prostitutelike

Prostitutelike is an adjective used in sociological and criminological discourse to describe actions, arrangements, or social dynamics that resemble prostitution in that money or material compensation is exchanged for sexual services or sexual access, but that may not be categorized as formal prostitution under law or official policy. The term is typically employed to discuss blurred boundaries between paid sex, transactional dating, and other forms of sexual exchange, as well as to analyze power, consent, and economic coercion.

In scholarly contexts, prostitutelike is used to describe patterns such as negotiated exchanges that resemble commercial sex without explicit contracts, or online or informal arrangements where sex is exchanged for money, favors, or resources but where legal definitions differ. It can also describe work arrangements or institutions that reproduce the same economic incentives or gendered dynamics as prostitution without labeling the activity as such.

Critics warn that the term can be stigmatizing or vague, and its use may depend on jurisdictional definitions of prostitution and on normative judgments about sex work. Prostitution remains the more precise legal and policy term in many settings, while prostitutelike is a heuristic used to analyze phenomena that are adjacent to sex work.

See also: prostitution, sex work, transactional sex, commodity exchange, stigma.