Sexy Money

Why do men make money? To have access to women. Sexy money!! We're talking the true price of sex.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Why do men make money. Iknow we think it so they can have
a comfortable living. I think it'sso they can have access to women.
Sexy money, the price of sex. This is doctor Wendy Walsh, and
you're listening to Mating Matters. Welcometo Mating Matters. I'm doctor Wendy Walsh.

(00:21):
In this episode Sexy Money, you'lllearn how the pursuit of money is
really a pursuit of sexual partners formen, and that when women make a
lot of money it can hurt theirreproductive opportunities unless they live in a matriarchal
society and have what's called a walkingmarriage. But even in a patriarchal society,

(00:41):
the price of sex goes up anddown depending on cultural supply, and
today we're in a high supply sexualeconomy. This is sexy money, Money,

(01:02):
Money, Money, A song releasedby the uber famous Swedish pop group
Aba in nineteen seventy six, basicallysums up the dilemma of so many females
working hard under a patriarchal system butnever seeming to get ahead, the dream
of a Cinderella fantasy. It permeatesour culture a financial rescue, whether it's

(01:23):
Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or LadyGaga and a Star Is Born, or
the many many actresses who have triedon a glass slipper In all the remakes
of Cinderella, female mating strategy seemsto involve one of two choices, toil
away and hope for true love orget a big time rescue by an alpha

(01:44):
male. Of course, in thefairytale fantasy, it's always both true love
and a financial windfall. Here's JuliaRoberts as a lovable small town girl turned
prostitute in the movie Pretty Woman andRichard Gere negotiating the price of her company
for six days. Spoiler alert,it turns out to be a lifetime of

(02:06):
company when they fall in love,or so audiences are led to believe.
If you're talking twenty four hours aday, it's gonna cost you. Oh,
yes, of course, all right, here we go, me a
ballpark figure. How much six fullnights days to four thousand, six nights

(02:28):
at three hundred is eighteen hundred?You want days two, two, three
thousand? Done? Movies aside?In real life, does sex have a
price? I mean, we allknow that some women charge for sex as
professionals, but what about the sexthat happens in relationships. I know it
seems kind of immoral to think thatlove has a price tag, or that

(02:51):
women actually sell dating sex, butanthropologists and evolutionary psychologists believe that unconsciously,
there's a mark value of reproduction.Whether one is paying for dates or displaying
large wasteful resources like fancy cars andhouses, or buying absolutely wasteful gifts like
diamonds, sex has a price.Women realize that there's a cost to reproduction.

(03:17):
Let's start with the risks associated withpregnancy or labor and delivery. You
know, until the advent of modernmedicine, many women died in childbirth,
and oh yeah, there's the costof feeding and sheltering a child until they
grow up. Thus, whether menknow it or not, sex has a

(03:38):
price. It may be monetary,or it may be the very high price
of care and commitment. But loveis costly. Here's why human males generally
want sex more than human females,because the cost of sex is so high
for women, especially if they choosethe wrong sexual partner. For women,

(03:59):
the clear risks are threefold. One, because of a female's unique biology,
women are more likely than men tocontract a sexually transmitted disease. Two.
Because most women's bodies produce high amountsof the bonding hormone oxytocin during female orgasm,
women are more likely to fall inlove through sex. Hint, ladies,

(04:25):
men don't fall in love through sex. They fall in love through trust.
And Three, As I mentioned,women are far more likely to contract
an eighteen year case of parenthood.For men, the cost of choosing the
wrong sexual partner is one lousy nightthat he can forget about quickly. I

(04:49):
can't go to a big ivy leagueschool, and I can't run a company
or be mayor. That's just theway the world is. For a girl,
need you, and right now youare a big fat kiss soaked thee
row. That was Amy Adams playingLynne Cheney in the movie Vice. That

(05:11):
was a woman's angst in the earlynineteen sixties. Historically, women had to
be choosy. Picking the wrong dudeto mate with could result in poverty and
starving children. That's why if hewasted resources on her, she could be
assured of his commitment and his abilityto provide more resources if he ran out.
Now think about this in behavioral economicsterms. Remember your economics one on

