Catherine Hakim, Honey Honey: The Power of Erotic Capital (London: Allen Lane 2011)
Catherine Hakim, a British sociologist – proudly displaying her own ‘erotic capital’ in a photograph on the dust jacket of the hardcover edition of her book – introduces her concept of ‘erotic capital’ in this work, variously titled either ‘Money Honey: the Power of Erotic Capital’ or ‘Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom’.[1]
Although Hakim insists this concept of ‘erotic capital’ is original to her, in reality it appears to be little more than social science jargon for sex appeal – a new term invented for a familiar concept, introduced to disguise the lack of originality of the concept.[2]
Certainly, Hakim may be right that economists and sociologists have often failed to recognize and give sufficient weight to the importance of sexual attractiveness in human relations. However, this reflects only the prejudices, puritanism and prudery of economists and sociologists, not the originality of the concept.
In fact, the importance of sexual attractiveness in human affairs has been recognized by intelligent laypersons, poets and peasants from time immemorial. It is also, of course, a central focus of much research in evolutionary psychology.
Hakim maintains that her concept of ‘erotic capital’ is broader than mere sex appeal by suggesting that even heterosexual people tend to admire and enjoy the company of individuals of the same sex with high levels of erotic capital:
“Even if they are not lesbian, women often admire other women who are exceptionally beautiful, or well-dressed, and charming. Even if they are not gay, men admire other men with exceptionally well-toned, ‘cut’ bodies, handsome faces and elegant social manners” (p153).
There is perhaps some truth to this.
For example, I recall hearing that the audiences at (male) bodybuilding contests are, perhaps oddly, composed predominantly of heterosexual men. Similarly, since action movies are a genre that appeals primarily to male audiences, it was presumably heterosexual men and boys who represented the main audiences for Arnold Schwarzenegger action movies during his 1980s heyday, and they were surely not attracted by his acting ability. Indeed, I am reminded of this meme.[3]
Likewise, heterosexual women seem, in many respects, even more obsessed with female beauty than are heterosexual men. Indeed, this is arguably not very surprising, since female beauty is of far more importance to women than to men, since their own marital prospects, and hence socioeconomic status, depend substantially upon it.
Thus, just as pornographic magazines, which, until eclipsed in the internet age, attracted an overwhelmingly male audience, were filled with pictures of beautiful, sexy women in various states of undress, so fashion magazines, which attracted an audience as overwhelmingly female and porn’s was male, were likewise filled with pictures of beautiful, sexy women, albeit somewhat less explicit and wearing more clothes.
However, if men do indeed sometimes admire muscular men, and women do sometimes admire beautiful women, I nevertheless suspect people are just as often envious of and hence hostile towards same-sex rivals whom they perceive as more attractive than themselves.
Indeed, there is even some evidence for this.
In her book, Survival of the Prettiest (which I have reviewed here), Nancy Etcoff reviews many of the advantages associated with good looks, as does Catherine Hakim in Money Honey. However, Etcoff, for her part, also identifies at least one area where beautiful women are apparently at a disadvantage – namely, they tend to have difficulties holding down friendships with other women, presumably on account of jealousy:
“Good looking women in particular encounter trouble with other women. They are less liked by other women, even other good-looking women” (Survival of the Prettiest: p50; citing Krebs & Adinolfy 1975).[4]
Interestingly, sexually insightful French novelist Michel Houellebecq, in his novel, Whatever, suggests that the same may be true for exceptionally handsome men. Thus, he writes:
“Exceptionally beautiful people are often modest, gentle, affable, considerate. They have great difficulty in making friends, at least among men. They’re forced to make a constant effort to try and make you forget their superiority, be it ever so little” (Whatever: p63).
A Sex Difference in Sexiness?
Besides introducing her supposedly novel concept of ‘erotic capital’, Hakim’s book purports to make two original discoveries, namely that:
- Women have greater erotic capital than men do; and
- Because men have a greater sex drive than women, “there is a systematic and apparently universal male sex deficit: men generally want a lot more sex than they get” (p39).
However, once one recognizes that ‘erotic capital’ essentially amounts to sex appeal, it is doubtful whether these two claims are really conceptually separate.
Rather, it is the very fact that men are not getting as much sex as they want that explains why women have greater sex appeal than men, because men are always on the lookout for more sex – or, to put the matter the other way around, it is women’s greater levels of sex appeal (i.e. ability to trigger the male sex drive) that explains why heterosexual men want more sex than they can get. After all, it is sex appeal that drives the desire for sex, just as it is one person’s desire for sex that invests the person with whom they desire to have sex with sex appeal.
Indeed, as Hakim herself acknowledges:
“It is impossible to separate women’s erotic capital, which provokes men’s desire… from male desire itself” (p97).
Evolutionary Psychology
Yet there is a curious omission in Hakim’s otherwise comprehensive review of the literature on this topic, one that largely deprives her exposition of its claims to originality.
Save for two passing references (at p88 and in an endnote at p320), she omits any mention of a theoretical approach in the human behavioural sciences which has, for at least thirty years prior to the publication of her book, not only focused on sexual attractiveness and recognized what Hakim refers to as the ‘universal male sex deficit’ (albeit not by this name), but also provided a compelling theoretical explanation for this phenomenon, something conspicuously absent from her own exposition – namely, evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.
According to evolutionary psychologists, men have evolved a greater desire for sex, especially commitment-free promiscuous sex, because it enabled them to increase their reproductive success at minimal cost, whereas the reproductive rate of women was more tightly constrained, burdened as they are with the costs of both pregnancy and lactation.
This insight, known as Bateman’s principle dates from over sixty years ago (Bateman 1948), was rediscovered, refined and formalized by Robert Trivers in the 1970s (Trivers 1972), and applied explicitly to humans from at least the late-1970s with the publication of Donald Symons’ seminal The Evolution of Human Sexuality (which I have reviewed here).
Therefore, Hakim is disingenuous claiming:
“Only one social science theory [namely, Hakim’s own] accords erotic capital any role at all” (p156).
Yet, despite her otherwise comprehensive review the literature on sexual attractiveness and its correlates, including citations of some studies conducted by evolutionary psychologists themselves to test explicitly sociobiological theories, one searches the index of her book in vain for any entry for ‘evolutionary psychology’, ‘sociobiology’ or ‘behavioural ecology’.[5]
Yet Hakim’s book often merely retreats ground evolutionary psychologists covered decades previously.
For instance, Hakim treats male homosexual promiscuity as a window onto the nature of male sexuality when it is freed from the constraints imposed by women (p68-71; p95-6).
Thus, as evidence that men have a stronger sex drive than women, Hakim writes:
“Paradoxically, the most compelling evidence of this comes from homosexuals, who are relatively impervious to the brainwashing and socialization of the heterosexual majority. Lesbian couples enjoy sex less frequently than any other group. Gay male couples enjoy sex more frequently than any other group—and their promiscuous lifestyle makes them the envy of many heterosexual men. Gay men in long-term partnerships who have become sexually bored with each other maintain an active sex life through casual sex, hookups, and promiscuity. Even among people who step outside the heterosexual hegemony to carve out their own independent sexual cultures, men are much more sexually active than women, on average” (p95-6).
Here, Hakim echoes, but conspicuously fails to cite or acknowledge the work of evolutionary psychologist Donald Symons, who, in his seminal The Evolution of Human Sexuality (which I have reviewed here), first published in 1979, some three decades before Hakim’s own book, pioneered this exact same approach, in his ninth chapter, titled ‘Test Cases: Hormones and Homosexuals’. Thus, Symons writes:
“I have argued that male sexuality and female sexuality are fundamentally different, and that sexual relationships between men and women compromise these differences; if so, the sex lives of homosexual men and women—who need not compromise sexually with members of the opposite sex—should provide dramatic insight into male sexuality and female sexuality in their undiluted states. Homosexuals are the acid test for hypotheses about sex differences in sexuality” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p292).
