Sex: Men Desire It, and Women Control the Supply
“Our brains are identical to the ones that emerged from Africa 100,000 years ago. You take a caveman, shave him, give him a three-piece suit, and put him on Wall Street, and he looks like all the others barbarians on Wall Street. Our brains haven’t changed at all in the last 100,000 years.”
Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist
In order to succeed in any undertaking, it’s crucial to identify obstacles, and to formulate a plan for maneuvering around them. For girls who want meaningful relationships with guys in the age of hooking up, it’s important to consider each obstacle as its own particular challenge. Today we begin to explore the root causes for the development and pervasiveness of the hookup culture, and the resulting power imbalance between the sexes. For the most part, the forces that promote hooking up are not within your control. The only thing that you can control is your own response, your own choices. You can improve your chances of finding a great relationship by taking an active role in defining what you want and being smart about meeting these challenges head on.
It’s important to remember that you are not powerless. Women hold one very important card:
Women still control the supply of sex. This is true in every culture and throughout time. Men have a strong desire for sex, and women control men’s opportunities to get it.
We begin reclaiming the upper hand in dealing with boys by understanding what has led us to a culture where hooking up is the norm and dating is dead. Let’s take a look at some of the key factors that got us here:
Cavemen
Men are biologically programmed to want sex with a variety of women. It’s in their DNA. Their purpose is to inseminate as many women as possible to produce children. When a man is monogamous, he is giving up something he wants.
For women, who give birth, it is important to choose a man who can be counted on to help raise her children. Of course, young women today are not looking at guys and thinking about their parenting skills. All of that is way into the future. But we can’t escape our DNA. Over thousands of generations, a preference for men who showed signs of being willing and able to commit evolved in women. The modern woman can and often does choose to have numerous sex partners before marrying. But it is in her nature to view those men through the lens of relationships.
Traditionally, dating has been the way that men and women found common ground. It gives women a way to test out different men. Because women control the sex supply, men have sought ways to please women through romance. In the hookup culture, guys are receiving the message that girls are satisfied with hooking up, and have no expectations of them. In sending that message, girls forfeit the most powerful leverage they have over men: controlling the supply of sex. If girls demand love and kindness in return for sex, they will get it.
Today, the market value of sexual access has plummeted. Sex is so readily available that men are not willing to give up much of anything to get it. Women need to start behaving in such a way as to increase the market value of sex to level the playing field and regain some control. The only way to achieve this is to restrict the supply.
The Sexual Revolution
The unintended consequences of the Sexual Revolution are another major influence on today’s sexual norms. The introduction of the Pill in the 1960s meant that for the first time women could choose to have sex without fear of pregnancy. At the same time, the Women’s Movement enabled women to make great gains in earning power. They didn’t need men to provide for them in the same way anymore. Men found to their amazement and delight that women no longer expected much in return for sex. This newfound sexual freedom led to a “market correction” and changed the rules of the game.
The Women’s Movement brought about many important changes for women. But that does not mean we are beholden to experimental notions of “free love” if they do not work for us, and do not give us what we want. These cultural forces are powerfully entrenched in our culture. To begin to change the culture, women will need to defend their right to be valued: to be treated with respect, honesty, and decency.
Demographics
Marrying Later
Women outnumber men in colleges today by 56% to 44%. At many small liberal arts colleges, the percentages are more like 60% to 40%. This imbalance is huge. It means that even if traditional dating were still the norm, the numbers favor the guys right now in a big way.
Americans are also getting married much later than they used to. In the last forty years, the average age at marriage has gone from 20 for women and 23 for men to 25 for women and 27 for men. That means that you are much less likely to meet your spouse in college than you were forty years ago. Today the college experience is about studying abroad, getting good internships, and preparing for graduate school. Chances are that any boy you meet in college will not live in the same place you do for the next five to ten years. So it makes no sense to get too attached now, because there is no way it can last.
Finally, your generation is under enormous pressure to achieve. The American Dream dictates that each generation do better than the last. You are the children of the Baby Boomers, a very high achieving group. Your parents have extremely high expectations for your future, and you’ve always understood this. It is important for you to get good grades and focus on excelling. Of course you’re interested in boys, but you’re worried that you really don’t have enough time for the demands of a high-maintenance relationship on top of everything else. Boys in particular feel that college is a time to have fun and let off steam, and they say they don’t want the commitment of a relationship.
