Revanchist Masculinity: Gender Attitudes in Sex Work Management

Abstract

Pimps, or male managers of female sex workers, are commonly represented in popular culture as hypermasculine and as a ubiquitous part of sex work. However, there is little empirical scholarship on pimps or the construction of their masculinity. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this article demonstrates how pimps produce a “revanchist masculinity” that seeks to reclaim power from women and establish status over other men. Pimps are suspicious of sex workers' motives and deny them decision-making power and profit sharing—processes that highlight how work practices can structure gender identity construction.

Keywords::

• sex and gender
• work and occupations
• sex work
• power
• masculinity

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Megan Comfort, Paula England, Lynne Haney, Colin Jerolmack, Kerwin Kaye, Mary Kelsey, Eric Klinenberg, Ashley Mears, Harvey Molotch, Shelly Ronen, Deirdre Royster, Kristen Schilt, Loïc Wacquant, Abigail Weitzman, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. The article also benefited from feedback received at the 2012 ASA Section on Sex and Gender Panel on Competing Rights: The New Politics of Gendered and Sexual Intimacy.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Because of the limited scholarship on sex work in general, and sex work management in particular, this article focuses on one previously unexplored aspect of pimps' identities: gender. For more sustained engagements regarding race and the cultural meaning of pimping see Collins (2004), Quinn (2004), and Staiger (2005).

² Specific geographical locations are obscured and pseudonyms assigned.

³ Ten of these interviews were conducted in 2007–2009 and 10 were conducted in 2010–2014.

⁴ Six interviewees reported managing white, Latina, or mixed-race women at previous times. The racial homogeneity of the interviewees and the women they managed should not be taken as representative. Instead, it is likely due to network effects and the snowball sampling technique employed.

⁵ Previous research (e.g., Bernstein 2007) confirms this financial arrangement.

⁶ The phrase “purse first, ass last,” which was used by ten of the respondents during their interviews, echoes the phrase “I don't give up no dick unless I get paid.” The latter phrase was a common expression among the managers in the Milners' study (Milner and Milner 1972:58).

⁷ In the larger context of race relations, where black men do not have the economic authority afforded to white men, the ability to secure women's love through sexual prowess and seduction is another prerequisite for masculinity, as is the ability to extract profits from women's labor (Collins 2004:151).