To this end, Symons briefly surveys the rampant promiscuity of American gay culture in the pre-AIDS era when he was writing, including the then-prevalent practice of gay men meeting strangers for anonymous sex in public lavatories, gay bars and exclusively gay bathhouses (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p293-4).
He then contrasts this hedonistic lifestyle with that of lesbians, whose romantic relationships typically mirror heterosexual relationships, being characterized by long-term pair bonds and monogamy.
This similarity between lesbian relationships and heterosexual coupling, and the stark contrast with rampant homosexual male promiscuity, suggests, Symons argues, that, contrary to feminist dogma, which asserts that it is men who both dictate and primarily benefit from the terms of heterosexual coupling, it is in fact women who dictate the terms of heterosexual coupling in accordance with their own interests and desires (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p300).
Thus, as popular science writer Matt Ridley writes:
“Donald Symons… has argued that the reason male homosexuals on average have more sexual partners than male heterosexuals, and many more than female homosexuals, is that male homosexuals are acting out male tendencies or instincts unfettered by those of women” (The Red Queen: p176).
This is, of course, virtually exactly the same argument that Hakim is making, using exactly the same evidence, but Symons is nowhere cited in her book.
Hakim again echoes the work of Donald Symons in noting the absence of a market for pornography among women to mirror the extensive market for pornography produced for male consumers.
Thus, before the internet age, magazines featuring primarily nude pictures of women commanded sizable circulations despite the stigma attached to their purchase. In contrast, Hakim reports:
“The vast majority of male nude photography is produced by men for male viewers, often with a distinctly gay sensibility… Women should logically be the main audience for male nudes, but they display little interest. Most of the erotic magazines aimed at women in Europe have failed, and almost none of the photographers doing male nudes are women. The taste for erotica and pornography is typically a male interest, whether heterosexual or homosexual in character…The lack of female interest in male nudes (at least to the same level as men) demonstrates both lower female sexual interest and desire, and the higher erotic value of the female nude in almost all cultures —with a major exception being ancient Greece” (p71).
Yet here again Hakim directly echoes, but fails to cite, Donald Symons’s seminal The Evolution of Human Sexuality, who, citing the Kinsey Reports, observed:
“Enormous numbers of photographs of nude females and magazines exhibiting nude or nearly nude females are produced for heterosexual men; photographs and magazines depicting nude males are produced for homosexual men, not for women” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p174)
This Symons calls “the natural experiment of commercial periodical publishing” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p182).
Similarly, just as Hakim notes that “the vast majority of male nude photography is produced by men for male viewers, often with a distinctly gay sensibility” (p71), so Symons three decades earlier concluded:
“That homosexual men are at least as likely as heterosexual men to be interested in pornography, cosmetic qualities and youth seems to me to imply that these interests are no more the result of advertising than adultery and alcohol consumption are the result of country and western music” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p304).
However, Symons’s pioneering book on the evolutionary psychology human sexuality is not cited anywhere in Hakim’s book, and neither is it listed in her otherwise quite extensive bibliography.
Sex Surveys
Another odd omission from Hakim’s book is that, while she extensively cites the findings of numerous ‘sex surveys’ replicating the robust finding that men report more sexual partners over any given timespan than women do, Hakim never grapples with, and only once in passing alludes to, the obvious problem that (homosexual encounters aside) every sexual encounter must involve both a male and a female, such that, on average, given the approximately equal numbers of both males and females in the population as a whole (i.e. an equal sex ratio), men and women must have roughly the same average number of sex partners over their lifetimes.[6]
Two explanations have been offered for this anomalous finding. Firstly, there may be a small number of highly promiscuous women – i.e. prostitutes – whom surveys generally fail to adequately sample (Brewer et al 2000).
Alternatively, it is suggested, not unreasonably, that respondents may be dishonest even in ostensibly anonymous surveys, especially when they deal with sensitive subjects such as a person’s sexual experience and behaviours.
Popular stereotype has it that it is men who lie in sex surveys in order to portray themselves as more promiscuous and hence ‘successful with women’ than they really are.
However, while this claim seems to be mostly conjecture, there is actual data showing that women are also dishonest in sex surveys, lying about their number of sex partners for precisely the opposite reason – namely to appear more innocent and chaste, or at least less rampantly slutty, than they really are, given the widespread demonization of promiscuity among women.
Thus, one interesting study found that women report relatively more sexual partners in surveys when they believe their answers are anonymous than they do when they believe their answers may be viewed by the experimenter, and more still when they believe that they are hooked up to a polygraph machine designed to detect any dishonest answers when reporting their answers. Indeed, in the fake lie-detector conditions, female respondents actually reported more sexual partners than did male respondents (Alexander and Fisher 2003).
A further factor may be that men and women define ‘sex’ differently, at least for the purposes of giving answers to sex surveys, perhaps exploiting the same sort of semantic ambiguities that Bill Clinton sought to exploit to evade perjury charges in relation to his claim not to have had ‘sexual relations’ with Monica Lewinsky.
Paternity Certainty, Mate Guarding and the Suppression of Female Sexuality
Hakim claims men have suppressed women’s exploitation of their erotic capital because they are jealous of the fact that women have more of it and wish to stop women taking advantage of their superior levels of ‘erotic capital’. Thus, she claims:
“Men have taken steps to prevent women exploiting their one major advantage over men, starting with the idea erotic capital is worthless anyway. Women who openly deploy their beauty or sex appeal are belittled as stupid, lacking in intellect and other ‘meaningful’ social attributes” (p75).
In particular, Hakim views so-called ‘sexual double-standards’ and the puritanical attitudes expressed by many religions (especially Christianity and Islam) as mechanisms by which men suppress female sexuality and thereby prevent women taking advantage of their greater levels of ‘erotic capital’ or sex appeal as compared to men.
Citing the work of female historian Gerda Lerner, Hakim claims that men established ‘patriarchy’ and sought to control the sexuality of women so as to assure themselves of the paternity of their offspring:
“Patriarchal systems of control and authority were developed by men who wanted to be sure that their land and property, whatever they were, would be passed on to their own biological children” (p77).
However, she fails to explain the ultimate evolutionary reason why men would ever even be interested in, or care about, the paternity of the offspring who inherit their property.
Here, of course, evolutionary psychology provides a ready and compelling explanation.
Evolutionary psychologists contend that human male’s interest in the paternity of their putative offspring ultimately reflects the sociobiological imperative of maximizing their reproductive success by securing the passage of their genes into subsequent generations, and their concern that their parental investment not be maladaptively misdirected towards offspring fathered, not by themselves, but rather by a rival male.
Yet Hakim is evidently unaware of, or at least does not cite, the substantial scientific literature in evolutionary psychology on male sexual jealousy and mate guarding (e.g. Wilson & Daly 1992; Buss et al 1992).
Had Hakim familiarized herself with this literature, and the literature on mate guarding among non-human animals, she might have spared herself from her next error. For on the very next page, citing another female historian, one Julia Stonehouse, Hakim purports to trace men’s efforts to control women’s sexuality back to the supposed discovery of the role sex – and of men – in reproduction in 3000BC (p78-9).
“At the beginning of civilization, from around 20000 BC to 8000 BC, there were no gods, only goddesses who had the magical power to give birth to new life quite independently… Men were seen to have no role at all in reproduction up up to around 3000 BC… Theories of reproduction changed around 3000 BC – man was suddenly presented as sowing the ‘seed’ that was incubated by women to deliver the man’s child… Control of women’s sexuality started only when men believed they planted the unique seed that produces a baby” (p78-9).[7]
This would seem a very odd claim to anyone with a background in biology, especially in sociobiology, behavioural ecology and animal behaviour.
