Cheap Sex

July 31, 2017
In this very unsatisfying third book, sociologist Regnerus (Premarital Sex in America) unsuccessfully applies economic theory to the messy realm of modern romantic and sexual life in an effort to understand “the sexual ideas, habits and relationships of Americans” today and what has changed in the past 40 years. Sexual relations, Regnerus maintains, are mediated by a “mating market” through which men acquire sex from women in exchange for commitments: the fewer commitments women demand from men prior to providing sex, the cheaper sex becomes. Regnerus proceeds to argue that the development of reliable birth control, the advent of online dating, and increasingly easy access to pornography have contributed to the dramatic decline in the value of sex. Yet reducing sexual intimacy to a marketplace exchange fails to account for the diversity of human relationships. Most obviously, the marketplace described is by definition limited to men seeking out the services of women. The limitations of the marketplace analysis quickly become apparent when the author attempts to account for same-sex relationships, finally admitting that “the exchange relationship is heteronormative” and offensively suggesting that the fight for marriage equality was “a cultural land grab rather than a product genuine desire.” Among recent books that apply economic theory to contemporary hookup culture (notably 2015’s Modern Love by comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg, and 2016’s Labor of Love by Moira Weigel), Regnerus’s book is the most clouded by academic jargon and limited in scope.