”I någon mening köper jag ju sex, men...” En analys av hur icke-prostitution konstrueras inom sugardejting

Abstract

Sugar dating is a relatively new and growing phenomenon within the sex- and intimacy industry. Sugar dating consists of meetings and relationships in which wealthier men compensate, materially and economically, relatively limited women for a dating-like arrangement where sex and intimacy often are excepted. Previous studies have found both that sugar dating can be considered prostitution and that sugar dating in several aspects differs from it. This study aims to analyze how non-prostitution is constructed among people with experiences of sugar dating in a Swedish context. The material consists of interviews with 24 people, nine men, and fifteen women, with experience of sugar dating in Sweden. The study is theoretically informed by the concepts of relation work, regimes of justification, and respectability. This study shows how non-prostitution is constructed, how the men give moral reasons for their actions, and how the women create and maintain respectability. The analysis uncovers five aspects of the interviewees' experiences of sugar dating. The five aspects are the content of the compensation, the form of the compensation, the sexual free will, the mutual pleasure, and dating similarity. Together these aspects are created through practical and discursive relation work. In themselves, these aspects emphasize differences to prostitution and also work as regimes of justification for the men and as a way for the women to create and maintain respectability.