| dc.description.abstract | Sugar dating is a relatively new and growing phenomenon within the sex- and intimacy
industry. Sugar dating consists of meetings and relationships in which wealthier men
compensate, materially and economically, relatively limited women for a dating-like
arrangement where sex and intimacy often are excepted. Previous studies have found both that
sugar dating can be considered prostitution and that sugar dating in several aspects differs from
it. This study aims to analyze how non-prostitution is constructed among people with
experiences of sugar dating in a Swedish context. The material consists of interviews with 24
people, nine men, and fifteen women, with experience of sugar dating in Sweden. The study is
theoretically informed by the concepts of relation work, regimes of justification, and
respectability. This study shows how non-prostitution is constructed, how the men give moral
reasons for their actions, and how the women create and maintain respectability. The analysis
uncovers five aspects of the interviewees' experiences of sugar dating. The five aspects are the
content of the compensation, the form of the compensation, the sexual free will, the mutual
pleasure, and dating similarity. Together these aspects are created through practical and
discursive relation work. In themselves, these aspects emphasize differences to prostitution and
also work as regimes of justification for the men and as a way for the women to create and
maintain respectability. | sv |
