Internationally, sex work research, public opinion, policy, laws, and practice are predicated on the assumption that commercial sex is a priori sold by women and bought by men; that's a mistake

Sex counts: An examination of sexual service advertisements in a UK online directory. Sarah Kingston  Nicola Smith. The British Journal of Sociology, January 5 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12727

Abstract: Internationally, sex work research, public opinion, policy, laws, and practice are predicated on the assumption that commercial sex is a priori sold by women and bought by men. Scarce attention has been devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) sex working as well as women who pay for sex. This is as much an empirical absence as it is a theoretical one, for the ideological claim that women comprise the “vast majority” of sex workers is rarely, if ever, exposed to empirical scrutiny. Focusing on the UK, we address this major gap in evidence in order to challenge the gendered and heterosexist logics that underpin contemporary debates. We do so by presenting large‐scale data gained from the quantitative analysis of 25,511 registered member profiles of an online escort directory. Our findings point to heterogeneity rather than homogeneity in the contemporary sex industry including in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and advertised client base. For example, while two‐thirds of advertisements self‐identify as “Female,” one in four are listed as “Male;” less than half list their sexual orientation as “Straight;” and nearly two‐thirds advertise to women clients. Our study thus challenges prevailing heteronormative assumptions about commercial sex, which erase LGBTQ sex workers and other non‐normative identities and practices, and which we argue have important political, practical, and theoretical consequences.

5 | DISCUSSION

Our research points to a diversity of identities and practices in the contemporary sex industry. These empirical findings are new, surprising, and perhaps even counter-intuitive in the context of widely held assumptions about the “types” of identities and practices involved in commercial sex. For instance, the End Demand (2016, p. 2) campaign group has called for the UK Parliament to criminalize the purchase of sexual services, asserting that “the majority of people exploited through prostitution are women and girls and the majority of those who pay for sex are
men.”14  In contrast to this stereotype of the female worker and male client, our data shows that a sizable minority
of escort profiles are listed as “Male,” that many do not self-identify as “Straight,” and that the majority explicitly
advertise to women and couples. To be clear, our findings do not show that the sex industry is not a gendered industry, for it is indeed the case that the majority of escort profiles were listed as “Female,” just as the majority also
advertised to men. What they do suggest, though, is that the sex industry may be gendered in rather more complex ways than is conventionally assumed, for sexual desire does not only exist in its heterosexual articulations.

To focus only, or even primarily, on the female worker/male client binary is to overlook the potential for divergent identities, activities, and expressions in the contemporary sex industry—and this binary is in turn underpinned by “vast majority” claims. Clearly, it is impossible to do justice to the rich complexity of performances, experiences and embodiments involved in the online sex industry in a single quantitative study. Our figures therefore cannot be assumed to reflect the transparent “reality” of online sex work. Nevertheless, our research challenges prevailing stereotypes of the sex industry as a monolithic bloc of uniform advertised or offered practices, and is instead suggestive of the high levels of diversification, specification, and specialization that have come to represent the hallmarks of contemporary capitalism (Phipps, 2014).

These original findings are significant in highlighting the need to rethink popular beliefs and prejudices about sex workers and their clients. As we have discussed, it is precisely the potential for complexity that scholarly and political debates about commercial sex often obscure. Most notably, they continue to reproduce age-old sexist stereotypes that women are sexual objects and men are sexual subjects. As noted earlier, anti-trafficking agendas are organized around the notion that trafficked “victims” of prostitution are women. This can be seen in both academic debates and in the activities of NGOs and campaign groups, such as the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women. In the UK, as well as internationally, calls to follow a “Swedish” or “Nordic” model of criminalization appeal directly to constructions of sex workers as victimized women and their clients as predatory men. The Swedish Institute, in full support of the ban on purchasing sexual services, has argued that “it is shameful and unacceptable that, in a gender equal society, men obtain casual sexual relations with women in return for payment” (Swedish Institute, 2010, p. 4). Likewise, across European political forums MEPs can be seen to perpetuate these gendered assertions in the context of debates on the trafficking for sexual exploitation. For instance, Mary Honeyball MEP and Vice Chair for the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality has claimed that “the most effective way of combating the trafficking of women and under-age females for sexual exploitation
and improving gender equality is the model implemented in Sweden, Iceland and Norway (the so-called Nordic model)” (Honeyball, 2014, p. 1).

