Sexual Commercialization and Masculine Rhetoric: Prostitution in Spain

Abstract

This article is focused on the study conducted on prostitution customers in Spain with the purpose of understanding why men pay for sex. In order to answer this question, the discourses of prostitution customers were analyzed through semi-structured in-depth interviews, group interviews and discussion groups. With the aim of coherently structuring the obtained narrations and classifying them in categories, the theoretical framework “frame analysis” was implemented. Four typologies of ideal customers were obtained: the misogynistic (hatred for women); consumerist (everything can be bought and sold); friend (affective though abusive); and critical (occasional and repentant). As far as we are concerned, the purchase of sex is not produced by the search for quality sex, fun and hedonistic enjoyment, but rather for a strategy to reinforce masculinity based on an identity focused on exhibition in front of a group of peers.

Keywords

• Gender
• prostitution
• users of prostitution
• frame analysis
• theories of masculinity