Selling virtual virility. Exposing male body in online sex work

Abstract

This contribution intends to study the theme of the body in online male sex work starting from the analysis of an in-depth interview carried out with an italian university student who plays the role of cash master for a male clientele. The body of the sex worker and that of the client are involved in an exclusively visual erotic game in which the masculinity of both becomes a conscious performance and, at the same time, the instrument and effect of a construction of models - normative and/or transgressive - of gender. The epistemological approach adopted is based on Simon and Gagnon's theory of "sexual scripts" that, by allowing us to examine the ways in which individuals organise and construct their sexual meanings, appears to be a privileged theoretical tool in the reading of the socio-sexual dimension of the body. This exquisitely pedagogical theme of investigation shows the plural dynamics of the formation (and reconstruction) of masculinity, not only in adolescence (as we have by now learnt to recognise) but also in adulthood, proposing, moreover, a theoretical challenge to the concept of the body itself, whose boundaries, ramifications and virtual hybridisations are explored.