This thesis presents a sociological account of men who pay for sex through the lens of relationships and sexuality. By addressing the traditional absence of male clients within research on the sex industry, it aims, first, to move research away from moralistic discourses and simplistic motivational accounts, and towards an analysis of the social context of paying for sex, in which both sexual commerce and the wider intimate sphere have changed. Second, exploring this social context, focusing on relationships and sexuality, it attends to the broader cultural formations of heterosexual male identities in contemporary sexual culture. Thirty five male clients of female sex workers were recruited using an internet message board and a local newspaper. Interviews were conducted either; faceto- face, over the phone or using MSN. Overall, I argue that paying for sex needs to be understood within the context of being a heterosexual man in contemporary sexual culture. Recognition of the social and cultural environments in which men perform their multiple identities draws attention to the interactional nature of identity, the influence of resources from the wider environment when crossing and maintaining identity boundaries, and the management strategies of conflicting identities. By exploring commercial sex as a heterosexual practice, experience and identity, which transitions over time, I argue that commercial sex allows men to sidestep the 'bargain', 'burden' and 'mundane' elements of non-commercial heterosexual life. Yet, paradoxically, these elements seep across the non-commercial/commercial boundary.

Sexuality is an ambivalent concept with multiple layers of meaning, touching upon diverse aspects of individual and social meaning-making systems. The nuances embedded within emic interpretations and appreciations of sexuality are shaped by complex contextual factors. Based on thirty months of ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis describes and analyses how youths in The Gambia negotiate meaningful sexualities in their day-to-day lives; thereby generating a grounded theory about their sexual scripts. The researcher's theoretical positioning is social construction: combining sexual scripting theory, symbolic interactionism, and critical social theories drawn from post-colonialism, African feminism, post-modernism (deconstruction). These theories informed the research design, and the lens through which interpretations were made, instead of being 'grand' theories backing the study. Based upon the grounded theory approach, the study investigated emit perspectives on sexuality, and explored lay frameworks of explanation(s) for ordinary performances of things locally labelled `sexual'. Research methods' triangulated ethnographic participant observation, qualitative semi-structured individual interviews, focus group discussions, participatory rapid assessment techniques, literature review. The researcher -a female Ugandan medical-anthropologist - was the main instrument of data generation. The research design was premised upon a feminist paradigm. The data collection process was highly flexible and responsive to contextual findings in the field. The analysis was largely inductive. Performances of youth sexualities in The Gambia were largely reflective of the main youth subcultures. Each subculture prescribed specific elements for its dominant sexual script. I suggest these youths negotiate five categorisations of sexual scripts: 1) Crescent script based on Islamic ethos, 2) Condom script based on biomedical sexual and reproductive health, 3) Cupid script based on Western notions of falling in love, romance and individual will, 4) Cultural-precedence script based on a reified notion of tradition - enacted within ethnic groupings, and supporting gerontocratic dictates, 5) Commoditisation of sexuality for exchange.

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This thesis provides necessary insight into the stories of people with atypical sex development or intersex characteristics. It is one of the first sociological studies of its kind to take the UK as its only geographical focus, and therefore makes a valuable contribution to exploring the social understandings of intersex and its medical care provisions in a local context. In light of the contested pathologisation of these sex traits, this thesis pursues a greater understanding of participants’ own accounts of the bodies, experiences and identities under question. The study uses a two-tiered qualitative process of solicited diaries followed by in-depth interviews with nine participants. Starting with the broad themes of social relationships and identities, this research places an original focus on how feelings of loneliness are experienced, anticipated and understood by participants, as well as the framing of (in)authenticity in participants’ approaches to sex classification, their engagement in and attitudes towards sexual activity, and their understandings of parenthood and experiences of infertility. My research indicates that participants’ understandings of their diagnoses are framed by notions of an idealised or ‘normal’ future. Normative expectations, including certain ways of being and life course milestones, are proffered as socially valuable at the expense of their alternatives. In some cases, this has led participants to feel an absence of control, and a sense that their lives or bodies are failing, unworthy or inconceivable. I show how the potential for stigmatisation and ostracism imposes a requirement to ‘pass’ as binary sex. Feelings of difference and deviance can lead people with atypical sex characteristics to feel like they do not ‘fit’ or ‘belong’; that – despite their relationships – they are alone. These conclusions offer insight into how social and medical support can be improved, and provide valuable contributions to intersex scholarship, reproduction studies and broader sociological debates on personal, political and institutional relationships.

