The ‘Prostitute’ and the ‘Client’ in the Making of England’s AIDS Policy

Abstract This paper explores the state’s evolving discourse on prostitution and sexual health during the ‘crisis years’ of England’s HIV epidemic. Analysing policy discussions, the majority of which pertain to the period between 1985 and 1989, I examine how HIV/AIDS reshaped the state’s understanding of prostitution. I argue that the emergence of HIV not only reinforced long-standing associations of prostitution with disease but also represented, to some extent, a turning point, as discourses of prostitution were recast in line with the concomitant social context, bringing key changes in how prostitution was pathologised and understood. Most prominently, male sex workers and clients of sex workers gained visibility in public health discourse. The article contributes to the growing scholarship on both the histories of sex work and HIV/AIDS by including both male and female sex work within one analytical framework, and considers how gendered, racial, and normative assumptions shaped state policy.