There are very few people to root for in this story
August 28, 2015 7:58 AM   Subscribe

GQ's Taffy Brodesser-Akner looks at the culture and economics of sugar daddies.
posted by Chrysostom (62 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Scrooge McFuck (not his real name)

This whole ludicrous-pseudonym device is really doing it for me.
posted by Gin and Comics at 8:00 AM on August 28, 2015 [17 favorites]


"Everyone here is on the hustle, and everyone here thinks they're winning."

Truer words etc., etc.

With sugar babies, he says, it's almost like a real person who actually loves you.

...
posted by zarq at 8:05 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


GQ has clearly given up on sub-editors.
posted by Mezentian at 8:05 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


“Look at me,” says Kitten. I do. We all do. “I'm going to be used for my body. I might as well get something from it.”

This is a good summary of the problem, as written by someone who doesn't really want to stop being part of it.
posted by kewb at 8:09 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


Commentary from The Toast:
I can understand being uncomfortable with the idea and some of the realities of sex work; I have been uncomfortable about it myself, at various times in my life. But I don’t believe that the discomfort of someone who is not involved in sex work in any meaningful way ought to dictate the conversation. Or even be a part of it! You can just feel some discomfort and, you know, sit with that in a quiet room for a while, and then carry on with your life.

And I think there’s plenty to be said about how sugar dating, and other types of “soft” sex work play into new economic realities after the last recession – I’d love to read something that investigates what Reid brought up at HRW, how sites like Rentboy and Seeking Arrangements mirror the kind of weird, “everyone’s an employee” cultures of Uber and Airbnb. And, oh gosh, I absolutely believe there’s plenty to be said about how sex workers (male and female) have to manage male/client entitlement in an industry where they’re also often facing the threat of arrest or public exposure. I just don’t think this article accomplished any of those things!”
posted by ChuraChura at 8:10 AM on August 28, 2015 [57 favorites]


I was getting annoyed at the snarky tone of the author but this bit made me snort-laugh so I guess I forgive her:
Often in the past few months, my first thought upon waking up is a new possibility for Scrooge. “Maybe he wants to wear a saddle and be hit with a riding crop while he recites Whitman,” I will tell my husband. “Can I have coffee before we discuss this?” he will answer.)
Still can't decide if the final paragraph of the piece is profound or just a cop-out.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:14 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


Subtract sex from the arrangement and you end up with what looks suspiciously like an ownership contract.

It's probably bias on my part, mind you; rich old men who always get what they want make my teeth grind.
posted by Mooski at 8:19 AM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


It would have been a powerful and more possibly insightful article if the author had written it in such a way as to display even a small amount of compassion for her subjects. I don't think objectifying people in writing positions the writer very well to argue against objectifying them sexually.
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:27 AM on August 28, 2015 [14 favorites]


That was a rather interesting article with a very abrupt and jarring conclusion that didn't really fit tonally with the rest of the piece. Virtually all of the people portrayed in the article seem to have a very realistic sense of what they want out of the transaction and have made peace with what sacrifices they have to make to achieve it, along with a set of boundaries they are not willing to cross. The conclusion, which reads to me as, "Well, these people might THINK they are happy, but I just know that they're not" does not seem supported by the evidence of her own article.
posted by The Gooch at 8:28 AM on August 28, 2015 [11 favorites]


"I've saved 42 grand and it's in T-Bills earning interest.

I've got three more years on my back. I'll have enough to retire.

You're a prostitute?

I'm talking about a business proposition, Louis.

I help you get back on your feet and you pay me, in cash, five figures."
posted by three blind mice at 8:30 AM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


I've got three more years on my back. I'll have enough to retire.

*sigh* Ah, the good old days. Would be more than three now, with rents in Philly and all.
posted by Melismata at 8:32 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


One specialist told me that most of these people want to be saviors, but they also want to humiliate. It's a common dynamic to suss out the sugar baby's boundaries—threesomes, say, or anal, whatever it is that pushes her beyond her moral code or value system—and then make her an offer that gets her to do it anyway: There's the power, and the altruism. It's not just that John's sugar daddy wanted to have unprotected sex with him. He wanted to make John do something he didn't want to do, and then have the quick cleanup of his conscience by saying, “But I'm helping the poor kid!”

