ALMOST ONE IN FIVE YOUNG PEOPLE WOULD CONSIDER SWAPPING SEX FOR CASH
Concerns have been raised that record levels of graduate debt could push young people – particularly women – into exploring prostitution as a solution to their money worries.
The Huffington Post has reported a boom in websites promoting ‘mutually beneficial relationships,’ through which cash-strapped young people are hooked up with wealthy older men. Their sudden popularity — particularly among students and graduates — is being linked to young people’s increasingly desperate financial situation as they are faced with tough competition for graduate jobs and unpaid internships whilst struggling to pay off student debt and keep up with the soaring cost of living.
The piece focussed on America, but there are real fears that the same situation could unfold in the UK — if it isn’t already. Graduate Fog has discovered several websites are operating here as well as in the US.
Shocked? We shouldn’t be. The warning signs have been there for a while.
Back in April 2010, alarmed UK researchers noted a huge jump in the number of young people willing to consider prostitution to pay off their graduate debt. Nearly 17% are willing to participate in the sex trade to pay for their education, while 11% indicated a willingness to work as escorts. Ronald Roberts — a professor at Kingston University — pointed to a ‘perfect storm’ of factors including rising tuition fees, increased debt, a culture of mass consumption and low-wage work.
At the time, these researchers warned that as tuition fees continues to rise, more young people would pursue sex work to make ends meet — and last week, it was announced that those starting their degree in 2012 will face debts of nearly £60,000. Already, students who started university in 2008 have graduated in £22,000 of debt. In America, the average debt is only (!) £16,700. So there is every reason to fear that these websites will become as popular in the UK as they are in the US.
So, how do these websites work? Simple — by matchmaking rich, older men (‘sugar daddies’) with cash-strapped young men and women (the ‘sugar babies’).
While there is no explicit suggestion that users are expected to exchange sex for cash, reports are emerging that these mutually beneficial relationships often include a sexual element.
In other cases, a sugar daddy may agree to pay his sugar baby’s rent every month, or contribute towards their household bills, credit card bills or student debt. The arrangement is presented in soft focus, with some websites referring to the sugar daddies as ‘mentors’ or ‘sponsors’.
On the website SeekingArrangement.com, sugar babies now outnumber sugar daddies by 10 to 1, with a 350% increase in the last five years. In the past few years, the site’s owner Brandon Wade says the number of students and graduates using his site “exploded” — and they are now the fastest-growing group within the site’s sugar baby community.
Cash-strapped graduates are showing particular interest, says Noel Biderman, who runs EstablishedMen.com and ArrangementSeekers.com — which he advertises on MTV and VH1. He told Huffington Post reporter Amanda M. Fairbanks:
“Let’s say you’re a recent graduate, with $80,000 [£49,000] of debt and a job that pays $35,000 [£21,500] a year. It’s tough to pay that amount of debt down, live in a decent city and still be able to socialize and do fun things. At some point, you’ll have to start making major sacrifices. But what if all of a sudden the only sacrifice is that age or success level of your boyfriend or some guy you occasionally hang out with? That becomes a real game-changer in how you get to live your life.”
Sugar daddy websites are big business. While sugar babies create their profiles for free, sugar daddies pay a minimum of £30 each month — but on SeekingArrangement.com high rollers can join the ‘Diamond Club’, for £1,500 a year. For this, the site verifies a sugar daddy’s identity, annual income and net worth — and ensures his profile gets the most traction by continually allowing it to pop up in the top tier of search results.
One of the sugar daddies the Huffington Post spoke to — ‘Jack’, 70, the retired founder of several financial services companies — said he pays around £300 a night on his chosen sugar baby, and that’s not including dinner (or shopping trips between ‘dates’). He told the reporter:
“Unlike a traditional escort service, I was surprised to find such an educated, smart population. I only go out with girls 25 and under. But I can’t walk into a bar and go up to a 25-year-old. They’d think I’m a pervert. So this is how I go about meeting them.
“Most of these young women have debt from school [university]. I guess I like the college girls more because I think of their student debt as good debt. At least I’m helping them out, like I’m helping them to get a better life.”
(Wow, thanks Jack. So you’re not just a sleazy old fossil?)
New Yorker Suzanne, 25, told the Huffington Post she was skint when a friend suggested she should sign up as a ‘sugar baby’:
“I was thinking about going on Match but I needed help financially. I guess what finally pushed me over the edge was that I needed help to pay off my loans from school [university].”
She had just been sacked from her waitressing job and was growing desperate after falling behind on rent. Added to that, she had tens of thousands of pounds of graduate debt — plus tuition fees to pay for night classes at law school. She took out a £7,000 loan and went on the hunt for a sugar daddy.
In the past few months, Suzanne has been on 40 dates with sugar daddies she has met online. After meeting a succession of “assholes,” she has finally found a “real gentleman.” At the end of the night, he usually gives her £250-£300. Ideally, she is hoping to make the arrangement permanent, so she has a regular income.
