Thailand

While raising questions about the Thai sex industry is, in view of the AIDS pandemic, a matter of urgent research interest, much of the existing discourse has failed to place an understanding of masculinity on the agenda. This paper aims to rethink assumptions about masculinity and confront much wider assumptions about male – and therefore human – nature. Against this background Thai prostitution is conceptualised as an axis around which many discourses of ‘otherness’ turn, leading to questions about the forms prostitution takes, who the clients are and how their motivations are articulated.