Hakim is apparently unaware that naturalists have long observed analogous patterns of what biologists call mate guarding among non-human species, who are, of course, surely not consciously (or even subconsciously) aware of the relationship between sexual intercourse and reproduction, but who have nevertheless been programmed by natural selection to behave in such a way as to maximise their reproductive success by engaging in such mate-guarding behaviours, even without any conscious awareness of the ultimate evolutionary function of such behaviour.
For example, analogous behaviours are observed among our closest extant nonhuman relatives, namely chimpanzees. Thus, Jane Goodall, in her seminal study of chimpanzee behaviour in the wild, describes how the dominant ‘alpha male’ within a troop of chimpanzees will attempt to prevent any males other than him from mating with a fertile estrus female, though she acknowledges:
“The best that even a powerful alpha male can, realistically, hope to do is to ensure that most of the copulations around the time of ovulation are his” (The Chimpanzees of Gombe: p473).
In addition, she reports how even subordinate males sometimes successfully sequester fertile females into ‘consortships’, whereby they seclude fertile females, often forcibly, leading them to a peripheral part of the group’s home range so as to monopolize sexual access to the female in question, until her period of maximum fertility and sexual receptivity has passed (The Chimpanzees of Gombe: p453-465).
Such chimpanzee ‘consortships’ sometimes involve force and coercion but other times seem to be largely consensual. We might therefore characterize them as representing the rough chimpanzee equivalent something in between either:
- Taking your wife or girlfriend away for a romantic weekend away in Paris; or
- Kidnapping a teenage girl and keeping her locked in the basement as a sex slave.
Certainly then, although chimpanzees are almost certainly unaware of the role of sexual intercourse, and of males, in reproduction, they nevertheless engage in mate-guarding behaviours simply because such behaviours tended to maximize their reproductive success in ancestral environments.
Indeed, more controversially, Goodall herself even tentatively proposes an analogy with human sexual jealousy, noting that:
“[Some] aggressive interventions [among chimpanzees] appear to be caused by feelings of sexual and social competitiveness which, if we were describing human behavior, we should label jealousy” (The Chimpanzees of Gombe: p326).
Thus, if our closest ancestors among extant primates, along with humans themselves, evince something akin to sexual jealousy and male sexual proprietariness, then it is a fair bet that our common ancestor with chimpanzees did too, and hence that mate-guarding was also practised by our prehuman ancestors, and certainly predates 3000 BC, the oddly specific date posited by Hakim and Stonehouse.
Certainly, mate-guarding does not require, or presuppose, any conscious (or indeed subconscious) awareness of the role of sexual intercourse – or even of males – in reproduction.[8]
Who Is Responsible to the Stigmatization of Promiscuity?
As for Hakim’s claim that men have suppressed women’s exploitation of their erotic capital because they are jealous of the fact that women have more of it and wish to stop women taking advantage of their superior levels of ‘erotic capital’, this also seems very dubious.
Take, for example, the stigmatization of sex workers such as prostitutes, a topic to which Hakim herself devotes considerable attention. Hakim argues that this stigma results from men’s envy of women’s greater levels of erotic capital and their desire to prevent women from exploiting this advantage to the full.
Thus, she writes:
“The most powerful and effective weapon deployed by men to curtail women’s use of erotic capital is the stigmatization of women who sell sexual services” (p75).
Unfortunately, however, this theory is plainly contradicted by the observation that women are actually generally more censorious of promiscuity and prostitution than are men (Baumeister and Twenge 2002).
In contrast, men, for obvious reasons, rather enjoy the company of prostitutes and other promiscuous women – although it is true that, due to concerns regarding paternity certainty, they may not wish to marry them.
Hakim, for her part, acknowledges that:
“The stigma attached to selling sexual services in the Puritan Christian world… is so complete that women are just as likely as men to condemn prostitution and prostitutes. Sometimes women are even more hostile, and demand the eradication (or regulation) of the industry more fiercely than men, a pattern now encouraged by many feminists” (p76).
In an associated endnote, going further, she even concedes:
“In Sweden, the 1996 sex survey showed women objected to prostitutes twice as often as men: two fifths of women versus one fifth of men thought that both buyers and sellers should be treated as criminals” (p282).
Yet this pattern is by no means limited to Sweden, but rather appears to be universal. Thus, Baumeister and Twenge report:
“Women seem consistently more opposed than men to prostitution and pornography. Klassen, Williams, and Levitt (1989) reported the results of a survey asking whether prostitution is ‘always wrong’. A majority (69%) of women, but only a minority (45%) of men, were willing to condemn prostitution in such categorical terms. At the opposite extreme, about three times as many men (17%) as women (6%) responded that prostitution is not wrong at all” (Baumeister and Twenge 2002).
Indeed, men appear to more liberal, permissive and tolerant, and women more censorious, in respect of virtually aspects of sexual morality. Thus, women are much more likely than men to disapprove of pornography, promiscuity, prostitution, premarital sex, sex with robots and household appliances and other such fun and healthy recreational activities (see Baumeister and Twenge 2002).[9]
Faced with this overwhelming evidence, Hakim is forced to acknowledge:
“If women in Northern Europe object to the commercial sex industry more strongly than men, this seems to destroy my argument that the stigmatization and criminalization of prostitution is promoted by patriarchal men” (p76).
However, Hakim has a ready, if not entirely convincing, response, maintaining that:
“Over time women have come to accept and actively support ideologies that constrain them” (p77).
And also that:
“Women have generally had the main responsibility for enforcing constraints but did not invent them” (p273, note 20).
However, this effectively reduces women to mindless puppets without agency of their own.
It also fails to explain why women are actually more puritanical than are men themselves.
Perhaps evil, devious, villainous, patriarchal men could somehow have manipulated women, against their own better interests, into being somewhat puritanical, or perhaps even as puritanical as are men themselves. However, they are unlikely to have succeeded in manipulating women into becoming even more puritanical than those evil male geniuses supposedly doing the manipulation and persuading.
Hakim’s Mythical ‘Male Sex Right’
Hakim suggests that sexual morality reflects what she calls a “male sex right” (p82).
Thus, she argues that the moral opprobrium attaching to ‘gold-diggers’ and prostitutes reflects the supposed patriarchal assumption that:
“Men should get what they want for free, especially sex” (p79).
“Men should not have to pay women for sexual favours or erotic entertainments [and] men should get what they want for free” (p98).
However, this theory is plainly contradicted by three incontestable facts.
First, promiscuous sex is stigmatized even where it does not involve payment. Thus, if prostitutes are indeed stigmatized, so are ‘sluts’ who engage in sex promiscuously but without any demand for payment.
Secondly, marriage is not condemned by moralists but rather held up as a moral ideal despite the fact that, as Hakim herself acknowledges, it usually involves a trade of sexual access in return for financial support – i.e. disguised (and overpriced) prostitution.
Third, far from advocating, as suggested by Hakim, that men should ‘get sex for free’, Christian moralists traditionally promoted abstinence and celibacy, especially before marriage, outside of marriage, and, for those held in highest regard by the church (i.e. nuns, monks and priests), permanently.[10]
In short, what seems to be condemned by moralists seems to be the promiscuity itself, not the demand for payment.
After all, if there really were a “male sex right”, as contended by Hakim, then rape would presumably be, not a crime, but rather a basic, universal and inalienable human right!
Puritanism and Prudery as Price-fixing Among Prostitutes
A more plausible theory of the stigmatization of sex work might be sought, not in the absurd fallacies of feminism, but in the ‘dismal science’ of economics.
On this view, what is stigmatized is not the sale of sex itself, but rather its availability at too low a price.
Sex available at too low a price runs undercutting other women and driving down the prices the latter can themselves hope to demand for sexual services.
On this view, if men can get bargain basement blowjobs outside of marriage or similar ‘committed’ relationships, then they will have no need to pursue such relationships and women will lose the economic security with which these relationships provide them.
Hakim claims that sexual morality reflects the assumption that:
“Men should get what they want for free, especially sex” (p79).
