One Blurred Edge of Sex Work: Interview with a “Sugar Baby”, Part 1
2012 5 Jan
(This interview was completed for and originally published at Role/Reboot, where I became the Sex + Relationships Section Editor on December 15, 2011. For more of the Role/Reboot Sex + Relationships section, click here.)
Sex work is a controversial and polarized topic, and there are many perspectives on it. My position is complex — but for me, when it comes to how we actually interact with sex workers, one important factor is whether or not they consent to and enjoy their jobs. I am absolutely in favor of giving better options to sex workers who do not enjoy their jobs, and I am horrified by the idea of a person being trafficked or coerced into sex that they don’t want to have. But I also know people who have sex for money 100% voluntarily, and I do not want to deny their experience.
My friend Olivia, a 25-year-old graduate student, recently started advertising her services on a “Sugar Baby” site called SeekingArrangement.com. I think it’s important for more people to understand these kinds of experiences, so I asked to interview her. Many people have pointed out that once a person starts thinking about the definition of “prostitute”, it’s a bit difficult to define what exactly a prostitute is. Some of my sex worker friends have asked the question: what exactly is the difference between a person whose partner buys her a fancy dinner after which they have sex — and a person whose partner buys sex with money? Olivia has thought at length about this, and I’m grateful to her for sharing her perspective on that question, and others.
Please note that Olivia is exceptionally privileged. What you are about to read is a portrait of what the sex industry looks like for a person who is very privileged: she comes from a white upper-middle-class background, she is not desperate, she is being paid a lot of money, she does not have a drug addiction. Many other peoples’ experiences in the sex industry are very different.
The interview went long, so we’re going to post it in two parts. Here’s part 1:
Clarisse Thorn: Hey Olivia, thanks so much for being willing to talk about this incredibly complicated topic. Could you start by defining a sugar baby site? What is it?
Olivia: I use the site SeekingArrangement.com. I don’t actually know how many sugar baby sites there are, but I get the sense there’s more than one. It’s very hard to pin down exactly what it does. I guess it connects people, usually with a big age gap, who are interested in exchanging some kind of material goods or financial resources for some form of companionship that is often sexual — but not always.
As far as I can tell, the site’s founder is very against the claim that this is prostitution. He puts out a lot of publicity claiming that this site has nothing to do with prostitution. At first I thought that he was trying to evade legal consequences, but I think he actually probably believes that. The site has a blog that he controls, and you can look at it to get a sense of what he’s thinking. One post I think is really interesting is called “Sugar Baby & Sugar Daddy: The Modern Day Princess & Prince?“, which compares being a sugar baby to a kind of “happily ever after” princess fantasy.
So far, no one I’ve talked to seems remotely interested in hiring what they see as a “prostitute”. They seem to want to be having sex with someone they find very attractive who is also someone they feel like they can respect, whose intelligence they respect. For example, someone I see occasionally — the last time I saw him, he gave me money at the end and he said that he felt good about giving me the money because he knew I wouldn’t spend it on, quote, “a designer handbag.” He seems to think that I am reasonably ambitious and have my shit together, and he seems to feel more comfortable giving me money because he knows it goes towards my grad school costs and credit card debt. My ability to write with proper grammar, without overusing emoticons, appears to be my biggest sales point. Men have told me this outright.
That guy also mentioned feeling more comfortable because he thinks I’m from the same social class as he is. There are a lot of class issues coming up in these encounters, I think. Being white and from an upper-middle-class background may help me get clients. My background has also given me a ton of confidence that puts me at an advantage when negotiating. I do not think I radiate “take advantage of me,” and I (nicely) tell guys who start doing that to go away.
The guy I was just talking about — he also mentioned that he feels like he doesn’t want to have sex with someone that he doesn’t feel at least a little bit connected to. There’s a distinction between meaningless sex and casual sex. I think these guys want casual sex — maybe they aren’t at the point where they want to deal with having a partner, or they’re really busy at work, or they already have another partner — they want casual sex but not meaningless sex.
In my encounters with these men, the money does two things. Firstly, it enables them to have a relationship with me that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have. Secondly, it puts them in this position where they can give me something valuable and have that be appreciated. The guys I see really want to feel appreciated.
Clarisse Thorn: Do you feel like this has given you any new insight into gender roles?
Olivia: Hmm …. It’s made me feel more powerful. I definitely feel like I am the one with the power in this situation. When I show up, I don’t feel like — here is this rich, powerful person who is about to bestow wealth upon me. I feel like — here is this person who is a bit sad and lonely, and maybe I can make their day better.