This research examines the notion of masculinity and how it is constructed and practiced through production, distribution, and consumption of soft porn mujra dance videos, and its discursive practices in Pakistan. The tradition of mujra dances as live performances became an integral part of Punjabi films that transformed through live stage shows to video format and new media technology, including YouTube. Reaching a wider audience through video CDs, cable TV, Internet and YouTube, it effectively replaced older forms of sexual practices and consumption. I argue that in mujra dances videos, the narratives of sexual desire were primarily written, produced, and consumed by men that fantasize sexually empowered public women who mock and ridicule male sexuality. I maintain that these fantasies emerged during the religious Islamic orthodox rule of Zia-ul-Haq (1979-88) that coercively controlled sexuality discourses in Pakistan. It resulted in evolving different methods of expressing male sexual desires. The producers, distributors, and consumers of mujra dance videos successfully use their agency to negotiate with the notion of piety and religion whilst entertaining their sexual desires. My research in the city of Lahore, Mall Road, and its adjacent road, Hall Road, reveals dichotomous practices, and an ambiguous relationship between the state and its people. Government institutions are located in close proximity to Hall Road, an electronic market with its piracy networks that deals in mujra videos and pornography. In the end, I connect the urban geography of Lahore with search paths and video postings on YouTube, where complex male sexual desires express similar dichotomous practices in virtual space. This research gathered data through interviews, content analysis of mujra videos' songs and dance, and mujra video posts on YouTube. I believe that this research examines the existing discourse on male sexuality, and adds to the existing scholarship that focuses only on the notion of piety, new media, and the public sphere in the Muslim world.

This thesis examines the social risks university students in Beirut associate with premarital sex, as well as exploring the various strategies they employ when dealing with these risks. Based on 34 in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 female and 16 male students, this study contributes to sociological research in two main ways. First, it goes beyond the sexual health-risk paradigm, which dominates academic scholarship, and instead enhances our understanding and conceptualisation of ‘sexual behaviour’ and of ‘risk’ by addressing the issue of premarital sex from a ‘social risk’ perspective. Second, it explores premarital sex in a religiously and demographically diverse, yet relatively conservative and patriarchal context. It does this without merely focusing on ‘Muslim women’ and ‘honour killings’ – two of the most featured aspects in the literature. The thesis also draws on Mary Douglas’s socio-cultural work on risk, along with sociological work on gender and power. The findings indicate that decisions about engaging in, or refraining from, premarital sex are shaped by social pressures and control, and dictated by social norms and moral values. Transgressing the latter imposes social risks, which were perceived in three main ways: Moral risk, where one’s respect and reputation might be jeopardised as a result of transgressing social expectations and moral boundaries; Shared risk, where one’s loss of moral reputation might expose one’s family to social shame, blame and dishonour; and Future risk, where women might become ‘unmarriageable’, once they lose their virginity (intact-hymen) or reputation. The findings also reveal that students negotiate their sexual lives and respond to these risks using various strategies, including: a) negotiating non-vaginal-penetrative sex and intimacy, b) undergoing hymen reconstruction, c) performing purity and chastity and d) negotiating temporary religious marriages. The findings demonstrate that, although sexual behaviour can lead to social exclusion, students manage these risks carefully to protect themselves and their families.

