| 1. |
- Gunnarsson, Lena, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Chemistry or service? Sugar daddies’ (re)quest for mutuality within the confines of commercial exchange
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Sex Research. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0022-4499 .- 1559-8519. ; 59:3, s. 309-320
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With the emergence and global proliferation of ‘sugar dating’ websites, the phenomenon of sugar dating is gaining increased attention. Sugar dating is described by these websites as arrangements based on an exchange of financial or other forms of support for intimacy and companionship. The framing of sugar dating as something in-between a business transaction and mutually enjoyable dating serves as the point of departure of this article, which draws on semi-structured interviews and a survey questionnaire with ‘sugar daddies’ engaged in heterosexual sugar dating in Sweden. The article examines how the tension between economic instrumentality and the ideal of mutual enjoyment is played out in ‘sugar daddies’ accounts of their sugar dating experiences. We demonstrate that the participants desire encounters with ‘sugar babies’ to be based on both sexual and relational mutuality, i.e., they want the women to enjoy being with them beyond the economic rewards. We show that the men’s use of economic incentives to gain access to ‘sugar babies’ stands in a relationship of tension with their desire for interactions to be based on mutuality. However, through various mechanisms they still manage to reap the fruits of the experience of mutuality offered in sugar dating encounters.
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| 2. |
- Gunnarsson, Lena, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Dimensional Theories of Abuse : The case of sugar dating
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The presentation adresses what we call Dimensional Theories of Abuse, that set of feminist theories which point out the interlinkages between normative and abusive gender relations. Through concepts such as ‘grey area’, ‘continuum’ and ‘dimensional view’ feminist scholars in the field of violence research have analysed how gendered normalcy and abuse often meet/co-mingle/overlap in ways that obscure the boundary between them. For example, whereas love and violence are commonly seen as radically different experiences, possessiveness may be part as much of a passionate love dynamic as of intimate partner violence. Similarly, it is not always easy to neatly distinguish conventional relationships based on economic dependence from prostitution. Further, as scholars in the field of sexual violence have pointed out, normative heterosexual scripts are organized in line with a gendered logic of conquering which has much in common with the dynamics of sexual violence.In the presentation we compare different ways of conceptualizing gendered abuse in dimensional terms, analysing some tensions among and within different approaches. One key tension revolves around the fact that dimensional thinking affirms the similarities between the normative and the abusive, while at the same time taking their difference as their point of departure. Some theories tend to emphasize the similarities – ‘it’s all abuse but to different degrees’ – whereas some affirm that there is a divide between the abusive and non-abusive but that this divide is more of a murky grey area than a clear line. We identify potentials and problems with both tendencies and suggest ways forward in feminist dimensional thinking.
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| 3. |
- Gunnarsson, Lena, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Mapping sugar dating in Sweden
- 2020
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since the launch of the first sugar dating site in Sweden in 2017, sugar dating has recurred as a hot topic in media and public debate. Although, as this paper will address, the very definition of sugar dating is contested, it is generally comprised of an arrangement between a ‘sugar babe’ and a ‘sugar daddy’ (or sometimes ‘mama’), where dating and/or sex is compensated for by the daddy in the form of money and/or other gifts. The aim of this paper is to map the practices of sugar dating in a Swedish context, answering two broad questions:What are the practices of sugar dating?Who are the sugar daters?The paper is based on qualitative and quantitative data from an ongoing Forte-funded research project on sugar dating. The bulk of the material was gathered in 2019 and consists of three sets of empirical data: semi-structured interviews with sugar babes and sugar daddies; survey data of members of a major sugar dating site; and membership data of registered users of the same sugar dating site.The paper uses a broad definition of sugar dating, reflecting the participants’ own understandings. A striking feature in the material is the wide variety of practices engaged in under the rubric of ‘sugar dating’, including: the straight-forward selling of sex; economically compensated relationships imitating conventional coupledom; fancy, gender-traditional dates paid for by the ‘daddy’ and ending with sex (with or without additional monetary compensation); and economically compensated online relationships with no sexual content. This multiplicity contrasts both with the wide-spread discourse in Swedish public debate that sugar dating is simply a cover for conventional prostitution, and with the sugar dating industry’s – and some sugar dating researchers’ – claims that sugar dating is something other than prostitution.