I wanted so much more of this. How do we know it's common? Can we talk to more people who have done this on the 'baby' side of things? Are there researchers who work with this? I have so many questions about the mindset of the sort of people who think this kind of relationship is appealing, but I don't particularly think of them as reliable narrators. A piece that expanded this paragraph--now that would be fascinating.
posted by sciatrix at 8:40 AM on August 28, 2015 [14 favorites]


Subtract sex from the arrangement and you end up with what looks suspiciously like an ownership contract.

That's marriage. This is more of a rental.
posted by clawsoon at 8:40 AM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


If you don't want this kind of thing to exist in the world, then you don't want capitalism or structural inequality based on race or gender. If you do want capitalism and structural inequality, then you're going to get various kinds of economically coerced sex work*.

I have a lot of trouble getting mad when marginalized people get paid for something that the world is always trying to coerce from them for free.

This really chimes with the emotional labor thread for me - what lots of men want is someone to act like the girlfriend experience - cater to and anticipate their needs but never express needs of their own unless those needs are fun/convenient - but not get paid.

I think it's depressing that most human relations are basically mediated by money (even when there's no actual finances involved; if you're treating your wife like a servant but you're not paying her, well, that's not a real human relationship, it's just theft of services). But if that's the way it's gonna be, then everyone who is marginalized should make sure they get their cut.

And actually, of the people I've known who do/have done sex work, all of them have achieved better lives thereby - in a couple of situations because they were in such bad places that regular money was a huge improvement and in one situation because the free time facilitated a lot of other stuff.

I'm always reminded a bit of what Oryx says in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake - basically, "sure, it's great to have love and it's great to have money, but if you have money and no love you're way the hell luckier than people with neither, so focus on the positive". A drawback to sex work as a way out is simply that it's not available if you're not good looking.



*Like, presumably in utopia some people would just be happiest as sex...facilitators? comrades? I like teaching - show me a person who has trouble analyzing a text and I'll sit down with them for free, regardless of who they are. Some people probably feel the same about sex.
posted by Frowner at 8:44 AM on August 28, 2015 [46 favorites]


I'm guessing Adult Baby for Mr. McFuck, by the way.

For those interested in the sugar babies' perspective, Tits and Sass might provide a jumping-off place.
posted by S'Tella Fabula at 8:45 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


Taffy Brodesser-Akner (not her real name).
posted by frogmanjack at 8:49 AM on August 28, 2015


mindset of the sort of people who think this kind of relationship is appealing

To clarify, since I realized right after the edit window closed--I meant the "daddies" when I said "the sort of people." I totally get why the younger people in this dynamic would be interested, because financial stability and not being broke as shit are appealing to everyone--especially if you're say, living in a shelter for homeless youth (!!!) or have been jettisoned by your parents with zero financial support for being gay (!!!).
posted by sciatrix at 8:49 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Taffy Brodesser-Akner
.... holidays in the Hamptons?

Based on her name alone I'd make that quip.

It seems as if, not. But on Twitter she seems very defensive.
Which makes me sad.
A work should stand on its own, and the haters should be distant.
And, I am not a fan of this work, but Jesus.... the modern media.... HASHTAG:UGH
posted by Mezentian at 8:52 AM on August 28, 2015




Taffy Brodesser-Akner (not her real name).
.... holidays in the Hamptons?
Taffy Akner and Claude Brodesser
Mr. Brodesser, 33, was an only child, the son of a father who was conscripted into the German Army at 14, near the end of World War II. The son was sent to parochial schools. At the same time, Ms. Akner, whose grandfather survived the concentration camp at Dachau, was studying at a yeshiva. Her family of Polish-Russian-Israeli immigrants were Orthodox Jews, members of the Lubavitch movement.
posted by djb at 8:58 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


"Taffy" is an insulting name for a Welsh person, so it's a little striking.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:59 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Taffy is so the name of person who would holiday in the Hamptons.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner seems to be her real name, married, which seems nice. I always like that melded versionm my hatred of the hyphenated regardless.

