Should Women Raise the Cost of Sex?
If there is one thing Americans have unrestricted access to regardless of gender, race, socio-economic status, age, or education, it’s sex.
It wasn’t a shocker to me when University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus said in a Washington Times article last week that the price of sex today is pretty low. Whereas men (allegedly) used to have to promise women marriage in exchange for sex, birth control allowed women to enter the sexual market with the same indiscretion as men. Now both genders bask freely in the sexual market before walking down the aisle.
So what’s the problem? If you ask men on college campuses and in urban cities, there isn’t one. Because these sexual markets are dominated by women, men can decide how much (or how little) they will exchange for sex because for every woman who decides that she wants to hold out, there are plenty more who are willing to put out. It’s the rule of supply and demand.
But while women have power when they are the minority in the sex market, allowing them to decide just how high the “cost” of sex will be for a man, women lose power as they enter their 30s—the marriage market—where women also outnumber men. Hence, Regnerus says that women “underestimate the long-term risk of sex-market behavior.”
While the underlying notion here is not to put the cart before the horse (or why buy the cow when you’ve already got the milk, et cetera, et cetera), saving oneself for marriage is seen as a high-risk strategy. Using an interesting analogy, Regnerus says, “You can’t just decide that your house is worth $500,000 if everyone else is getting $200,000. … You can try for that price, but it’s unlikely you will get it.” Well then.
This little tidbit reminded me of a conversation I had with a guy friend some time back about women feeling pressure to have sex with a man before they are in a committed relationship, and the elimination of true dating in today’s society. His solution: “Why don’t all women just get together and make a pact to stop opening their legs before a man makes a commitment to them.”
I don’t know if the proper word is unfortunately, ironically, or oddly enough, but nevertheless, the Washington Times article comes to the same conclusion: “If women were more in charge of how their romantic relationships transpired … we would be seeing greater male investment in relationships, more impressive wooing efforts, fewer hookups, fewer premarital sexual partners … shorter cohabitations, more marrying … and more marrying at a slightly earlier age. In other words, the price of sex would be higher. It would cost men more to access it.”
In some ways I agree with this advice, but I think it’s a bit of a hard pill to swallow, as all of the onus is placed on women. It suggests women have to sacrifice their sexual desires for the seemingly greater good—getting a man to commit. While it may be worthwhile to forgo ones desires to hit the sheets in the interest of getting a man to settle down, it is frustrating that no one asks men to control their sexual urges, settle down sooner, or become less promiscuous.
On the other hand, this friendly reminder speaks to the power of the p-u-s-s-y. The more in demand it is, the more power women have to require longer courtships and upfront commitments. Of course this article operates under the assumption that all women want to settle down, but with the majority of women—black, red, white, and yellow—expressing frustration about the lack of men stepping up to put a ring on it—and in a timely manner—perhaps this suggestion might warrant a second listen.
Still, even if a select few of us decide to put the kitty on lock, unless women present a unified front across the board, a man can always find sex elsewhere—hence the pressure most women feel to engage in sex sooner rather than later.
So, in navigating this messy arena of sexual economics, should women band together and raise the cost of sex?
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Men didn’t start marrying women because of the cost of sex. They say the world’s oldest profession is prostitution for a reason. From the beginning of time if men wanted sex without a relationship they could get it very easily. Men married in order to have someone they knew would procreate and allow him to carry on his DNA and women married in order to be taken care of. So to imply that men couldn’t get commit-less sex until 1960/70′s is wrong. They could, it just cost $$$. Even if collectively woman decided not to have sex with men until they were married, yeah you might have more marriages, but there are still going to be those women who say screw it sleep with who they want. Just like in times before and actually today.
I think of it this way, it is not the duty of my vagina to change current social trends. While it is amazing, it is still just a vagina. The fact science suggest women change their sexual habits to regulate mens implies that men are too stupid to control their own sexual desires and they need someone else to do it for them. If I was a man I would be insulted and as a woman I find this burden to be annoying.