My own view is almost the opposite. Sexual morality reflects the assumption, not that men should be able to get sex for free, but rather that they should be obliged to pay a hefty price (e.g. the ultimate price – marriage), and certainly a lot more than is typically demanded by prostitutes.
Aside from myself, this view has been most comprehensively developed by psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues. Baumeister and Vohs (2006: p358) write:
“The so-called ‘cheap’ woman (the common use of this economic term does not strike us as accidental), who dispenses sexual favors more freely than the going rate, undermines the bargaining position of all other women in the community, and they become faced with the dilemma of either lowering their own expectations of what men will give them in exchange for sex or running the risk that their male suitors will abandon them in favor of other women who offer a better deal” (Baumeister and Vohs 2006: p358).
On this view, women’s efforts to prevent other women from capitalizing on their sex appeal is, as Baumeister and Vohs put it, analogous to:
“Other rational economic strategies, such as OPEC‘s efforts to drive up the world price of oil by inducing member nations to restrict their production” (Baumeister and Vohs 2006: p357).
Interestingly, an identical analogy – between the supply of oil and of sex – had earlier been adopted by Warren Farrell in his excellent The Myth of Male Power (which I have reviewed here), where he wrote:
“In the Middle East, female sex and beauty are to Middle Eastern men what oil and gas are to Americans: the shorter the supply the higher the price. The more women ‘gave’ away sex for free, or for a small price, the more the value of every woman’s prize would be undermined, which is why anger toward prostitution, purdah violation (removing the veil), and pornography runs so deep, especially among women. It is also why parents told daughters, ‘Don’t be cheap.’ ‘Cheap’ sex floods the market” (The Myth of Male Power: p77).
This then explains why women are generally more puritanical and censorious of promiscuity, prostitution and pornography than are men.
It might also explain why feminism and puritanical anti-sex attitudes tend to go together.
Hakim herself insists that feminist campaigners against prostitution, pornography and other such fun and healthy recreational activities are the unwitting dupes of their patriarchal oppressors, having inadvertently internalized ‘patriarchal’ norms that demonize sex work and women’s legitimate exploitation of their erotic capital for financial gain.
In fact, however, the feminists are probably acting in their own selfish best interests by opposing such activities. As Donald Symons explains in his excellent The Evolution of Human Sexuality (which I have reviewed here):
“The gain in power to control heterosexual interaction that accompanies the reduction of sexual pleasure is probably one reason… that feminism and antisexuality often go together… As with more recent feminist movements the militant suffrage movement in England before World War I ‘never made sexual freedom a goal, and indeed the tone of its pronouncements was more likely to be puritanical and censorious on sexual matters than permissive: ‘Votes for women and chastity for men’ was one of Mrs Pankhurst’s slogans’… Much recent feminist writing about female sexuality… emphasize[s] masturbation and, not infrequently, lesbianism, which in some respects are politically equivalent to antisexuality” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p262).
However, if feminist prudery is rational in reflecting the interests of feminist prudes, it does not reflect the interests of women in general. Indeed, to represent the interests of women as a whole (as feminists typically purport to do) is almost impossible, because the interests of different women conflict, not least since women are in reproductive competition primarily with one another. Thus, Symons observes:
“Feminist prostitutes and many nonprostitute, heterosexual feminists are in direct competition, and it should be no surprise that they are often to be found at one another’s throats” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p260).
This, he explains, is because:
“To the extent that heterosexual men purchase the services of prostitutes and pornographic masturbation aids, the market for the sexual services of nonprostitute women is diminished and their bargaining position vis-à-vis men is weakened… The implicit belief of heterosexual feminists such as Brownmiller that, in the absence of prostitution and pornography, men will come to want the same kinds of heterosexual relationships that women want may be an attempt to underpin morally a political program whose primary goal is to improve the feminists’ own bargaining position” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p260).
Hakim does not really address this alternative and, in my view, far more plausible theory of the origins of, and rationale behind, sexual prudery and puritanism. Indeed, she does not even mention this alternative explanation for the stigmatization and criminalization of sex work anywhere in the main body of her text, instead only acknowledging its existence in two endnotes (p273 & p283).
In both endnotes, she gives little consideration to the theory, but rather summarily and rather dismissively rejects the theory. On the first occasion, she gives no real reason for rejecting this theory, merely commenting that, in her opinion, Baumeister and Twenge (2002), who champion this theory:
“Confuse distal and proximate causes, policy-making and policy implementation. Women generally have the main responsibility for enforcing constraints but do not invent them” (p273, note 20).
On the second occasion, she simply claims, in a single throwaway sentence:
“The trouble with this argument is of course that marital relationships are not comparable with casual relationships” (p283, note 8).
However, although this sentence includes the words “of course”, its conclusion is by no means self-evident, and Hakim provides no evidence in support of this conclusion in the endnote.
Admittedly, she does briefly expand upon the same idea at a different point her text, where she similarly contends:
“The dividing line between the two markets [i.e. mating markets involving short-term relationships and long-term relationships] is sufficiently important for there to be little or no competition between the two markets” (p235).
This, however, seems doubtful. From a male perspective, both long-term and short-term relationships may serve identical ends – namely access to regular sex.[11]
Therefore, paying a prostitute may represent an alternative (often cheaper) substitute for the time and expense of conventional courtship.
As Donald Symons puts it:
“The payment of money and the payment of commitment are not psychologically equivalent, but they may be economically equivalent in the heterosexual marketplace” (The Evolution of Human Sexuality: p260).
Indeed, conventional courtship often, indeed almost invariably, involves the payment of monies by the male partner (e.g. for dates).
Thus, as I have written previously:
The entire process of conventional courtship is predicated on prostitution – from the social expectation that the man pay for dinner on the first date, to the legal obligation that he continue to provide for his ex-wife, through alimony and maintenance, for anything up to ten or twenty years after he has belatedly rid himself of her.
Thus, according to Baumeister and Twenge:
“Just as any monopoly tends to oppose the appearance of low-priced substitutes that could undermine its market control, women will oppose various alternative outlets for male sexual gratification” (Baumeister and Twenge 2002: p172).
As explained by Tobias and Mary Marcy in their forgotten early twentieth century Marxist-masculist masterpiece, Women As Sex Vendors (which I have reviewed here and here), street prostitutes, especially those supporting a pimp, are stigmatized simply because:
“These women are selling below market or scabbing on the job” (Women As Sex Vendors: p29).
What’s that got to do with the Price of Prostitutes?
Particularly naïve, if not borderline economically illiterate, is Hakim’s conclusions regarding the likely effect of the decriminalization of prostitution on the prices prostitutes are able to demand for their services. Thus, she writes:
“The only realistic solution to the male sex deficit is the complete decriminalization of the sex industry. It should be allowed to flourish like other leisure industries. The imbalance in sexual interest would be resolved by the laws of supply and demand, as it is in other entertainments. Men would probably find they have to pay more than they are used to” (p98).
In fact, far from men “find[ing] they have to pay more than they are used to”, the usual consequence of the decriminalization of the sale of a commodity is a fall in the value of this commodity, not a rise.
This is because criminalization produces additional costs for suppliers, not least the risk of prosecution, which are almost invariably more than enough to offset lack of regulation and taxes, and the reduced demand attendant to criminalization, which generally reflects the generally lesser risk of prosecution associated with consumption as opposed to supply.[12]
Thus, with the passage into force of the Volstead Act in 1920, which banned the sale and purchase of alcoholic beverages throughout the USA, the price of alcohol is said to have roughly tripled or even quadrupled.
Similarly, the legalization of marijuana in many US states seems to have been associated with a drop in its price, albeit not as great a fall as some opponents (and no few advocates!) of legalization apparently anticipated.
Indeed, later in her book rather contradicting herself, Hakim admits:
“In countries where the [sex] trade is criminalized, such as the United States and Sweden, the local price of sexual services can be pushed higher, due to higher risks” (p165).