Although it is nice to see the sins of WW2 have been settled in one family, especially since I gather Lubavitch types are not so forgiving.
posted by Mezentian at 9:05 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow, Elementary Penguin, that piece is really awesome. It's, um, funny how emotional labor keeps coming up as an ostensibly-free part of the work provided by a sugar baby--and how much it looks like half the distinction of being a sugar baby (vs. other forms of sex-as-exchange-for-money) is in offering up the emotional labor of letting the daddy pretend. Like, that's the service that's being bought and sold, and the differences in sex work--as far as I can tell--in large part revolve more around the quantity and kind of emotional labor you have to do to cater to clients' feelings than the actual sex itself. (Assuming sex is involved, which it may not be.)

A big red flag on any sugar daddy’s profile is an expressed predilection for acting as a “mentor.” He wants to be no such thing. Ask any mentoring program in any major metropolitan area in the United States and you will find them absolutely starved of male mentors. What this man wants is an audience that is compelled to listen to him pontificate on topics like evolutionary psychology and American exceptionalism. His opinions are offensive and reliably dull.

!!!!!
posted by sciatrix at 9:10 AM on August 28, 2015 [14 favorites]


On further reflection:

1. We live in an age of quantification and quantification-as-shopping. It's easier, right now, to break a relationship into marketizable chunks. This is both because we have tools (in terms of actual labor hours, average prices for labor, etc) and because we're having a cultural moment in which the idea of reducing everything to fungible, discrete, quantified chunks is how we understand the world.

2. There's liberation, sort of. If I were to marry a dude, I wouldn't be his property, and if he were to hit me or confiscate my paycheck I would technically have legal recourse - even though legal recourse isn't available to everyone by any means. More, very few people would say "it's perfectly fine that he hits you and takes your money, that's what marriage is" - but that's a really recent development, as a little bit of study of the early 20th century reveals. Men are no longer automatically entitled to women's labor for free. (And the safer it is to be out of the closet, the less the sexual and emotional labor of marginalized gay men can be appropriated by richer gay men.)

2.5. So, we've got a framework which says that women are entitled to the fruits of their own labor in marriage, at least to some extent. The norm is no longer "women should not expect pay for their labor, and should expect that any kind of recompense they get is totally at the whims of men"; women expect to have access to some economic equality, and women can earn their own livings and not live with men. This allows us to name the emotional and sexual labor of marriage as labor, and allows a discourse which basically says "I'm not getting anything in this marriage, goodbye".

3. I think this has a knock-on effect for sex work, because it's the labor of marriage without the marriage. I think sex work is going to get more common, more pervasive and more respectable. All those tech bros, for instance - surely many of them are going to want to pay good money for a housekeeper/sex worker, and they'll have the money to do so. I would expect that as class inequality deepens, more and more men will have paid "wives" rather than romantic partners. There's an advantage to marrying a fellow upper middle class person, but there's also an advantage to paying someone and having them meet all your needs.

4. I think the mid-century dream of a labor truce - where it was possible to be working class and make a decent living and it was possible to minimize conflict between labor and capital - is bracketed with the dream of romantic love unmediated by money, and both are fading out. Marriages used to be entirely economic, but in those situations the women were property. I think we're moving toward a world where many partnerships are openly entirely economic and the women are openly employees. This is depressing, yes, if you compare it with a utopian dream of equality and freedom. But if the revolution isn't coming, "fuck you, pay me" sounds pretty good.

5. Is it better to say "things are bad now, but my dream is about love and equality and I have that dream inside of me" or to say "I have a realistic understanding of the world and I won't let anyone use my naive dreams of love and equality to exploit me"? If you really, truly believe that the best thing you can achieve is to get paid for your emotional and sexual labor, how does that shape your interior life? Is there any alternative to that understanding, or is seeking an alternative just a way of kidding yourself about real power structures?
posted by Frowner at 9:12 AM on August 28, 2015 [20 favorites]


with so many writers who were sex workers, it seems odd we keep getting these same tired, sneering profiles from someone who just needs to prove themselves better than people who earn a living through sex. i keep hoping whorephobia will die down, especially amongst so called feminist women, but so far i keep being disappointed.
posted by nadawi at 9:13 AM on August 28, 2015 [26 favorites]


