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Paper Title

Buying Sex as Edgework: Hong Kong Male Clients in Commercial Sex

Keywords

  • commercial sex
  • edgework
  • male clients
  • hong kong
  • china
  • masculinity
  • risk
  • leisure
  • pleasure
  • sexual scripts
  • modern intimacy
  • companionate sexuality
  • resistance
  • gender norms
  • late modernity
  • transactional sex
  • sex
  • fantasy
  • kink
  • bdsm
  • masturbation

Article Type

Research Article

Research Impact Tools

Issue

Volume : 56 | Issue : 1 | Page No : 105–122

Published On

January, 2016

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Abstract

Commercial sex is a risky business and men who buy sex engage in a form of voluntary risky behaviour. Using Stephen Lyng’s notion of edgework, this qualitative study examines Hong Kong men who buy sex in Hong Kong/China and argues that these men’s engagement can be understood as a form of leisure edgework which balances risk and pleasure by negotiating the boundary between order and chaos. This article concludes that men buying sex can be seen as a form of resistance to normative companionate sexuality and the skills they exercise are key cultural principles needed in late-modern society. Edgework therefore plays an important role in modern intimacy, especially in shaping masculinity and men’s sexual scripts.

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