Technology
Rapid changes in technology are having a profound effect on the way young people communicate. Notwithstanding the benefits of social networking sites, text messaging, instant messaging, etc., taking more of our interactions electronic has served to make communication less personal. We don’t talk on the phone as much. We make most of our plans via text, which is devoid of emotion.
Guys love this! When a guy shoots you a text, he’s not risking very much. Even if you blow him off, the rejection doesn’t even begin to compare to your looking him in the eye and saying you have no interest in dating him. When he does text, he’s likely to say, “What are you up to?” rather than “I’d like to see you.” He may talk about meeting up later. Or say he’ll text again once he knows what his plans are. At no time does he need to say straight out that he really wants to see you and is willing to make a plan for a specific time.
This sucks for girls. They feel like they can’t initiate the conversation, and so are often left hanging as the night wears on. It’s very hard for girls to interpret these messages or the intent behind them.
Media
Your generation has been raised with unprecedented access to sexually explicit material. It boggles the mind to imagine that men were ever aroused by the glimpse of an ankle. Today, young men view porn together as a way of bonding. Porn scenarios almost always show the woman subservient to the male. And porn focuses on the pleasure of the man; the woman’s pleasure is secondary and automatic. As proof that porn is now totally mainstream among guys, many of the theme parties on college campuses are taken from porn plotlines: CEOs and Office Hoes, Golf Pros and Tennis Hoes, Cowboys and Schoolgirls, Doctors and Nurses, etc. Research shows that watching porn is actually deadening guys’ libidos. The number of young men seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction is skyrocketing. They literally can’t get it up with a healthy, normal girl because no actual sexual experience can match the arousal they feel watching porn.
Porn has raised the bar so high that many women work hard to arouse men so that they, as women, can feel empowered and desired. From dressing extremely provocatively to baring it all in Girls Gone Wild videos, girls are offering themselves up as fresh meat. If you want to be treated as a piece of meat, just follow along. Everybody’s doing it. If you hope to expect more from a guy, you will have to expect more from yourself.
So we’re up against some pretty big obstacles: our DNA, a 1960s hangover, long odds, the objectification of women in the media, and technology that lets boys act so passive they’re almost invisible. But we know that men and women will continue to mate. The show will go on. The next post in this series, Understanding the Hookup Environment, will ask “What’s Dumb About Hooking Up?” You may be stuck with it, but that doesn’t mean you have to sit quietly and like it.
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Cialis or Tadalafil. I'm 64 years old with high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction. Have tried everything on the market for the past 2-3 years, unsuccessfully. Doctor gave me 20mg samples of Cialis. Within 30 minutes was like a teenager with my wife. Unbelievable sex. Unbelievable pill.
I'm not certain this will take, as my computer has been on the fritz all day. I stumbled onto your blog and I've been reading a bit. I like plenty of what you have here, but this is a bit much.
Really? Free Love & Feminism was just that damaging? (Horrors, call the Nat. Rev!). And yet your own history, and common sense belies this. Yes, there's much less 'dating' as such, especially in big cities. There's probably any number of reasons for this, one of the less understood but more salient ones may be simply tied to economics. Few guys can actually afford to seriously 'date' a few gals anymore. Not for the full dress & 'nice restaurant' deal of times past. So it slides by much more casually. And then everything does as well. At $100+ a throw for a 'serious' dinner, parking and/or a movie/entertainment, well most folks (guys mainly) under the age of 40 have been priced out of the market, automatically.
But Free Love? Over-rated as an explanatory device, unless you recognize that we've always had waxing & waning periods of 'free love' (and 'freer expression'), and that alarmists were there at those periods too to warn us of it's dire consequences. Yet we survived somehow. It comes with the emancipation & more liberty provided to, for & by Women. And it is a genuine revolution, but it's always been one of the most contentious heritages of the West. (Yes, it's one of the favorite reasons the Taliban hates us too!)