And in exchange “these girls” think they're getting what they want. But you can't get what you want in this world without a scam, without thinking you are the grifter and not the mark. Kitten believes she is gaming the system, profiting off her body instead of being used for it, but she's not making as much as she could if she were a better negotiator. Tigress thinks she's doing the smallest amount of work for the most amount of money, but if you talk to her, there is something off there, something not right in her bragging and eagerness. John's sugar daddy, who bought the suits and the domestic plane tickets, thought he was the one in control, but it was John who had what the sugar daddy wanted and wouldn't give it to him. Everyone here is on the hustle, and everyone here thinks they're winning. And so what's so wrong with that? Who exactly is getting hurt?

That, my friends, is the scam, here at the intersection of greed and loneliness and insecurity and the basic human need for survival. You can tell yourself whatever story you want, and eventually you'll forget you're telling a story and you'll find yourself in the parking lot of a Pizzeria Uno getting sucked off by someone who thinks she's getting the better end of the deal. And the worst part is, you'll think you're helping her. And she'll give you that blow job, all the while wondering how she could get so lucky, how you could be so dumb. Everyone gets what they want. And, sure, what's so wrong with that


This is my experience with the kink community. Everyone is playing games to treat one another as objects? Some are so used to it that they expect it - others are so used to the privilege they can't fathom a world without it.

This and the emotional labor thing are eye openers. Thanks for posting this
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 9:20 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


is in offering up the emotional labor of letting the daddy pretend

Midbrain don't care and can't differentiate anyway.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:26 AM on August 28, 2015


I would love to see a parody article written in this same condescending tone about, say, fast-food workers. "Her parents know about the burgers, and they don't love it, but, well, are they paying all of her tuition?" "Kitten believes she is gaming the system, profiting off her labor instead of being used for it, but she's not making as much as she could if she were a better negotiator." This all applies to any kind of labor. And while paying for sex/companionship is a more personal exchange that allows for more exploitation on either side, so does any personal contract, like housecleaning or chauffering. Personally I can imagine happily being on either side of this exchange, just like I can make sandwiches as well as buy them. Social stigma aside, why not?

Sure, some people successfully meet and attract partners where they "just love each other and make it work." But I'd be surprised if they're even the majority. And it's only sex and emotional labor where society expects that kind of serendipity; for every other mutual need, we're okay with capitalism. This article talks about how both the "sugar daddy" and "sugar baby" are being grifted, but the recent emotional labor thread made it clear that in a relationship without explicit exchange, it's even easier for one party to exploit the other.
posted by Rangi at 9:29 AM on August 28, 2015 [19 favorites]


Taffy? Sugar daddies? Fudge brownies? I can't even…
posted by bobloblaw at 9:32 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Taffy Brodesser-Akner

This is interesting. There's a Claude Brodesser-Akner who headed KCRW's popular "The Business" show. One day he scolded those who planned to boycott a theater whose owners donated to Prop 8, comparing them to Hollywood blacklisters. It was a surprising take for him to take (I definitely didn't agree), but it sounded heartfelt.

The next episode ran as usual, until it ended with a clearly still furious editor assuring the audience that Claude's opinions about Prop 8 opponents were not of the stations, and that he was not authorized to share them on the show.

The episode after that was introduced by Kim Masters, who continues hosting to this day.

It's funny to see the other half of that couple pop up somewhere like this.
posted by deathmaven at 9:36 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


The writer's first name is Stephanie. She goes by Taffy. She wrote about her name here. Here's some of her other published work.
posted by zarq at 9:42 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Making fun of the author's name is petty, imo. Even in an article where she's given people snarky synonyms.
posted by zarq at 9:44 AM on August 28, 2015 [18 favorites]


Taff-eeeeee! Taffy!

Glynn?
posted by FJT at 9:53 AM on August 28, 2015


And that's what it came down to: “The whole concept of a sugar daddy intrigued me, because even if I were dating someone traditionally, I'd give them money anyway.”