And also that:
“In countries where prostitution is criminalized, fees can sometimes be higher than in countries where it is legal, due to scarcity and higher risks” (p87).
In short, all the evidence suggests that, if prostitution were entirely decriminalized, or, better still, destigmatized as well, then, far from men “find[ing] they have to pay more than they are used to”, in fact the price of prostitutes would drop considerably.
Hakim writes:
“Women offering sexual services can earn anywhere between double and fifty times more than they could earn in ordinary jobs, especially jobs at a comparable level of education. This world of greater opportunity is something that men would prefer women not know about. This is the principal reason why providing sexual services is stigmatized… to ensure women never learn anything about it” (p229).
In reality, however, far from this being something that “men would prefer women not know about”, men would benefit if more women were aware of, and took advantage of, the high earnings available to them in the sex industry – because then more women would presumably enter this line of work and hence prices would be driven down by increased competition.
In addition, if more women worked in the sex industry, fewer would be competing for jobs with men in other industries.
In contrast, the main losers would be existing sex workers, who find that they would have to drop their prices in order to cope with increased competition from other service providers – and perhaps also women in pursuit of husbands, who would find that, with bargain basement blowjobs available from prossies, more and more men find have little need to subject themselves to the inequities and indignities of marriage and conventional courtship, which, of course, offer huge economic benefits to women precisely because they are, compared to purchasing the services of prostitutes, such a bad deal for men.
Sexual Double-Standards Cut Both Ways
Arguing that the stigmatization of sex work is “the most powerful and effective weapon deployed by men to curtail women’s use of erotic capital”, Hakim points to the fact that this “stigma… never affects men who sell sex quite so much” as evidence that this stigma was invented by, and hence serves the interests of, evil male oppressors.
Thus, she contends:
“The patriarchal nature of… [negative] stereotypes [about sex workers] is exposed by quite different perceptions of men who sell sex: attitudes here are ambivalent, conflicted, unsure” (p76).
I would contend that there is a more convincing economic explanation as why males providing sexual services are relatively less stigmatized – namely, gigolos and rent-boys, in offering services to women and homosexual men, do not threaten to undercut the prices demanded by non-prostitute women on the hunt for husbands.
Indeed, the proof that there is nothing whatever ‘patriarchal’ about these differing perceptions is provided by the fact that, in respect of long-term relationships, these ‘double-standards’ are reversed.
Thus, whereas ‘homemaker’ or ‘housewife’ is a respectable occupation for a woman, attitudes towards ‘househusbands’ who are financially dependent on their wives are – to adopt Hakim’s own phraseology – ‘ambivalent, conflicted, unsure’.
Meanwhile, men who are financially dependent on their partners and whose partners happen to work in the sex industry – i.e. pimps – are actually criminalized for their purportedly exploitative lifestyle.
However, the lifestyle of a pimp is actually directly analogous to that of a housewife/homemaker – both are economically dependent on their sexual partners and both are notorious for spending an exorbitant proportion of their sexual partner’s earnings on items such as clothing and jewellery.
Women’s Sexual Power – Innate or Justly Earned?
Hakim argues that exploitation of sex appeal for financial gain – e.g. working in the sex industry, marrying for money or flirting with the boss for promotions – ought to be regarded as a perfectly legitimate means of social, occupational and economic advancement.
In defending this proposition, she resorts to ad hominem, asserting (without citing data) that disapproval of the exploitation of erotic capital “almost invariably comes from people who are remarkably unattractive and socially clumsy” (p246).
I will not stoop to respond to this schoolyard-tier substitution of personal abuse for rational debate (roughly, ‘if you disagree with me it’s only because you’re ugly!’), save to comment that the important question is not whether such people is ugly – but rather whether they are right.
Defending women’ exploitation of the male sexual drive, Hakim protests
“Apparently is fine for men to exploit any advantage they have in wealth or status, but rules are invented to prevent women exploiting their advantage in erotic capital” (p149).
However, this ignores the fact that, whereas men’s greater earnings are a consequence of the fact that they work longer hours, for a greater proportion of their adult lives, in more dangerous and unpleasant working conditions, women’s greater level of sex appeal merely reflects their good fortune in being born female.
Yet Hakim denies erotic capital is “entirely inherited”, instead insisting:
“All aspects of erotic capital can be developed, just like intelligence”.[13]
However, no amount of make-up, howsoever skillfully applied, can disguise excessively irregular features and even expensive plastic surgery and silicone enhancements are recognized as inferior to the real thing.
Moreover, even Hakim would presumably be hard-pressed to deny that the huge advantages incumbent on being born female are indeed “entirely inherited”. Indeed, even men who undergo costly gender reassignment surgery are rarely as attractive as even the average woman.
However, Hakim insists that:
“Women generally have higher erotic capital than men because they work harder at it” (p244).
Here, I suspect Hakim has her causation precisely backwards. In fact, women work harder at being attractive (e.g. applying makeup, spending copious amounts of money on clothes, jewelry etc.) precisely because the rightly realize that good looks has bigger pay-offs for women than for men.
Indeed, Hakim herself admits:
“Even if men and women had identical levels of erotic capital, the male sex deficit automatically gives women the upper-hand in private relationships” (p244).[14]
A Darwinian perspective suggests that both women’s greater erotic capital and the male sex deficit result ultimately from the fact that females biologically make a greater investment in offspring and therefore represent the limiting factor in mammalian reproduction.
In short, no amount of hard work will grant to men the sexual power conferred upon women simply by virtue of their fortune in being born as a member of the privileged sex.
Disadvantage, Discrimination and Double-Standards
Given that she believes erotic capital can be enhanced through the investment of time and effort, Hakim denies that the advantages accruing to attractive people are in any way unfair or discriminatory. Similarly, she does not regard the advantages accruing to women on account of their greater erotic capital – such as their greater ability to ‘marry up’ (‘hypergamy’) or earn lucrative salaries in the sex industry – as unfair.
However, oddly, Hakim is all too ready to invoke the malign spectre of ‘discrimination’ on those rare occasions where inequality of outcome seemingly benefits men over women.
Thus, Hakim gripes argues that:
“The entertainment industry… currently recognizes and rewards erotic capital more than any other industry. However, here too there is an unfair bias against women that leads to lower rewards for higher levels of erotic capital than are observed for men. In Hollywood, male stars earn more than female stars, even though female stars do the same work, but going ‘backwards and in high heels’” (p231).
Oddly, however, Hakim neglects to observe that in Hollywood’s next door neighbour, the pornographic industry, female performers earn more than men and the disparity is much greater and affects all performers, not just A-list stars.
This is despite the fact that, in this very same paragraph quoted above, she acknowledges in parenthesis that “entertainment industry… includes the commercial sex industry” (p231).
Neither does Hakim note that, as discussed by Warren Farrell in Why Men Earn More (reviewed here):
“Top women models earn about five times more, that is, about 400% more, than their male ‘equivalent’. Put another way, men models earn about 20% of the pay for the same work” (Why Men Earn More: p97-8).
Hakim rightly decries the fact that:
“The concept of discrimination is too readily applied in situations where there is differential treatment or outcomes. In many cases, there are simple explanations for such outcomes that do not involve unfair favoritism or intentional bias” (p131-2).
Yet, oddly, despite this wise counsel, Hakim fails to follow her own advice, being all too ready to invoke discrimination as an explanation, especially malign ‘patriarchal’ discrimination, wherever she finds women at a seeming disadvantage.
For example, many studies find that more physically attractive people earn somewhat higher salaries, on average, than do relatively less attractive people (e.g. Scholz & Sicinski 2015).
However, perhaps surprisingly, the wage premium associated with good looks is generally found to be somewhat greater for males than for females (e.g. Frieze, Olson & Russell 1991).[15]
This is, for Hakim, a form of “hidden sex discrimination” (p194). Thus, she protests:
“Attractive men receive a larger beauty premium than do women. This is clear evidence of sex discrimination, especially as all studies show women score higher than men on attractiveness scales” (p246).