A lot of the men who are on this site want to feel appreciated, so it’s important to them that the woman they’re with give off the appearance of appreciating them. So for example, on the website there’s a lot of talk about sugar daddies being “mentors” or “benefactors” rather than clients. They seem to want some combination of me asking them about their day, and they also want to feel like they’re bestowing knowledge upon me about the world. One of the men I see will always talk about his opinions about money. He has complicated feelings about himself having money because he doesn’t come from money, so he’s trying to work those out. But he also keeps telling me in a very serious voice that money will not make me happy, that nothing I can buy will make me happy. I tell him that I can buy security and he says yes, that is one thing I can buy.
Other men seem to be having issues with their age. One mentioned that he’s just turned 40, and that’s really bugging him. Then he flaked out on me a couple times — I don’t think he was completely okay with his own decision to be seeing me. But anyway, often, another thing these men seem to get out of it is access to someone who has a bunch of youthful energy and optimism and just plain new ideas. A lot of them have mentioned feeling stuck, or bored, or cynical, or intellectually constrained. So in this sense sex is only one thing I’m offering them — I’m also offering them optimism, hope, energy, and so on. Firstly, the sex is good in and of itself, as most of them aren’t getting laid otherwise. But the sex is also a symbol of them getting access to my youthful energy or whatever.
I think the archetypal image of a mistress involves a woman being “kept” so that she doesn’t have to work, so that she can be available for sex basically whenever. But I don’t think this is what the men I see want. I am more valuable to them because I have other work that I am seriously invested in, and am having sex with them anyway. Again, these men are interested in a woman who they see as more “equal” to them — in this case, defined by earnings potential — and they seem gratified by the idea that they could help me enter their income bracket someday. This is, of course, still kind of patronizing; like I said, they keep using words like “mentor”. It’s also presumptuous. But I think a lot of them being patronizing and presumptuous can probably be attributed to age and wealth, and only some of it to gender.
I think I’ve learned more about class and money than I have about gender. It turns out there are people to whom $1000 versus $3000 doesn’t matter that much, and I finally understand that on a visceral level. $1000 doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to most of them. I knew this, but now I really know it.
Another thing I’ve been struck by is exactly how much romantic relationships are worth. I’ve had several clients tell me they don’t feel wealthy, and they feel like they worry about money a lot. I think they were sincere. Of course, my first thought was: don’t you think that your $2000-per-month prostitute is part of the budget that could be trimmed? But I think that maybe it’s not, actually. I think they think that investing a lot of money in me is a good investment for them if it gives them a release valve so they can deal with the rest of their lives. They’re probably right.
Thanks for reading! Click here to read Part 2 of my interview with Olivia, in which she discusses how she negotiates monetary exchanges and how she manages her relationship with her husband.
Tags: casual sex, interviews, masculinity, sex work
I’ve posted here and there around the net in the last couple of years looking for a woman interested in some light d/s and role playing, often using the header”Do you need a daddy?”. I quit using that particular header because all I seemed to get was replies from women looking for sugar daddies. And I didn’t get the impression that any of them were particularly privileged. A lot of them made a point to tell me that they were single mothers, and otherwise unemployed. Nothing against unemployed single mothers, but none seemed to be really interested in the light d/s.
“what exactly is the difference between a person whose partner buys her a fancy dinner after which they have sex — and a person whose partner buys sex with money? ”
The difference is that buying one’s partner dinner does not create an obligation to have sex. That is a HUGE difference.
What about three dinners?
I got fixated on the same thing as AlmostClever. It’s basically a fallacy to even mention these two things together. Food is not money. Neither is a movie night or a new designer bag. And I wonder why this comparison only goes one way on the gender street. Am I entitled to sex, when I buy a guy dinner or a beer? That’s ridiculous and that’s because relationships which are not based on money don’t really have a trading function as much as some people (MRA’s) would like to believe. You might end up with a real relationship even if someone pays you to be in it, but as long as they pay, they are your work. As much as some might love their work, it’s still keeping them alive and safe. Not really optional in that.
Otherwise a really good, enlighting interview! I’ll be waiting for the sequel.
I see the ramifications of this solving so, so, many of the problems today. I’m going to have to think on it in some detail & get back to you. It does shift the power from male to female, where it really has always resided but was/is stolen by physical force but now via legal governance – physical force is losing its power (having been replaced by money, whose power is backed up by physical force via government controlled police & military) – but the laws are still made mostly by older, white, privileged men, who like the old ways, mostly. Fascinating interview.
peace
@AlmostClever: Nothing creates an obligation to have sex, ever. A prostitute is allowed to change her mind. If she does, she should probably give the money back, but she doesn’t give up her right to rescind consent just because she’s a prostitute.