I...clearly did dating wrong when I was single.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:55 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


Here's some of her other published work.

oh wow, lol, i've hated a lot of her work. also, maybe making fun of her name isn't the best, but she sort of called it on herself with the disdainful way she's named and talked about her subjects.
posted by nadawi at 9:56 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


Making fun of the author's name is petty, imo.

Speaking just for myself, I'm not making fun of it. As someone with Welsh heritage, I'm not 100% thrilled with her nickname, but agree that it is not relevant to the article.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:09 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


To further clarify what irked me about this piece: It is only natural, I think, to have assumptions about people who are participants in this type of quasi-sex work. The point of doing the research to put an article like this together is to see how the reality either confirms or contradicts those initial assumptions. What bothered me about this article is that instead of taking that new information and reshaping her views as a result, the author instead stubbornly insists that nobody could possibly be happy participating in this type of transaction, and therefore anyone who claims to be fine with it is just deluding themselves. If the author wasn't open to the idea that her assumptions on this topic were wrong, one wonders what the point of writing the article in the first place was.
posted by The Gooch at 10:12 AM on August 28, 2015 [7 favorites]


The article is absoutely spot-on.

In Capitalism, everybody thinks they're happy, everybody thinks they're working their way up the ladder, everybody thinks that they've got it under control.

Everybody is wrong.

A lot of people in this thread are reading this article as if it was some kind of sex-negative anti-sex worker screed. It's not. It's revealing how capitalism has infected every facet of our lives, including our sex lives.
posted by Avenger at 10:27 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


TNI article was much better.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:29 AM on August 28, 2015


Yep. We've created a culture where everything is for sale, and everyone is increasingly forced to be a merchant in every aspect of their lives, whatever their inclinations.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:30 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


isn't it weird that these anti-capitalist write ups that aren't at all whorephobic are so insulting to sex workers and so utterly focused on how disgusting the writer finds blow jobs? probably just a coincidence...
posted by nadawi at 10:31 AM on August 28, 2015 [13 favorites]


If this is a larger anti-capitalist critique which starts with sex work, then:

1. I don't think it's a very good one, as it's mostly titillation.

2. Anti-capitalist critiques ought to focus on valuing and trusting the workers instead of equating them - morally and emotionally - with the capitalists.

3. It needs to prove its premises. I think you could write a long profile of a sex worker - with her consent and cooperation - that focused on how emotionally deadening sex work was, etc*. But in this one, the writer just breezily asserts that Kitten and Tigress and even good ol' Ilene are being emotionally eroded, in flat contradiction of how they actually describe their own lives. It's true that everyone does think they're getting ahead under capitalism, it's true that we're all suffering from false consciousness, but if you want to point at sex work as a particular site of false consciousness, you need to do more work.

4. I think that Kitten and Tigress - Kitten especially - sound pretty level-headed. They don't just "think" that they're getting ahead; they're actually getting ahead, because they started from pretty lousy places. It's difficult not to see one of my friends in their particular stories, and believe me - she is soooooo much better off now than she was before, both materially and emotionally. So basically, I don't buy the whole "everyone has false consciousness" bit, and the story would need to do a lot more work to prove that Kitten and Tigress had lots of good opportunities that they were neglecting to take the bad opportunity of sex work.

5. I think it's really difficult to begin one's anti-capitalist critique with a piece about sex work, because the gravity of the generic terrible sex worker narrative is so strong. And I think that GQ is simply not going to run a really feminist critique of sex work because its core audience is Dudes Who Do Not Want To Think That They Are The Villains. So it's always going to be "see, this is mutual exploitation - look how the worker is exploiting the capitalist!!!"



*Again, from conversations with friends, I feel like non-emotionally deadening sex work does exist, but it's not the majority of sex work. Some people like their work a lot most of the time, some people like it a lot occasionally, some people are indifferent; many people have bad experiences with creepy/violent/yuck dudes. But a lot of work is emotionally deadening, dangerous, etc. Immigrant women workers, for instance, are super vulnerable but no one cares because not titillating.
posted by Frowner at 10:48 AM on August 28, 2015 [10 favorites]


It's true that everyone does think they're getting ahead under capitalism, it's true that we're all suffering from false consciousness, but if you want to point at sex work as a particular site of false consciousness, you need to do more work.

