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Prostitution by any other name?

Information Analyst

Penultimate Amazing
Information Analyst
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BBC News: The women seeking rich older men to pay their university fees

"It's been euphemistically referred to as "mutually beneficial, transactional dating" but is the growing world of "sugar daddy" relationships just a sanitised term for sex work?

Freya is 22 and wearing jogging bottoms and a tatty T-shirt. She expresses herself unaffectedly and confidently.

She decided to start sleeping with older men for money while she was at university. "I love sex," says Freya. "And you know, I'm pretty good at it. So getting a sugar daddy - or two - was a no-brainer really."

Freya is one of a growing number of debt-ridden university students in the UK who have decided to become "sugar babies". These young women agree to be wined and dined by rich, older men who are known as "sugar daddies", in return for cash and gifts.

"My married sugar daddy gave me about £1,000 a night," says Freya reflectively. "He was just in it for the sex. My divorced sugar daddy gave me between £1,000 and £2,000 as an allowance." "
 
The article reads like the term is relatively unknown in the UK. Is that the case? I've known what sugar daddies are since I was a teenager and I'm in my mid-40s now.
 
Life is good when one is rich enough to buy someone's entire life without making even a tiny dent in one's own budget.
 
Lerxst said:
The article reads like the term is relatively unknown in the UK. Is that the case? I've known what sugar daddies are since I was a teenager and I'm in my mid-40s now.
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Sugar daddies is some older than that.....
 
Lerxst said:
The article reads like the term is relatively unknown in the UK. Is that the case? I've known what sugar daddies are since I was a teenager and I'm in my mid-40s now.
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No, "sugar daddy" is been a term that's been around for decades in the UK, but it would generally be applied to any older and significantly wealthier male partner. I think the main difference is that in the past it would have implied only the occasional gift of items or money, meals out, holidays, etc. Someone who is more regularly and majorly/entirely financially supported would be more likely to be defined as a mistress or "kept woman," but there is an overlap.
 
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Information Analyst said:
It's been euphemistically referred to as "mutually beneficial, transactional dating" but is the growing world of "sugar daddy" relationships just a sanitised term for sex work?
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If people are having sex in return for payment, either in terms of money or goods, then it's prostitution no matter if it's called compensated datingWP or whatever euphemism one uses.
 
I always like pterry's term: "negotiable affection."

But, what, is there nothing happening in Britain right now? The furor over Prince Whatever's crocs died down too early, and the BBC editors panicked and pulled something from the Slow News Day file?
 
Arcade22 said:
If people are having sex in return for payment, either in terms of money or goods, then it's prostitution no matter if it's called compensated datingWP or whatever euphemism one uses.
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Hmmm.. So where is the line? How is this different from supporting someone financially that you also have sex with? Such a definition would apply to many committed relationships would it not?
 
Arcade22 said:
If people are having sex in return for payment, either in terms of money or goods, then it's prostitution no matter if it's called compensated datingWP or whatever euphemism one uses.
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People almost always have sex in return for some form of payment. Is everyone engaging in prostitution? Honestly, I don't need a euphemism, as I don't consider the practice to have a shred of negative connotation so long as the exchange is truly un-coerced and mutual.

I have had women that were otherwise out of my league many times in the past. I'm under no illusion that were I the same age and appearance, but with considerably less money that I would have been able to bed any of them - although I never gave them a dollar in direct exchange and I suspect they all would have at least pretended offense had we labeled it prostitution.
 
Information Analyst said:
No, "sugar daddy" is been a term that's been around for decades in the UK, but it would generally be applied to any older and significantly wealthier male partner. I think the main difference is that in the past it would have implied only the occasional gift of items or money, meals out, holidays, etc. Someone who is more regularly and majorly/entirely financially supported would be more likely to be defined as a mistress or "kept woman," but there is an overlap.
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Okay thank you, I do enjoy the subtleties of vocabulary between American English and the Queen's English. I like "kept woman", I think I will use that one.
 
Lerxst said:
Hmmm.. So where is the line? How is this different from supporting someone financially that you also have sex with? Such a definition would apply to many committed relationships would it not?
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I think prostitution depends on the mutual understanding between two people (or two people and a pimp). Maybe someone who gets into a relationship with the intent of benefiting from their partner's money is prostituting themselves in the colloquial sense but it seems to me that for it to truly be prostitution, that partner would have to know that the poorer person is trading sex for money.

"Sugar daddies" absolutely know what the deal is so, yeah, prostitution by another name.
 
I can't but help think of the quote attributed to Winston Churchill...

Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?"
Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "
Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!"
Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”
 
Babbylonian said:
I think prostitution depends on the mutual understanding between two people (or two people and a pimp). Maybe someone who gets into a relationship with the intent of benefiting from their partner's money is prostituting themselves in the colloquial sense but it seems to me that for it to truly be prostitution, that partner would have to know that the poorer person is trading sex for money.

"Sugar daddies" absolutely know what the deal is so, yeah, prostitution by another name.
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Except with all of the women i have known that had sugar daddies it never started out that way. there was never any money exchanged the first time or even the first few times they had sex. the financial support came afterwards in exchange for a relationship that included sex.
 
Lerxst said:
Except with all of the women i have known that had sugar daddies it never started out that way. there was never any money exchanged the first time or even the first few times they had sex. the financial support came afterwards in exchange for a relationship that included sex.
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Sounds like the drug dealer model. Get 'em hooked on freebies then start charging.

Who knows, maybe some of these people are delusional and don't understand what they're doing. I would find it hard to definitively define it as prostitution (particularly in the criminal sense) in that case, though it probably is.
 
Hell, I can't blame anybody for taking advantage of such an arrangement. I would if I could, hands down.

But I'm also not of the opinion that prostitution is necessarily bad.
 
3point14 said:
So, marriage is prostitution?
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There's a cliche that prostitution is not payment for sex, but payment for sex plus getting lost afterward.

There's a bit of truth to this. In a 'real' marriage I would hope that there's emotional content involved in addition to an exchange of cash and sex.
 
In my first "real" marriage, here was no sex, only negative emotional content and of course a huge exchange of cash.
 
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