Porn actors, in particular, are aware of this dynamic, which is often characterized in the porn business as "over-exposure." While many leave the industry or move over to jobs behind the camera, other performers will try to hold onto their fans by expanding their sexual repertoire in order to enhance the "fantasy potential" among their fans.

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But often this progression leads to appearances in lower budget productions. "One interesting thing about this business," director Kristen Bjorn observes, "is that the longer you are in it, the less money you are paid. Once you are an old face, and an old body, forget it. You're through as far as your popularity goes."

Male sex workers in other genres also react to the retrogressive dynamic by expanding sexual repertoire, or, where possible, by working in other markets and locales.

Male prostitution and sex work has long been a highly stigmatized activity--because it is often illegal and widely considered shameful, but also because it seems to contravene conventional masculine roles. Nevertheless, it is an activity that in many new forms has become increasingly significant.

The centrality of gay and lesbian bars to glbtq culture has been reduced in recent years, but they continue to fulfill important functions; and, in many areas, they remain the most visible manifestation of glbtq presence.

Bisexual pornography began in earnest during the mid-1980s, but the quality and number of bisexual videos has decreased dramatically since their heyday in the 1980s.

Gay male pornographic film and video, which dates from the release of Wakefield Poole's The Boys in the Sand in 1971, has provided gay men an all-too-rare positive image of gay sexuality.

Most of the pornography that features transsexuals is neither made by nor for them, but in recent years trans porn activists have began to produce pornography for transsexual and other queer audiences.

Because pornography is an accepted part of gay male life, performers in gay pornography hold a relatively esteemed position in gay culture and several have emerged as idols and icons.

Sex work has long been the last resort of desperate women and girls, but more recently some women--including some lesbians--have been drawn to the profession by a renegade ideology of sexual liberation.

Although art historians have given very little attention to representations of sex workers, images of same-sex prostitution extend far back into history.