Study finds: Male Escorts Educate Clients About Safe Sex

Male Escorts Educate Clients About Safe Sex,
According to Hunter Professor's Study

October 20, 2004 (New York, NY) - According to a study published by
Hunter College Psychology professor Jeffrey T. Parsons in the journal
AIDS Care, male escorts who solicit sex on the Internet have adopted
the role of safe-sex educators with their clients.

Parsons, who is the Director of Hunter's Center for HIV/AIDS
Educational Studies and Training (CHEST), initiated this study, "The
Classified Project" in 2000, along with co-authors Juline Koken and
David Bimbi, doctoral students in social personality psychology at
the CUNY Graduate Center. The research team interviewed 46 gay and
bisexual male escorts about their personal lives and sexual behavior
with clients.

"We were concerned with the stereotypes surrounding male sex workers,
since a lot of publications attribute the spread of HIV to them,"
said Parsons. "Many of those studies were conducted with male sex
workers on the streets, so we looked at the increase in Internet-
based sex workers instead. We found quite the opposite - these men
were not being unsafe but were actually educating their male clients
about safe sex."

Parsons found that most of the men didn't choose to be escorts for
survival (food, drugs and shelter in return for sex) but for money
for graduate school tuition, housing, gym memberships and vacations.

According to Parsons, the findings suggest that male escorts
are "vectors of safer sex education" which, says Parsons, is
especially important for non-gay identified men who utilize sex
workers are a difficult group to reach out to concerning safer sex
education.