less money than it would cost elsewhere was considered by most clients as a key asset of the market.

Well it’s cheaper, for one thing. Here you can get pretty much whatever you want for about 60 or 70 bucks ($). At a brothel it’d be $150 at least. (Carlos).

Nah I don’t go down to St Kilda … A mate of mine picked up this chick down there and told me she wanted something like 120 bucks ($) for a root (sex). It’s nowhere near that high out here (on Curtis Street). (Shane).

With a growing familiarity with one or many of the sex workers on Curtis Street, some men began buying gifts or trading other resources of value for sex instead of simply paying for sex with cash. Gift-giving was most common in ongoing arrangements between a sex worker and client. At least in some cases, it was a tactic men used to attempt to blur the lines between being required to pay for sex and non-commercial intimacy. Gifts from the client often became more personal as the association developed, and in some cases allowed these men an avenue into more private aspects of the sex worker’s life such as their friendships with other sex workers, boyfriends, and even family.

I’m not like all these other guys who she makes pay through the nose just for a fuckin’ blowie [oral sex] or somethin’. See, with us it’s different. We’re not like boyfriend or girlfriend or nothin’. No way, I couldn’t handle it … letting her fuck all these other blokes. But I just take her out for dinner sometimes, or sometimes I’ll buy her somethin’ she wants. Then it’s just sort of, well, what happens, happens. (Costa)

Trading resources rather than money for sex was most common in situations where the connection between seller and buyer extended into other, related, social networks. An example of this was when clients and sex workers already knew each other through their participation in other drug and non-mainstream networks. Some of these trades involved accommodation, drugs, phones, iPads, and even participation in violent acts against other people:

That’s Frank. He gives ya smack (heroin). Its fuckin’ shit gear … most of it's crushed up benzos (benzodiazepines) or some shit, but it’s pretty good for just one job. (Abby)

Fuckin’ look at this, man. Gary just gave me his phone. Not bad, huh? He said he stole it from some bloke that had been staying at his house after he fucked him over with rent and shit. Not bad, eh? It’s even unlocked and everything. I reckon I’ll get $200 at Cashies [Cash Converters] for that. (Julia)

This bloke just gave me a whole sheet of grey nurse [a sought-after brand of diazepam] for a job. Fuck, man. I wish I could get paid like that all the time … I can probably get about $50 each for ‘em. (Tracy)

This ongoing social connection produced a context in which deals, arrangements, and money-lending between the sex worker and the customer were reasonably common. For male clients, lending money to street sex workers then later requesting the money be paid back in sex often appeared as the preferred method of payment. This allowed them to further blur the lines between buying sex and non-commercial intimacy with the sex worker, which increased the value men placed on buying sex in this market in comparison to regulated markets in which the process of buying sex appears more rigid.

It’s not always just when I’ve got money either. Like a few weeks ago Sally called me wantin’ to borrow 50 bucks. Then she kept tellin’ me she didn’t have any money to pay back … so I finally said to her, ‘Well, if you’re not going to pay back the money, you should be doing a job (sex) with me’. (Carlos)

You know how I lent Tracey $20 so she could get a gram of choof (marijuana)? Yeah, well I ended up getting a free blowjob out of it … not free, but as payback for lending her the money. (Louis)

I don’t want to be out here with these girls. It’s just that I feel sorry for some of them and lend ‘em money every now and then. When they can’t pay me back, if I don’t say somethin’ like, you know, ‘you gotta pay me back some other way then’ [with sex], then they’re gonna think of me as some fuckin’ bunny they can scam money off when they’re hanging out (experiencing drug withdrawal). I ain’t no-one’s bunny, man … especially not for any of these girls out here. (Reg)

Distinction between brothels and street sex work

The value of the sexual capital men attributed to the experience of buying sex in this street sex market was more than just a product of familiarity and price. At least some men who bought sex on Curtis Street were influenced by a preference for what they thought defined this market from other more regulated markets. Many of these preferences involved a general rejection of the structured processes experienced by men who had purchased sex in regulated environments:

When you go into a brothel, it’s like going to Macca’s (a McDonald’s Restaurant). You just get handed this booklet thing that has all their services and other stuff in it and you choose what you want [from it]. Then she takes you to this little room where you’ve basically gotta strip down to nothin’ … then she starts checking you over for STDs. It’s bad, man. It’s like you’ve gotta go to the doctor each time ya wanna root (sex). (Shane)

Perceptions of brothels as highly structured environments where clients are required to undergo a pseudo-medical examination before being allowed to have sex (experienced by most as uncomfortable) was echoed by the majority of interviewees. Often contributing to the dislike of the more structured brothel experience was the demeanour and presented style of women working in these contexts, which most described as reinforcing the ‘staged’ feeling of the brothel and as negatively affecting their experience. Here, being fake, ‘stuck up’, ‘done up’ (particularly with a focus on make-up and hair), and watching the clock were expressions commonly used to describe women they’d bought sex from in a brothel, and all of these elements were described as detracting from their experience:

I don’t like brothel girls. They’re all fake, I think. (Ephran)

When they’re in brothels, they all think they’re the shit and start acting all stuck up. But out here … they’re not stuck up at all, and you can talk to ‘em about all sorts a’ shit. Those brothel girls don’t give a fuck. All they’re doing is waiting ‘til your time’s up so they can go back to sitting on their arses like they were doing before. (Louis)

‘It’s just more, you know, natural’

When men talked about their preference for buying sex on Curtis Street, their discussion typically shifted back to a distinction between what many described as the more sterile/staged environment of a brothel and the more natural/realistic context of the street sex market.

That’s why I like coming out here [to Curtis Street] instead. It’s more natural. It’s not like you’re pickin’ up at a nightclub or anything … you’re still payin’ ‘em. But, I don’t know … it’s more, yeah, more natural. You’re just driving around and you see a girl you like so you pull over and start talking to her. (Shane)

In addition to their perception of the street sex market on Curtis Street being closer to a more organic, non-commercial experience was both the relaxed style of dress and more genuine demeanour of the women who worked on the street.

The girls out here are different. They’re natural beauties. Brothel girls have their hair and makeup done like they’re going somewhere special. But these girls [street sex workers in Dandenong] just look how they always look. They don’t need to do all those things to be beautiful. They just are. (Shahid)

As this comment suggests, it was the ‘realistic’ or ‘natural’ context that many men considered more appealing than other commercial options. Despite being contrived, the market’s use of public space, coupled with street sex workers’ relaxed style of dress and demeanour, allowed some men to participate in a sexual encounter that may resemble a non-commercial sexual fantasy that they could envisage themselves experiencing as part of their everyday lives. This allowed participating men to mentally ‘buy in’ to the experience of purchasing sex from a woman working on Curtis Street, rather than being a passive participant in what many described as a ‘cold, sterile’ experience of buying sex in more controlled environments, such as brothels. For most of these men, it seemed that the women working on Curtis Street shared at least some similarity with women they’d otherwise perceive as potential non-commercial sex partners, and this was further emphasized by their more ‘down to earth’, personable attitude towards the client, their sex work, and their use of public space. Despite its illegality, it is this more organic or natural experience of buying sex from women working on Curtis Street that fills it with a higher value of sexual capital than other regulated commercial sex environments – at least in the eyes of some of its regular participants.

Discussion

While the body of research on commercial male sex clients has grown over recent years, our understanding of this group is limited in comparison to what we know about the experience of sex workers. At least some of this is a result of the challenges researchers face trying to access this group. Existing empirical studies of male clients or ‘punters’ measure prevalence, identify characteristics that distinguish this group from non-client men, and explore their participation in harm-producing practices. Many of these draw inferences from survey data and reports from sex workers, and are therefore limited in their ability to account for the perceptions and experience of punters. Few studies include men who purchase sex in illicit street sex markets. This article engages with Agustin’s (Agustin, 2005, 2007) cultural framework of commercial sex that approaches the actions and perspective of participants as embedded within unique social, cultural and economic contexts in which they are experienced.