The article doesn't say that sex work is a special and unique point of false consciousness, it's just the most titillating and eye-catching, hence the reason we are talking about it.
posted by Avenger at 10:56 AM on August 28, 2015


But we - considering "we" to be the audience in general - sure aren't talking about capitalism; we're talking about the same old boring misogynist stuff again. Sex work is going to be an automatic derail in a mass audience conversation about capitalism, and I'm suspicious of any non-sex worker who starts a critique there.
posted by Frowner at 10:59 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


I've spent time hanging around with people who are, well, Professionally Gorgeous. Performers, dancers. I have dipped my toe into what it takes to make that happen. It ain't cheap. It ain't cheap at all. And it takes a lot of time and effort to keep yourself in that kind of shape.

It's a trade-off. If you've got that kind of body, how much is it worth? How much can you get? How long are you willing to do this? How is pretending to care about your sugar daddy's weird politics necessarily any different from pretending to care about this cactus dressed like Olivia Newton-John you're drawing for a wholly owned subsidiary of Electronic Arts?

*this is a real thing a friend of mine was recently paid to do.
posted by egypturnash at 10:59 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


If the tone is anti-sex work, and an argument could be made for or against that (honestly, I thought the article was far more critical of the sugar daddies), then it's encouraging that people here are reading it as the inevitable consequence of hilariously unequal capitalism.

My first thought was of the Cracked article about sex slavery previously on metafilter. There were comments at the time that a huge part of the problem was that people had money to buy people with and were able to keep all of that money hidden. Vast inequality is a large part of what makes sex work what it is. I'd be curious about about studies that correlate sex work statistics with inequality metrics, but sex work is on tax returns in very few countries.

I think the article looks down on the sugar daddy relationship from the context of "Everybody's scamming each other" rather than sex work is bad; recall that line about how the sugar daddies didn't like "prostitutes that were all business and no smiles." If they're critical of something, it's about stripping the honesty out of the procedure, hence the bizarre questions. The author definitely has some tone problems, but that seems pretty common for authors looking at sex work from the outside.
posted by Strudel at 11:07 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


i trust charlotte shane's take on this article
The corollary to "bad mean men have sex" is always "sad self-exploiting bimbos vainly attempt to alleviate their loneliness, haha, pathetic"

I know parts of it were funny! But even more of it was really cruel and smug about its cruelty. How did you miss that? O right, bc sex work.
her twitter has more reactions with screenshots from the article.
posted by nadawi at 11:15 AM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


I'm surprised at the scientists and academics in the article. Partly, that they can afford it, and partly that they'd risk burning down their careers this way (corporate scientists might get away with it, but professors would be in trouble if the university and especially the public found out.)
posted by Mitrovarr at 12:09 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


but professors would be in trouble if the university and especially the public found out.

Found out what? Get away with what? Having a young hot girlfriend who likes nice things? What would the trouble be?

That's an admirable quality in a man, as long as he's not embezzling to pay for it. Because you're right, academics do not make the big bucks.

(Also, if that was the worst thing any professor in the school was up to...heh, nevermind, that's not even feasible.)

Men do this every day. Shit, men get promoted for it.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:32 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Taffy Brodesser-Akner investigates the bold new transactional-love economy.

Other than the internet-enabling, there's nothing "bold" or "new" about any of this.

In Capitalism, everybody thinks they're happy, everybody thinks they're working their way up the ladder, everybody thinks that they've got it under control.

Really? Because I know a lot of people who are miserable and frightened and feel like their entire financial lives are completely out of their control.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:59 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm always baffled, though given current intellectual fashions decreasingly surprised, that people can read a piece like this as "sneering" or "condescending", let alone (sigh) "phobic". Do people not see how the author uses her own prejudices, class position, and knowing naivete as a narrative device? How this piece examines those assumptions as much as expresses them? Do you think the class implications of her own name have never occurred to her? Do you think she's choosing the pseudonyms in this piece as a straightforward, totally unironic expression of her contempt for her subjects?

