Maskuliniteter i domstolsmiljö : En etnografisk observationsstudie om tilltalades uppträdande under huvudförhandlingar i köp  av sexuell tjänst.  Examensarbete för masterexamen i kriminologi, 30 hp  Kriminologi  Avancerad

Sammanfattning: Sweden was the first country that reformed their sexual purchase law and criminalized the purchase of sex and sexual services in the year 1999. Since then, the applicability of the law has been discussed both nationally and internationally as well as academically, politically and on various platforms of social media. Both research about sex-sellers and sex-buyers have been done, the latter is usually aiming to understand why men buy sex, and what type of man of whom could be the archetypical sex buyer. This study aims to understand how sex-buyers present masculinity in court in the context of being charged for purchasing sex. This was made possible through attending and observing the defendants during trials in district courts in the Stockholm area. To conceptualize the results a theoretical framework of masculinity, first coined by Connell (1995/2005), was used to detect different types of masculinities presented by the defendants during 11 trials regarding sex purchase lawsuits. In the analysis three themes were detected, which was “the purchase of sex and guilt”, “moral and brutishness” and “reactions to the police witness description of the defendant”. This was shown both through body language and verbally. Several masculinities were detected during the trials, and it was not uncommon that the same defendant was shifting between different masculinities during the same trial and sometime at the same time through what they showed through body language and what they said verbally. This study shows the complexity in researching men who buy or are accused of buying sex using norms of masculinity as a theoretical frame. The study also puts light on the influence of the courtroom environment and how this might have an impact on the defendant’s behavior during the trial. The results have shown that the behavior might have been influenced by masculinity norms, courtroom norms or even a combination of them both. This is due to the results of finding several masculinities in the same defendant during the same trial. I therefore urge the research of sex-buyers to widen the concept of masculinity and not group sex-buyers into distinctive groups based on masculinity norms as hegemony, toxic masculinity and subordinated masculinity when results of this study show the phenomenon to be far more complex than previous research has predicted.