ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore the meanings that different actors, in a particular ethnographic setting, attach to the notion of an individual who is at once a man and a prostitute’s client.1 I consider the interdependency of the two terms, and how their relationship often verges on the parasitic, while each simultaneously pushes the boundaries of meaning of the other. This contested space for meaning relates to the potency of both concepts. Historically in western thought, the hegemony of discourses of men/‘maleness’ and of men/‘clientness’ are such that they are both often taken for granted and treated as synonymous rather than being openly articulated as men/maleness and men/clientness. Maleness often hijacks personhood, thereby precluding the latter as a shared
space for women and children. With clientness, the reverse process occurs. Textual and popular discourses of prostitution are generally negative discourses; not surprisingly, they are mostly discourses about women prostitutes. Precisely because of the hegemony of male/maleness discourses, (male) clientness is often given a privileged back seat, leaving women prostitutes up front with only the faintest whiff of an idea that clients exist as well. Slowly, this situation is beginning to change. The occasional feminist voice
speaks out, exposing clients (for example, McCleod 1982) or deconstructing ‘masculinity’, as in this volume. However, the general outlook is bleak. Anthropological and sociological studies of ‘masculinity’ bring the concept of ‘maleness’ to the fore; the paradox is that male discourses occupy a privileged status and ‘masculinity’ studies go some way towards reinforcing this. Some of them are critical, but many are not. And most texts on prostitution, when they mention clients, present them en masse, precluding a contextualized analysis of who these men are and where their responsibilities lie. My chapter aims to redress this situation and examine men and/as clients in one
particular setting. It points to the plurality of discourses regarding the notions ‘man’
and ‘client’. Male selves are messier than many studies of ‘masculinity’ would like to acknowledge, and so too are client selves, often stereotyped and essentialized in texts on prostitution. There are, of course, no observable hegemonic discourses in this ethnographic setting. Patterns do emerge, but they are at once informed by powerful counter-patterns – hence discourses conflict.