Demographics are changing and one of the biggest drivers for why women are delaying marriage is their college completion rates, which now are well above males typically. So they're preferring to delay marriage & child birth to complete their higher education. In order to get better jobs & careers. It's a choice. Unfortunately the rest of life has not quite caught up and the gals have about 5-6 yrs post grad to 'get it all together' and try to start a family. Despite it all, many (even most) manage to thread this needle and actually do so. Many do not however. It's a close call for most, especially high achievers. That's why it pays to 'get smart fast', and try Not to play games with guys who might be interested in you. Hence the 'push-pull' of both sides of the 'hook-up culture'.
You don't see that perhaps. But it's there. The gals looking for Mr. Perfect in bed & Mr. Successful Striving Professional on the career ladder. The ones who grade on 'above 6ft' and 'well endowed', as musts for the 'barriers to entry' into their marriage or a LTR market. You can't do that by just guessing or 'estimating' at a bar, they want, just like the guys, to get to examine 'the horse flesh' in person. To try out the equipment to see if it's 'suitable'. Which btw, is their perfect right. That's why equality matters so much to them. They want an affirmative choice. They refuse to settle for 'less'. (Well not before their 50th birthday, perhaps).
The porn angle is interesting & telling. I think it's a very strong disinclination for the guys today to not do much of anything. Want to convince a guy to leave his fine nest with FREE Porn on the Net, all day long? Make it easy with him to 'hook up' with the real thing. That's another incentive for the 'hook up culture'. The only thing that Might begin to beat 'fantasy' is reality, if it's 'good & plenty', and not too difficult to obtain or troublesome to maintain. But if porn had been so available to earlier generations/ I think it would have created the same sorts of incentives. It's not exactly 'deadening' the erotic impulses, it is 'disincentiveizing' guys from actually going out and meeting gals. Not having much practice, this only gets worse through time for many guys, and the women now have much higher standards of performance & expectations.
So to my mind it creates a somewhat bi-polar world, (which never really went away). The really intelligent gals might know what they want, go for it, and get it, and get married (or in a LTR) before they're 30-35. The ones that 'hold out for perfection' or a 'better union' after yes, decades of 'hookups' & one night stands, might just get lucky later on, but the dating pool is quite shallow by then. If you're at all squeamish about 'retreads' or single dads, or other interesting 'baggage' it might be sometime before your prince will be coming. Many of the guys will feel the same way. Especially if they're just work a day stiffs with no reasonably high salary, tight & demanding schedules and no time for a 'real relationship'. All of their time & energy is captured at every more demanding jobs, with ever more precarious pay & tenures. Who needs women they commonly ask? They just use you & your money for their wants & desires and are often tremendously troublesome & querulous. And then it's back to Porn& Karl Kraus' famous dictum. If it's the 'easy' life they desire, it's best done alone. For both partners there needs to be some 'extra' value added besides the sex for it to all work in a LTR/marriage.
So to make a long story short? My short & dirty prescription here is that it's a somewhat successful 'revolution of rising expectations' on behalf of women & marriage. Some of the parts are working better than others. If you get lucky early it's working. If you know what you want early, you might be able to get there. If you spend your 20's discovering just which 'unit' fits your particular carnal needs best, well then it might take awhile. And you then bump up against the population that then has some physical & health challenges. Ergo, everyone over the age of 40-45 say. The Devil as they say is in the details. Most of us have little time to waste on this decade(s) long journey of 'discovery'. Not unless you're a model of human physical perfection let's say. Which brings us to the media again and another rant for a different day: media images of men, women, love & loving. Think about it. It's often only in the commercials do we ever glimpse the ideals that we imagined we grew up on. Right? Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'
Wow, I just stumbled upon your blog today and I think it's great! It's one of the best Web sites I've seen dealing with sex and the hookup generation. I agree with this article completely; it's about time women opened their eyes and realized that it's up to them to determine how they want to be treated by men. In response to the first commenter, I have to disagree: I have tons of guy friends, and they've all told me that the girl determines what the relationship is. If a woman puts sex on the table right away, then there is no incentive to wine and dine her; however, is she does the opposite and makes the guy “woo” her, then a dating relationship (if the man is interested) will commence. I recently dated a guy with over $100,000 in student loans, and that did not stop him from taking me to dinner or asking me to go on walks in the park. Using the economy as a reason to not date is just another lame excuse, and should not be tolerated.
KG Says: “I have tons of guy friends, and they've all told me that the girl determines what the relationship is. If a woman puts sex on the table right away, then there is no incentive to wine and dine her; however, is she does the opposite and makes the guy “woo” her, then a dating relationship (if the man is interested) will commence”.
This is fine as it goes, and a bit of 'common sense' too. But how long do you 'hold out'? There are natural expectations on behalf of both parties. Past a few months or so? The guys feel like they're being played for chumps in a HS like game that the gals yes, Do control. Few other than the very religiously inclined will tolerate that for long. So the 'strategy' does have it's natural limitations.
“I recently dated a guy with over $100,000 in student loans, and that did not stop him from taking me to dinner or asking me to go on walks in the park. Using the economy as a reason to not date is just another lame excuse, and should not be tolerated”.
Yes, people really do still date, and try to do so cheaply. But KG? This is not exactly 'wine & dine' in the style many feel they should be accustomed to. It's nice, but it can't be long before someone looses interest because 'he's just not special enough to do X, Y, z…'. The lousy state of the economy is not a just a reason Not to date. It's also a very good reason why Not to get married, and to postpone a divorce too, as everything costs money! This from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/10/recess...
I quote from this:
“Some Americans are putting off marriage and children because of the economy, according to a national survey released Wednesday.
Eleven percent of Americans surveyed said they planned to postpone marriage, and the same number said they are waiting to have children, according to the survey by legal website FindLaw.com”.
And further: “The trend is more pronounced among young folks and poor folks. Thirty-seven percent of people between 18 and 34 said they were postponing marriage, divorce, or children. Thirty-five percent of those with less than $35,000 in yearly household income said they were putting off a big decision”.
So YES the economy does influence peoples behavior!
I also assume this is your age set too. Speaking of your last date with Mr. 100K in debt, that does sound like a 'professional' sort of load, so he probably has some decent prospects as a Doc or a Lawyer. So are you still with him? Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'
Hi KG, thanks so much for reading and commenting! I totally agree with you about the economy – a walk in the park is lovely. A guy can make pasta at his place (and I'll bring the wine) for $10. I think it's all about the effort. Of course, there are some women who want a guy to spend money on them. They are seeking something other than love and relationship. A rich guy can spend a ton of money and be lazy about dating. A broke guy can be utterly charming and inventive with very little to spend.
I feel as though I should argue some minutiae pieces of this posting, but I really cannot… I am 24, out of college for two years, and I have to say that this posting (and blog in general) hits the issue right on. As a fan of micro economics, I appreciate your incorporation of economic concepts, and I do agree that relationship decisions are economic in nature.
You may have seen this article, but just in case you have not, NPR had a good story about the matter as well. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?st...
One comment of interest- I was caught up in the hookup culture in school for the reasons that you mentioned, and I somehow unexpectedly stumbled into a relationship towards the end of college (it has now been 2.5 years). I have to say that transition from a transactional-based hooking up interactions to a meaningful relationship was very stressful. I can imagine that many young people also lack such relationship skills, and it can be awkward when some of them may be learning some basic skills for the first time when they are in their early-mid (and sometimes late) 20s.
Hey, Rachel, thanks so much for coming by and leaving a comment! You make a very interesting point – that moving from hooking up to a relationship can be very difficult because we have no practice at relationships. It really does have enormous implications for dating and marriage later, shifting the whole timeline back by perhaps 5 years? That is extremely significant for women, whose fertility has an expiration date.
The caveman argument is really getting old. I'm disappointed in Dr. Kaku, jumping on that tired old bandwagon; he's capable of far superior analyses.
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that man's brain has evolved significantly since then? Or are you questioning evolutionary psychology?
Actually it has indeed involved since then, at least somewhat…. Evolutionary psychology is a field deified by imaginative crackpot theorists and not taken very seriously by anthropologists and those who work with physical evidence. Read what Stephen Jay Gould has to say on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#...
