1 Regulating the Male Sex Industry Thomas Crofts 1 Forthcoming in Victor Minichiello and John Scott (eds), Male Sex Work and Society, Harrington Park Press, 2014 Introduction The issue of how to best regulate the sex industry has been much debated throughout history and across jurisdictions. Whilst the one constant in this discourse has been the focus on the regulation of female sex work, the issue of male sex work has remained relatively absent from debates. When men are viewed in connection with sex work it tends to be with a focus on their status as the clients of female workers. Although growing attention is being paid to male sex work in the social sciences, it is clear that broader policy shifts in recent years which increasingly view female workers as victims and male clients as exploiters of women (Whowell and Gaffney 2009) largely bypass male sex workers. This chapter will firstly explore why male sex work has received relatively little attention in legal academic and policy literature and has largely been overlooked by sex work regulation. Secondly, it will demonstrate how the connection between the conceptualisation of male homosexuality and male sex work has impacted upon the regulation of male sex work. Finally, it will discuss some of the forms and spaces of male sex work, examining how these forms and spaces are shaped by regulation. While the themes identified in this chapter will find resonance in other jurisdictions the focus here is primarily on the legal situation in Australia and the United Kingdom. Why has male sex work received little attention? Much of the discourse around male sex work (as well as female sex work) is, as Whowell and Gaffney comment, Ǯhistorically, politically, legally specific and shaped by other 1 Associate Professor and Director, Sydney Institute of Criminology, School of Law, Sydney University.