A new term

I ran across a new term relating to P4P (although not exclusively) today.  Well, not necessarily new; a lot of people are probably already familiar with it; just new to me. 

It’s somewhat similar to something I’ve tried (with limited success) to discuss before, under descriptions like “connection” or “FWB$” or “P4P friend.”  A professor of sociology who has studied prostitution and the changes in recent years came up with the term, I think.  It’s a bit clinical-sounding, perhaps, but in a way it does capture what I’ve been thinking about:

bounded authenticity

Here’s an excerpt from a paper the professor wrote:

Drawing from fieldwork and interviews with middle-class sex workers, this essay considers the relationship between the class-privileged women and men who are increasingly finding their way into sex work and more generalized patterns of economic restructuring. How has the emergence of new communications technologies transformed the meaning and experience of sexual commerce for sex workers and their customers? What is the connection between the new `respectability’ of sexual commerce and the new classes of individuals who now participate in commercial sexual transactions? This essay concludes by exploring some of the key transformations that are occurring within middle-class commercial sexual encounters, including the emergence of `bounded authenticity’ (an authentic, yet bounded, interpersonal connection) as a particularly desirable and sought-after sexual commodity.

(emphasis added)  And here is a brief mention from a book she wrote (click to “look inside” and flip to page 6) :

Elaborating on these theoretical efforts, and following Luker’s and D’Emilio’s analyses of the emergence of a relational sexual ethic during the rise of industrial capitalism, it is my claim that the proliferation of forms of service work, the new global information economy, and “postmodern” families peopled by isolable individuals have produced another profound transformation in the erotic sphere.  Both the traditional “procreative” and the modern “companionate” models of sexuality are increasingly being supplemented by what sociologist Edward Laumann and his colleagues have referred to as a “recreational” sexual ethic.  Instead of being premised on marital or even durable relationships, the recreational sexual ethic derives its primary meaning from the depth of physical sensation and from emotionally bounded exchange — what I here term bounded authenticity.

(emphasis added)

Well, it will never be popular, as opposed to academic jargon, but it has a certain ring to it.  It contains two key concepts: in at least some P4P encounters there is something that (1) is real, but also (2) limited, and that will not (in most cases) go beyond the boundaries of the paid encounter.

“Bounded authenticity.”  I like it.