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This chapter concentrates on the male sex workers in Beijing and Shanghai. There are forty-five in-depth interviews of money boys mainly coming from rural or semi-rural areas to big cities in China. Contrary to the overtly one-sided and dominant representation of male sex workers as depressed, depraved, dissolute and violent sociopaths in popular Chinese culture and media representations, it is found that the option of sex work has offered new possibilities for survival, livelihood, and self-development for young migrants in a class-stratified society confronted with massive tensions between rural and urban developments. In the discussion of male prostitution, one view is that it is a survival strategy enforced by poverty, homelessness, and powerlessness — a form of slavery arising from economic, social, and cultural deprivation. The other view is that prostitution is a “rational” choice for men who are constrained by their marginalized positions in a highly class-stratified social structure. Male prostitution is a contested but negotiated arena of power, and the identity of the male sex worker involves a strategic self that constantly negotiates risks and dangers, excitements and gains, in the process of sexual transaction.

This chapter describes the organization of four sex markets in Chicago. It characterizes sex markets as the spatially and culturally bounded arenas in which searches for sex partners and a variety of sexual transactions take place. The chapter focuses on how local organizations, social networks, culture, and space interact on the ground to create the sex markets found in the four neighborhoods. Its interest in the organization of sex in the city follows from the early Chicago school's interest in the patterns of urban life. All these elements interact in a given sex market to structure the sexual behavior of its participants in patterned and predictable ways, but they can often also have unintended consequences. The chapter focuses on heterosexual sex markets and discusses the overlap between heterosexual and homosexual sex markets.

This chapter assesses how German occupiers and Polish men and women interacted during times of racial segregation. Curiosity, a thirst for adventure, and specific offers gave rise to observable intimate relationships, especially in the first weeks and months of the German occupation. One measure intended to curb contact between German and locals was physical separation by the German racial thinking. However, in everyday life and in some places, the segregation between groups was enforced less strictly than the regulations demanded. Instead, the German men's need for female company was an open secret, and was, to some extent, tolerated by both military and civilian authorities. Most couples who had intimate relationships lasting for longer periods got to know each other at work, however. This was the most logical and least dangerous space for interaction because men and women met here daily anyway, meaning that neither side would attract suspicion. Contact with local women could also arise from military or professional duties: police and customs officers got to know women during questioning and arrests. Sexual barter transactions, and also sexual blackmail, could develop from such encounters.