At a fire sale a few years ago, James MacPherson, a retired professor of politics at Wits, Johannesburg, known for his seminal work on the Frontline States’ war of attrition against the apartheid regime, bought a restaurant in Pretoria specializing in North African cuisine. (…)
Source: Farah, Nuruddin “The Start of the Affair.” New Yorker, 15 December 2014.
Available at [🔗]
current affairs
In The Atlantic article “How sugar daddies are financing college education,” Caroline Kitchener describes how a popular web site links “sugar daddies” (typically rich middle-aged men) with “babies” ( typically college-aged girls.)
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questions
There is a strong differential in status and buying power between James and Ahmed the “The Start of the Affair”. Could we say that their relationship is fully consensual? Is it akin to prostitution? Is it exploitative? Do you find it objectionable?
The same questions can be raised about relationships between “sugar daddies” and young college students, as described in The Atlantic article “How sugar daddies are financing college education.” Are these relationships exploitative? Are they genuinely consensual? Are they akin to prostitution?
Here are some stats from the New York Times article “Keeping up with being kept” (10 April 2009) [🔗] On the website SeekingArrangement.com the babies outnumber the daddies with ten to one; a quarter of the sugar daddies are looking for male “babies”; three quarters for female “babies”; one percent of the older parties are “sugar mommies.” Do you find these stats surprising? Does it make any difference to your assessment?
If the relatively long-term relationships between sugar daddies and babies is unobjectionable, then what could be objectionable to the short-term arrangements between johns and prostitutes? And yet, the former is perfectly legal, while the latter is heavily constrained by law in many places.