Negotiating the edge: The rationalisation of sexual risk-taking amongst Western male sex tourists to Thailand

Every year thousands of Western men travel to Thailand as sex tourists in order to participate in paid-for sex. Although many of these men will use condoms in order to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections, despite the risks others will not. By applying Steven Lyng’s (1990) concept of edgework to data collected from 14 face-to-face interviews with male sex tourists in Pattaya, Thailand and 1237 online discussion board posts, this article explores the ways in which these men understood and sought to rationalise the sexual risks that they took. It argues that notions of likelihood of infection and significance of consequence underpin these behaviours, and identifies the existence of understandings of sexual risk that reject mainstream safer-sex messages and frame condomless sex as a broadly safe activity for heterosexual men. The article concludes by summarising the difficulties inherent in driving behaviour change amongst this group of men for whom sexual risks appear to be so easily rationalised away as either inconsequential or irrelevant.