At first glance, it may indeed seem anomalous that the wage premium associated with physical attractiveness is rather greater for men than for women. However, rather than rushing to invoke the malign spectre of sexual discrimination, a simpler explanation is readily at hand.
Perhaps relatively more attractive women simply reduce their efforts in the workplace because other means of social advancement are opened up to them by virtue of their physical attractiveness – not least marriage.
After all, as Hakim herself emphasizes elsewhere in her book:
“The marriage market remains an avenue for upward social mobility long after the equal opportunities revolution opened up the labor market to women. All the evidence suggests that both routes can be equally important paths to social status and wealth for women in modern societies” (p142).
Therefore, rather than expend effort to advance herself through her career, a young woman, especially an attractive young woman, instead focuses her attention on marriage as a form of advancement. As the redoubtable HL Mencken put it in his book In Defense of Women:
“The time is too short and the incentive too feeble. Before the woman employee of twenty-one can master a tenth of the idiotic ‘knowledge’ in the head of the male clerk of thirty, or even convince herself that it is worth mastering, she has married the head of the establishment or maybe the clerk himself, and so abandons the business” (In Defense of Women: p70).
Or, as Matthew Fitzgerald puts it in his delightfully subtitled Sex-ploytation: How Women Use Their Bodies to Extort Money From Men:
“It takes far less effort to warm the bed of a millionaire than to earn a million dollars yourself” (Sex-ploytation: p10)
In short, why work for money when you have the easier option of marrying it instead?
Moreover, evidence suggests that relatively more physically attractive women are indeed able to marry men with higher levels of income and accumulated capital than are relatively less physically attractive women (Elder 1969; Hamermesh and Biddle 1994; Udry & Eckland 1984).
Indeed, some of the same studies that show the lesser benefits of attractiveness for women in terms of earnings and occupational advancement also show greater benefits for women in terms of marriage prospects (e.g Elder 1969; Udry & Eckland 1984).
Thus, psychologist Nancy Etcoff writes, in her book Survival of the Prettiest (which I have reviewed here):
“The best-looking girls in high school are more than ten times as likely to get married as the least good-looking. Better looking girls tend to ‘marry up’, that is, marry men with more education and income then they have” (Survival of the Prettiest: p65)
Yet, in stark contrast, as even Hakim herself acknowledges, ‘marrying up’ is not an option for even the handsomest of males simply because:
“Even highly educated women with good salaries seek affluent and successful partners and refuse to contemplate marrying down to a lower-income man (unlike men)… Even today, most women admit that their goal was always to marry a higher-earning man, and most achieve their goal” (p141).[16]
In short, it seems that Hakim regards any advantage accruing to women on account of their greater erotic capital as natural and legitimate, not to mention fair game for women to exploit to the full and at the expense of men.
However, in those rare instances where sexual attractiveness seemingly benefits men more than it does women, this advantage is then necessarily attributed by Hakim to a “hidden sex discrimination” and hence viewed as inherently malign.
Are Women Wealthier Than Men?
Hakim claims that the importance of what she calls erotic capital has been ignored or overlooked due to what she claims is “the patriarchal bias in social science” (p75).
As anyone who is remotely aware of the current state of the social sciences should be all too aware, there is little evidence for “patriarchal bias in social science”. On the contrary, for over half a century at least, the social sciences have been heavily infested with feminism.
My own view is almost the opposite of Hakim’s – namely, it is not “patriarchal bias”, but rather feminist bias that has led social scientists to ignore the importance of sexual attractiveness in social and economic relations – because feminists, in their efforts to portray women as a ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘oppressed group’, have felt the need to ignore or downplay women’s sexual power over men.
In fact, although Hakim accuses them of being unwitting agents of patriarchy, feminists have probably been wise to play down women’s sexual power over men – because once this power is admitted, the fundamental underlying premise of feminism, namely that women represent an ‘oppressed group’, is exposed as fallacious.
Indeed, much of data reviewed by Hakim herself inadvertently proves precisely this.
For example, Hakim observes that:
“The marriage market remains an avenue for upward social mobility long after the equal opportunities revolution opened up the labour market to women. All the evidence suggests that both routes can be equally important paths to wealth for women in modern societies” (p142).
As a consequence, Hakim observes that:
“There are more female than male millionaires in a modern country such as Britain. Normally, men can only make their fortune through their jobs and businesses. Women achieve the same wealthy lifestyle and social advantages through marriage as well as through career success” (p24).
“There are more female than male millionaires in Britain. Some women get rich through their own efforts, while others are wealthy widows and divorcées who married well” (p142).
Here, though, I suspect Hakim actually downplays the extent of the gender differential. Certainly, she is right that in observing that “normally, men can only make their fortune through their jobs and businesses” and hence that:
“Handsome men who marry into money are still rare compared to the numbers of beautiful women who do this” (p24).
However, while she is right that “some women get rich through their own efforts, while others are wealthy widows and divorcées who married well”, I suspect she is exaggerating when she claims “both routes can be equally important paths to wealth for women in modern societies”.
In fact, while many women become rich through marriage or inheritance, self-made millionaires seem to be overwhelmingly male.
Thus, most self-made millionaires make their fortunes through business and investment. However, as Warren Farrell observes in his excellent Why Men Earn More (reviewed here and here), whereas feminists blame the lower average earnings of women as compared to men on discrimination by employers, in fact, among the self-employed and business owners, where discrimination by employers is not a factor, the disparity in earnings between men and women is even greater than among employees.
Thus, Farrell reports:
“When there was no boss to ‘hold women back’, women who owned their own businesses netted, at the time (1970s through 1990s) between 29% and 35% of what men netted; today, women who own their own businesses net only 49% of their male counterparts’ net earnings” (Why Men Earn More: pxx).
On the other hand, focussing on the ultra-rich, in the latest 2023 Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, there are only sixty women, just fifteen percent of the total, of whom only twelve (i.e. just twenty percent) are, Forbes magazine reports, ‘self-made’, in contrast to fully seventy percent of the men in the list.
None of the six richest women on the list seem to have played any part in accumulating their own wealth, each either inheriting it from a deceased father or husband, or expropriating it from their husbands in the divorce courts.[17]
As Ernest Belfort Bax wrote over a century ago, in collaboration with an anonymous Irish jurist, in The Legal Subjection of Men (which I have reviewed here):
“The bulk of women’s property, in 99 out of every 100 cases, is not earned by them at all. It arises from gift or inheritance from parents, relatives, or even the despised husband. Whenever there is any earning in the matter it is notoriously earning by some mere man or other. Nevertheless, under the operation of the law, property is steadily being concentrated into women’s hands” (The Legal Subjection of Men: p9).
This, of course, suggests that it is men rather than women who should be campaigning for ‘equal opportunity’, because, whereas most traditionally male careers are now open to both sexes, the opportunity to advance oneself through marriage remains almost the exclusive preserve of women, since, as Hakim herself acknowledges:
“Even highly educated women with good salaries seek affluent and successful partners and refuse to contemplate marrying down to a lower-income man (unlike men)” (p141).
Women also have other career opportunities available to them that are largely closed to men, or at least to heterosexual men – namely, careers in the sex industry.
Yet such careers can be highly lucrative. Thus, Hakim herself reports that:
“Women offering sexual services can earn anywhere between twice and fifty times what they could earn in ordinary jobs, especially jobs at a comparable level of education” (p229).
Yet men are not only denied these easy and lucrative means of financial enrichment but are also driven by the Hakim calls the ‘male sex deficit’ to spend a large portion of whatever wealth they can acquire attempting to buy the sexual services and affection of women, whether through paying for sex workers or through conventional courtship.
Thus, as I have written previously:
The entire process of conventional courtship is predicated on prostitution – from the social expectation that the man pay for dinner on the first date, to the legal obligation that he continue to provide for his ex-wife, through alimony and maintenance, for anything up to ten or twenty years after he has belatedly rid himself of her.
