ABSTRACT
In this paper 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. 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.
