Rent Boys: The World of Male Sex Trade Workers

by Michel Dorais

Book Overview

From the author of Don't Tell and Dead Boys Can't Dance. Candid interviews and personal stories explore the lives of male street hustlers, strippers, and escorts. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773529020
• ISBN13: 9780773529021
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Straightforward, Unadorned, and Informative

The adjectives are few and far between in this no-nonsense, unsentimental, and extremely thoughtful study by an acedemic who obviously cares deeply for the health and welfare of young men in the sex trade. Based on a series of detailed interviews with 40 male sex workers in Montreal and Quebec City, the author and his team of researchers have distilled four distinct "types" of life-patterns into which his subjects may be classified. And while Dorais admits that the lines between these categories are quite permeable, the four types nevertheless provide a useful framework with which to understand the history, psychology, and motivations of men who rent themselves to others. Even more provocative, however, is the suggestion that each of these types require a tailored approach to "extraction strategies" when the sex workers themselves decide that it's time to leave the life of prostitution. Although rigorously academic, this book is far from dry -- and highly readable. At exactly 100 pages, it can be completed in a couple of hours. And that's a small price to pay for the chance to have permanently dispelled all the tawdry and tired misconceptions about what it means to be a modern-day male sex worker. Highly recommended.