(05:35):
one class. When something declines insupply, the price goes up. When
something rises in supply, the pricegoes down. If women want less sex
than men and are choosy with whothey mate with, they keep the supply
low and the price of sex ishigh. Back in the nineteen thirties,

(06:03):
forties, and fifties, the priceof sex was about six months of courtship,
where men had to sacrifice a lotand compete with other men to win
a woman's favor, and then paybig time at an altar with a wedding.
But in recent decades, sociologists havebegun to notice a trend. The

(06:27):
price of sex is going down.They suggest this is because of two factors.
One, the physical risks of sexare reducing, and two, female
competition for mates is increasing. Howdid sex get less risky for women?
Well, let's start with modern medicinethat made childbirth less dangerous, and then
in nineteen sixty two there was theintroduction of the birth control pill. This

(06:50):
is my husband, Mark. We'regoing to have three beautiful children and live
happily ever after in Paris someday,but for now, I'm on the pill.
Besides medical advances, another great thinghappened in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
Women entered the workforce in droves andfinally had their own money as a

(07:13):
buffer against poverty. With that insurancepolicy in place, in the nineteen seventies
and eighties, women began to enjoythe pleasure of their own bodies and have
sex because it felt good and itwas fun, and they worried less that
motherhood would throw them into poverty.Thus, sex began to rise in supply
and the price began to drop.Remember the price of sex that used to

(07:35):
be six months of courtship and awedding back in the nineteen fifties. Well,
by the nineteen eighties, the priceof sex had dropped to the cost
of three expensive dates. It wasan unspoken rule. It was called the
three date rule. I've been marriedfor thirty three years, and the last
time I dated was thirty three yearsago. That would have been nineteen eighty

(08:00):
six, when the price of sexwas still three long evenings. There were
a few times when I would goout with a girl and the first time,
yeah, there would be nothing wouldhappen. The second time you'd try
to do something, maybe you'd likelike in the movies, you'd lean back
and kind of yawn and put yourarms out and put your arm around her.

(08:22):
And then the third date, ifyou did that, she stuggled up
with you, you would know,oh, this is going somewhere. I've
known my husband for twenty five years. We have been together for nineteen and
we've been married for nine. Thethree date rule is, you know,
you never wanted to have sex ona first date. I mean that was
my own thing too. I neverwanted to have sex with anybody on a
first date because I wanted to onesee what kind of person they were,

(08:46):
and he couldn't really tell that alwaysfrom a first date. So the second
date was for me used to kindof, you know, figure out even
more who the person was, Like, how did they react to the when
I called back, did they callme back right away? Did they give
me that attention that I was lookingfor? And then by the third date,
you know, I think I feltI knew people well enough where if
I wanted to have sex on thethird date, I would have been very

(09:07):
comfortable doing so. You know,three dates is kind of like the expectation
that you spent enough time with thisperson, you've gotten to know them,
and now you want to see themnaked. I think it was an expectation
on both of our parts because we'reboth there, we're both into each other,
we're both at that third date kindof goal, I guess you could
say, and we're like, okay, this is the time to move on.

(09:28):
And I mentioned more competition from women. Here's the other problem for women.
When all the women lower their pricefor sex and enter a mating marketplace
that includes competition from online pornography andan endless stream of beauties on dating apps,
the cost of sex drops to thebargain basement price of one well worded

(09:50):
text. Here are the words thatthis young man in his twenties puts in
a text in order to woo awoman. Come, but maybe I would,
you know, add something beforehand,like hey, what's going on?
What you're doing today? You're freetonight? Like yo, come over?
I'm well I want to hang outor she usually knows what the deal is.

(10:13):
I'll say come over, and she'llsay yeah, and it'll be an
imply like you know, booty call. I'm thirty years old, single,
living in Los Angeles with a dogand a pretty well paying job and a
ton of friends. Courtship has beena little non existent or has gotten more
few and far between. I thinkwith the men kind of in the dating

(10:37):
scene, especially in LA and it'sreally kind of been boiled down to maybe
a dinner, maybe a movie,and if you're not willing to have sex
at that point, then it's kindof on to the next I don't think
I've had a guy call me andasked for a date, and probably six
or seven years. A lot ofit is through social media now, whether

