Sex and money both involve exchanges. Money is a generalized medium of exchange used to sell/buy labor, goods, and services; sex involves the exchange of intimacies and arousals. Though often opposed in moral discourses, sexual intimacies and financial transactions are rarely divorced in practice – from the explicit sex/money transaction of prostitution to the more implicit arrangements of sex/money in marriage. This course will explore the commodification of intimacy, questioning the relationships between sexualized desire and monetary currencies under various conditions, settings, and contexts. We will focus in particular on the politics and ethics of intimacy when it is insinuated in monetary exchanges, namely the power relations between provider and recipient of intimate services. Topics include: the ideological division between public and private, commodification, sexual subjectivity, the sex industry (pornography, prostitution, phone sex, exotic dancing) and other kinds of paid-for intimacy, mail-order brides, surrogacy, advertising, cyber-sex, and the inequalities of power in a globalized economy.
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