Jesus.
posted by oliverburkeman at 1:29 PM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


waitwaitwait

Taffy is writing about sugar daddies? All these women, looking for their 100 Grand from some "Clark Toblerone," made a fortune as a jolly rancher? And what's with the denigration of sex work? When baby ruth is hungry and you're out of milk, duds can be pretty appealing, even if you have to blow pops. Peeps need that payday to stay alive in a late-capitalist system. It's not like the three musketeers are going to swoop in and save you when you're 'twix student loan payments and rent coming due. And even if these men aren't some big hunk, a hustler can get a bit o' honey.

Keep your snickers to yourselves, nerds.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:41 PM on August 28, 2015 [15 favorites]


Old relevant Askme.
posted by Melismata at 1:56 PM on August 28, 2015


When baby ruth is hungry and you're out of milk, duds can be pretty appealing, even if you have to blow pops.

Okay, I take it back. That was hilariously creative.
posted by zarq at 2:08 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Lyn Never: Found out what? Get away with what? Having a young hot girlfriend who likes nice things? What would the trouble be?

Found out they're paying for 'dates'? Most people will not recognize a difference between this and going to a prostitute. And that's seen as really pathetic. To say nothing of enraging the morality police.
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:14 PM on August 28, 2015


And I think that GQ is simply not going to run a really feminist critique of sex work because its core audience is Dudes Who Do Not Want To Think That They Are The Villains.

Really? I always thought that GQ's audience is gay men. Or, more specifically, Dudes Who Do Not Yet Admit To Themselves That They Are Gay But Like Looking At The Super Hunky Male Models In Awesome Outfits. Or maybe that's just sample bias, because it's 100% true for the three men I've known who actually read GQ.
posted by LooseFilter at 2:16 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Found out they're paying for 'dates'? Most people will not recognize a difference between this and going to a prostitute. And that's seen as really pathetic. To say nothing of enraging the morality police.

Other than at religious schools, I don't think paying for sex (as long as you aren't paying a student, of course) would get you fired at most schools. Getting arrested for it in a way that splashes your name and photo across the front page might, of course, but not simply engaging in transactive sex.

I didn't like the article -- the humor seemed off to me and detracted from what is a really interesting set of situations. I knew people in college who were in sugar-daddy relationships and it mostly seemed to work for them at that point in time. I have wondered how people navigate relationships across wide economic and power gaps, and at what point those become openly or tacitly transactive and at other points they do not.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


I wonder how ubiquitous this will become. I can imagine a situation, not too many years from now, where inequality has increased further, the lives of non-wealthy young people have become more economically precarious (the sort of university degree required for any sort of work leaves one saddled with crippling debt, and housing is unaffordable), and a small group of very wealthy individuals have become even wealthier and more powerful. There, it is standard practice for the titans of finance to become sugar-daddies and build up virtual harems, contracting sexual exclusivity and submission from young women in return for enough money to pay off their debts and buy an apartment of their own, paid on their 26th/30th/whenever birthday when the contract finishes. The young women are issued with rose-gold Vertu phones (a model made discreetly for the sugar-daddy market) and/or ornamental electronic manacles loaded with spyware which monitor them, sending back all their actions back to their sugar-daddy's security team; anyone who is seen being intimate with anybody else not only loses the millions they stand to get at the end of the contract but is made an example of through punitive lawsuits; new sugar-babies are shown a dossier of young women who thought they could game the system and ended up taking their own lives, as a warning. Meanwhile, the top sugar-daddies have thousands of women on exclusive contracts to them, with entire teams to manage them; this gives them not only access to and dominance over attractive young women, but perhaps psychologically more compellingly, implicit domination over the large number of men (and women) with whom these women may have otherwise gone out; once you've got that, you're the alpha-male of alpha-males, a true Genghis Khan of the neoliberal age.

Of course, there are complications. History has shown that large numbers of men with no chance of finding partners tend to cause unrest. Perhaps society becomes more warlike, invading neighbouring countries to expend its surplus menfolk, and the illusion of the age of peaceful commerce (remember “no two countries with a McDonalds have gone to war”?) is buried forever. Or perhaps some kind of gladiatorial games are organised to cull them. Though most probably, violence (from street crime to terrorism to football hooliganism) goes up.
posted by acb at 4:10 AM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


In any discussion of labor, I think it's worth considering three other things:

1) Men who do stereotypically "feminine" work are still paid much more than women, often to the point that income gaps in these fields are *worse* than gaps elsewhere. And in some cases, fields that are perceived as "women's" fields are some of the only places where one can dismantle labor protections and impose nasty work conditions with little public outcry. Just ask child care workers, domestics, and teachers.

