An ethnographic study of HIV-related risk practices among Glasgow rent boys and their clients: report of a pilot study

Abstract

This paper provides an early report of a continuing ethnographic study of male prostitution in Glasgow. Pilot work indicates that rent boy activity may be of considerable importance for the spread of HIV infection. Although there is little evidence of an association between rent boy activity and injecting drug use, rent boys may well be implicated in epidemic spread because many (but not all) of them report unsafe sexual practices. Some boys reported that they engaged in unprotected anal sex both actively (insertor) and passively (insertee). Although the majority of the boys' clients were covert bisexuals--married men seeking occasional, anonymous, male sexual contact--a substantial minority of clients were gay-identified.