Love as a Fictitious Commodity: Gift-for-Sex Barters as Contractual Carriers of Intimacy

Abstract

Gift-for-sex (GFS) barters are a niche practice potentially representing the commodification of everyday dating practices. We inquire how GFS exchanges are practiced and understood in contemporary Russia. Second, we situate these in relation to contemporary economic culture. Our project provides answers in two steps based on online content. First, we identify GFS exchange practices within a major dating website. Next, we take the signals exchanged in those dating profiles and display their intersubjective meanings in Russia based on blogs and discussion fora. Our analysis focuses on gender roles and inter-gender conflicts, the use of economic jargon, the link between luxury consumption and sexuality, and understandings of gift-giving and generosity, in order to show how GFS barters, despite being contractual, carry emotional and romantic content. As such, love is under a constant conversion process, through the medium of the contractual gift, into the fictitious commodity form.

“It’s Its Own Thing”: A Typology of Interpersonal Sugar Relationship Scripts

“…Overall, I found that sugar arrangements comprise a unique relational package with their own subcultural and interpersonal scripts that, in the majority of cases, differ from prostitution. My findings echo the sentiments of other researchers who also argue that sugar relationships are distinct from commercial sex work (Cheung et al 2016; Hunter 2002; Nayer 2017; Swader et al 2013; Swader and Vorobeva 2015; Swindler and Watkins 2007). For instance, based on their study of male benefactors who engage in compensated dating, Cassini Sai Kwan Chu and Karen Joe Laidler (2016) note that compensated dating differs from prostitution in that it is “.…”

“…Although some female prostitutes may develop a genuine liking for their clients (Albert 2001; Sanders 2008), the script that typically guides their interactions does not dictate that they develop and maintain authentic emotions for customers. This, in part, is what distinguishes a “benefactor” from a “client” (Swader et al 2013:613), as legally speaking, engaging in sexual activity with a person for whom an individual has no emotion for the sole purpose of profit is considered prostitution (Motyl 2013). Fifth, although the subcultural sugar relationship script called for sugar partners to maintain arrangements that were NSA, the lives of recipients and benefactors were more intertwined than what is described in the literature on prostitution.…”

“…However, I argue that sugar arrangements are distinct from prostitution. Like a handful of other scholars who have studied sugar relationships, I assert that lumping these arrangements under the umbrella of commercial sex work is problematic (Cheung et al 2016; Hunter 2002; Nayer 2017; Swader et al 2013; Swader and Vorobeva 2015), as many noncommercial intimate relationships involve a monetary or material exchange of some form (Hunter 2002; Ranganathan et al 2017). Viviana A. Zelizer (2005) provides an extensive discussion of the ways in which intimacy and the economy are intertwined in her seminal book The Purchase of Intimacy .…”

“…In so doing, I found that, in most cases, sugar arrangements are neither traditional dating relationships nor prostitution but instead constitute a unique relational package with distinct subcultural and interpersonal meanings, or as one participant succinctly stated, “It’s its own thing.” The connected lives approach is well suited for examining sugar relationships, as framing these arrangements solely as prostitution not only criminalizes women’s behavior, it reinforces the false binary emphasized by the hostile worlds and separate spheres paradigm and ignores the complex ways in which money and intimacy are intertwined in these arrangements. As Christopher S. Swader and colleagues (2013) note “. .…”

‘Pure’ drug users, commercial sex workers and ‘ordinary girls’: gendered narratives of HIV risk and prevention in post-Soviet Ukraine

“…Problems with our questions were quickly revealed when we piloted the survey in Vilnius among the agency representatives and later when the survey was administered to clients. For example, we knew that agencies were recruiting women known by staff to engage in sex exchange broadly defined (for example, both women who identified as sex workers and those who engaged in ‘compensated dating’ (Swader and Vorobeva 2015; Swader, Strelkova, and Sutormina 2013)). However, we were getting extremely low response rates to the questions about women’s experience with sex exchange.…”