Introduction: Special section ‘female clients of commercial sex’

The early interest in male clients: Pathologizing and criminalizing

The interest in male clients is not new. Before the second half of the 20th century, male clients were being pathologized and associated with alcoholism, non-integrated personality structures, inability of emotional attachment and masochism in researches (Vanwesenbeeck, 2001). Nevertheless, many researchers during the 20th century did not find empirical evidence of psychological pathology or particularities related to the decision to buy sex (Armstrong, 1978; Winick, 1962) or differences between clients and non-clients (Simpson and Schill, 1977).

Since the 1990s, we see an increased concern in empirical research on the demand side of sex work. This interest started when researchers realized that little work had been done on sexual risk behaviours of clients related to infection with HIV (Barnard et al., 1993) and that researching male clients of female sex workers would be essential for HIV prevention (Faugier and Cranfield, 1995).

Despite the lack of in-depth knowledge about the demand side, clients play an increasing role in the formulation of policies on sex work and on human trafficking. We see an international trend towards the criminalization of clients, both with a shift in enforcement policy in the United States that targeted sex workers’ costumers (Weitzer, 2010) and with the implementation, in 1999, of the so-called Swedish model persecuting clients of sex workers. More recently, policies have been introduced to criminalize clients, among others, in France, Ireland and the Netherlands where recently a new policy has been formulated of a partial criminalization of clients who have sex with victims of human trafficking. Thus, clients are increasingly problematized and stigmatized, and within the dominant discourse on human trafficking, they have become the subject of a moral panic in many Western countries since the 1990s (Bernstein, 2007) which has led to an increasing demonization of clients and an oversimplification of their sexuality. In many countries, the public discourse on sex work represents clients as sex addicts or psychologically disturbed. Labelling clients as ‘perverts’, as is the case in Sweden (Külick, 2005), indicates a simplistic notion of sex work and clients’ sexuality and only contributes to a reinforcement of the stigma on sex work.

Within the radical feminist discourse on sex work, in which commercial sex is conceptualized as sexual violence against women committed by men, clients are always conceived as potential aggressors who are abusing women. This image is reinforced within the discourse on human trafficking in which clients are portrayed as a homogeneous category of men and as potential criminals who suppress women. Under this approach, paying for sex is seen as intrinsically violent or problematic behaviour. The sexuality of male clients is conceptualized on basis of essentialist notions of male sexuality and arguments that men have a higher sex drive and are more promiscuous than women and cannot control themselves. In this sense, the knowledge on clients is related to a restrictive sexual morality which prohibits any further exploration of the demand side.

Why the lack of research on women clients?

When talking about clients of commercial sex, female buyers are scarcely mentioned. If we know little about male clients of commercial sex, much less is known about female clients.

But why has there been so little interest on women buying sex? Clients are usually male, and this gender difference may be an explanation to the fact that research on women customers being very sparse. Additionally, women’s sexual behaviour in general has received little attention. But what seems a more consistent justification for the much less interest devoted to female clients is the distorted idea of homogeneity within the sex market, disregarding men and transgenders who sell or buy sexual services. Radical feminists supposing prostitution as an institution that reinforces and represents male domination assume all the clients to be male, although the existence of female clients of sex work invalidates the idea of commercial sex being an expression of male domination.

Also, we recognize methodological problems related to gain access to female clients. Female clients are much harder to reach than male clients – they are fewer and they have more reasons to hide their behaviour. Men may conceal their involvement in commercial sex to prevent being stigmatized and even viewed as ‘perverts’ in certain societies. Women, however, also have to face the sexual double standard. Within the framework of hegemonic masculinity, normative masculinity is related to domination and femininity to submission (Connell, 1995, 2005). Being a man means to be sexually active. Masculine identity is associated to the act of possessing, taking, penetrating, dominating and self-affirmation, if necessary by force (Badinter, 1996). Women, on the contrary, are socialized to have sex on basis of a monogamous, love relation and are estimated to be chaste, sexually passive, submissive and preyed upon. Historically women’s sexuality has been considered as passive and sexless (Attwood, 2007; Groneman, 1994). Being a female client of commercial sex undermines this social–cultural expectation and risks to be called a whore.

