ABSTRACT
Sexual scripting theory, with its de-essentialising potential, is a powerful weapon in dismantling simplistic, classificatory and derogatory understandings of men as clients of commercial sex, allowing us to explore how making sense of paying for sex is an everyday accomplishment for men in the scripting of heterosexual masculinity. Drawing upon middle-aged and elderly Italian men’s accounts of their heterosexual sexual biographies, we point to directions along which the potential of scripting theory can further unfold in research on purchasing sex, by considering scripting as a situational, biographical and boundary-drawing process.