As a consequence, despite working fewer hours, for a lesser proportion of their adult lives in safer and more pleasant working environments, women are estimated by researchers in the marketing industry to control around 80% of consumer spending.
Yet Hakim goes even further, arguing that both what she calls the ‘male sex deficit’ and the greater levels of erotic capital possessed by women place women at an advantage over men in all their interactions with one another, on account of what she refers to as ‘the principle of least interest’.
In other words, since men want sex with women more than women want sex with men, all else being equal, women almost always have the upper-hand in their relationships with men.[18]
Indeed, Hakim goes so far as to claim that men are condemned to a:
“Semi-permanent state of sexual desire and frustration… Suppressed and unfulfilled desires permeate all of men’s interactions with women” (p228).
Yet, here, Hakim surely exaggerates.
Indeed, to take Hakim’s words literally, one would almost be led to believe that men walk around with permanent erections.
I doubt any man is ever really consumed with overwhelming “suppressed and unfulfilled desires” when conversing with, say, the average fat middle-aged woman in the contemporary west. Indeed, even when engaging in polite pleasantries, routine conversation, or even mild flirtation with genuinely attractive young women, most men are capable of maintaining their composure without visibly salivating or contemplating rape.
Yet, for all her absurd exaggeration, Hakim does have a point. Indeed, she calls to mind Camille Paglia’s memorable and characteristically insightful description of men as:
“Sexual exiles… [who] wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy” (Sexual Personae: p19).
Therefore, Hakim is right to claim that, by virtue of the ‘the principle of least interest’, women generally have the upper-hand in interactions with men.
Indeed, her conclusions are dramatic – and, though she seemingly does not fully appreciate their implications – actually directly contradict and undercut the underlying premises of feminism – namely that women are disadvantaged as compared to men.[19]
Thus, she observes that:
“At the national level, men may have more power than women as a group – they run governments, international organizations, the biggest corporation and trade unions. However, this does not automatically translate into men having more power at the personal level. At this level, erotic capital and sexuality are just as important as education, earnings and social networks… Fertility… further enhances women’s power” (p245).
On the contrary, she therefore concludes:
“In societies where men retain power at the national level, it is entirely feasible for women to have greater power… for private relationships” (p245).
Yet women’s power over their husbands, and women’s sexual power over men in general, also confers upon women both huge economic power and even indirect political power, especially given that men, including powerful men, have a disposition to behave chivalrously and protectively towards women.
Thus, one is reminded of Arthur Schopenhauer’s observation, in his brilliant, celebrated and infinitely insightful essay ‘On Women’, of how:
“Man strives in everything for a direct domination over things, either by comprehending or by subduing them. But woman is everywhere and always relegated to a merely indirect domination, which is achieved by means of man, who is consequently the only thing she has to dominate directly” (Schopenhauer, ‘On Women’).
Indeed, in this light, we might do no better than contemplate in relation to our own cultures the question Aristotle posed of the ancient Spartans over two thousand years ago:
“What difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women?” (Aristotle, Politics II).
References
Alexander & Fisher (2003) Truth and consequences: Using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality, Journal of Sex Research 40(1): 27-35.
Bateman (1948), Intra-sexual selection in Drosophila, Heredity 2 (Pt. 3): 349-368.
Baumeister & Vohs (2004) Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions, Personality and Social Psychology Review 8(4) 339-363.
Baumseister & Twenge (2002) Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality, Review of General Psychology 6(2): 166-203.
Brewer, Garrett, Muth & Kasprzyk (2000) Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America; USA 2000, 12385.
Buss (1989) Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures, Behavioral and Brain Science 12(1):1-14.
Buss, Larson, Westen & Semmelroth (1992) Sex Differences in Jealousy: Evolution, Physiology, and Psychology, Psychological Science 3(4):251-255.
Elder (1969) Appearance and education in marriage mobility. American Sociological Review, 34, 519-533.
Frieze, Olson & Russell (1991) Attractiveness and Income for Men and Women in Management, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21(13): 1039-1057.
Hamermesh & Biddle (1984) Beauty and the labor market. American Economic Review, 84, 1174-1194.
Kanazawa (2011) Intelligence and physical attractiveness. Intelligence 39(1): 7-14.
Kanazawa and Still (2018) Is there really a beauty premium or an ugliness penalty on earnings?Journal of Business and Psychology 33: 249–262.
Scholz & Sicinski (2015) Facial Attractiveness and Lifetime Earnings: Evidence from a Cohort Study, Review of Economics and Statistics (2015) 97 (1): 14–28.
Trivers (1972) Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.) Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man, 1871-1971 (pp 136-179). Chicago, Aldine.
Udry and Eckland (1984) Benefits of being attractive: Differential payoffs for men and women.Psychological Reports, 54: 47-56.
Wilson & Daly (1992) The man who mistook his wife for a chattel. In: Barkow, Cosmides & Tooby, eds. The Adapted Mind, New York: Oxford University Press,1992: 289-322.
[1] Both editions appear to be largely identical in their contents, though I do recall noticing a few minor differences. Page numbers cited in the current review refer to the former edition, namely ‘Money Honey: the Power of Erotic Capital’, published in 2011 by Allen Lane, which is the edition of which this post is a review.
[2] One is inevitably reminded here of Richard Dawkins’s ‘First Law of the Conservation of Difficulty’, whereby Dawkins not inaccurately observes ‘obscurantism in an academic subject is said to expand to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity’.
[3] In this context, it is interesting to note that Arnold Schwarzenegger and other bodybuilders with extremely muscular physiques do not seem to be generally regarded as especially handsome and attractive by women. Anecdotally, women seem to prefer men of a more lean and athletic physique, in preference to the almost comically exaggerated musculature of most modern bodybuilders. As Nancy Etcoff puts it in Survival of the Prettiest (reviewed here), women seem to prefer:
“Men [who] look masculine but not exaggeratedly masculine” (Survival of the Prettiest: p159).
In writing this, Etcoff seemed to have in mind primarily male facial attractiveness. However, it seems to apply equally to male musculature. For more detailed discussion on this topic, see here.
[4] Although I here attribute beautiful women’s unpopularity among other women to jealousy on the part of the latter, there are other possible explanations for this phenomenon. As I discuss in my review of Etcoff’s book (available here), another possibility is that beautiful women are indeed simply less likeable in terms of their personality. Perhaps, having grown accustomed to being fawned over and receiving special privileges on account of their looks, especially from men, they gradually become, over time, entitled and spoilt, something that is especially apparent to other women, who are immune to their physical charms.
[5] Hakim mentions evolutionary psychology as an approach, to my recollection, only once, in passing, in the main body of her text. Here, she associates the approach with ‘essentialism’, a scare-word, and straw man, employed by social scientists to refer to biological theories of sex and race differences, which Hakim herself defines as referring to “a specific outdated theory that there are important and unalterable biological differences between men and women”, as indeed there undoubtedly are (p88).
Evolutionary psychology as an approach is also mentioned, again in passing, in one of Hakim’s endnotes (p320, note 22). As mentioned above, Hakim also cites several studies conducted by evolutionary psychologists to test specifically evolutionary hypotheses (e.g. Kanazawa 2011; Buss 1989). Therefore, it cannot be that Hakim is simply unaware of this active research programme and theoretical approach.
Rather, it appears that she either does not understand how Bateman’s principle both anticipates, and provides a compelling explanation for the phenomena she purports to undercover (namely, the ‘male sex deficit’ and greater ‘erotic capital’ of women); or that she disingenuously decided not to discuss evolutionary psychology and sociobiology precisely because she recognizes the extent to which it deprives her own theory of its claims to originality.
[6] Actually, due to greater male mortality and the longer average lifespan of women, there are actually somewhat more women than men in the adult population. However, this is not sufficient to account for the disparity in number of sex partners reported in sex surveys, especially since the disparity becomes more pronounced only in older cohorts, who tend to be less sexually active. Indeed, since female fertility is more tightly contrained by age than is male fertility, the ‘operational sex ratio’ may actually reveal a relative deficit of fertile females.
[7] Before they discovered of the role of men in impregnating women, and in those premodern societies where “this idea never emerged”, there was, Hakim reports, ‘free love’ and rampant promiscuity, sexual jealousy presumably being unknown (p79). Of course, we have heard these sorts of ideas before, not least in the discredited Marxian concept of ‘primitive communism’ and in Margaret Mead’s famous study of adolescence in Samoa. Unfortunately, however, Mead’s claims have been thoroughly debunked, at least with regard to Samoan culture. Indeed, it is notable that, in the examples of such premodern cultures supposedly practising ‘free love’ that are cited by Hakim, Samoa is conspicuously absent.
[8] This error is analogous to the so-called ‘Sahlins fallacy’, so christened by Richard Dawkins in his paper ‘Twelve misunderstandings of kin selection’, whereby celebrated cultural anthropologist (and left-wing political activist) Marshall Sahlins, in his book The Use and Abuse of Biology (reviewed here), assumed that, for humans, or other animals, to direct altruism towards biological relatives proportionate to their degree of relatedness as envisaged by kin selection and inclusive fitness theory, they must necessarily understand the mathematical concept of fractions.
[9] Only in respect of homosexuality, especially male homosexuality, are these attitudes oddly reversed. Here, women are more accepting and tolerant, whereas men are much more likely to disapprove of and indeed be repulsed by the idea of male homosexuality in particular (though heterosexual men often find the idea of lesbian sex arousing, at least until they witness for themselves what most real lesbian women actually look like).
[10] Thus, Hakim herself observes that, under Christian morality:
“Celibacy was praised as admirable, then enforced on Catholic priests, monks, and nuns” (p80)
[11] If both long-term and short-term sexual relationships both serve similar functions for men – namely, a means of obtaining regular sexual intercourse – perhaps women do indeed conceive of such relationships as representing entirely separate marketplaces, since, unlike for heterosexual men, short-term commitment-free sex is much easier to obtain for women than is a long-term relationship. This then might explain Hakim’s assumption that the two markets are entirely separate, since, as herself a female, this is how she personally has always perceived it.
However, I suspect that, even for women, the two spheres are not entirely conceptually separate. For example, women sometimes enter short-term commitment-free sexual relationships with men, especially high-status men, in the hope that such a relationship might later develop into a long-term romantic relationship.
[12] Besides the risk of criminal prosecution, the costs for suppliers associated with criminalization include the inability of suppliers to resort to legal mechanisms either for protection or to enforce contracts. This is among the reasons that, in many jurisdictions were prostitution is criminalized, both prostitutes and their clients are at considerable risk of violence, including extortion, blackmail, rape and robbery. It is also why suppliers often turn instead to other means of protection, providing an opening for organized crime elements.
[13] In fact, it is a fallacy to suggest that because something can be enhanced or improved by “time and effort”, this means it is not “entirely inherited”, since the tendency to successfully devote “time and effort” to self-improvement is at least partly a heritable aspect of personality, associated with the personality factor identified by psychometricians as conscientiousness. Behavioural dispositions are, in principle, no less heritable than morphology.
[14] This, of course, implies that the greater female level of ‘erotic capital’ is separable from the ‘male sex deficit’, when, in reality, as I have already discussed the ‘male sex deficit’ provides an obvious explanation for why women have greater sex appeal, since, as Hakim herself acknowledges:
“It is impossible to separate women’s erotic capital, which provokes men’s desire… from male desire itself” (p97).
[15] Although there is a robust and well-established correlation between attractiveness and earnings, this does not necessarily prove that it is attractiveness itself that causes attractive people to earn more. In particular, Kanazawa and Still argue that more attractive people also tend to be more intelligent, and also have other personality traits, that are themselves associated with higher earnings (Kanazawa and Still 2018).
[16] Indeed, more affluent women are actually even more selective regarding the socio-economic status that they demand in a prospective partner, preferring partners who are even higher in socioeconomic status than they are themselves (Wiederman & Allgeier 1992; Townsend 1989).
This, of course, contradicts the feminist claim that women only aspire to ‘marry up’ because, due to supposed discrimination, ‘patriarchy’, ‘male privilege’ and other feminist myths, women lack the means to advance in social status through occupational means.
In fact, the evidence implies that the feminists have their causation exactly backwards. Rather than women looking to marriage for social advancement because they lack the means to achieve wealth through their careers due to discrimination, instead the better view is that women do not expend great effort in seeking to advance themselves through their careers precisely because they have the easier option of achieving wealth and privilege by simply marrying into it.
Unfortunately, the fact that even women with high salaries and of high socioeconomic status insist on marrying men of similarly high, or preferably even higher, socioeconomic status than themselves means that feminist efforts to increase the number of women in high status occupations, including by methods such as ‘affirmative action’ and other forms of overt and covert discrimination against men, also have the secondary effect of reducing rates of marriage and hence of fertility, since the higher the socioeconomic status and earnings of women the fewer men there are of the same or higher socioeconomic status for them to marry, particularly because other high status high income occupations are similarly occupied increasingly by other women. This may be one major causal factor underlying one of the leading problems facing developed economies today, namely their failure to reproduce at replacement levels. This is one of many reasons we must stridently oppose such feminist policies.
[17] Of course, being ‘self-made’ is a matter of degree. Many of Among the six richest women in America listed by Forbes, the only ambiguous case, who might have some claim (albeit very weak) to having herself earned some small part of her own fortune, rather than merely inherited it, is the sixth richest woman in America, Abigail Johnson, who is currently CEO of the company established by her grandfather and formerly run by her father. Although she certainly did not build her own fortune, but rather very much inherited it, she nevertheless has been involved in running the family business that she inherited. The five richest women in America, in contrast, have no claim whatsoever to having earned their own fortunes. On the contrary, all seemingly inherited their wealth from male relatives (e.g. husbands, fathers), except for the former wife of Jeff Bezos, who instead expropriated the monies of her husband through divorce. According to Forbes the richest ‘self-made’ woman on the list is the seventh richest woman in America, and thirty-eighth richest person overall, Diana Hedricks. However, since she founded the company upon which her fortune is built with her then-husband, it is reasonable to suppose, given the rarity of ‘self-made’ female millionairs, that he in fact played the decisive role in establishing the family’s wealth.
[18] Actually, however, the situation is more complex. While men certainly want sex more than women do, especially promiscuous sex outside a committed relationship, women surely have a greater desire for long-term, committed, romantic relationships than men do. This complicates the calculus with respect to who has the least interest in a given relationship.
On the other hand, however, the reason why women have a strong desire for long-term committed romantic relationships is, at least in part, the financial benefits and security with which such relationships typically provide them. These one-sided benefits are, of course, further evidence that women do indeed have the upper-hand in their relationships with men, even, perhaps especially, in long-term committed relationships.
Yet men can also obtain sex outside of committed relationships, not least through prostitutes. Yet the very fact that heterosexual prostitution almost invariably involves the man paying the woman for sex rather than vice versa is, of course, further proof that, again, women do indeed have the upper-hand, on account of ‘the principle of least interest’.
[19] A full understanding of the extent to which women’s sexual power over men confers upon them an economically privileged position is provided by several works pre-dating Hakim’s own, namely Esther Vilar’s The Manipulated Man (which I have reviewed here), Matthew Fitzgereld’s delightfully subtitled Sex-Ploytation: How Women Use Their Bodies to Extort Money from Men, Tobias and Mary Marcy’s forgotten early twentieth century Marxist-masculist masterpiece Women As Sex Vendors (which I have reviewed here) and Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power (which I have reviewed here and here).
The Contemporary Heretic 