The whore stigma applies to all women not behaving accordingly to the prescribed rules for female (sexual) behaviour – and buying sex is not, in any way, one of that rules. Sex workers are stigmatized based on a moral conception of sexual activity that defines certain acts as evil, including prostitution (Nahra, 2005). Quoting Pheterson (1996), perhaps the most insidious political function of the whore stigma is the division of women in honoured and dishonoured. Female clients by not respecting the sexual norms expected for a woman are considered to sexually misbehave; they are dishonoured and will be stigmatized. Furthermore, paid sex is included in what Rubin (1984) calls ‘bad’, ‘abnormal’ and ‘unnatural’ sexuality. Thus, women paying for sex have a strong reason for staying invisible.

Researching women who pay for sexual services: Scarcity romance, sex, power and gender issues

There have been growing signs of the occurrence of sexual services for women – from stories in the media reporting a rise in women paying gigolos to the existence of male escort adverts and sex work agencies for female clients. Also, there are some empirical evidences in epidemiological investigations with sex workers, indicating the existence of the female demand (eg Busari et al., 2011; Estcourt et al., 2000; Ford et al., 1993; Haley et al., 2004; Mi et al., 2007; Pisani et al., 2004; Sethi et al., 2006). In these studies, focused on HIV/AIDS and STIs, and sexual practices and risk behaviours, when male sex workers were asked about the sex of their clients, their answers about female clients ranged from negligible less than 1% in London (Sethi et al., 2006), passing through 10% in Sidney (Estcourt et al., 2000), to 32% in Jakarta (Haley et al., 2004). Thus, it seems there are a significant number of women buyers.

Although we may know little about women clients, since the 1990s, there are some researches on women who pay for sex. The most prominent area in the investigation of women as sex buyers is sex tourism. The so-called sex tourism involving women of the Western world takes them to areas in developing countries looking for a holiday with a sexual component. Women crossing a full variety of ages, nationalities, and social and economic backgrounds engage in sex tourism in Caribbean, South America, Africa, Asia or even Europe (eg. Davidson and Taylor, 1999; Herold et al., 2001; Kempadoo, 2001; Pruitt and La Font, 1995; Phillips, 2008; Jacobs, 2009). The relations between the white, Western, middle-class women with poor, uneducated, Black men range from one night stands to long-term relations that exceed the length of the female’s vacation (Weichselbaumer, 2012), and we see a great variety of sexual and economic activities which occur between male locals and female tourists.

Some authors prefer to call it ‘female romance tourism’ (Pruitt and La Font, 1995) stressing that the liaisons between female sex tourists and the men whom they pay are constructed through a discourse of romance and long-term relationship. Attempts have been made to differentiate between sex tourism and female romance tourism, but some researchers point out that in this type of tourism, most women are looking for casual sex, not romance, even if they describe their relationships as romantic in reality it concerns here sex work (Albuquerque, 1998; Davidson and Taylor, 1999; Taylor, 2001). The situation seems to be more complex than these two dichotomous visions, in which the motivations to engage in relationships with local men are usually analysed. As Herold et al. (2001: 994) argue ‘it is too simplistic to define relationships between female tourists and beach boys as strictly either sex or romance tourism. Rather, it should be recognized that the motivations for tourist involvement with the local men vary considerably. In some cases, they are focused mainly on romance and in others mainly on sex. On the other hand, both love and sex may be emphasized equally. Yet among other tourists, the focus is on companionship and neither love nor sex may enter the picture’. Saying so, they suggest a new concept, namely, companionship tourism, and conceptualize romance and sex tourism as the two ends of a continuum.

