Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2015

This article deals with the issue of self-organisation among male sex workers with male clients (M$M). Specific research questions are: What are the barriers and opportunities with regard to self-organisation among M$M in the Netherlands? Which subcategories of M$M are most inclined to self-organisation? To what extent could solidarity with female sex workers be pursued? Since 1971, three successive phases can be distinguished in the development of male prostitution in the Netherlands. In the years of transition, 1971-1986, boys clubs became manifest for the first time. The period 1987-1999 is marked by the aids epidemic, when HIV-prevention in female as well as male prostitution took high political priority. The legalisation of prostitution in the year 2000 was accompanied by a shift in focus to forced prostitution and trafficked women and by an increase in the online availability of male prostitution. This article provides a historical overview of the development of the multiple attempts at M$M’s self-organisation and subsequently discusses M$M’s (lack of) self-organisation in relation to issues of difference vs. equality, the collective vs. the individual and the role of social media.

Debates on gay and lesbian advocacy in the Netherlands have often revolved around the role of the political culture of pillarisation in facilitating or hindering the gay and lesbian (GL) social movement. Pillarisation ended, however, just as the GL movement was beginning to gain momentum. In this article, gay and lesbian advocacy is examined from 1986-1994, during which the government engaged in designing a national policy to combat anti-homosexual discrimination. After describing the transition from a political cultural of pillarisation to one of corporatism, I will investigate the extent to which corporatism was extended to the gay and lesbian social movement and structured relations between the government and the gay and lesbian social movement. Last, I will examine the ways in which a political culture of corporatism affected gay and lesbian advocacy. In extending corporatism to the GL social movement, the government created strong partners with whom policy could be negotiated and developed. Incorporation empowered some GL SMOs and secured their ‘place at the table’. Once incorporated into the formal political arena, the SMOs were able to achieve a number of policy advancements, but they also had to compete with much stronger players. Despite the strong position of some GL SMOs, and the COC in particular, some political party opposition to the GL movement resulted in the GL movement’s failure to achieve its most central goal.

In Western collective memory, male and female homosexual activism has been considered a product of the 1960s. Although most sociohistorical literature on the homosexual movement in Western Europe and the United States shows homosexual activism existed before, it narrates the history of the movement in a linear way. According to this linear narrative, the Western homosexual movement started in the first post-war decade as an accommodationist, cautious movement that used a strategy of respectability. In the late 1960s, it changed into a radical, political, and visible liberation movement. The history of the Dutch homosexual movement has been described in the same manner: the C.O.C. in the immediate post-war period has been portrayed mainly as a shelter for homosexuals. Likewise, scholars characterised the strategy of the C.O.C.-activists as a cautious plea for pity. A historicising, contextualising approach, which looks at the C.O.C. in the immediate postwar period independently from its later form the period after, reveals a different image of the C.O.C. Instead of as a shelter, the C.O.C. appears in the first post-war decade as a social movement that aimed to change society by deploying and extending the cultural template available for organisations concerned with sexuality.

Dit artikel doet verslag van exploratief onderzoek naar de doelen en activiteiten van Nederlandse LHBT-werknemersnetwerken en naar wat actieve leden binnen deze netwerken motiveert. Bovendien wordt onderzocht in hoeverre we van deze netwerken kunnen leren hoe burgers praktisch vorm kunnen geven aan zowel neorepublikeins als seksueel burgerschap. Op basis van interviews met leidende personen binnen de netwerken wordt geconcludeerd dat de LHBT-netwerken invulling geven aan neorepublikeins burgerschap door op uiteenlopende manieren ongelijke expressiemogelijkheden en ongelijke behandeling van LHBT te agenderen en terug te dringen. Door op verschillende wijzen drempels voor gelijkwaardige deelname van LHBT aan het sociale verkeer weg te nemen, tonen LHBT-netwerken tevens hoe op de werkplek seksueel burgerschap kan worden bevorderd. Ten slotte blijkt dat de respondenten steeds actief werden in de LHBT-netwerken nadat zich hiertoe onverwachts een mogelijkheid aandiende en dat zij worden gemotiveerd door het streven naar seksueel burgerschap.