@RogueBambi “That’s ridiculous and that’s because relationships which are not based on money don’t really have a trading function as much as some people (MRA’s) would like to believe. You might end up with a real relationship even if someone pays you to be in it, but as long as they pay, they are your work. As much as some might love their work, it’s still keeping them alive and safe. Not really optional in that.”
I’m a little confused here. Wouldn’t a housewife be someone whose relationship is her work? Certainly it is what keeps them alive and safe. I’m not certain the distinction you are attempting to make between money and other goods is quite as solid as you think it is.
I have to second Anonymous’ point there.
I would also like to add the following:
Unfortunately, there is a HUGELY common discourse in regular dating sites about (generally) women making a guy “work” for it before she “gives” him sex, and a lot of that is to do with making him pay for dates and such. What else could we mean when we call her “cheap” if a woman who has sex on a first date, except that she hasn’t made him pay enough money for her sexual services?
The preconception exists that a guy is only paying for dinner/movie/whatever because he expects at some point down the line to stick his dick in her.
This is precisely why I refuse to go the so-called “romantic” route and pay outright for dates (I expect reciprocation but not “going dutch”): I want sex to be its own reward for both myself and my partner, and that runs contrary to the dominant paradigm.
It is not without significance that Friedrich Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that marriage is/was a form of prostitution. His criticisms highlighted precisely this problem, and also sought to highlight the hypocrisy of the supposed morality of one form over the other. The same type of thinking still seems to permeate society’s attitudes towards sex and dating. (It should be noted that Engels also refused to marry his life-partner, because of the unfairness of the laws governing the relation of a wife and husband back in the 19th Century)
Now, a business exchange (sex for money or goods and services) is fine with me as well, if I were to go down that route. But that would not be a relationship, it would be an exchange of money/goods/services for a service in return – “payment in kind” or barter-trade is still payment, after all.
It follows from this, that I view sugar baby/daddy relationships as a form of business exchange, and therefore sex work. I am happy to let people self-identify in terms of the label they give their branch, and if sugar babies/daddies feel it isn’t prostitution, then I’ll accept their view. But to me, it is still an exchange of money/goods for a service.
“The difference is that buying one’s partner dinner does not create an obligation to have sex. That is a HUGE difference.”
In addition to cosigning Anonymous’ response, one overlooked difference is that a dinner, movie, theatre attendance, etc. is an experience. Money isn’t. One involves exposing aspects of one’s life, and discovering aspects of another’s, at least in potential. Even if they’re trivial. The other doesn’t.
Sorry it took me a while to moderate some comments yesterday; I was in transit without Internet.
I think some people probably believe that purchasing dinner (or multiple dinners) creates an “obligation” for sex, and others don’t. And lots of people are somewhere in between, like me — I don’t think that I owe a guy who buys me dinner sex (or a relationship or whatever), but I find ways to negotiate explicitly every time a guy does that, because I don’t want to take the risk that he thinks we’re doing something that we’re not doing.
I also think that a lot of discussions about “what’s a whore” and “what’s not a whore” break down once we start getting past whore stigma, because a lot of those discussions serve the purpose mainly of certain people trying to distance themselves from the idea that they might be sex workers. So, once people start thinking of “whore” as less of an insult, those discussions start happening less.
See, Clarisse, this paragraph really made me angry:
“So far, no one I’ve talked to seems remotely interested in hiring what they see as a “prostitute”. They seem to want to be having sex with someone they find very attractive who is also someone they feel like they can respect, whose intelligence they respect. For example, someone I see occasionally — the last time I saw him, he gave me money at the end and he said that he felt good about giving me the money because he knew I wouldn’t spend it on, quote, “a designer handbag.” He seems to think that I am reasonably ambitious and have my shit together, and he seems to feel more comfortable giving me money because he knows it goes towards my grad school costs and credit card debt. My ability to write with proper grammar, without overusing emoticons, appears to be my biggest sales point. Men have told me this outright.”
The paragraph is like a primer in whore stigma, and it’s not at all clear that your friend is critical of these ideas she says her clients have. “[i]ntelligence they respect”? Because folks who do more explicit sex work are dumb? Not some of the ones I know! Is that their idea, and does she share it, and if not, why does she repeat it uncritically? “[R]easonably ambitious and have my shit together”? Really? Because people who do more explicit sex work are, what, lazy couch potatoes, who don’t have to, say, advertise and book clients and do work to make the business run? That’s not what my friends have told me. “My ability to write with proper grammar, without overusing emoticons, appears to be my biggest sales point.” What, the minute one says, “yeah, I do sex work”, the smilies and misused apostrophes in plurals just grow like weeds? What the shit is that?