Other studies on female sex tourism mention the transgression of gender roles, even if just temporarily, far from home and related to the uniqueness of the tourism environment (Berdychevsky et al., 2013) and as a temporary liberation of the established order (Weichselbaumer, 2012).

Another analytical framework in female sex tourism is related to the power balance between female tourists and local men, with some authors asserting that, like men, women engage in exploitative relationships, and that we must also understand these relationships in the context of postcolonialism (Davidson and Taylor, 1999; Hesselink, 1987). Moreover, the dynamics of these relationships also demonstrate that dominance and power are not static but are shifting and situational, constantly negotiated and contested (Pruitt and La Font, 1995).

Recently, a systematic mapping review of the empirical research on commercial sex where women are the buyers and men the sellers was carried out by Berg et al. (2020). Their review included 46 studies, three-quarters of them published in the last 15 years, of which 25 explicitly researched women as clients of male sex workers, although the vast majority of studies included only male participants. Nineteen from the 25 studies focused on sexual-economic exchanges between tourist women from the global north and local men, which confirms our assertion that most studies on women clients of commercial sex is included in research on sex tourism.

Although the information about the women was limited, Berg et al. (2020), based on the studies included in their systematic review, conclude that women appear to be, when compared to male sex workers, older, educated and economically comfortable and independent. Furthermore, they conclude that the motivations of women who buy sexual services arise from the satisfaction of their sexual needs. They also argue, as we mentioned above, that ‘commerce and inequalities of power and socioeconomics are strongly influential in transactional sex where women form the demand and men the supply’ (Berg et al., 2020: 115). Even recognizing the possibility of the growing and diversifying female demand for male sexual services, Berg et al. (2020) assert on basis of their systematic review that research on women as clients of commercial sex is relatively rare.

We must admit that female sexual behaviour in the international sex industry is changing. It has become more expansive, active, independent and visible. This is evidenced, for example, by the proliferation of pornography for and by women and the increased access to sexually explicit material to women of all classes and sexualities, with the erotic fiction for women becoming a mainstream genre for publishers (Ciclitira, 2004). Also male striptease shows like Chippendales or ladies’ clubs are highlighting the idea that women are becoming more sexually active as consumers and may pay for sex or, at least, for an erotic play.

Going to a striptease club reflects these changes in female behaviour. The few studies that have been done on female clients of male striptease (eg Arent and Carrara, 2008; Dressel and Peterson, 1982; Montemurro et al., 2003; Pilcher, 2009; Marques, 2013; Scull, 2013) show that contrary to men, women emphasize socialization with female friends inside the striptease club and claim not to value the sexual component of the activity. One of the debates emerging within these researches is related to gender roles in the context of male striptease. In the literature, a dichotomy can be distinguished between two different positions: from one side, researchers argue that this behaviour reinforces gender roles, and for the other side, they claim that seeking for male striptease is a transcendence of gender roles (Scull, 2013) – but if we think of women as being regularly sexually objectified the fact they attend male striptease becomes a transcendence of gender roles per se (Marques, 2013). As pointed out by Sanders-McDonagh (2015: 338), ‘understanding women as desirous, agentic, gazing sexual subjects troubles much of the essentializing anti-pornography feminist discourse of women and sexual representation’.

Similarity in the demand side: Diversity of people and desires and stigma

The four articles gathered in this special section have the particularity and unusual characteristic of having female clients of sexual services or erotic performances as research participants. This characteristic makes this number relevant due to the uniqueness of the studies and for allowing us to have access to the women’s subjectivity as sex clients, giving them ‘voice’.

One of the evidences when we listen to female clients of commercial sex is the analogy between their motivations and the motivations of male clients. The empirical findings of the researchers Sarah Kingston, Natalie Almond and Scarlett Redman about female clients in the United Kingdom, published in this special section, illustrate a remarkable similarity when it comes to male and female demand and demonstrate that the reasons why women purchase sex do not differ so much from men’s reasons, such as no strings sex or a desire for ‘bounded authenticity’ (Bernstein, 2007). The sexual services they buy range from sexuality to intimacy and can be seen as an emotional and bodily intimate service within a context of contemporary capitalism and growing consumerism.

