Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Kryptogal (Kate, if you like)'s avatar

These are good questions, and I think that you will find the answer becomes apparent if you assume that everyone intuitively and unconsciously understands that sex is a market, and an inherently and unavoidably unbalanced one. They likely don't consciously think of it that way because no one has articulated it to them that way and people have overlaid other concepts. But if you consider that both perspectives are a way to try to solve an unbalanced market problem, then both the conservative/sex is sacred stance AND the progressive/desire-is-required stance make sense.

Everyone (well, most everyone) wants sex. But to get it, you need another person to "transact" it with you, so it's a market. The problem is the demand is universal, but the supply is actually quite low, because everyone wants sex from the same relatively-small subset (i.e. young, attractive people). If we assume that people live to 90, and that they will spend 70 of those years with some desire for sex, and if we also assume that most people are only sexually attractive for maybe 25-30 years of their lifespan, and even within that "span" of attractiveness, only about half of people are actually considered "attractive"...then you have a problem where 100% of people want something for a span of 70 years, and they all want it from only 15% of the population. Add in the fact that men have this desire even more strongly than women, on average, and it creates even more market imbalance.

In other words, if they could, all (straight) men would only be having sex with a small sub-set of women in a particular age range correlating with fertility. And if it was all based on attraction-only, no one would ever have sex with old men, or unattractive men. And because of the gender differential in desire, some people would still have sex with old or unattractive women, but they wouldn't be willing to pay or give or trade-off much of anything to do it.

I think all adults understand this intuitively. The young themselves don't, always. So how does society solve this imbalance without creating a lot of problems and strife? Many people do NOT want young women do be able to fully capitalize upon their market power here. It would create too much of a monopoly for them. It would screw over everyone else, and if they were allowed to fully realize upon the high demand for what they have, they'd be able to increase the costs way too high.

Society therefore tries to find ways so that young, attractive women are unable to capitalize on the natural monopoly they hold, either via religious shame or making it outright illegal or other norms discouraging it. And for the most part, women don't complain TOO much about that, because those same women will one day age out, and they likely realize that their future selves will be screwed in a situation where young women have zero social impediments from fully marketing and capitalizing upon their sexual assets.

For the feminists, this creates a problem, because the interests of young/attractive and old/unattractive women are directly in conflict, and feminism is not good at acknowledging or dealing with instances where different groups of women have directly conflicting interests. Thus, the constant wars over this issue, where they never quite acknowledge the real issue, which is that a gorgeous 20 year old selling sex appeal is in fact empowering herself and likely engaging in the most lucrative possible work she could, while directly dis-empowering all other women.

For non-religious right-wing people, their preferred solution is to try to keep the costs of sex with young women as low as possible while also retaining maximum leverage and bargaining power for men. And honestly it's so thinly-veiled and transparent that they've never been able to impose their vision absent force.

For religious people, the solution is to allow sex only in life-long contracts, which circumvents the market distortion created by the age-based supply and demand skew. Because you marry a hot 25 year old and the trade-off is you're stuck with them at 75, so it solves the problem.

And for ordinary people, substituting the life-long-within-contract-only sex requirement for the requirement of mutual sexual desire is a slightly different way of solving the same supply-demand skew. Because young and attractive people are naturally attracted to each other, and then everyone else just has to pair up roughly according to equivalent attractiveness-level, which seems seems intuitively fair, balanced, and reasonable to most. So two hot 25 year olds can pair up and it's a fair trade, or two non-hot 25 year olds, and the same for two 45 years olds or 65 year olds -- in all cases it fixes the age-based supply/demand skew. This is basically how things work in practice for 90% of the population, until technology rubbed the market skew into people's faces a bit too much, and made it much easier to transact among market participants, without having to do so publicly or risk getting caught.

The reason that an ugly but famous guy sleeping with a pretty young fan bothers people, or an old wealthy man sleeping with a pretty poor woman, is not actually because of concerns over influence or power (as you correctly point out, old men are quite exploitable by young women). It's because it creates a market disruption by circumventing the accepted solution (life-long contract or equivalent-attractiveness-level-trades). And markets are collective where what others do DOES directly impact one's own possible options. If old men with money are allowed to easily purchase sex from young women without any taboo, it pisses off the young men, who don't have money, and who hate the thought that their equivalently-attractive female peers can simply be bought so easily. And because of all the "sacredness" and other obscuring voo-doo that people surround it with, it allows all the other old men to start thinking that young women are actually ATTRACTED to old men, and that they should be able to get one too (this specific problem is at least fixed in the case of direct prostitution). And then that screws over all women, who don't want old men to think they can get young women without paying very dearly for it.

When Aella or Hanania point out the actual fact that prostitution is extremely lucrative for young, attractive women, most everyone else will react against that. Because it's clear that by allowing them to freely capitalize on their asset without stigma would make them TOO valuable, to literally everyone else's expense OTHER THAN an equally small portion of wealthy men. But they don't say it that way because it sounds too much like whining or envy or being a sexual communist. So instead they come up with reasons that sound more like they're concerned with vulnerable people, such as sex trafficking or exploitation concerns. Their actual concern is that too much of a free-market in sex will create disastrous social implications because the supply and demand are inherently, biologically extremely skewed, and basically everyone who isn't wealthy or attractive will get nothing, in that type of regime.

If a 60 year old man is free to spend all his money on a 25 year old purchased girlfriend, without shame or stigma, why on earth would he stay married to his 60-year old wife? Or why would she stay with him, if he's spending all his money on mistresses? And how would young or poor men have any hope of ever having a girlfriend? And why would anyone want to pair up long-term, unless it was for a purely economic-type partnership without an implied expectation of love and sex? These things sound extreme, but they are actually the logical result if you open the door for utterly unstigmatized transactional sex on a short-term basis, allowing for any type of trade-off. Even the people who supposedly claim to be most in favor of legal prostitution are almost certainly relying on an assumption that it would remain stigmatized and somewhat unusual (which I think is a very bad assumption to make).

Anyway, food for thought. I've found that most people are unwilling to go along with my market-based analysis -- it's too coldly economic for them -- but I've found that all of the seemingly irrational positions people hold make perfect sense when viewed that way. Most people will protest that in fact they very much love and are still attracted to their 60 year old wife, or that most women would never want to be prostitutes like that...personally I think they are fooling themselves and only think that because they've lived in a society with the mix of the religious and attractiveness-matching norms that keep the rails on the real marketplace, or how people would behave absent such norms. A truly free market with out any governing norms/taboos would be very bad for most, so regulating things by repressing the conduct of both young attractive women and older men with money/fame helps everyone else.

In ages prior, the skew was not QUITE as much of a problem because the risk of pregnancy limited behavior, and older men aged out of capacity earlier. Viagra, birth control, abortion, and the ability to easily and anonymously transact sex without anyone finding out has amplified an existing wired-in market skew several times over.

Also, I fully agree with your first footnote and criticism of Louise Perry.

Expand full comment
JG's avatar
May 28Edited

I really liked this article.

“As we’ve progressed technologically we’ve reduced some of the most material risks associated with sex [reducing justifications for considering it sacred].”

I think this is true, but I also wonder often how much of sex’s sanctity is hardwired into our psychology via genes. There’s good evolutionary reasons for men to feel strong sexual jealousy and to act exploitatively, for women to be cautious of sex with uncaring men, etc. I’m firmly on the side of greater sexual liberation, but I do worry sometimes my position will start to run into genetic barriers soon.

Expand full comment
28 more comments...

No posts