The BBC on gay male escorts

From female prostitutes in Tatler, to male escorts on the BBC website, it's refreshingly impossible to keep a certain credential of sex worker out of mainstream media at the moment. Hurrah! You'll see why I say "certain credential" momentarily.

Hang on though. What was that? A story on the BBC about male escorts? WTF? 

I know, I found it double blinkingly amazing too! It's mostly positive and I love how it has gone for the business angle as a hook - as in the practicalities of how male escorts market themselves - rather than sticking a figure on the work to "wow" readers. Having said that, the Beeb can't completely help themselves and chuck in a quote in paragraph seven in which the interviewee, Brandon, says: "The most I've ever made is £30,000 in a month. When I work that hard, the money can be great." I'm glad they kept in the fact that Brandon had to work hard for that money and not insinuate that sex work is a piece of piss and that figure probably isn't every month, unlike the £20k-a-night female sex workers piece, which made it sound like it was a) easy to achieve that kind of status and b) made it sound like that happened all the time. The BBC even keep up the positivism highlighting the fact that his career choice has afforded him a living space in the heart of London. Well jel!  

It doesn't last though, because, naturally, this lifestyle has to come at a price:

 "I was seeing an arms dealer."

Wow, what a BBC-esque way to take the escort profession down a peg! 'You can have all this great stuff, but you have to cosy up to some pretty undesirable characters that might throw your ethics into whack.' I suppose that's one way to read it. The other is that it could possibly feel very James Bond. Now that is sexy.

Interesting that yesterday, for the ladies, it was all talk of rich oil tycoons, royals, bankers; there was nothing so controversial in there as servicing arms dealers. This is BBC's first stab in the article at reinforcing to readers that maybe this career path ain't so glam after all and just to hammer that home they have the story of Nico: a depressed, drug-taking male escort with family issues. Obviously, as it's the BBC, they need to show both sides of the coin. That's what they're famous for of course: unbiased. However, kudos to them that they didn't stick that right at the end of the story and the feature's parting words actually appear quite liberal and open minded towards male escorting.

Right, that's the bulk of what I wanted to say. Now onto what I meant by "certain credentials". The only other thing to highlight is that this is about gay male escorts. Again, it's excellent that this stem of sex work is getting a voice within mainstream media at all, and that is a positive, but with this article and the one from yesterday it's only progressive to a point.

'There has been a slow societal shift in the acceptability of sex work, says Del Campbell from the Terence Higgins Trust.

"There is a lot less stigma for men who sell sex," he says. "Often, the women are still seen as victims but for some gay men, escorting is now a normal job. You could mention that you're an escort at a dinner party and in some circles, no one would bat an eyelid."'

While it's apparently becoming an accepted profession within the gay male community, what about out of it? What about the men that offer escorting services for women? How often do we hear them, or see them in the media? In this scenario, the focus of the articles are often shifted to be about the women that are doing the buying, because that's the "shock" value. That's still the taboo. The guys get lost in the media storm around "her". Examples here, here and here.

So, my (sweeping) assumption from what I've seen in the last two days is that unless you're a gay male, a high-end expensive female escort, or a woman paying for a male escort, you're going to find it tough at the moment to make it into the popular press.