I’m getting the strong impression that your friend _is_ one of those assholes who is trying hard to be not-like-those-others.
Hey Thomas. Well … when I’m doing an interview, I don’t have much opportunity to offer critical analysis in the middle of reporting what my interview subject said. (I’ve thought before that I should maybe start following up interviews with a critical deconstruction of some kind — for example, remember when I interviewed that guy who does BDSM porn and you wrote an awesome response? And Orlando C. left a pretty brilliant, critical comment on that interview, too. Times like that. Or maybe I should just gather together different comments on the interviews and make them their own post.)
There are some areas in this interview that seem a little bit at odds with my own sense of stigma and acceptance, and with what I’ve heard about sex work. For example, I worry about things like “glamorous sex worker stereotypes” and I also worry a little bit about how Olivia is addressing physical safety (she talks more about this in Part 2, which is upcoming). I can’t comment on whether she has thought through her own stereotypes of sex workers very thoroughly. I would say, however, based on what I’ve observed of SeekingArrangement, that her comment about emoticons and proper grammar is pretty spot on :P Not that “all sex workers” are unable to write without those things — and not even to say those things are bad! — but there’s a definite niche at that site for women who take a clear, formal tone in their writing.
As a side note, when I was doing edits on this interview, I tried to paraphrase a couple things that Olivia said. I then sent the interview to her for review. When she responded, she picked out the places that I’d paraphrased, and she then said: “I think you’ve translated some of what I said into feminist-speak. That might be okay with me, if you think it’s important for your audience? But it’s not language that I would use and I don’t really understand all of its connotations and implications, so unless we talk about it further, I’m not really comfortable with it being attributed to me.”
I’d like to get more voices of sex workers out there, but I think I also have to be prepared for them to talk in ways that might not accord with my particular ideals.
Nice that these men want to spend time with intelligent, attractive women. Too bad they only want to dig in their pockets to make it happen. Is that harsh of me?
Haha. No, Grypo, it is not harsh. That’s a thought that I have a lot during these conversations, actually.
I have a question: What thoughts do you (plural) have i/r/t all possible scenarios involving sexual relationships? Can you order them on a continuum from worst to best. Worst being violent rape, incest (?) … on up to best (?) … concurrent with age of participants? Where have you been on the continuum? Where would you like to be? What are the barriers in your way?
In a word, no.
For one thing, there could never be an objective ranking, because what is awesome to one person could be horrible for another – for example, some people find consensual nonconsent, or “being forced” in the context of a broader consent to a relationship, to be the tops. Others think that is no different from rape and could never understand that mindset.
Informed consent and risk-aware concern for one’s partner make the difference, regardless of all other factors (e.g. money or goods and services being traded for sex, types of activities being engaged in, etc)
While consent (or informed status) can be blurry to define (e.g. “I’m not sure I want this” or “How much do you need to know?”), you just can’t rank that continuum in the way you seem to be asking. Sometimes “I’m not sure I want this” turns out to be super-awesome experience, and sometimes using surprises and tricks can produce fantastic experiences too. The thread on “When a scene goes wrong” highlights that things can turn out “bad” even when they are “good” by those criteria.
To #17 -I wasn’t asking for objective, I was asking for subjective. In others words, according to your examples “super-awesome experience” might equate to my “best,” or a 10 on a continuum from 0-10, and maybe your “fantastic” a 9. But both of those scenarios seem to me as if they could be put in the same category, maybe something like “risk with partner.” Another category might be “risk with professional,” or “risk with friend.” Or, risk with self. I was really asking YOU (plural, or any and everyone who wanted to think about it to be specific only to themselves) … does that clarify it? In all the examples #17 cited there seems to be the recurring theme of risk > so #17 might have as a 10: “scenario with risk.” Risk = The possibility that the act could go bad, and that adds to its value. And maybe, say “first time with love interest,” would rate a 5, and “duty sex” (= sex with spouse/partner when you don’t want to) a 2. And so on. I think it is doable considering the discussion about sex as work. Could you rank your work experience from best to worst? “Love” experiences? Maybe sleep on it.
@ mark jabbour #18:
No, that doesn’t work, because if you try to say that a particular type of activity by its nature is “good” or “bad”, then the very fact that you talk about a risk of things going wrong (I didn’t talk about that risk, I talked about risk-awareness, which refers to the idea of knowing what you’re getting into and deciding what counts as a safe activity) shows that you can’t expect activity type A to be always “good”. Sometimes, it will be good and sometimes it won’t. The passage in the linked post from Newmahr shows how something that was normally “good” for a participant ended up feeling “bad” instead.
