From experience to confusion.

Masculinities, affections and emotions in the stories of men who pay for sex in Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses different narratives in the stories of men who pay for sex, focusing on the tensions that emotional and affective dimensions represent for the masculinities of these men. The article aims to complicate some stereotypes about men who pay for sex understanding the specificities of the sex market in order to think about power relations in the articulation between masculinity, emotions and affects. This analysis is the result of a virtual ethnography in two online forums of experiences of commercial sex, within a work with different actors in the Argentinean sex market. Both types of stories are described, those most modeled, apparently devoid of emotions, as well as those, apparently exceptional, where affects and confusions that destabilize certain forms of masculinities emerge. In the final reading of these stories, the points of connection between the two emerge, highlighting the illusions that the logic of the sex industry produces.