Experts say this can’t be classed as straightforward prostitution — as a clear sex-for-money exchange is absent — but the trend is clearly worrying. Ronald Weitzer, a professor of sociology at George Washington University says:
“I could easily see people who have been in college at an elite university who are paying a lot of money and racking up a tone of debt being more attracted to something like this, rather than someone who went to state school [university] or someone with little or no debt. Under the banner of sugar daddy and sugar baby arrangements, a lot of prostitution may be going on.”
He also warns that those who start working as a sugar baby may find it hard to quit the habit in future:
“The more you make, the harder it becomes to transition away from – just like high-end sex workers anywhere.”
*Are you tempted to become a ‘sugar baby’?
Will graduates start considering prostitution as a solution to their money worries? Do you know anyone who is already selling sex to pay off their graduate debt?
Like this? Now read:
“The sex industry is the only place where graduates feel welcome”
Graduates have been shut out of every other industry. No wonder they’re turning to escort work to make ends meet, says one graduate…
I’m surprised there aren’t any comments yet!
Are you more shocked that money changes hands for sex, or that grads are not immune? I have no idea how many people are forced into prostitution through poverty and desperation, or what percentage of them might have gone to Uni, but that old power play of richer, older guy paying for the company of younger, more attractive guy / girl is still going strong. Its prevalence doesn’t make it any less sad, but it’s hard to legislate and enforce human sexual behaviour.
I hope that in the UK, at least, the fact that student loan repayments only kick in after reaching a certain income level means that grads won’t have to resort to prostitution to pay the rent and eat. I would also hope that there are organisations / charities or other help available that would prevent people (grads or otherwise) from having to choose that route through desperation.
Not surprised, not shocked, expected it for a while actually. Many grads now face a range of bitter choices, enslave oneself for a pittance in soul-destroying work, turn to prostitution or get angry and riot. Actually, as far as I know the latter choice hasn’t been explored yet among graduates, only among a minority of disenfranchised young people, but give it time….
Gosh, that’s quite a story you’ve linked, as I say this I’ve applied to 13 jobs in the past week, probably 30-40 jobs since the 3rd week of July, and around 70 since the start of July. No luck, no interviews, still the usual slog of applying to jobs and working part time in my stopgap job that is barely paying for my counselling and other vital life activities.
If there was a sugar boy service I’d probably apply to join it. I’m that broke that I’d exchange my body for cash. I feel desperate and I have nothing but sympathy for those women who feel forced to join a site like that to pay off debts. Being a graduate is degrading, when you have to compete for jobs, many of which you hate, compromise your values and some of these roles make you work so hard and present yourself as marketable that you give so much of yourself without the prospect of getting anything else in terms of a potential job. It’s getting screwed (terrible pun intended) around without the cash. Where’s the dignity in that?
The issue of sex work is a lot more complicated then a single issue focus. I appreciate that the point of graduatefog is to raise awareness of the dire situation of graduates, but including gender and sexual politics makes it a little bit more nuanced. I grant that there are a lot of women who would prefer doing this kind of ‘work’ to admin or working in a call centre, the latter can be considered a prostitution of emotional labour which can be as draining psychologically as sex can be. It may be that there are women who enjoy the work, ‘Belle de Jour’ as a case in point was a postgraduate who was funding her writing up-post thesis period by sex work.
I will say this from my own anecdotal evidence during my time as a student: I’ve known some girls who have went into sex work to help with rent and studies or just wanted extra money. I’m not surprised at all there is sex work going on among students, whoever created this website clearly saw there was a market that could be utilised.
Thanks for raising this issue.
By “graduate debt” do they mean overdrafts, credit cards and the like (like my own debt)?
Because unless the system is retrospectively changed by Parliament, as long as you stay in Britain student loans are repaid through the tax system, with nothing to pay below the relevant threshold. (At least for post-top up fee loans).
So sex work to pay off Student Loan Company that doesn’t really need to be paid off and will ultimately be written off is hardly sensible.
As far as paying rent and paying off other debts go, it doesn’t surprise me students and graduates do this, considering they could earn more in a day than they could in a week of shop or admin work.
And, of course, some may have been evicted or have faced eviction with no family to help them, and found this was the only way (other than getting pregnant if female) to avoid ending up on the street (councils don’t have to give emergency accommodation to everyone, only those in “priority need”).
It’s occurred to me even as man that work of this nature probably the highest paid work I could get (not that I would do that) – i.e. except as incidental to certain aspects of “escort work”, my alleged intelligence is basically worthless (indeed the market value seems to be essentially zero an hour due to unpaid internships).
And, rather depressingly, lap danging establishments and so-called “massage parlours” are actively recruiting young women, which is hardly the case with many other employers and young people.
Of course if the welfare state is further undermined – especially if Housing Benefit is abolished for under 25s as Cameron threatened – even more will be forced into the sex trade, including vulnerable young people fleeing abusive families and likely to end up in the most dangerous and exploitative types of prostitution (street-walking, under the control of pimps etc).