You’ve read into what I wrote a whole bunch of stuff that just isn’t there as far as I can see – first, ascribing it to my personal experience, which isn’t true; second, assuming it’s about risk being the factor that makes it a good experience, whereas the risk (if any is implied, which I don’t accept) would be in whether or not it would be a good or a bad experience; third, that being unsure of wanting something makes that thing a “risk” – it doesn’t, it just makes it something one is ambivalent about to begin with.
I just can’t see a way to rank an event by “type”, although you might rate individual experiences after the fact. Maybe there are some trends you can spot, or some instances that would never be okay under any circumstances, but as a general rule, ranking seems impossible.
Then you talk about, not ranking “all possible scenarios involving sexual relationships” but rather, ranking sexual experiences. Again, it’s impossible to rank a sexual experience before you’ve had it, and it’s impossible to give a generalised ranking (although you can give a summarised representation of experiences of a certain type). And I’m pretty sure that if I tried to rank my experiences, I’d end up with all manner of non-transitive sets (think rock, paper, scissors). Even if that weren’t the case, I don’t know how I would do it, and I don’t know what such a ranking would mean?
I am completely mystified as to the relevance of this “ranking” to sex work or “sex as work” anyway; you seem to be implying that sex that’s done as work must somehow have a particular quality that makes it always the same type of “good” or “bad” in a person’s ranking, but I don’t understand why that would be – if you had a bad day at work today, does that mean all work (of that type) is bad, or might tomorrow be a better day, that makes it a “good” work experience?
I think it’s an interesting point, but perhaps framed in a slightly harsh way. Perhaps it’s not a matter of what they want to do to make it happen. Perhaps it’s a matter of what they are psychologically or socially capable of doing.
@desipis:
That’s exactly what I was thinking. And, furthermore, if we’re trying to destigmatize sex work, then why is it “too bad” that these interactions are being paid for?
And, furthermore, if we’re trying to destigmatize sex work, then why is it “too bad” that these interactions are being paid for?
This is a fair point. I guess I was thinking that it’s too bad the interactions are being paid for if the guys in question genuinely want something else — especially if the guys in question are having trouble getting something else because they aren’t choosing to treat other women well (which I don’t think is the case with most of these guys, to be clear).
Reg,
Wouldn’t a housewife be someone whose relationship is her work? Certainly it is what keeps them alive and safe.
Wow. Really? Do you feel that people who take primary care of their family are obligated to have sex with their spouse, because they are “supporting” them or always subdue to their wims? (Supported, because their work is not equally respected and financially rewarded by the society.) Because I know it’s been used as an excuse time and time again to blackmail women to do things the supporters way, to have no personal goals and so on… But I don’t see that a caretaker’s relationship is their work. Cleaning, taking care of children and cooking, yes – but those are also legitimate, legal careers are they not?
I think that sharing responsibility in a relationship in a way or another is not the same as being paid for doing something – or having a “relationship”, anyway.
Personally I’m not OK with *all* sex-work: namely the type that isn’t actually work but slavery, so somewhat a moot point, up until you try to separate the two – who is hands-down voluntary and who is forced into it (by circumstances or otherwise) and why does that matter/not matter?
Obviously I don’t have the answers.
#20: Interesting point.. Are we always entitled to get everything we want, though? Do we deserve everything we want? Does it matter as long as someone has money and someone else wants to accept that money? At what point is that no longer valid? etc.
I think, as long as this is something (primarily) men buy from (primarily) women it’s going to be something I have an issue with. To be clear, I have an issue with the buying party, but I also realize that in order to lift the stigma of the paid party one would have to stop being judgemental all together, or?
And I may also feel that, how do you know (not YOU, but general), as someone who takes money for sex, that your clients are always paying for those who are voluntary vs those who aren’t and does that matter/how much does it matter?
Lots of questions and I hope I’ve been respectful in my ramblings.
And I may also feel that, how do you know (not YOU, but general), as someone who takes money for sex, that your clients are always paying for those who are voluntary vs those who aren’t and does that matter/how much does it matter?
This is a serious problem, and not just from the sex worker’s perspective … also from the perspective of sex buyers who want to be respectful and decent people. Being able to tell if a sex worker is doing the job wholly-voluntarily can be tricky, especially since sex workers typically make more money or are otherwise better-regarded by clients if they appear to enjoy the work.
As a side note, I think that the sex-positive writer Greta Christina once wrote a book on how to be a good sex buyer. Should be Googleable.