In the old days people used to protest for free love. Nowadays women do not give away their love for free, but still, if we believe the social psychologists, they have been reducing the price.
Multiple factors have caused women to lose control of what Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus calls: “the meet market.”
The Pill has made it easier for women to have sex without worrying about the consequences. Gender equality has made it easier for women to dispense with a male provider. A surplus of women on college campuses has made it difficult for any individual woman to place a high price on her intimacy. Internet porn has reduced the price of sexual stimulation to zero.
The New York Post reports: “Regnerus likens the price of sex to the housing market. Too many foreclosures in one community, and the price of neighboring homes start to plummet. This is why single women in New York sometimes feel as though sex on the first date is a given: According to the market, it is.”
In old days women used to exchange sex for a lifetime commitment. Nowadays they give it away for the price of a couple of beers, if that.
Women might not feel very good about the way they are behaving, but they do not feel that they have a choice. In our non-judgmental age women who band together to address intimacy issues are likely to claim that they are proud of themselves for acting like sluts.
Yet, in market terms, women who are proud of their slutty behavior are lowering the value and the price of feminine sexuality, not just for themselves, but for all women.
Blaming men for this state of affairs is disingenuous, because women set the price and conditions for their intimacy. And women must bear responsibility for their own behavior.
The way women behave is the primary factor determining the market price for female sexuality.
In the not-too-distant past, and throughout most of human history, women found the behavior of prostitutes, strippers, porn stars, and sluts to be grossly offensive. They abhorred having to compete against women who were giving away, relatively cheaply, something that they held dear.
Today, women are actively competing against these less-than-reputable women, by lowering the price of intimacy. It may have become a societal norm, but it is still not a good thing.
Today so many women have been giving it away cheaply that they refuse to believe that their behavior is in any way wrong. As they see it, hooking up is the rule more than the exception.
The research raises an important point that needs to be underscored. In a marketplace your behavior does not just affect you. It affects all other participants in the market.
When a group of participants bands together to lower the price of its merchandise, this affects all other market participants. Many other merchants will discover that they have a choice between matching the low price or closing up shop.
The solution is for women to band together and withhold their sexual favors, to pull a Lysistrata.
Yet, the notion that a group of women in this feminist age is going to band together to withhold sex seems unrealistic. That does not make it a bad idea.
It might be bad for sex-positive feminism, but it would be good for women.
I don't know about that. Certainly there have been enough cases of "internet porn" ruining marriages (according to the women) that it is national issue. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the only way that could happen is if the woman was withholding sex, using it as a means to train her "husband" and generally playing hard to want. The husband, to keep peace in his house, moves on to willing if imaginary women. But it only became an news story when she couldn't get the sex she wanted. And these women are willing to humiliate themselves in public by telling the world that they can't seduce their husbands, instead of partaking of the porn themselves. This implies that women need sex more strongly then men, but less often, as shown by the fact that the men were able to replace their frigid wives with porn and the women could not. If this is the case, your embargo idea is doomed to fail, as men will be able to hold out longer then women can deny their urges. Not that I have a solution......
ReplyDeleteThe pill has also transformed the nature of the marriage union. The modern woman has rejected her procreation ability as a means to bind a man to a family. Now sterile sex is used by a woman as a reward for entertainment. Coupled with no fault divorce and courts favoring the woman; when her husband is no longer amusing, she can seek entertainment from another man without consequences.
ReplyDeleteAs G.K. Chesterton once wrote in his 1911 book "the problem with the world". He writes that his problem with the radical feminist was that she was not radical enough, actually the modern radical feminist isn't even a feminist.
I don't think that the suffragettes would approve of how the modern feminist has reduced her gender to being a vulgar commodity.