Male professionals double as sex workers for extra income
Gym instructors, call centre workers and direct sales agents are among
thousands of professional men moonlighting as sex workers in the city to
supplement incomes they feel are too meagre to give them a decent life in
Mumbai. Unlike female sex workers, these men do not walk the streets but
operate entirely through social networking websites, according a study
funded by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, dedicated to AIDS research,
and executed by the Humsafar Trust, a non-profit focusing on gay and
transgender sexual health. "I cannot afford to live in the city if I don't
double up as a sex worker," said Sujit, 28, who works as a gym instructor
in
Vakola and was part of the study, but did not want Hindustan Times to use
his last name. The six-year study, which will be completed in March,
estimates that Mumbai has 6,000 male sex workers. This is a fairly
significant number as it is almost a third of the 20,000 female sex workers
that civic body's Mumbai District AIDS Control Society estimate operate in
the city. The study found that most of the men, like Sujit, became sex
workers for economic reasons: three-fourths came from lower middle class and
working class backgrounds. About 60 per cent of their encounters were with
gay men, 20 per cent with women and the remaining 20 per cent with couples.
"Most of the women and couples who are clients are from the upper middle
class," said Shantaram Kudalkar, project director of the Mumbai District
AIDS Control Society, a civic initiative. "Because male sex workers use
social networking sites, this class of clients finds it easy to avail of
their services." But for the same reason, estimating the number of sex
workers was more difficult than if they had used more overt methods of
soliciting, said Vivek Anand, Humsafar's chief executive who headed the
study. "Moreover, once we tracked them down, many of them would first deny
that they were sex workers," he said. "But with counselling, they
admitted
to it." What helped in tracking them down was the fact that most of the
male
sex workers met their clients in public places before proceeding elsewhere.
The study's field workers thus managed to track down 2,600 male sex workers
in Mumbai over the past six years, all of who eventually admitted that they
charged for sex. Like Sujit, all of them are now registered with Humsafar
and regularly visit non-profit's clinic for health check-ups. Based on
interviews with these 2,600 men, who told field workers about others they
knew who were also sex workers, the study's statisticians arrived at a final
estimate of 6,000. About a third of these are probably HIV-positive because
that was also the percentage of the 2,600 registered men who tested
positive.
http://qmediawatch. wordpress. com/2009/ 02/04/male- professionals- double-as-
sex-workers- for-extra- income/
*From The Hindustan Times<http://www.hindusta ntimes.com/ StoryPage/ StoryPage.
aspx?sectionName =HomePage& id=79f7b1bf- 8c60-4a41- 934e-e17dcc2c825
3&&Headline= Male+professiona ls+double+ as+sex+workers+ for+extra+
income>(front
page of the Mumbai edition_
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