Lastly, I have TONS more to offer a man than just my vag. If he isn’t willing to get to know me first before trying to sleep with me, he is wasting MY time. I don’t lose by being alone but I DO lose when I am with a man who isn’t willing to treat me the way I want to be treated. I think a larger problem is that many women are SO desperate to be in relationships or feel “loved”, they would rather deal with s$&% than be alone. Women need to learn not to settle for crappy, committaphobe, irresponsible, dirty “men” and instead learn to love themselves by themselves. If you aren’t comfortable being alone by yourself or even loving yourself, how can you expect someone else to? I’m sure the guy you want would much rather be with the “secure and self-aware” you rather than the “bitter bc I settled for crappy men over and over and over again” you.
Hip Hip Hooray for another self-aware woman! There may be a handful of us but I’m thrill to see we are growing in numbers! Well Said!
Preach girl! Even the title, “Should Women Raise the Cost of Sex” implies that all women are for sale so essentially we are all prostitutes. And in reality there are plenty of men who desire love and companionship and not just sex from women.
LOVE IT (all of the above)
^5 LemonNLime!
First, let me say that the whole “what you won’t do, another woman will” is beyond stupid. It’s almost as stupid as that whole “crabs in a barrell” dealie that black folks like to toss around whenever it seems as if black people are fighting amongst themselves. Crabs are wild animals and don’t belong in a barrell. It’s not natural and they’re trying to ESCAPE. They’re not trying to be malicious and trying to insure everyone dies. They want freedom and are trying to scratch and claw their way to it.
If a man leaves a woman because she won’t give in to his demands for sex and he finds another woman willing to accomodate him–hurray for him. But the woman who didn’t give into his demands has lost NOTHING and does not need to feel one ounce of remorse. He obviously got what was really important to him from somewhere else and the woman who held firm to her standards doesn’t have to deal with a jackass. I say that the woman who sleeps with his corny ass is the real loser.
I always thought they same thing about that, “crabs in the bucket” comment too. I always though it a poor analogy…poor things just want to go back to to ocean.
F*%& pressure. I’ll give it up when I wanna. :P
Wow! What a moral decline, Black people were more moral just after slavery then they are today with all of this copying of caucasian people sex more`. Now it is not a question they are asking as to whether or not they should fornicate but at what cost. They seem to think that waiting to get married is hopeless and futile and so they are under their own pressure to have their vagina tickled instead without the recognition of consequences. If they want to fornicate to procreate is one thing but just to relief the itching in their loins is another .
The lowered price of sex is not just a black issue. There was an article in Salon titled, “The sexual cost of female success” back in January which was targeted at American women in general (link: http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/01/19/young_women_romance). First question: “You report that the “price of sex” has hit an all-time low. What does that mean, exactly?”
Seems the difference is that black women produce babies from these casual relations more often than others. Which is definitely something that needs to be worked on.
Um could it possibly be we are also waiting longer to get married – and it actually has nothing to do with the ‘price’ of sex (which by the way is extremely sexist notion) .
The average age of marriage in the 1950s was 22 years old to today’s 28 years of age – that is a huge leap.
http://paa2004.princeton.edu/download.asp?submissionId=41434 (Are Black Men Marrying Younger than Black Women? New Evidence from Census 2000 )
Some women don’t want to marry until they’ve finished graduate school and are well-established in their careers – that puts them at 30+
Well the statistics are provided on the slim-pickings available…By the way the majority of my marriage proposals came between the ages of 19-28 years old. Brothers weren’t concerned about my sexual activity either – they were interested in getting married period. I got married at 28.
First rule, an item/good/service is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
Second, by using sex to exact a price (commitment, marriage, whatever) you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead of selling sex for money, you are selling it for emotional fulfillment. Sex is not a weapon.
Third, if you want to get a partner and keep a partner, work on who you are. Work on your physical fitness, character, education,etc…. Don’t be interesting, become interesting. One is a facade, the other is a state of being. Be happy with yourself and find someone who you can be happy with. Sex is a natural expression of the bond and intimacy that two people share.
If the only thing you have to attract, persuade, and keep a mate is the frequency of sex… well, more likely than not you are unfulfilled and profoundly unhappy. I wouldn’t want anything to do with a person like that. Thank you but no thank you. Keep it.
