The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Economics of Love

Posted on | January 21, 2011 | 27 Comments

That’s when she told me a story
About free milk and a cow.
She said, ‘No hugging, no kissing
Until I get a wedding vow . . .’

Research affirms old-fashioned common sense:

As women progress in educational and professional opportunities, their odds of finding a committed man appear to go down.
That’s one of the findings in the new book “Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying,” by researchers Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker at the University of Texas at Austin.
Researchers found that since women in the 18- to 23-year-old group feel they don’t need men for financial dependence, many of them feel they can play around with multiple partners without consequence, and that the early 20s isn’t the time to have a serious relationship. But eventually, they do come to want a real, lasting relationship. The problem is that there will still be women who will have sex readily without commitment, and since men know this, fewer of them are willing to go steady.
“Women have plenty of freedom, but freedom does not translate easily into getting what you want,” Regnerus said.
The wide availability of pornography has also influenced the dynamics of relations between men and women, Regnerus said. A segment of 20-something men are content to have their sexual experiences by themselves, removing them from the pool of available partners. That means high-quality men – likely those who want monogamous, committed relationships – are still eligible for dating, but the overall dating pool has shrunk, meaning some women will be left unsatisfactorily single.

Which is to say that it is in women’s long-term best interests to organize a nookie shortage — making sex available only on condition of marriage — and to revile as sluts those floozies who refuse to cooperate with efforts of the Nookie Cartel to increase the value of the aforesaid commodity.

But why lecture, when it has been so well expressed in a song?

UPDATE: Linked by James Nicholas, the father of two girls. Having daughters tends to help a guy get in touch with his inner social conservative.


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Category: Culture, Economics, Marriage, Science, Sex

Comments

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Too bad more artists from the sixties and seventies can’t make kick-ass videos of the old classics. Was that really the Georgia Satellites? Seems they ought to be a lot older looking than that.

  • Ericdondero

    Ah, Stacy, but here’s the fly in your ointment. When such societies do arise, such as some heavily religously Catholic areas of Mexico, or Victora England, there was/is always an outlet – prostitution. Men will flock to prostitutes – legal or otherwise – if the women gang up and limit sex.

    And thus, we’re back in the same game, where men will have the upper hand.

    It’s called a substitute good in Eco 101 terminology.

  • Ericdondero

    Ah, Stacy, but here’s the fly in your ointment. When such societies do arise, such as some heavily religously Catholic areas of Mexico, or Victora England, there was/is always an outlet – prostitution. Men will flock to prostitutes – legal or otherwise – if the women gang up and limit sex.

    And thus, we’re back in the same game, where men will have the upper hand.

    It’s called a substitute good in Eco 101 terminology.

  • Wordygirl

    Nobody does this topic better than you, Stacy. I love quoting your articles to my 19 year old daughter.

  • Anonymous

    So what you’re saying is that all these amateur sluts are causing unemployment among whores.

    Not really a convincing argument, you see, unless it’s your belief that a woman who might be able to make several hundred dollars a night as a prostitute is getting a better bargain by tumbling into bed with a stranger who buys her a few drinks at a nightclub.

  • nicholas

    I was pretty confident this whole Nooki Cartel had been around awhile. We haven’t seen as much of them since people got it into their heads that if a guy thinks it’s a good idea, it must be the best. Let’s hope for a resurgence in the nooki futures market.

    Linked.

    Well done, Stace.

  • http://nicholas-whatthe.blogspot.com/ nicholas

    How about this? What I just said>

  • Serfer62

    Don’t forget the origin of Feminism movement in the 70s with their brutal assaults on men … ie no-fault divorse but splitting the assets, men can forget of ever seeing their kids, special women priveleges…all that exsist today and are certainly inhibitors to marriage as the climbing age for first time marriage shows.
    As a veteran of the Feminazis wars, I was an early “Practise Husband”, I slowly learned how much more freedom I had as a single.
    It depends on women to make the choice, use marriage as a committement or a fad. PS the divorce rate is 69% women intiated.

  • Joe
  • DaveO

    What price freedom? Abortions until one is ready. No-fault divorce when one is no longer steady. STD, rape, and bugs in the beddy. The only thing that separates her from a prositute is the price of admission.

    Maybe mom was right: go to church, find a nice girl, and never let her watch Oprah.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Maybe Muslims have the right idea. Marry three or four women. One of them is bound to make a good wife. Just keep the others for around for housecleaning, baby-sitting, or when you’re just in the mood for a change of (biting tongue, restraining myself here) PACE.

  • mike
  • Joe

    Off Topic but worth it: Thank God it’s Friday!