(10:58):
that's snapchat at her Instagram. Well, they'll just write you a message through
your social media channel and compliment youand ask if you want to meet up
that night. And women are apparentlyon call for cheap sex at almost any
hour. When asked what is thelatest time the young man we interviewed would
text a woman for sex. Keepingwith the times, he's kind of shameless

(11:22):
because, you know, like goingout and drinking this stuff, bar clothes
is like two, so maybe liketwo thirty. Compare that to the nineteen
eighties when dating was expensive for men. In the eighties, you still felt
like as a man or as ayoung man, that it was up to
you to be the provider in quotesand when somebody else gave you the money,

(11:45):
it's just sort of it almost tookaway the power that you had,
I think because if you paid,if you paid, then you kind of
felt like she owed you. Butlooking at the new sexual economy, using
an old lens may sound like sageadvice. However, it might not work
if the female to female competition ishigh. If your friends are putting out

(12:07):
and your boyfriend is exposed to anendless array of filtered beauties on Instagram and
many many virtual sex partners on pornsites, this is who your new competition
is, and the old advice maynot work anymore. I think that's maddening
for them not to connect that becausethey had sex on a first date,

(12:28):
that this is why a guy doesn'twant to commit. I hear this from
lots of friends, especially when Iwas younger, who would be like,
I can't get this guy to callme back. It's like, well,
you had sex with him on thefirst date. What do you expect.
He doesn't need to call you back. He already got what he wanted,
and when he wants it again,that's when he'll give you a call.
Because you're waiting for him to call. They think they're trying to get a
relationship, but they're doing all thewrong things. My name is Mark Rignaris.

(12:56):
I'm the professor of sociology at theUniversity of Texas at Austin and the
author of Cheap Sex, The Transformationof Men, Marriage and Monogamy. We're
talking about the price of sex here, right, So when the price of
sex diminishes via a form of technology, and so the book talks about the
birth control pill, pornography, onlinedating, all three kinds of technologies,

(13:20):
when those diminish the price of sex, men are more able to sort of
command the price that they want,right. I mean, men can kind
of get by with the happy hourbudget or a couple of cocktails, really,
maybe a dinner. You know,I'm newly dating someone and even just
getting him to take me out toa movie has been a challenge. We're

(13:43):
speaking about very economic terms, right. You can slather on top of that
all sorts of romance and wooing,etc. But when it comes right down
to it, men have not changedfundamentally for a very very long time.
What has changed, and fairly recently, is the ease with which they can

(14:03):
access what we call high quality sexualexperiences. You can attract a woman through
Tinder. You can attract a womanthrough just four or five photos of yourself.
You don't really need to have allof the glitz and glam. It's
just you know, are you relativelygood looking? Are you bangable? And
when men can access high quality sexualexperience is doctor Mark Ragnaris says, they

(14:26):
lose the ability to commit. Afterall, men don't have a fertility window.
The advantage in the race to appropriatenow lies with men. It really
pushes women in a corner of likethey're the ones who have to compete with
each other for his attention, right, even though his quality sort of objectively

(14:48):
speaking, maybe notably lower than inthe generation before them. And I think
it's arguable that, you know,men have not improved lately, and that
the sort of lowering of the costof sex has not only not improved men,
it's turned them more borish and atthe same time, maddeningly, it

(15:09):
gives them control over the pace ofthe relationship. No, I definitely feel
a pressure to have sex early onbecause of that fertility window. You know,
I'm thirty years old and haven't hada child at this point in my
life. And I feel that ifI don't present myself in a way sexually
that's desirable early on, then they'llget bored. They'll move on and find

(15:31):
somebody else. Anthropologists have long knownthat when women are economically disadvantaged, marriage
rates go up, more children areborn into wedlock, virginity is coveted,
and oh yeah, prostitution rates goway up too. That's because when women
are economically disadvantaged, they're forced tonegotiate with their most valuable asset, their

(15:52):
vagina. So they either maintain theirvirginity and ask a man to sign on
the dotted line and agree to supportthem and any offspring in a contract called
marriage, or they rented by thehour. Here's another scene from Pretty Woman
where Julia Roberts plays that lovable prostituteand her colleague played by Laura San Giacomo
discuss the power they feel when negotiatingfor sex can really slow tonight. Yeah,

(16:21):
at least she'd get a pimp,you know, Collus really takes here,
and then he'll run our lives andtake our money. Know the rights
we say, who we say when? Will we say how much? But
in a high supply sexual economy,according to regnaris, women have lost their
bargaining chip. So when you thinkabout technology, she gets control over fertility

(16:44):
with the advent and the uptake ofcontraception, so she gets to control of
how many children she has and whenhe gets control and exchange for how quickly
is sex introduced into this relationship.And the latest research shows that the dream
of futility control with the birth controlpill. He's also starting to crumble in
resportings Health Watch, birth control pillsand blood clots. The hormones in oral

(17:07):
contraceptives are what makes them work,but over the years side effects have become
a big concern. Now is DoctorJennifer Ashton reports one particular type of the
pill maybe linked to some new problems, problems that can be deadly. Technology
certainly adds to the problems for women. Pornography and online dating have made finding
a suitable mate tricky, and thenyou introduce sort of high technology digital porn

(17:33):
which are like, wow, nowI can have an almost sexual partner right
in the same room with me.I can be in one relationship in reality,
I can be in virtual relationships inthis sort of unreality. At the
same time, she wants his monogamousattentions. He's think, oh, you
have my monogamous, real life behaviorwith a real human being. She's like,

(17:57):
no, that's not good enough.He's like, well, that's what
you're going to have to settle forthe advent of pornography and it's increasing digitalization
and quality sort of really provides competitionfor her. And all this competition means
dating becomes expensive for women, evenwhen the prize is an immature boy who

(18:18):
fails to man up. You know, I get my nails done every other
week, so that's about eighty dollars. Their hair is about four hundred dollars
every six weeks. It probably agood two three hundred dollars a month dating
budget between yoga classes and shopping andyou know, wards of a thousand dollars.
As for single men, the onewe interviewed says he spends not more
than thirty to sixty dollars a monthon dating. And that's the odd movie.

(18:42):
If he has to take a dateout, to be honest, it's
usually not like that. It's usuallyjust like come over, maybe I'll have
drinks at the house if that's whatthey ask for. If they requested,
like, you know, you gotanything, they drink. I'll love to
have a drink when I come over, Like, okay, I'll go buy
a drink. I don't want tosound like a herb or a mean dude,
but that's usually just how it goes. So is there a way to

(19:06):
game the new system? Here's anidea. What if women had total economic
power and men needed us for support. We're certainly seeing a culture of young
men who seem to be failing tolaunch when we think about online dating as
another technology, I mean, whowould have ever thought of people sending pictures
of their genitalia? Men sending picturesof the genitalia to women and thinking this

(19:30):
is somehow attractive. In fact,some sociologists say that when men don't have
to work for sex, they losecareer ambition. Could women pick up the
slack? Research shows that there area couple of problems with the sugar mommy
ideal. The first is that whenmen make less money than their wives,
they're more likely to cheat. Inthe movie Crazy Rich Asians, a rare

(19:53):
Hollywood take on a matriarchal family system, the wealthy and beautiful heiress Asterisk played
by Jemma Chan, hides most ofher luxury purchases, including expensive jewelry,
so her husband, who has farless money, can still feel manly.
But it doesn't work. She discovershe's having an affair. Anyway, you're

(20:15):
yntenness on me. I'm not theone who's screwed up, of course not.
He always the prettiest riches's most perfectgoal in the room. Well,
I'm just this lucky boss that willnever measure up. The second problem for
the sugar mommy ideal is that womentend not to choose men who make less
money than them. Researcher Fiona Morefrom the University of Abertei Dundee is a

(20:38):
sociologist and coined a term called theGeorge Clooney effect hi guys. Her studies
showed that the more education of moneya woman has, the more she wants
her man to be even older,wiser, and richer like George Clooney.
I mean, we all want todate George Clooney, don't we. This
of course, has angered many men, many good men who might be considered

(21:03):
to be lower status mats. Youcould suggest that this trend has given rise
to a group of violent men whocall themselves involuntarily celibate or in cells.
In twenty fourteen, Roger murdered sixpeople in a killing spree near the campus
of UC Santa Barbara. Before theattack, Roger recorded a video saying he