2) Other fields where conventional attractiveness (or, really, physical condition of any sort) is a significant factor in one's employability have historically tended to leave workers who age out in dire straits. And such fields are also systemically discriminatory along lines of age and race.

3) The wealthy will push very hard, often successfully, to turn unionized or contracted work into right-to-work whenever possible, and they will always have better lawyers even when it's time to negotiate a contract.

If all sex workers were treated essentially like any other worker, they would be in a much better situation than they are today. But they would still be treated the way workers are treated.
posted by kewb at 5:29 AM on August 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


I wonder how ubiquitous this will become. I can imagine a situation, not too many years from now, where inequality has increased further, the lives of non-wealthy young people have become more economically precarious (the sort of university degree required for any sort of work leaves one saddled with crippling debt, and housing is unaffordable), and a small group of very wealthy individuals have become even wealthier and more powerful.

Honestly, we are already pretty much at the point where a version of a sugar daddy relationship is accessible economically to people who are not anywhere near the one percent. I have a middle class job in a fairly poor county, which makes the economic gulf between me and the average young person here incredibly large.

If I were to want to (which I don't, obviously), paying someone's car payment and/or rent in exchange for sex wouldn't be a financial stretch at all for me, but that would be huge to someone working part time while taking classes at the university with student loans, say. The same would go for purchasing low-end luxury goods or taking someone on a trip to Vegas -- small money on a white collar salary, but completely inaccessible otherwise for a lot of people. The plutocrat cases in the article are fun to read, but it extends a lot further than those extreme examples.

The growing inequality in the US is starting to feel similar to when I was working in developing countries and watching the NGO and embassy workers leveraging their privilege for sex with local people. When people are poor enough that basic goods and services are hard to afford, being able to offer even minimal support brings a lot of power. It is gross, and I can see it growing year by year here.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:01 AM on August 29, 2015 [6 favorites]


Charlotte Shane wrote a fantastic piece on this for Jezebel.

But here are some other things I know. Laws against sex work are used to control and punish already marginalized women. They are tools for enforcing poverty and state violence. Prostitution is illegal, and rape is still rampant and unpunished. Furthermore, male sexuality does not thrive on violence; it often gravitates toward tenderness and connection. Men are not monsters just because they’re paying, and the men who pay for it are beloved husbands and fathers and sons. Women can successfully subvert systems that would destroy us, but doing so never entails demonizing another group of women in the process, or treating those women as disposable clowns...

Hawk writes, “There must be a reminder that who we are is worth more than the world’s ignorance would have us believe.” My reminder is that I come from the club that produces writing like this, instead of articles that revel in misogyny and scorn. My reminder is that it may feel safer but is never better to laugh and call someone deluded instead of recognizing we are all making compromises to live our best life in a hard world. She’s the dumb one, I’m the smart one. She’s the lazy one, I’m the hard-working one. It’s easy to despise someone for not having more power, or for not responding to their powerlessness the way you think they should. It’s easy to embrace the idea that some people deserve to be exploited by virtue of who they are, or that they’re already less human than you by virtue of being more vulnerable. It’s how I feel about jokes about sex workers being molested: thank you for mining my life “in search of reasons for my vileness.” Tell me more about why I’m pathetic, and you’re definitely not.


Men Consume, Women Are Consumed: 15 Thoughts on the Stigma of Sex Work
posted by triggerfinger at 5:46 PM on September 1, 2015 [4 favorites]


Hampson, Lilienstein and Morrison covered this issue with more sympathy for the participants back in 1978. However, as with most of their groundbreaking work on controversial sexual questions, they disguised it as a children's song.
posted by clawsoon at 2:16 PM on September 4, 2015


« Older Mr. Whiskerstein has been catatonic since...   |   Vulture talks to Quentin Tarantino Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments