Abstract
In Northern Thailand, visiting sex workers alongside male peers has historically been a bonding technique that enables men to perform masculinity among their male co-workers. While research uncovering men’s work-based visits to sex workers is limited, it has been found that men who do business with each other may provide or expect commercial sex visits as part of workplace negotiations; this has been considered “an unremarkable aspect of male professional life” (VanLandingham et al. 1998, 2003). Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Thailand, this research utilises the lens of multiple masculinities to assert that workplace bonding in the modern era both perpetuates and challenges gender inequalities. This chapter first examines the gendered effects of visits to commercial sex establishments among male co-workers. By reviewing methods through which male co-workers perform masculinities in relation to commercial sex, this article will argue that workplace negotiations of manhood through the purchase of commercial sex work affects both men and women. This chapter will conclude by affirming that men who bond through the purchasing of commercial sex create homosocial environments that objectify women and sustain glass ceilings for women in the workplace.