(21:25):
wanted to punish women for rejecting him. But what would happen if all the
men could make the same amount ofmoney? Who would women choose? While
a study like this would be kindof impossible to stage in a human society,
monkeys can be researched. A groupof researchers from Germany, Barbara Titty
and Michael Heisterman, the UK BrandonWheeler, and Nigeria Martin Fahey set out

(21:48):
to study resource based mating systems.That means a mating system where the mails
defend and protect the resources needed formating. In other primates, that might
mean nesting sites and food. InHomo sapiens that's us, that means money
men protect their money from women.The researchers used a primate cousin of ours,

(22:11):
wild capuchin monkeys, you know themas the famous organ grinder monkeys.
The studies monkeys were living in thewild in Inguaza National Park in Argentina.
The researchers had a question, whatif lower ranking mails had equal ability to
procure and share food with females.Would females prefer a different kind of guy

(22:33):
than the standard alpha male? Putin human terms, what if a nice
guide trash collector earned the same amountof money as, say, a professional
athlete. The researchers manipulated the environmentof one community of capuchin monkeys. They
limited the access by alpha males tosome resources and increase the ability of lower

(22:53):
ranking mails to procure food and nestingsites. Think bank accounts and nice houses,
ladies. What the researchers found isthat even though all the males became
equally rich, the females still preferredthe alpha males to have sex with m
Let's think about this. Certainly,this could be because this preference for alpha

(23:15):
dudes is hardwired in female DNA,at least in Capuchan monkeys, and it
may take many generations to evolve outof women. In other words, since
capuch and females showed a super strongpreference for yummy alpha males in their anthropological
past and even just before the studywas mounted, they may lack something that
evolutionary psychologists call behavioral plasticity. Changesin ingrained behavior take time, often many

(23:40):
generations, but the researchers think there'sanother thing at play here too. Another
study on this same group of monkeysfound that alpha males are the most socially
integrated. They are the big manon campus, and when women hang out
with them, besides food, theyget community wide protection from predators. In

(24:03):
other words, don't mess with theCEO's wife. Keepers safe, and it'll
help you rise up the ranks.Of course, human beings are different.
We have a wide range of matingstrategies. Plenty of guys are able to
obtain sex and long term mates byjust being a good person, offering care
and commitment. A date is notan exchange of goods. It's an exchange

(24:27):
of communication. It's an exchange ofexperience between you and another person. It's
not something that you're trying to say, I think you're worth one hundred all
lobster dinner. It's I think you'recute. I think you're cool. Let's
go out and talk and see ifthere's anything more to this. That's how
I've always felt myself, as faras dating is supposed to actually be.
So, If making all men richdoesn't fix the sexual economy, what about

(24:51):
making all women rich? Think aboutit. If women own the resources,
men would have to be nice sothey could survive, I even have sex,
and women wouldn't need to hope fora wedding and an altar for their
survival. It's called a matriarchal society, and yep, there are a few
on the planet today. For instance, the Mosuo who live near the border

(25:14):
of Tibet. These people live inlarge family households. Children take the mother's
name and they always remain in theirmother's care. Property is passed down between
females. These women have something calledwalking marriages. Women choose their partners by
literally walking into a dude's home whenthey want to have sex. In the
Nagovisi people of New Guinea, ifa couple just hangs out enough and the

(25:38):
man helps the woman in her gardenfor all intents and purposes, they're consider
married. All this makes me thinkis modern Western culture becoming more matriarchal.
If women can't get men to commithis time and resources to his offspring,
then the village needs to change therules. You know, I'm someone who

(26:00):
is relatively open minded when it comesto traditional versus non traditional. I mean,
traditional is safe, but nontraditional worksfine too, But I think all
in all, you know, that'sjust kind of the way that society is
moving, where women can adopt,and should they choose to have a family,
they can do it on their own, and because they're financially more stable,

(26:22):
a man isn't really needed. Andthank God for sex toys. You
know, more than forty of Americanchildren are born out of wedlock. That's
been going on for a few decades, and one in four children are being
raised by a single mother. Ifshe is to survive, she needs help
from the village. Look no furtherthan our current women's rights initiative, the