This thesis is the culmination of a qualitative social research project on the experiences of people in relationships without sex. Theoretically and ideologically grounded in Queer and Borderland Theories, my premise rests on the view that intimate relationships are a product of and subject to a culture of normativities in regards to sex and relating, with relationships without sex as disavowing the tenet of compulsory sexuality. In conjunction with the multiplicity of identities and practices this entails, I view relationships without sex and the people involved in them as being situated in the space between normative and non-normative sexual culture. Intelligibility, contextualised lived realities, their social-discursive construction, and conceptual boundarywork are key factors in highlighting the heterogeneity and intricacies of relating without sex. My participant cohort is made up of 13 individuals who, within a narrative interview framework, spoke about their relationships, identities, everyday experiences, challenges, (sub)cultural belongings, and conceptualisations of sex and intimacies. I very intentionally included accounts that highlight the possibility of not wanting sex by virtue of preference and/or identity, as well as realities in which people do not have sex for different – circumstance- or choice-based – reasons. An analysis of interview data forms the basis for findings that cast relationships without sex as an undertheorised, but incredibly rich topic of study with implications for refocusing both theoretical and qualitative work on intimacies due to calling into question socio-cultural expectations around sex being universally desired and always featured in significant (‘partner’) relationships. In this project specifically, relationships without sex sparked careful engagements with matters of intelligibility and how to achieve it when sex is usually assumed as a given; with the relationship between practice and identity; with sex as an integral constitutive, but far-from-fixed concept in relationships without; with various conditions that intersect to enable or constrain ways of relating without sex; as well as with existing relationship paradigms that structure fields of action and possibility in regards to different modes of relating.

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This thesis is concerned with investigating young people’s sexual cultures in contemporary Britain. Adolescent sexuality has received much attention in academia, the media and government legislation but recently, this problem has been augmented by concerns around the sexualisation of society. Sex and relationship education plays an important role in controlling young bodies and addressing the ‘problem’ of teenage sexuality. The empirical data is obtained from interviews and focus groups with 31 young people in the North East of England. By employing discourse analysis, this project reflects on the discourses available to young people, with particular attention paid to classed and gendered sexual subjectivities. Instead of viewing young people through the lens of sexualisation, that is, as vulnerable and in need of adult protection, the work presented here views young people as the producers of their own distinct cultural practices. Using the insight of young people themselves, this research concludes that the SRE provision in schools continues to be inadequate, irrelevant to the lived experiences of British youth and to perpetuate many of the themes that concern sexualisation discourse. By assuming a white, middle-class, heterosexual subject, the protectionist paradigm of SRE and similar discourses of sexualisation treat young people as a homogenous group and thus, obfuscate the classed and gendered inequalities which allow some young people to be constructed as sexually deviant. I argue that manifestations of femininity are crucial in the building of sexual reputation for both young men and women and the perception of femininity plays a key role in the production of sexual cultures. I contend that discourses of pressure perpetuate gendered inequalities and there is little support in education or wider culture to enable young women to seek ‘pure’ sexual pleasure.

In recent years, the topic of threesomes has become more and more visible within the mainstream media. Threesomes now feature in a plethora of media pieces, television shows, films, and there are even mobile applications specifically catering for those looking to have threesomes. Despite this increased interest, however, academic research has somewhat neglected this area. Accordingly, this thesis presents the first qualitative study on both men and women’s threesomes for more than 25 years. The research focuses on developing an in-depth understanding of threesomes within a contemporary context, investigating people’s motivations for, experiences of, and attitudes to threesomes, from the perspective of those with actual experience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 individuals (16 women, 12 men) who had ever engaged in a multi-sex threesome. Those having only engaged in all same-sex threesomes were excluded in order to provide a narrower focus for the study. Those heavily involved with sexual minority support groups, as well as swinging, were also excluded in an attempt to limit the particular biases that respondents from these groups can create. The target population were drawn from personal connections as well as via snowball sampling. The sample were mainly white, middle-class, and roughly half of them identified as heterosexual. The findings suggest that threesomes are multi-faceted experiences with multiple purposes, meanings, and motivations. It is suggested that more inclusive attitudes towards those from sexual minorities, enhanced sexual freedoms for men and women, as well as societal expectations to explore new forms of sex, have diminished many of the stigmas around threesomes, thus enabling more people to be interested in them. It is also suggested that threesomes may simultaneously represent both a bolstering of, and a challenge to, the institution of monogamy.