Male Sex Working as Sexual Scripting: A Symbolic Interactionist Account

Abstract

This chapter aims to outline the ways in which symbolic interactionism shifts the focus of inquiry into sex from being sexual toward becoming sexual, which takes into account doing sexualities, rather than tracing their origins in a static conception of nature. This means that our being sexual varies according to the rituals and performances in which we are involved as part of our daily lives. Such is the case any time we perform a role to communicate our identity to one or more audiences from communicative, expressive, aesthetic, and verbal points of view. This process is particularly manifest in male sex working where social actors are involved in the use of excuses, justifications and, generally, motive talk that are useful to neutralize their own sexual conducts and negotiate the gender appearance and sexual practices. Using the late developments of sexualities’ symbolic interactionist studies emphasized by sexual scripts theory, the chapter focuses on the theoretical necessity to understand that there are far more reasons to be sexual than ways to be sexual