Close your eyes and picture a person who pays for sex.
Is it an able-bodied, middle-aged, white heterosexual man?
University of Victoria researcher Chris Atchison says you’re wrong (at least much of the time). And he plans to back it up with a national study called Sex, Safety and Security, which aims to be the largest research project interviewing sex buyers in Canada.
“What we’ve found is this remarkable diversity among and between different people who purchased sexual services,” Atchison said. In addition to the above stereotype, Canadians buying sex are also gay, bisexual, couples, people with disabilities, multiracial and more.
Atchison already has 18 years of research on the topic under his belt, but says Sex, Safety and Security is his most ambitious yet. He expects to interview more than 1,000 sex buyers across the country and is hitting the road this week to conduct research in St. John’s, N.L., Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., and Montreal.
Atchison said he became interested in the topic in the mid-1990s when he noticed that, despite the fact that sex buyers far outnumber sex sellers, there was nearly no research into who they were.
“How can you say that you understand an industry and you’ve identified the problem when you have not talked to at least half of that industry? … The largest and most significant portion of the sex industry had been untapped,” he said. “And yet, we have all these beliefs about them, even back then — this notion of the sleazy, perverted, pedophilic, violent, abusive, exploitative [men].”
Though he was told that nobody who buys sex would be willing to talk, Atchison put out calls on the promise of confidentiality and anonymity. Sex workers who believed in his research put the call out to their clients and he also called for study participants through adult venues, online appeals and through traditional media.
His first study attracted 200 responses; the next, 300. And his most recent, called Johns’ Voice and conducted in 2008 and 2009, received 1,023 responses — a record he hopes to break this year.
“Clearly, if you open the channels of communication, people want their story heard. They want someone to listen to them,” he said.
Sex, Safety and Security picks up where Johns’ Voice left off. Through that study, Atchison and his team learned about the diversity of buyers. It may be accurate to say that the average sex buyer is in his 40s, but that doesn’t reflect the diverse experiences and motivations of the 18- and 84-year-old buyers.
“It reduces things to the lowest common denominator, as opposed to looking at the fact that there are people of diverse physical abilities, ethnic and cultural backgrounds out there,” Atchison said.
Johns’ Voice also began identifying patterns of how space influenced safety, especially between the street and the much larger off-street industry spaces online, through escort services and brothels. The spaces where sex is bought and sold has a large impact on sexual, physical and economic safety of both buyer and seller, he said.
But where Johns’ Voice focused on safety and HIV/AIDS, Sex, Safety and Security aims to widen the gates for a broader study of the attitudes, opinions and experiences of sex-industry participants.
“Now with Sex, Safety and Security, we’re really opening up,” he said. “It’s about how all these people come together and the relationships they forge in different spaces.”
The surveys and interviews will cover demographics and backgrounds, as well as delve into more qualitative experiences: What makes for a positive or negative experience, how are conflicts resolved, how do negotiations occur, what factors lead to health and safety considerations, and more.
The forum calls for participants who pay for sex or sexual services, sex workers, their intimate partners, people who own and operate commercial sex venues, and individuals and organizations that regulate the industry.
“Things that really get more at the experience, as opposed to, ‘Fit yourself into box A or box B,’ ” he said. “It’s something that allows people to extend more of their stories.”
The project is funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and is one of several projects currently taking place with the aim of better understanding health and safety in the Canadian sex industry.
Atchison said that despite nearly two decades of knowledge on the topic, he doesn’t plan on swaying public opinion about the sex trade in any particular direction.
Instead, he said he hopes to provide solid information for policy makers, educators and outreach workers to conduct their work with less discrimination and with the knowledge that the industry involves a much wider variety of people and forms than they may think.
“I don’t advocate for any particular position. I believe that research has to be done independently of advocacy, so as to inform policy, legislation and outreach practice more intelligently,” he said.