What one woman do to her vagina has nothing to do with mines, if I ‘am selling my “house for 500,000” trust their will be buyers out in that price range interested and ready to buy so I don’t believe the hype it is all how you present yourself. I’ am going for what I’ am worth and how I deem myself which is more than my vagina, my vagina is a perk with the house not the foundation. And if a guy only want that one perk he doesn’t want me point blank so he can gladly find another woman that can give him what he wants. But I would love to hear the flip side of this argument from men. Because often times I wonder how many men just sleep with these women simply because the offer of sex is already on the table and why don’t most exercise the power to say no or we don’t have to do it so early. Someone can sell you something all they want but you don’t have to buy. But I think a lot of comments hit the nail on the head that we shouldn’t put a price on the act of sex itself but the relationship, you as a person, etc. Their are people who slept with each other upfront and are still together just like their are people who waited and are still together so it is not really about the sex but the people involved
Preach!
It is a fallacy, the idea that men have sex with any women who offer. I have throughout my life turned down opportunities to have sex with women generally to avoid the complications that accompany those offers. Plus there are women who were just unappealing to me personally. I am not alone, even some of the biggest hounds I know tend to exercise some standards in their choice of women. Are there men whose entire relationship experience is based on the pursuit of Pssy?
Yes. But those men are a minority and most of them generally never promise more than just sex and if there is any deception it often based on not enlightening the woman as to fact that it may not be more than sex. A lie of omission.
IMO, women generally overthink sex and men generally do not think about it enough in the sense of what the act symbolizes. You can have great sexual experiences without love and commitment but you have the best sex life with love an commitment.
This article is ignorant and sexist on so many points its sad. You do realise that there are women in the world who do not have the choice to close thier legs because they have been trafficked in to provide sexual release for men, because they are pimped. Stop repeating the lie! Farming is the oldest profession – without it men would have no surplus and no money, services or goods to exchange for sex.
Furthermore does no-one see sickening commodification of all of our human interactions nowadays! I thought the western world was moving away from this. I’m not a prosititute but according to this article apparently when I enter a relationship I’m actually entering a contract to give my c**t to a man whenever he wants it in exchange for …what …”wooing”, gifts, money, the normal behaviour of someone who should be in love with me? Why not just go back to the days of the dowry and when it was ok for a man to rape his wife with impunity, cos apparently the worth a women goes as far as her genitals.
This assumption is insulting it assumes that men only think as far as thier dicks and women think as far as thier purses, we all know that explaining the intricacies of a relationship with all its highs and lows can not be accomplished with the language of free market capatialism – so why do it?!
I think this is coming from the broken homes of the 60s and 70s: there was NO MAN to tell their daughters they were beautiful–and now, we have women in their 20s and 30s who CANNOT find a man they find suitable for husbands( womans career was for the family or an addition to it-no matter what it was)–I always thought that DIVORCE AND SEPARATION was WORSE for the CHILDREN than for the spouses themselves. When people divorce or break up, it could seem like a ‘highschool’ relationship that went south BUT for the kids, it was EVERYTHING!!(mom and dad are family) I am sooo tired of hearing all the negative in our community of how its going!-25% LEGITAMACY?! LORD HAVE MERCY!! Yea, I know it was caused by the ‘sexual devolution”
The reason why women believe “giving it up” is key to keeping a man is because of conditioning. Only in the beauty & sex industry does our salary trump that of our man counterparts. We don’t believe we have much to offer, so why should men????? And the media’s falsehoods only cements this idea further. Like the comparision of apples to pears, having mindblowing sex with someone say nothing about your ability to be a lifelong partner or a great mom.
Sorry,.. that gennie out the bottle… Our social environment is flowing with the innuendo of sexuality from “How to bag a Millionaire” books to strip clubs.., YouTube & MySpace to MTV., We had the abstinence safe sex noise for a minute but our culture’s obsession hip shaking and quick money….
LMFAO!! So I should go to the club and give away my punnany to every Tom, Dick, and Harry just so the other chick can’t beat me to it…I don’t think so…my body is a Temple! I treat it as such. If a guy doesn’t like me because I’m not giving it up fast enough then that’s his business. He wasn’t worth my time anyway…
It’s funny too because the guys that walked away from me because I wasn’t fast enough always came back!! Sure the other chick was faster but that doesn’t necessarily mean she maintained his interest. The race doesn’t always go the swiftest. Sometimes it’s the chick that can hold her own until the time is right and reward him accordingly.
