Debt, sex, and money: Imperialist discourses of transactional sex across three geographic and cultural contexts

Discourses surrounding similar forms of transactional sex in the United States and Europe, Africa, and East Asia exemplify the ways that sexual transactions serve as affectively charged inflection points at which gendered, racialized, and classed forms of power collide. Deconstructing academic discourses and affective strategies surrounding sugar arrangements in the United States and Europe, blessed relationships in Africa, and compensated dating in East Asia uncovers the ways that cultural norms surrounding sex, gender, and money serve to uphold imperialist, patriarchal, racist hierarchies. Outlying examples of intersectional discourses provide a roadmap for challenging these dominant power structures in the academic literature.