Sexual Economics

Lainailen useammassakin jutussa pätkiä kirjoituksesta Sexual Economics and Sex as Female Resource (pdf).

A heterosexual community can be analyzed as a marketplace in which men seek to acquire sex from women by offering other resources in exchange. Economic principles suggest that the price of sex will depend on supply and demand, competition among sellers, variations in product, collusion among sellers, and other factors.

Specifically, sex is a female resource. Put another way, cultural systems will tend to endow female sexuality with value, whereas male sexuality is treated by society as relatively worthless.

As a result, sexual intercourse by itself is not an equal exchange, but rather an instance of the man getting something of value from the woman. To make the exchange equal, the man must give her something else in return, and his own sexual participation does not have enough value to constitute this. How much he gives her in terms of nonsexual resources will depend on the price (so to speak) set by the local culture and on her relative standing on valued sexual characteristics.

When sex happens, therefore, it will often be in a context in which the man gives the woman material gifts, consideration and respect, commitment to a relationship as desired by her, or other goods.

Treating sex as a female resource means that each culture (we define culture as an informationbased social system) will endow female sexuality with value, unlike male sexuality. Women will receive other valued goods in return for their sexual favors. Male sexuality, in contrast, cannot be exchanged for other goods. Put another way, women become the suppliers of sex, whereas men constitute the demand for it and play the role of purchasers and consumers. Even though in one sense a man and a woman who are having sexual intercourse are both doing the same thing, socially they are doing quite different things.

Thus, the first prediction based on the social exchange theory of sex is that interpersonal processes associated with sexual behavior will reveal a fundamental difference in gender roles. Men will offer women other resources in exchange for sex, but women will not give men resources for sex. In any event, the bottom line is that sexual activity by females has exchange value, whereas male sexuality does not. Female virginity, chastity, infidelity, virtuous reputation, and similar indicators will have positive values that will be mostly absent in the male.

A somewhat different explanation for why sex is a female resource can be deduced from motivational differences. Social exchange theory has featured the ?principle of least interest? (Waller & Hill, 1951). According to that principle, a party gains power by virtue of wanting a connection less than the other wants it. For example, Waller and Hill proposed that the person who is less in love has more power to shape and influence the relationship, because the one who is more in love will be more willing to make compromises and offer other inducements in order to keep the relationship going. If men want sex more than women, therefore, men would have to offer other benefits to persuade women to have sex, even if women desire and enjoy sex too.

The social exchange analysis emphasizes that sex is a female resource, so that men must offer women other resources in exchange for it. But how much? The price of sex (so to speak) may vary widely. In order to commence a sexual relationship with a particular woman, a man may have to offer her a fancy dinner, or a long series of compliments, or a month of respectful attention, or a lifetime promise to share all his wealth and earnings with her exclusively.

Prediction is that a low price of sex favors men, whereas a high price favors women. Therefore men will tend to support initiatives that lower the price of sex, whereas women will generally try to support a higher price. Ideologies of "free love" (that is, sex unaccompanied by any other obligations or exchanges) will appeal to men more
than women.