Notably, it is not only national policy but also local-level practice that can be shaped by problematic constructions of sex workers. In the UK, the systematic erasure of LGBTQ sex workers in political discourse means that
there are few projects commissioned to provide support services to them (Bryce et al., 2015). There is therefore
“an urgent need for policy revisions to ensure that future provision is inclusive, relevant to the needs of all sex
workers and recognizes the rights to public protection for all” (2015, p. 252). Given that many on- and off-street
physical spaces are frequently dominated by cis female sex workers, other sex workers may feel excluded from
these spaces and the projects that provide support services there, hence why they may advertise online in large
numbers. It is often these visible parts of the industry that are assumed to reflect the industry as a whole (Scoular,
2015), and these assumptions not only obscure the complexity of the industry but also materialize in the support services commissioned to provide outreach for sex workers. This highlights the need for political debates
and policy practice to recognize and respond to the diversity and complexity in the industry that our study has
identified.
The heteronormative imaginaries of sex work, which are propped up by empirical claims, thus play out as
material realities that not only shape public policy and practice but also the everyday lives of sex workers and
their clients. Importantly, they work to increase the visibility of some—often the most vulnerable, such as street
workers—while creating invisibilities for others. For example, research by Kingston, Hammond, and Redmand
(2020) shows that women clients feel they are ignored by policy makers because of their assumed non-existence,
in turn meaning that they can more easily evade police detection and prosecution in countries that have created a
criminal offence of paying for sex. To be able to “go under the radar” is particularly important in contexts such as
the UK, where legislation has made it a criminal offence to purchase sexual services from a forced or coerced person. That women in the sex industry are being rendered visible only in certain types of ways—as street workers,
as victims of sex trafficking, but never as clients—not only reflects gendered, racialized, and classed hierarchies
but also serves to produce them. It is poor and migrant women, after all, that dominant discourses focus on—and
it is poor and migrant women who are in turn being targeted by the police, as the English Collective of Prostitutes
(2016) repeatedly report. This further underscores the need for political debates and policy interventions to challenge heteronormative logics and, in so doing, to resist the denigration and criminalization of sex workers that
such logics help to produce.

5.1 | Limitations

Although our original findings are important in challenging the dominant stereotypes that continue to frame
scholarly and political debates, there are several limitations with our research. First, our findings relate only to a
specific period of time. We attempted to account for inactive profiles, but it is likely that our 2-month window of
escort activity did not capture sporadic users: those who “dip in” and “dip out” of sex working. Commercial sex has
been described as “the ultimate precarious labor” (Sanders et al., 2016, p. 16) due to its high levels of part-time,
casualized, temporary, and contingent work, and it is not uncommon for some sex workers to leave the industry
and then return months or years later due to a change in their financial, occupational, or personal circumstances.
Second, the findings from this study are taken from just one online directory. There are many other advertising sites and agencies that cater for this wide-ranging market, and many sex workers do not advertise online.
The “digital divide” is well documented, as those who may be economically disadvantaged or computer illiterate
may be unable to engage online (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003). Street sex workers can be difficult to locate
online because they often do not have access to the internet or mobile enabled devices. Likewise, sex workers
are not necessarily limited to one sex scene, with some working on the street and also from their own homes.
Thus, our findings cannot be extrapolated to make concrete assertions about the rest of the UK sex industry.
Nor does the data provided give an indication of the aggregate volume of sale and purchase of sexual services
across the UK—although it should be noted that because of the hidden and secretive nature of the sex industry
globally, it is not possible to provide such data. As outlined earlier, our aim has not been to produce “representative” findings as this would rest upon problematic assumptions about the sameness and replicability of human
experience.
Third, just as our sample did not include all sex workers in the UK, so too it cannot be assumed that all profiles
in our sample were from bona fide sex workers. Previous research has ascertained that people often engage in
“identity performance” and “impression management” whilst engaging online (Boyd & Jeffrey, 2006). For some, creating a fantasy online personality can produce feelings of liberation from the constraints of physical form, or a mode of “empowering exhibitionism” (De Laat, 2008, p. 68). Agents and managers may also post profiles of particular escorts but then inform clients that this escort is not available but that another is; we call these impersonated sex workers. Others may advertise sexual services online, but this does not “convert” into clients or service types. Thus, some advertisements may only reflect someone’s ambition to sex work rather than its actual practice; we call these prospective sex workers. Furthermore, sex workers who advertise online often have multiple profiles to feed into niche markets (for example, by advertising as a dominatrix who performs sadomasochism and bondage on one profile, whilst advertising more mainstream services on another) (Pruitt & Krull, 2010). The use of multiple profiles can therefore itself operate as an effective advertising tool, as it enables escorts to access a wide range
of clients.

