Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex by Juliet Watson

Author:Juliet Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Tamara also stayed in an intimate relationship for the financial assistance that her partner, Dominic, provided:

He used to help me out a lot so that’s why I stayed with him, because I was sort of struggling with money … He would just give me money or get some shopping for me, buy me cigarettes, stuff like that.

Significantly, and in contrast with the clear fee-for-service trade of commercial sexual activity, it was more common for the participants to view the material support that they received from their intimate partners as happening within the context of a romantic/love relationship, rather than a relationship based solely on economic transaction. Sarah expressly said that when she first met Sam he was her ‘knight in shining armour’. It is, therefore, imperative when examining survival sex relationships to also question how romantic/love relationships are defined and how discourses of love provide meaning in young women’s lives (Fraser 2008). The intimate relationships that were described by Sarah and Tamara were economically rational yet also involved emotional attachment.

Young homeless women may seek material assistance from their intimate partners without that being the sole foundation for their intimate relationships. Both Sarah and Tamara stated that they did not enter into intimate relationships for financial gain, but that they remained in them because the intimate relationships made it easier for them to survive. Sarah, in particular, expressed a fear of returning to the privation of homelessness without Sam’s material assistance. The situation described by Sarah emphasises that a concept of home that only recognises its meaning as shelter fails to account for the social and cultural significance and attachments that are ascribed to the home. For Sarah, living with Sam was associated with more than shelter, it also included ‘luxuries’, ‘the pretty side of things’, and an environment that was ‘beautiful’. Accordingly, if having a home is considered normative, then those who are homeless cannot help but be conscious of their marginalisation from what the home entails for the mainstream homed society.

Jessie also drew attention to the experience of being ‘looked after’ in addition to receiving material support:

I met this guy and I took him back to my hotel room and slept with him. I don’t know why I did that. I really don’t know why. But he was really nice to me, he looked after me, and he would come around all the time and give me money and buy me food. And he was nice. He was different to the other guys that had actually raped me. He ended up taking me in.

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