By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. Sugar dating is described by these sites as dating arrangements based on an exchange of intimacy and companionship for financial or other forms of support. Given that sex is often part of the arrangements, claims are widespread, yet disputed, that sugar dating is a form of prostitution.
Although not all kinds of sugar dating include sex, we argue that sugar dating sites should be seen as key actors in the expansion of the sex and intimacy industry, drawing on and articulating pre-existing tendencies within it. The proliferation of "sugar dating" websites, facilitating transactional relationships between a "sugar baby" and a "sugar daddy," raises new questions about the reconfigured relationship between intimacy and economy in the contemporary Global North.
By encouraging people to approach sex and intimacy through a logic of exchange, sugar dating has been claimed to represent the culmination of a broader trend towards a "marketization" of intimacy. Based on semi-structured interviews, this article analyzes Swedish "sugar babies"' investment in a transactional approach to intimate interactions with men, focusing on the emotional rewards that they associate with the transactional setup of sugar dating.
While the participants' transactional approach to intimacy is bolstered by the cultural dispersal of a neoliberal rationality into ever more domains of life, I argue that its deeper roots need to be sought in the precarious conditions of contemporary intimacy.
Drawing in particular on the work of Eva Illouz, I claim that the women's embracement of a transactional approach to heterosexual sex and intimacy may be read as a defensive tactic of seeking to gain control over the flows of intimate interaction in light of the gendered insecurities and vulnerabilities of the contemporary market of intimacy. This article is based on a study exploring how men who purchase sex in Sweden experience and navigate risk.
