ABSTRACT
Male sex work has operated for decades in digital spaces, including those where sex work is implicitly or explicitly forbidden. Through an ethnographic study of online male sex work, we constructed five intersecting layers of digital regulation that affect and shape the online expression of male sex work: (1) regulation of the self, (2) platform regulation, (3) service-delivery regulation, (4) legal regulation, and (5) social regulation. Each layer exhibits specific expressions of control, commonly intersecting to shape (and be shaped) by one another in ways that are often invisible and largely unquestioned. Like offline regulation, online regulation appears to diminish male sex workers’ capacity to negotiate safe and healthy commercial sex encounters, and it reveals society’s persistent interest in seeking to control sex work. By understanding digital regulation through the lens of male sex work, it becomes possible to see the pervasive forms of regulation that dictate all aspects of our online lives, sex working and otherwise.
