Male Sex Workers: a comparative study of a fringe phenomenon in Italy and Sweden

This research aims at mapping and analysing the phenomenon of male sex workers (specifically men that sell sex to other men, M2M or M$M) in Italy and Sweden. If female sex work has been studied from different scholars worldwide, a lack of attention exists on the male side of the phenomenon. This gap in the academic literature mirrors a more general \u2018invisibility\u2019 of the issue also in other domains - politics (governments and public institutions), press and public opinion. Why should men in XXI century still be willing to pay for sexual encounter, when sex among gay people appears so easily and freely accessible? The research points, first of all, at answering this complicated question and at grasping the different sides of the phenomenon through a qualitative methodology. In-depth interviews with sex workers (the so-called supply side) will be carried on in Milan and in Stockholm together with an online ethnography, since the phenomenon of male sex workers is strongly related to the use of internet. The research focuses, in particular, on the issue of identity and the \u2018identification\u2019, self-labelling problems of both sex workers and clients. The project then looks at the working conditions of sex workers and at the services provided to their clients. A further gap in most studies, indeed, relates to the analysis of sex work as an actual work. Being a comparative research, much attention will be paid to the different legislation that exists in Italy (abolitionist country) and Sweden (neo-prohibitionist country) and on the effects of existing provisions on sex workers