Socially we’ve become a “see & do” culture.., That goes for tatoos, clubs, Reality shows, even the church… Media-wise we’re given alot of poor examples of social behavior, Every perfect model of proper social manners is out weighed 10-fold by hyped examples of exhibitionism, attention seeking and narcissism… As long as we have those women representing profits & popularity by way of reality TV and other media., they set the example for women & girsl on so many different other social levels… Just recently observed a college graduation ceremony where almost every women there (young & older) dressed in the same manner as the reality show or video-chick characters… Imagine the same tatoos & strip club dance move being immitated at the church dance because the influence of those dance-moves & tatoos in various levels has overwhelmed the culture… > ” the VALUES that we’ve place on our sexual encounters in the past are becoming outmoded, obsolete by the standards of media entertainment of our time and our haste for stimulation & impatience to develope stable lives”… We’ll have to develope, engineer, cultivate an african (values & culture) preserve or reservation to put the ( fornication-gennie) back into the bottle ::::<
People read articles differently-what I got from this article is to stop becoming sexually invested in a man so quickly. give it time. Sure, he could only be about the p***y but if he is, you know you didn’t give it to him and now he’s gone. I think women and men should stop trying to be so “sexually free” because there are too many diseases out there. Point blank: hoes are not cute.
The notion that withholding sex will get a man to commit is just plain false and a dangerous mentality to carry into any relationship, because you are setting yourself up for disappointment. If a man wants to commit he will, if he doesn’t want you he doesn’t want you. End of story.
Ideally , there should be some type of relationship/friendship before sex happens. However, this article suggests that women and our vaginas are commodeties. And as someone mentioned earlier, I have much more to offer a man than whats in between my legs
Reading this article and some of the comments that followed makes me wonder if the women’s revolution is going backwards. In 2011, is “Should Women Raise The Cost of Sex?” the best we can do when it comes to real discussions about sex and healthy relationships? SMDH
Hmmmmm. Interesting article and interesting comments.
Of course the cooch is a commodity! Why else is prostitution the oldest living profession? So why are women today giving it up like it has absolutely no value?
Hell yea we need to make a pact to keep it locked up till these men earn our stuff. We need to get back to basics and focus on what really matters love and family. Sure there are always going to be hoes but that doesn’t mean we all need to follow suit. A man can pay for sex but he cannot pay for the companionship that comes with a real relationship… and sooner or later the men are going to realize that thats what they want. And, men have told us time and time again… if you give up the goods too soon most of them will get bored and never take the time to really get to know us. They say this all the time so why are some women still so confused about whether they should give it up on the first date. the answer is NO, you horn toad!! This isn’t Love Jones. Ziplock your stuff and keep it fresh.
Like sex is SO great that women today can’t do without it. Be real, half the time sex is whack, your hair gets all messed up and you’re all sore the next day. Pleez, lock it up ladies!!! Get a toy and please yourselves..that’s a fool-proof way to get urs in 5 minutes flat with your hair in tact!
You can act like you having a good time living out your Sex in the City fantasies if you want to… you gonna end up old as hell with an STD and no children or spouse around to change your adult diaper. You’ll be sitting there looking like Boo-Boo-the-Fool. Literally.
puh leeze! this man and his sad statistics are at it again. there he goes, trying to use science to support his right wing christian beliefs. rolls eyes.
http://feministing.com/2011/01/19/your-daily-women-will-die-alone-alert/
This picture on the cover, i don’t like ONE BIT. To me, it shows that the man is being cherished instead of the woman. Most women LOVE to have a man hold her head in her hands!!—Im seeing a LOT OF PICTURES LIKE THIS and its a shame…it shows many women in a desperate position, although many don’t see this happening—Check out the pictures of the past, no matter what the color of the people are….the man is the one who steps out and the women choose to respond or not–thats the way it was in my day—the man enters the womans space FIRST….I notice, when the sexual revolution started, women and girls were still finding mates at times, but NOW in 2011 onward, its totally DIFFERENT…and its really sad….My grandaughters had a hard time finding boys to go to the prom with her unless she ‘puts out’ first…..