Men of pleasure?
A research into how male sex workers experience harm reduction
In this research in-depth interviews were taken from ten male escorts to find out how they experience
harm reduction, which aims at reducing/avoiding harms related to sex work. Even though all respondents admit that such harms exist and agree that harm reduction is highly useful, not all think it applies to them. While scientific researchers have shown that street sex workers experience more harms than those who work indoor, our results confirm that it might also be advisable for aid organizations to make a distinction between full-time sex workers on the one hand who seem to experience more difficulties and are more in need of social welfare and their part-time colleagues on the other hand who are more positive about their job and do not wish to use harm reduction. Furthermore, even though not all the participants are in favor of male-only targeted harm reduction initiatives, the fact that there are significant differences between male and female sex workers cannot be denied.