Findings from this article contribute to and extend existing understandings of the punter through its focus on street sex market clients, its method, and its use of direct client narrative. The participation of punters in this research developed out of suggestions from local sex workers for their inclusion in research about Dandenong’s street sex market. These interviews may not have been possible without the active participation of local sex workers as gatekeepers to an otherwise hard-to-reach population. The authors are unaware of this strategy being used in comparable studies, but note its success in this particular context. The use of individual semi-structured interviews with punters allowed the research to remain flexible and explore observations with interviewees as they emerged. Flexibility within interviews and a reliance on client narrative in the description of research findings contribute to an account that is both contextually specific and reflective of the experience of research participants.

In this article the authors present findings from interviews conducted with nine men who buy sex in an illicit street sex market in Dandenong. A number of themes that emerged in these interviews have been observed in similar studies (Atchison et al., 1998; Bernstein, 2001; Hammond, 2015; Peng, 2007; Pitts et al., 2004; Sanders, 2008a, 2008b). For example, lower fees for sex compared with other commercial sex options, and spatial proximity were described by all interviewees as influencing their decisions to participate in this market. Similarly, men’s description of gift giving in lieu of direct financial payment for sex and its effect on sex-worker/client boundaries is consistent with accounts captured in other commercial sex contexts. Where this article extends existing understandings of male clients of street sex workers is in its identification of the use of public space and style of local street sex workers as factors that shape the preference of interviewed men to buy sex in this market instead of in other commercial sex contexts. Punters cite a preference for the ‘authentic’ commercial sexual experience available in this market, through its use of public space and the more realistic demeanour of the sex workers, and their consideration of this as unique sexual capital contributing to their preference to buy sex in this market, despite the associated risks.

This observation may be specific to the client group of this market, or a characteristic of the men interviewed, and therefore requires further study or comparison with clients of other street sex markets in order to assess its generalizability to other client groups. Regardless, its presence on Curtis Street is interesting (even if only in the small sample of men interviewed in this research) as it not only provides insight into the preferences of these men for less-regulated forms of commercial sex, but also of their perception of female beauty, sexuality and risk. The desire for more ‘natural-looking’ women contrasts with dominant images of female beauty often held up as desirable in the context of commercial sex, and therefore paints a different picture about what these men want from the sex they buy. The men interviewed in this study wanted to be able to relate to the women from whom they bought sex, and to be able to see them as real women. This was contrasted with how they perceived many women in regulated environments to present themselves in a ‘plastic’ way. While further research is required, this perception and preference for ‘natural’ beauty and ‘authentic’ experience in street sex markets may contribute to the continued demand for street sex markets, even when lower-risk and perceivably more attractive commercial sex options, such as regulated brothels, are available.

Footnotes

Ben Durant has recently completed his PhD study of street sex work in Dandenong, Victoria. Ben’s professional interests include working and researching with vulnerable populations, with particular focus on empowerment, consciousness raising and advocacy.

Jen Couch is an academic and practitioner currently working at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. Dr Couch is a senior lecturer in youth work at the ACU and currently teaches in the university Thai Burma program for refugees on the Thai border. She has established a national and international reputation for her work in the area of refugee young people and resettlement, and is one of the few academics to undertake research on young people from refugee backgrounds and homelessness. Before beginning at ACU 10 years ago, Dr Couch worked extensively in the youth and community sectors in Australia and South Asia. She has worked with, and on behalf of, young people in the areas of refugee settlement, displacement, homelessness, rights and participation, torture and trauma, and capacity building. She has published widely about young people and marginalization and is particularly interested in working in hopeful and positive ways to change social inequalities and exclusion.

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