The Sex Economy – Why Buy The Cow When The Milk is Free – Or, When Sex is Free and Easy Why Should Men Bother to Commit to Marriage
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✦ This is one of those posts on my blog that contains strong, adult language. As in the “F” word is used several times, so if you are a dainty, wilting Christian flower who faints at the sight or sound of cuss words, have your smelling salts handy. I do not always issue warnings like this when strong language is in the content.
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The Sex Economy – Why Buy The Cow When The Milk is Free – Or, When Sex is Free and Easy Why Should Men Bother to Commit to Marriage
It seems like once every year, or every other year or two, a right wing, conservative type of writer comes up with an editorial explaining to women about the sex economy, and why the expression “why buy the cow when the milk is free” still rings true.
Then your secular feminists get angry and write rebuttals to those editorials. I’m not quite sure why secular feminists so deeply object to the concept (though I do have a theory or two), but mainly, I find their objections vague and unmemorable, and I’ve read several of their anti-sex-economy editorials over the years. Despite having read some of their rebuttals, I’ve yet to make sense of why they object.
Here are the links:
✦ 1. The liberal / left wing/ secular feminist perspective ✦
(Link): Sex is Not An Economy And You Are Not Merchandise from the Jezebel site (author unknown; possibly Lindy West)
✦ 2. The conservative position ✦
2A (Link): The economics of sex: Has the price gotten too cheap? by Naomi Schaefer Riley
2b (Link): Cheap Dates and How the ‘price’ of sex has dropped to record lows
✦ EXCERPTS
✦ 1. The liberal / left wing / secular feminist perspective ✦
(Link): Sex is Not An Economy And You Are Not Merchandise
It’s hard to know what sections of what to excerpt from this liberal essay from Jezebel, because its author (who is perhaps Lindy West?) largely engages in ad hominem and a lot of snark.
For example, after quoting a long portion of conservative Riley’s piece where Riley says:
The “price” [of sex] 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.
—[end excerpt]—
The Jezebel writer’s response to that view consists only of these words:
Oh, shut the fuck up.
—[end excerpt]—
Seriously. That is all the writer had to say in response.
Go click the link I gave to the page and read it if yourself you don’t believe me.
Much of the rest of the page consists of that sort of rebuttal. Which might be fine on a casual blog such as mine, but Jezebel is a main stream publication which I presume has a wide readership, and if the Jezebel writer is trying to change minds, she is not going to have much success by saying, “fuck you” and not much else.
Here I am, still pretty conservative in regards to sexual ethics, or pretty sympathetic to conservative views about sex, and I’m really, honestly trying to understand her liberal, feminist objections to why she is opposed to the conservative “sex economics” genre of editorial, but how can I arrive at an understanding of her view, when it consists of nothing but a “fuck you” to her ideological opponent?
Here are more excerpts from the Jezebel page (and the only name I see associated with this page is Lindy West, so I assume she is the author, but I may be mistaken about that):
If anything, sex is less commodified now than when my great-grandparents were courting. Before divorce; before reliable, effective birth control; before women’s advancements into the higher levels of the workforce; marriage was ALL about economics.
Now that women are able to leave abusive and unhappy relationships, support themselves financially, and choose when/if to have children, we don’t need marriage anymore.
It’s no longer an economic imperative, which means that people are free to be choosy about who they marry. So you’re damn right marriage rates are dropping and people are marrying later. It’s because we’re getting better at it.
[conservative Riley wrote:]
We now have a split mating market: One corner where people are largely interested in sex, and one corner where people are largely pursuing marriage. And there are more men looking for sex than women, and more women looking to marry than men.
[Jezebel author responds:]
Okay. Wait. So women are banging dudes willy-nilly on the singles scene and it’s lowering their “market value,” but women are also “vastly” outnumbering men “in the marriage market”? Which is it? I’m confused.
—[end excerpt]—
My response to the Jezebel author’s supposed confusion on this point: there are some women, who are celibate and waiting until marriage to have sex, such as me.
And yes, women such as myself, find it harder to get married, as we are virgins and are (or were) waiting until marriage to have sex. We find it more difficult meeting men who respect our celibacy- until- marriage lifestyle.
Many men these days (even a lot of Christian ones) now expect or demand sex prior to marriage, because a lot of other women, women such as yourself, have been too happy to have sex before marriage, which gives the men little incentive to respect my wishes (i.e., no sex before marriage, and I’d like to marry).
A lot of people – the ones who scoff at virginity and sexual purity – have this weird-ass view that you should “test drive” your partner prior to marriage to make sure the two of you are “sexually compatible,” see this post,
(Link): Weak Argument Against Celibacy / Virginity / Sexual Purity by the Anti Sexual Purity Gestapo – Sexual Compatibility or Incompatibility – (ie, Taking Human Beings For Test Spins – Humans As Sexual Commodities) (Part 2)
And yes, views such as that make it very difficult for people who believe in staying a virgin until marriage to get many marital prospects.
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