The Economics of Sex
Sometimes the universe decides I don’t have enough rage in my life.
OK, perhaps I should explain. No is too much. Let me sum up.
One of the dating misconceptions that I tilt at regularly is the myth that women are the sexual gatekeepers and that sex is a transactional procedure where a woman only “gives it up” when a man meets her price; this is generally known as the commodity model of sex. The commodity model of sex insists that women are only worth the sex they don’t have; after all, if she “gives it away” too readily, then she is actively driving down her own value. Because apparently sex is a limited, non-rewnewable resource and once you’ve tapped that particular well, it’s dry forever.
The (Bullshit) Economics of Banging
“The Economics of Sex”1 is a self-consciously hip whiteboard-style talk in the style of Minute Physics, because nothing makes slut-shaming go down easier than cutesy rip-offs of popular YouTube channels.
The basic premise of the video is simple: marriage is on the decline in America and that’s terrible. People’s first marriages are happening later and later in life – with a median age of 27 for women and 29 for men – and this is also terrible. Why? Who knows; if the Austin Institute does, they’re not saying. However, the cause is abundantly clear: women are giving it up to easily. You see, sex – according to this video – is a commodity, which means that there’s a market price. Since men want sex more than women do, women are thus the gatekeepers of sex, controlling the sexual market with an iron vagina. Men, on the other hand, are the gatekeepers of commitment, which women desire more than men do. And so the presumed exchange is sex for commitment.
To quote straight from the video:
The “price” varies widely. But if women are the gatekeepers, why don’t very many women “charge more” so to speak? Because pricing is not entirely up to women. The “market value” of sex is part of a social system of exchange, an “economy” if you will, wherein men and women learn from each other—and from others—what they ought to expect from each other sexually. So sex is not entirely a private matter between two consenting adults. Think of it as basic supply and demand. When supplies are high, prices drop, since people won’t pay more for something that’s easy to find. But if it’s hard to find, people will pay a premium.So apparently under ideal circumstances, the invisible free hand of the market would be quietly stroking everyone’s nethers and keeping the price of sex high. But because women aren’t standing in lockstep solidarity and universally setting the market value for sex at “marriage”, the result is that the “market price” for sex is low.
Sex is her resource. Sex in consensual relationships will happen when women want it to. So how do women decide to begin a sexual relationship? Pricing. Women have something of value that men want…badly, something men are actually willing to sacrifice for. So how much does sex cost for men? It might cost him nothing but a few drinks and compliments, or a month of dates and respectful attention, or all the way up to a lifetime promise to share all of his affections, wealth, and earnings with her exclusively.
And since everyone knows that men won’t get married unless bribed into it by being granted access to a woman’s hoo-haa, men are reaping the benefits of the low-cost sex available to them. This is, of course, unfair to women because men can get boners forever, whereas women lose their fertility at 40 and thus become completely and utterly undesirable in any context and are thus without any sexual capital.
Oh and also, part of the reason for this market disruption was the ability to have sex without consequence. So the pill has disrupted the sexual marketplace. Also: it literally compares the birth control pill to bees and compares the Sexual Revolution to the effects of DDT. And why is this bad for the “cost” of sex? Again: an actual quote from the video.
Before contraception, sex before marriage took place during the search for a mate—someone to marry. Sex didn’t necessarily mean marriage, but serious commitment was commonly a requirement for sex. Sex was oriented towards marriage. Don’t believe people who say your great-grandparents were secretly as casual about sex as your friends are. They weren’t, because to mess around with sex eventually meant, well, becoming parents.Of course, this is bad for everyone because having low-commitment sex means men simply won’t grow up because why should they. So this is bad for society all around and thus women need to band together to perform a Lysistrata-esque pork-out and thus artificially dry up the supply, allowing the “natural” market price of sex to rise. And if it does, then we’ll see more “improved wooing”, fewer premarital partners and shorter co-habitations and – most importantly – “more marrying going on.”
