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Gay sex-sellers flood Nordic social media site

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Gay sex-sellers flood Nordic social media site
Stockholm's Central Station (Centralen) has been a known male sex sales hotspot. File: Pelle Sten/Flickr

Administrators at the Nordic social media site Qruiser, operated by the publishers of Swedish LGBT magazine QX, have testified to an increase in young men trying to sell sex.

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The gay networking site told Sveriges Radio (SR) this week that it deals with about ten cases of would-be sex buyers and sellers every week. Its weekly visitor number hovers around 175,000. 

One young man told SR that he had covered his offer of sex with the word "generous", which lead to many requests for meet-ups. "Generous" is now one of the words that Qruiser staff look out for as they trawl their services for suspected cases of prostitution. Dollar signs are also considered a red flag. 

Mikis Kanakaris, chairman of 1,000 Possibilities (1000 möjligheter), an organization that helps boys and young men exit prostitution, said that many sex sellers had suffered sexual abuse earlier in life.

"If you've been assaulted, you sometimes lessen the anxiety by reliving the assault and trying to wrest back control over the reenacted situation," he told SR. 

Kanakaris also testified to the market being particularly rife for younger boys, or teens who look much younger than they are. By the age of 15, sex sellers will face drying-up demand, he noted. 

A review from the National Youth Affairs Board (Ungdomsstyrelsen) found that one to 1.5 percent of teenage boys in the last year of high school had sold sex. 

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