(26:44):
fight for women's reproductive rights, equalpay, subsidized childcare, and even the
Me Too movement. They're all designedto reduce the financial burden of motherhood.
And while you may think that menfear this kind of female power, equal
pay, free childcare, and completecontrol over their reproductive rights, I think

(27:04):
again. Could you imagine a worldwhere sex was plentiful and low cost for
men and they never had to work. I think some men might like this
walking marriage anyone, I've got agarden I need some help with. Of
course, there's another solution, mencould learn to slow down the pace of
the sexual relationship in order to getthe benefits of a whole relationship. Remember

(27:30):
the man who was last dating duringthe nineteen eighties when the three date rule
was the social norm. Well,now he's a father of sons in their
twenties. In today's hook up culture, I think young men are missing out
on the opportunity to get to knowsomebody and get to know the quirks that
really make life fun. And that'sone thing I try to tell my boys.

(27:51):
It's like, you need to spendtime to make a foundation. So
I think you're missing out on buildinga foundation when you're just looking at a
woman as just a vessel for sex. We've been so socialized today to expect
like, oh, now, whatdo I have to do? I have
to if I'm a woman, likeI have to so nurture his ego.

(28:12):
I have to please him somehow.I have to give back for the investment
that he's doing in this nascent beginningrelationship. No, I don't think she
has to do any of those things. He should be the one who's doing
the wooing, right, So it'snot so much that she needs to change.
She needs to sort of live intowhat she has long wanted, which

(28:33):
is to be treated well and withrespect and dignity and security. And if
she expects that from him, somemen will give it. Not all men,
but some men, right, andshe'll more quickly go through the process
of figuring out which men those are, because they're still out there. I
just feel like when you're on thatapp for the sole purpose of sex,

(28:57):
that's all you're ever going to getout a lot. You're not going to
get any kind of love. You'renot going to get any kind of companionship.
You're not going to get any kindof like the little things that make
having a relationship actually worth it beyondthe sex. Sex is fun, but
it's that's like ten percent of yourrelationship. A relationship life plan. I'd
like to say that I do,but I really don't. I really don't.

(29:19):
I mean, sure, I haverelationship ideals, but at the end
of the day, I've kind oflet go of any expectations because I feel
like it's safer to let go ofthose expectations than it is to kind of
be clawing at something that may ormay not happen. What to kind of
reacquire the sort of idea of acartel among women. We hang together or

(29:44):
we all hang separately. Right,it's power in numbers where we can sort
of demand better treatment from men.Human beings have survived because we are amazing
problem solvers, and we are constantlysolving the problems presented to us by our
environment. Now, in our ancientpast, those problems could have included a

(30:07):
drought that led to a famine.In today's times, the problem presented to
many many women is that we arein a high supply sexual economy, and
there is an oversupply of successful womenand an undersupply of what many would consider
to be marriageable men. How arewomen solving these problems. They're doing it

(30:30):
all kinds of ways. They're becomingsingle mothers, and we know that more
than forty percent of American babies forthe last few decades have been borne out
of wedlock. They're doing it insame sex relationships. They may be adopting
babies, they may be freezing theireggs to expand their fertility window a little
bit longer. But some women aresolving the problem simply by raising the price

(30:56):
of sex with them. That meansthey're charging the highest price possible for sex,
and that is care and commitment.And men will pressure to obtain sex.
They'll say, well, if Idon't get it from you, I'll
get it from somebody else. Iwould venture to say that woman's response every

(31:18):
single time should be I don't thinkyou can get sex with me from somebody
else. When a guy leaves becausehe's not willing to do the work of
building an emotional connection with you,then you should count your lucky stars because
the process of finding one good partneris really a process about eliminating hundreds of

(31:42):
them. Love is as much aboutstrategy as luck. Money, money,

(32:07):
money, I'll wants money, money, money. Thanks for listening to Mating
Matters. Up next, Survival ofthe Gayest is gay and identity or behavior?
How do we evolve? They havegay people. I'm doctor Wendy Walsh's

(32:30):
Mating Matters is co produced with iHeartMedia. It is produced, researched, and
written by me, doctor Wendy Walsh, and it is edited and produced by
Brooke Peterson. You can follow uson social media at doctor Wendy Walsh.
Please share this podcast with a friend. It's the only way that people find
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(32:52):
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