The implications of male prostitution are well known to health workers who deal with young men who are caught in the trap of selling sex. Typically, young men who have had a minimal level of education and who often grew up in care are providing sex for cash to older men, who are often well educated, well off and married. The common presumption that men who pay for sex with men are overtly homosexual was exploded in 1993, when the short film 'Boys for Rent' by Liam McGrath was first broadcast.

The young men interviewed in McGrath's film, and in books like 'Rent' by Evanna Kearins, revealed that the majority of their clientele are married, successful older men, outwardly heterosexual and conservative. Unable to express their desires in their 'normal' life, they exist on a kind of emotional autopilot. When the faking becomes too much, they succumb to their desires and seek out a male prostitute on whom they impose their dominant, though secretive, sexuality.