Seeking and surveilled: the effects of Tumblr’s sexual content ban on sugar babies’ posts

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, there has been an increase in concern about sugar arrangements, relationships in which sugar babies, typically young women, provide romantic companionship to sugar daddies, typically older men, in exchange for money and/or gifts. This concern became more pointed in 2018, when the United States Congress passed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which led to a purge of “sexual” content from social networking sites. In this context, I investigated changes in sugar babies’ Tumblr posts using a mixed-methods approach. My hypothesis that there would be a statistically significant decrease in sexual posts after Tumblr’s ban on sexual content was supported by my findings. The results of this study shed light on the ways neoliberal gender, sexual, and economic discourses are both perpetuated and resisted by sugar babies online in the wake of mass surveillance, censorship, and legal discipline.

KEYWORDS:

• Sugar arrangements
• FOSTA
• social media
• censorship
• sexual labor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Rachel E. Davis

Rachel E. Davis is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Middle Tennessee State University with expertise in critical criminology, digital sociology, gender inequalities, and sexual labor. Her goal is to further the movement for social justice locally, nationally, and globally through education and activism.