Also, to help state how ridiculous the idea is that evolution has stopped or something http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12...
susan, thanks for your comment. I am well aware of the controversy surrounding evo psych, but I don't think you can call them crackpots. Many of them have at least the scholarly qualifications of SJG. The problem is, anthropology alone cannot explain human behavior. For that, we need psychology. There is plenty of real research being done in this area – Helen Fisher of Rutgers (an anthropologist) is a highly respected researcher in relationship science, which dovetails nicely with evo psych.
This does seem counterintuitive. I don't think Michio Kaku's quote here is meant to imply that evolution has ceased. Rather it proceeds very, very slowly.
but…it doesn't proceed very, very slowly per se. Throughout biological history, evolution has occurred at varying rates. Read on the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Today incredibly strong evidence suggests that evolution is occurring at a greatly sped up rate.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22188535/
(there are more but at the moment I cannot retrieve them.)
There are in fact, several more fundamental arguments to keep in mind when (usually angry and frustrated male) laypeople are discussing evolutionary psychology as the basis for 100% of people's behavior (sarcasm).
1. Human genetic variability- this forms the basis of evolution. We are not all identical robots, otherwise we would not have genes or sexual selection or any of that. We are different to begin with, and very likely, if being a “nice guy” or “family oriented” or “beta” or zeta or WHATEVER they call it, conferred the least advantage of any behavior in the majority of our prehistoric environments, then guess what? It would be the very, very least frequent gene; yet it IS strange indeed that only a minority of men seem so desperately testosterone-driven and anti-relationship in the general population. Like the evolutionary psychologists would want us to believe. If THOSE genes conferred the greatest evolutionary advantage then why aren't they the overwhelming majority?
2. The modern human race did not evolve in one environment. Where exactly are these evolutionary psychologists referring to, when they refer to some absurdly vague “distant past environment that we evolved in”? This is funny, because geneticists, ethnologists and biological anthropologists all can tell you and provide you proof.
There simply *was* no ONE environment where all selective presssures were the same throughout our evolution from being chimps to the time that a relatively small group of modern humans (almost exactly like us) migrated out of the African continent and eventually populated every corner of the globe .
Humans migrated, met separate populations, mingled, separated, etc. WE EVOLVED IN MANY DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS. There were bottlenecks (theoretically- more than one), genetic drift etc. There were several isolated populations at different points in history. The story is not as simple as they make it seem.
Evolutionary psychology, wtf. Maybe, I'm just one of those silly people that greatly prefer facts, and big pictures and logical thought, instead of long diatribes of what WOMEN SHOULD and how we are all PROGRAMMED.
Seriously, show me a random sample of MRIs or a set of proteins linked to a trait and then I won't assume you are just another angry acne-ravaged, comicon-going, socially undeveloped teenage male abused by your mother and on the verge of a homicidal high school rampage. I promise.
One last point, I think a really really important and specific point to address your contention, is that – I believe we are confused over the meanings of anthropology, psychology and which is relevant to this discussion. It is biology relevant here, NOT psychology as you mention Susan. Anthropology comes closer to explaining the biological drives- not psychology which deals to a MUCH higher extent with personal and environmental factors than does anthro.
Um….just *had to* say, I know us women are (usually) nice and everything, but um, this guy MOST CERTAINLY shuld NOT- I repeat, NOT- be interacting with women. Or people. Further interactions in his current state of mind will most likely increase his amount of rejection and exacerbate the problem- for him and others around him.
He is not a shy teenage girl with a crush; what he clearly needs is therapy and probably some form of social coaching or even cognitive deprogramming …
Not a therapist just someone who understands people…
Susan, thanks for all the great information here. I find it fascinating that humans are evolving “away from each other” based on regional differences.
1. Well, I like your reasoning here. I spend a lot of time advocating for guys that most people would consider “beta.” I think the alpha/beta distinction has come to be something largely cultural. Men who aren't successful with women start behaving in ways they think will attract women (negative ways) and think that turns them into alpha. If there is a real distinction, it has to be hormonal, as you say. Also, I contend that while high-testosterone males may have been useful in slaying the woolly mammoth, certainly in today's American information economy, we see men with presumably lower testosterone levels succeeding. In fact, there are consulting firms that specialize in working remedially with “alpha” or Type A males to make them more collaborative in the workplace.