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| 4. |
- Gunnarsson, Lena, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Varieties of Sugar Dating in Sweden : Content, Compensation, Motivations
- 2023
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Ingår i: Social problems. - : Oxford University Press. - 0037-7791 .- 1533-8533. ; 70:4, s. 1044-1062
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With the emergence and global proliferation of “sugar dating” websites, the phenomenon of sugar dating is increasingly on the public agenda. Sugar dating is described by thesesites 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. Based on interviews and a survey questionnaire, this article maps the practice of heterosexual sugar dating in Sweden as described by “sugar babies” and “sugar daddies” themselves. It shows a striking diversity in regard to what sugar dating means for participants, both in terms of what they do when sugar dating and in terms of how money and/or other material goods are involved in arrangements. A further key difference between sugar dating arrangements is whether “sugar babies” enter them for purely instrumental reasons or enjoy them in and of them-selves. Although not all kinds of sugar dating include sex, we argue that sugar dating sitesshould be seen as key actors in the expansion of the sex (and intimacy) industry, drawing on and articulating pre-existing tendencies within it.
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| 5. |
- Hoffart, Amund Rake, 1988-
(författare)
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Intersectional intersectionality? Interpretative politics in metacommentaries on intersectionality
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The claim that intersectionality has become a dominant paradigm for feminist scholarship and activism constitutes the backdrop to this study. One central arena for making such claims is the genre of metacommentaries on intersectionality. This genre often responds critically to the development of intersectionality into a paradigm and focuses on how the dispersal of intersectionality into ever-new contexts carries with it a series of missteps and breakdowns. The paradigmatisation of intersectionality is seen as problematic: its successes lead to failures; its popularity to a loss of radical edge; its travels to uprooting. This critique instigates a form of storytelling that attempts to bring intersectionality back to where it belongs. In this study, three responses to the paradigmatisation of intersectionality are identified. All work to pin it down and shape it as a proper object: to define its meanings, connect with its roots and realise its potential. These responses are read as themselves contributing to paradigmatisation, positioning the genre of metacommentaries as both “against” and as an important part of this process.This thesis develops a critique of the gestures of correction inherent in the metacommentary responses. A central finding is that the construction of a proper form of intersectionality is contrasted against an improper other, known as “additivity”, a way of conceptualising the relationship between social categories as separate and independent, making it possible to add them to each other. More importantly, additivity serves as a conceptual placeholder for a long list of methodological no-go areas, such as essentialism, exclusion and binary thinking. Thus, in the metacommentaries, a starkly oppositional relationship is constructed: through making additivity into a pejorative, intersectionality becomes an imperative. A paradoxical effect of overstating this binary is that it reinforces the very theory/practice gap that is singled out as causing missteps and breakdowns in intersectional scholarship. Instead of struggling to resolve the problem of additivity at a metatheoretical level, it is suggested that we need to dissolve the exceptionalism that guides the corrective impulse and to acknowledge our collective implication in additive modes of thought.
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| 6. |
- Strid, Sofia, Docent, 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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Sugardating as Empowerment or Exploitation? Feminist Interpretations of the Commodification of Intimacy
- 2021
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The paper explores the mechanisms of heterosexual so called “sugardating” and the proliferation of specific sugardating online datingplatforms from a feminist perspective. Sugardating, according to these platforms, is an arrangement based on the exchange of intimacy andmaterial support, often including sex and money.The aim of the paper is to describe, analyse and provide a critique of sugardating seen as aspecific manifestation of the changing nature of the contemporary social organisation of human sexual experience, where women areincreasingly commodified. In so doing, the paper informs about and engages with lived life and real-world events, with the aim to stimulatediscussion over controversies surrounding contemporary sexualities.The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with men andwomen with experience of sugardating (n=23), a structured questionnaire with members of a sugardating online community (n=100), andregistered membership profile data of a sugardating online community (n=34 578).The paper argues that sugardating needs to be situated and analysed in its socio-sexual and economic contexts, rather than from anindividual perspective.In remaining based on structural inequalities and unequally positioned men and women, sugardating perpetuatesgender and binary norms and practices of women’s sexuality as subordinate to men’s sexuality. Further, this inbuilt structural inequality doeslittle, contrary to postfeminist arguments, to transform or subvert fe/male (hetero)sexuality. Ultimately, sugardating serves to upholdprostitution and underpin the prevailing gender order. The enabling mechanisms are the continued commodification of women and theconflation of intimacy and patriarchal capitalist practices of the sex industry.
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