Buying sex, as Hillary Caldwell and John de Wit conclude in their article, included in this special section, on basis of a qualitative study of women buying sex in Australia, is not a gendered activity. Just as in the case with male clients, the authors ascertain that female clients do not have particular characteristics that might distance them from women who have not bought sex. The research results of these articles in this special section show that female clients are a diverse group of women who tend to be in their 30s and 40s and who buy a great variety of emotional and bodily services, including sex and intimacy. Most often they seem to buy these services from private escorts or through agencies than for example in indoor brothels or on the streets, although more research is needed here. The primary concern that female clients had about buying sex was navigating the laws and experiencing stigma what we also see reflected in research on male clients (Hammond, 2015). Thus, dominant heteronormative gender norms keep the women in check through slut shaming and the whore stigma.

Female sexuality and female sexual agency: Not fully transgressive

Besides the fact that the articles in this section challenge the oversimplified idea that sex work clients visit sex workers just for the sex, they also provide interesting insights into female sexuality. The empirical findings from this special section on female clients show a transformation of female sexuality. Through their assertive initiation of sex and the focus on their own sexual pleasure, women who pay for sex challenge essentialist notions of female sexuality, that conceptualize women’s sexuality as passive and subordinate to men’s, and dominant ideals around monogamy and heteronormativity.

As the research by Katy Pilcher in the United Kingdom shows, male strip shows represent an interesting liminal space in which women can challenge heteronormative sexual scripts and normative femininity and sexuality. Despite its transgressiveness, however, this space of troubling female sexuality stays limited. Although female clients challenge traditional notions of expected female sexual passivity by actively seeking out and buying (hetero)sexual services, according to Caldwell and de Wit, the women from their research maintained a feminine role of passive desirability which does not fully destabilize conventional gendered constructions.

The same ambiguity is identified in the article by Akiko Takeyama between the transgressive actions of female buying sex and engaging in extramarital romance and their desire to maintain a youthful femininity and supporting the idea of an idealized romantic love with ‘the’ Prince Charming. This led the author to assert that the women featured in her essay were not seeking gender equality or freedom from male. Nevertheless, she ends up situating these sex buying behaviours within what she considers a ‘mundane feminist activism’. Conducted in Tokyo Host Clubs, where Japanese women flirt and often pay exorbitant sums of money to young Japanese men, the research by Akiko Takeyama led her to write this article that discusses how romance has become a commodity in modern Japan, but also a technology of the self – in the Foucaultian sense – in a way that romance with hosts functions for these women as a means to attain self-fulfilment by transforming themselves into women who are sexually desirable to the kind of men whom they also desire.

What does this mean for further research on sex work?

Looking at female clients opens up the gendered framework in which sex work is normally discussed. Sex work is related to gender ideology and different roles and perceptions of men and women in society. The phenomenon of female clients breaks down some of the main conceptions about sex work, as the stereotypical image of buyers of commercial sex, which links to defying the women victimization perspective on sex work. Female clients pose a challenge to normative gender roles. To speak of female clients is to break several taboos, the stigma and the silences around female sexuality simultaneously. The study of the female clients of sex work can be seen as a magnifying lens of the changes in female sexual behaviour. Accordingly, female sex buyers challenge the double standard towards female sexual behaviour and the whore stigma which is a sword of Damocles over the head of each woman. Thus, this special section aims to render visible the female behaviour of buying sex and simultaneously to contribute to fill a gap in the study of commercial sex and to a better understanding of the female demand of sex services.

The innovative research in this special section opens up a challenging and theoretically important area within research on sex work and invite scholars on the sex industry to explore further the silences around the demand side. Additional investigation should also try to better understand the role of race in a sex industry where whiteness is still often seen as the unspoken norm. As said by Weitzer (2005), female sex clients are a small but theoretically important fraction of the sex work market.