If prostitution is a degrading profession, and if it is a prolific spreader of disease, why should the male be permitted to demand that prostitutes be available to enable him to exercise his sexual freedom?261
When Canadians describe and explain sex work, they often position their arguments based on the assumption that the sex workers are female and the clients male, yet we have seen how male and female sex workers may experience sex work differently.
The Canadian discourse on sex work generally attempts to describe and explain the phenomenon from one of two theoretical perspectives. At the very least, these perspectives should account for or help explain the differences between men and women who sell sex, as well as the similarities.
One of these two frameworks is the social-psychological perspective. This perspective was adopted by the Badgley Committee (1984) and does not usually include significant structural analysis of the family as a social unit, or of the role of the family in production and reproduction.
In contrast, the Fraser Committee (1985) utilized the second most popular framework: a political economy approach. This perspective is usually influenced by a feminist analysis of patriarchal social relations and stresses inequalities in job opportunities, earning power and sexual socialization.262
According to Lowman, a Canadian theoretical perspective on sex work should amalgamate both of the above frameworks. Such a perspective would combine a political economy or social-structural level of analysis (which considers such factors as racial, gender and generational power structures -- including employment opportunities) with a social-psychology perspective (which would focus on the factors that "push" people away from their home lives and those that "pull" them to the street and into sex work).263
Ultimately, one must consider the Canadian context in which sex work occurs:
Certainly people make choices. Indeed, most prostitutes claim that their prostitution is a matter of choice and that it is motivated by the rational expectation of gain. But "reasons" are not necessarily "causes." What is more important, both theoretically and in terms of designing social policy, is the relationship between choice and constraint. To adopt a familiar sociological aphorism, people usually choose to prostitute, but they do not make this choice in conditions of their own choosing.264
Brannigan (1994) described four ideas around which public discussions of sex work tend to cluster: nuisance, occupation, delinquency and exploitation:
1. Nuisance: "the idea that street prostitution is essentially a public nuisance which has to be suppressed to protect neighbourhoods"
2. Occupation: "the idea that prostitution is an occupation in which people exercise rights over their own bodies and over how they propose to earn money from them"
3. Delinquency: "the idea that prostitution is a form of delinquency or crime which needs to be deterred like other forms of unlawful conduct"
4. Exploitation: "the idea that prostitution is a form of sexual exploitation of a vulnerable sector of society"
Nuisance, delinquency, occupation and exploitation are four very different ways of thinking about prostitution. None of these definitions of the situation is completely compelling. Each has different implications for how we conceive of what the alternative measures need to address and how these measures would contribute to the issues of safety.265
Kinsman (1994) would have us ask, how is it that sexual relations -- including sex work and same-gender sex -- are made into social problems? For him,
it is especially important to investigate where these definitions have historically and socially come from. If we can grasp where they have come from, and how they have been put in place, we can act to challenge and transform them.266
Traditionally, knowledge about male sex work in Canada has been used to mandate police action, to assist legal and judicial systems in the formation of Criminal Code offences "and to help organize psychiatric, medical, media, and social practices for dealing with sexual problems.'"267 In order to solve the difficulties involved in theorizing male sex work in Canada, we will need to shift social standpoints and begin to empower sex workers and their clients "to have more control over their bodies and the circumstances shaping their sexual lives."268
Visano (1987) found that our liberal democracy's social service framework of intervention in the lives of male sex workers rests on the belief that they are incapable of moral responsibility:
These benevolent services are attentive to certain "needs," rather than the "rights" of these youths. ... This humanitarianism holds firmly to the concept of "parens patria" -- the state as a parent. Following this logic of parental responsibility, liberal informers argue that it is not necessary to extend to these youth the same legal rights enjoyed by adults.269
In order to fully understand male sex work in Canada, we have to consider not only what in some cases might "push" men away from their homes and "pull" them into sex work. We also have to consider the human and legal rights of these individuals, as well as looking at how it is that male sex work and the buying and selling of sex are seen as social problems.
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