In Search of Respect: The Logic of Buying Sex For Male Underclass in Urban China

• In Event: Community Contexts of Race, Ethnicity, Victimization, and Offending

Abstract

Men’s consumption of sex has been widely explored for various reasons such as physical desire, the search for romantic relationship, masculinity, or the excitement of being risky as an edgework in China. However, most of the existing research is based on the experience of middle or upper-class male sex clients. The sex consumption of male underclass is underexplored. Based on three months extensive fieldwork in a half-demolished urban village in Guangzhou where the lowest level of buying and selling sex activities concentrate, this research argues that sex consumption becomes an important vehicle for the underclass men to look for limited respect by exploiting patriarchal ideology when they suffer from multi-dimensional social exclusion and marginality. More specifically, we examine three mechanisms through which the search of respect is realized: creating illusion, dominating sex consumption process and showing off to peers.

Authors

• Qipu Hu, University of Macau

• Jianhua Xu, University of Macau