  • Joe
  • http://www.haemet.blogivists.com Roxeanne de Luca

    Words cannot express how happy I am that someone else agrees with me – women need to stick together, slut-shame bad women, and make it clear to men that nookie with a nice girl means a ring. Also, I’ve long wondered why men expect me to “give it up”, as it were, for a rented movie and a glass of lousy wine when I could command much more on the streets… so thanks for saying this:

    Not really a convincing argument, you see, unless it’s your belief that a woman who might be able to make several hundred dollars a night as a prostitute is getting a better bargain by tumbling into bed with a stranger who buys her a few drinks at a nightclub.

    ..’cuz every time I’ve looked at some prospective suitor and said something like, “If I’m going to sleep with someone that early on, why wouldn’t I just be a prostitute? I would get better dinners, would get paid – really well, and could corner the market on guys who are way more successful than you are,” they look at me like I’m crazy and then get really mad.

  • http://www.haemet.blogivists.com Roxeanne de Luca

    I ranted about this below, but the other advantages of prostitutes is honesty. If a man has to buy sex from a woman, he knows that he has only earned the physical part; he doesn’t expect the emotional part. He understands that there’s women you pay to sleep with and women you marry to sleep with. These days, men think there’s just women you sleep with, that’s it. And pardon me if I think that, as a WOMAN, I should have the grounds to say, “If this isn’t emotional for you, if you could do this with any woman, or any woman with the right equipment and the right attitude, then I don’t want it from you.”

    As it is, though, we’re expected to act like prostitutes, without the benefits and without the emotional reserve. When sexually loose women are “nice girls”, or tell you that they are, men WILL expect ALL nice women to be sexually loose. the harsh reality is that we are expected to live down to the standards of the worst among us

    But hey,, James Nicholas thinks I’m “Machiavellian”, so what’s a girl to do?

  • Ilion7

    I’ve long said that the only difference, worth noting, between a slut and a whore is that the whore has enough self-respect to get paid for her “easy virtue.”

    I assure you, not *every* man expects a women to “put out.”

    I can *also* assure you that if one is a man who does not try to pressure a woman to “put out,” that *she* will be royally pissed.

  • gg

    I agree that men and women view sex differently. Just because many men see sex as solely a bodily function doesn’t mean that’s the truth, and many women seeing it as connected with love doesn’t necessarily equate to “emotional displacement.” Both views are valid in their own way.

    There are probably many areas in which what is taken for truth is simply a male consensus, developed over centuries of patriarchy, without consultation with those holding up the other half of the sky. And as the patriarchal view has developed in isolation, it has tended to reinforce itself, and so on and so on.

    And religion has been at the core of this nonsense. We all know the basic story. Yada yada, in fact.

  • http://waxingerratic.wordpress.com/ ECM

    Wow, I hope this post is satire because it does not, in any way, line up w/ the history of the USA, when, indeed, women did ‘save’ themselves for marriage. (Note: in case there’s some confusion, culturally, Mexico and Victorian England are not, nor have they ever been, anything like the USA.)

    And as for dealing with prostitutes, McCain made his point above: you call them “whores” and “sluts” and you *stigmatize* them just like you do to the ‘regular’ girls, which is *exactly* how it’s been done in America since at least the turn of the 20th century. (And unless I’ve missed something, we still do think of prostitutes, by and large, as whores, and it’s a badge of shame–not honor–to visit one, even in our debauched age.)

  • http://nicholas-whatthe.blogspot.com/ nicholas

    “But hey,, James Nicholas thinks I’m “Machiavellian”, so what’s a girl to do?”

    And brilliantly so. But hey, you guys around here don’t have to take my word on it. Read it yourself.

  • Joe

    McCoo and Davis actually wed in 1969 when this song came out and have been married since. They credit their success in marriage on their Christian faith.

  • Lorenzo

    No mention of Lysistrata? That nookie embargo stopped a war but exacerbated the war between the sexes.

  • http://rightnetwork.com Joy W. McCann

    I agree with your logic, though not with the notion that women should “slut-shame” other women.
    I think the case for restraint makes itself without “slut-shaming,” and without Stacy making cavalier remarks about “nookie.”
    Because I’ve been observing human nature, and I think restraint speaks for itself, without any need for a “hard sell” or social engineering.
    All we need is to teach grownups how to date again, and teach young women how to dress.

  • http://rightnetwork.com Joy W. McCann

    There is a respectful way to make the case for chastity. I’m not positive you’ve accomplished that here, Stace.

    But I’ll buy you a beer anyway; my turn, after all.

  • Pingback: West vs East Men vs Woman « Da Techguy's Blog

  • http://nicholas-whatthe.blogspot.com/ nicholas

    Now that’s a sensible comment.

  • http://nicholas-whatthe.blogspot.com/ nicholas

    I think he covered that with the Georgia Satellites.

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