Fourth, given that escorts' advertisements cannot be assumed to be "real" (since advertising is not the same as selling), we do not claim to have captured the “reality” of sex working online. Yet this does not mean that escorts' advertisements can simply be dismissed as “fake” either. Indeed, as post-positivist researchers, we reject outright any notion that there is some kind of neat division between “authentic” and “fabricated” identities, which overlooks the performative character of all identities (Butler, 1990). Nor do we regard sexuality as a “thing” that lies beneath or beyond social existence and which either hides or declares its “reality” (Foucault, 1978; Bernstein, 2007). For example, if someone sets up an escort profile in order to articulate their fantasies surrounding sex work (but they never actually engage in sex work), is this not in itself a meaningful performance? Is fantasy not in itself “real” in some senses? If we accept that sexual subjectivities are performed in virtual spaces as well as physical ones, and if we also accept that the boundaries of what does and does not constitute “sex work” are always blurred (Cabezas, 2009), then online advertisements are clearly worthy of attention in their own right.

Fifth, the study was very much bounded by the search engine tools available to us. Given that profiles were organized according to pre-set categories, these may not have reflected the self-identities of those advertising. For example, the gender options available were “Male,” “Female,” “Couple MF,” “Couple MM,” “Couple FF,” “TV/TS Male,” “TV/TS Female,” “TV/TS Couple MF,” “TV/TS Couple MM,” and “TV/TS Couple FF,” with no reference to alternate identities such as non-binary, genderqueer, intergender, or agender. As noted, people often engage in identity performance through sex work, and so the gender and/or sexual identities that people perform when escorting cannot be assumed to match up neatly with the sexual and/or gender identities they perform in other contexts of their lives. The data thus inevitably obscure a far more complex and fluid picture than can be captured through search engine results.

Our study thus highlights the need for future research to further deepen and expand the analysis offered here. Given that our research was limited to one online UK-based directory at a particular moment in time, future studies could examine a larger number of international sites (see, for instance, Minichello & Scott, 2017) to interrogate whether the patterns we identify here play out in other national or local contexts. However, researchers must recognize that sex workers migrate extensively for sex work (Agustín, 2006; Van Blerk, 2008), and thus may advertise on multiple sites. Similarly, longitudinal research could explore how the configuration of the online sex industry shifts over time, for example in terms of the geographical distribution of escort profiles.

The research also points to other areas of enquiry that were beyond the scope of our study but that nevertheless warrant further analysis. Given that we found many couples advertising online, further studies on couples are needed. Although research has identified the experience of sex workers who provide services to couples and couples who have purchased sex, this has been somewhat limited (Kingston et al., 2020). In addition, the data on the geographical distribution of sex work online points to the need for more research on rural parts of the UK and elsewhere. It is hardly surprising that research has focused on major cities given the heightened visibility of the industry (together with increased access to support services) in city centers. Although online research such as ours does not completely overlook sex workers who provide services in more rural areas, it would be fruitful for future studies to interrogate sex working in rural communities. In addition to further quantitative analyses, qualitative and/or mixed methods research could be undertaken to explore these complexities and nuances in more depth. Further quantitative analysis of advertisement sites would also be useful, for example to explore the relationships between particular variables (such as those between age, sexuality, and rates of pay; whether people charge more per hour in the south than in the north of the country; and whether those who advertise as male, female,or non-binary escorts are more likely to offer specific services).

Finally, qualitative research could investigate whether advertisements translate into bookings, although this would need to consider the diversity of sex worker practices and experiences. For example, building up a client base takes time and, whilst a person might not be providing sexual services at the time of the research, this does not mean that they will not provide sexual services at some point. Kingston et al.’s (2020) research on women who pay for sexual services alone and as part of a couple, has shown that many men sex workers work part time and inconsistently, and thus may be misinterpreted as “bogus” sex workers when their inconsistent work patterns are not taken into account. (We define a bogus sex worker as someone who does not intend to sell, sexual services, nor works in the industry as an agent or manager, but creates a bogus profile for personal gratification or in order to victimize or exploit sex workers). Like any other area of research, it is possible that some of our sample were bogus or impersonated sex workers, and others were career sex workers (who work full time as sex workers), parttime sex workers (who have another part-time or full-time job), yoyo sex workers (who dip in and out of sex work) and prospective sex workers (who show ambition to sex work, but their adverts do not translate into bookings).

Qualitative research could also explore user activity (e.g. profile log ins over a 1-5 year period) to interrogate if and how this reflects particular types of sex working (e.g. career sex work), patterns of sex working (e.g. working ondoors when not online), and personal circumstances (e.g. caring responsibilities, long-term illness).