Sex trade among men: negotiating sex, bodies and identity categories

Abstract

Commercial sex is a marginalized and highly stigmatized activity in Brazilian culture. In this article we aim at investigating the discursive strategies used by young men who trade sex in order to resist stigmatization and social exclusion. We interviewed 24 young men who trade sex in a medium sized city in Brazil. Discursive strategies used by the interviewees to avoid social stigma could be summarized as (1) a reduction of sexual activity to its commercial sense by employing a conceptualization of masculinity that focuses on moral values and disregards sexual intercourse, (2) an emphasis on the anatomic characteristics as a criterion to delimit sexual identification categories, and (3) a shifting of sexual systems from one based on sexual object choice to one based on sexual aim. The discussion highlights that the interviewees were actively negotiating with normative assumptions of sexuality and thus producing either its subversion or conservation.

Keywords

• sexualidade
• discriminação sexual
• prostituição juvenil