2. I hear everything you are saying here, and I'm willing to defer to your apparent expertise – I'm an amateur. However, I have read a great deal of research that explores what traits women seek for long-term partnering, for example. There seems to be some consensus around this. Does it not make sense that women would be “programmed” to seek partners who would be reliable in helping them raise their young to adulthood?
I understand your point about anthro, psych and biology, but it seems to me that the lines between all of these disciplines are getting blurred in the academic community. In fact, economists have jumped into the fray, along with game theorists, sociologists, etc.
Susan, thanks for all the great information here. I find it fascinating that humans are evolving “away from each other” based on regional differences.
1. Well, I like your reasoning here. I spend a lot of time advocating for guys that most people would consider “beta.” I think the alpha/beta distinction has come to be something largely cultural. Men who aren't successful with women start behaving in ways they think will attract women (negative ways) and think that turns them into alpha. If there is a real distinction, it has to be hormonal, as you say. Also, I contend that while high-testosterone males may have been useful in slaying the woolly mammoth, certainly in today's American information economy, we see men with presumably lower testosterone levels succeeding. In fact, there are consulting firms that specialize in working remedially with “alpha” or Type A males to make them more collaborative in the workplace.
2. I hear everything you are saying here, and I'm willing to defer to your apparent expertise – I'm an amateur. However, I have read a great deal of research that explores what traits women seek for long-term partnering, for example. There seems to be some consensus around this. Does it not make sense that women would be “programmed” to seek partners who would be reliable in helping them raise their young to adulthood?
I understand your point about anthro, psych and biology, but it seems to me that the lines between all of these disciplines are getting blurred in the academic community. In fact, economists have jumped into the fray, along with game theorists, sociologists, etc.
Women want relationships. In the dating era, men exchanged commitment for sex. In the hookup era, commitments are not required to get sex. Therefore, men don't offer it, and relationships are scarce. Women can only right this sinking ship by closing their legs. I'm not surprising men wouldn't be pleased by the idea, but the truth is the hookup culture serves only the interests of the most desirable men. Many women find that they can have a piece of him for one night, and feel validated by his temporary desire.
As for your name, imagine this pickup line:
“Hi, I'd like to pound you with my Hammer of the Gods.”
Gross!
The real trouble here seems to be that you without realizing it are equating sexuality with misogyny.
Hammer, your comment makes me a bit suspicious as to why your anger seems to be targeted against “the sexual control attractive women already have”. Is it perchance because you have been felt a victim to this power?
However, on a more humanist note, let me say this: if you could for a minute take yourself out of your own spoiled and impotent rage (please try just for a second) and try to be objective, you might realize that your anger at women's power over you is much the same as our anger at men's power over us when we worry over when or whether or not he is going to call, going to leave us for the next hot thing, etc. We- according to you- are at the opposing end of the power spectrum from you but in the end, we all are seeking the same thing because we are more alike than you think. Don't we all want the same thing? Don't you guys want affection, attention, love too?
susan, yes, yes, yes. Thanks for weighing in here. Ugh. Also, I love what you said about how we all want the same thing. The blame game takes so much time and energy, gets everyone so riled up, that we get more invested in the battle than the outcome. And we wind up more isolated than ever. It just doesn't make sense.
So this whole sorry saga started because women decided to tie relationships with sex, to use sex merely as a means to an end.
Or because men decided to offer commitment in exchange for sex, to use relationships merely as a means to an end.
Why can they not want the same thing?
Woman is the honorable personality in society. It should have the values in the society. In the role as Daughter, , Sister , Wife and grandmother there is the hierarchy system as the time passes its values should increase but in our society the values of the Woman are just in the age of 18 to 35 she have some value after that it is ignored at every stage. To change the Natural trend and natural human values and the family system we will have to suffer a lot.
A time will come when we will in minorities in our own countries and call the people from other nations. There is a natural family and pure relationship system in Islam which values to the person according to their hierarchy in society. The natural flow of life is necessary otherwise we will not humans we will machines.