Posted March 2, Underlying this aggression is the notion that sex, because it is so valuable, should be given freely and that money contaminates the mutual exchange of physical intimacy. I have taken a few economics classes recently and despite the discipline's ability to confound intuition and everyday logic, this concept of 'free is better' still escapes my young economic mind. My mathematical mind can't seem to conjure up the right equation either.
It is said that money can't buy you love though some may disagree but why should it not buy you sex? It appears to be more socially acceptable though more by young adults than us older folk to get drunk and have sex with some recently met acquaintance than it is to soberly and intently have sex where money changes hands.
And for the purposes of this piece I will focus on women getting paid by men. The answer lies in patriarchy. Should women be free to sell their bodies as they wish then the 'sexual value' of women goes down. What is not valuable in freedom has no value in control. Rape becomes less of a weapon because there is no man to incite to anger, no woman to shame.
The woman will always hurt when violated but when the free sexual expression of women becomes hers to do with as she wishes, then the shame and stigma of sex—in all its forms—decreases. In the USA there is a stigma attached to sex thus all the talk about our uteri and what we can do with it when. We would much rather talk about money. In Europe talking about money is as taboo as talking about sex in the USA. There is a puritan undercurrent Ok, far from undercurrent but a big tsunami :- that says that abstinence before marriage really is the ideal.
And for a woman, a 'big number' of partners prior to marriage makes her less valuable. Just as it was in medieval times. As for the white dress at marriage and even quinceaneros I cannot even begin to get started without busting my carotid artery. All I can say is that when 'tradition' becomes the excuse to participate in one's own oppression then… As for the giving away from father to husband, well I digress…sort of. Be clear that this is not about sexual exploitation of minors age of consent being a topic for another day , nor am I talking about the trafficking of women though it is highly entangled with this notion of women's sexuality being owned by men.
