Blurred lines: Technologies of heterosexual coercion in “sugar dating”

“Sugar dating” is the practice of establishing a “mutually beneficial relationship” between an older, affluent male – Sugar Daddy – and a younger, financially disempowered female – Sugar Baby. Although the figure of the “Sugar Daddy” has become commonplace in popular culture, this area of study remains largely unexplored, especially in the UK. Among the numerous websites that have mushroomed in the last decades in this country, Seeking.com stands out not only for providing an online meet-up place for Sugar Daddies and Babies, but also for serving as the matrix where the “sugar” discourse is constructed. The site functions as a discursive producer of the subject, inasmuch as Sugar Babies and Daddies are subjected and subjugated through a process of assujettissement by this kind of discursive power. Interviews conducted with four women who had recently acted as Sugar Babies showed how this discourse permeates the subjects and acts as a “technology of coercion” that works to perpetuate hegemonic notions of heterosexuality and undermines the participants” agency to refuse to engage in sexual intercourse, effectively “blurring the lines” of sexual consent.