Restricting access to female sexuality to increase its value

By Serge Kreutz
2006

Florida University professor Roy Baumeister in 2004 published research showing that women themselves regard female sexuality as a value to be traded for non-sexual benefits. The findings of Baumeister and colleagues also indicated that cultural restrictions to the availability of female sexuality are often imposed and maintained not by men but by women themselves in order to preserve a high exchange value for their sexuality.

In line with this research, it has been observed that in Indonesia, and even more so in Malaysia, women elect to wear headscarfs without being under pressure from social institutions to do so. Wether the wearer is honestly deeply religious or not, the donning of a headscarf is virtue signalling... meaning that this female is not sexually easy. She is thus increasing the value of her sexuality.

Women in Western countries have other strategies to protect the sexual market value of female sexuality. One such strategy is to limit male access to a wide range of what otherwise would be attractive options. Age-of-consent limits, conjugal property rights, high costs of divorce, restrictions on prostitution, the stigmatisation of promiscuity, regulations on Internet dating, the threat of prosecution on rape charges, the concept of marital rape, activism against pornography, the exclusion from university jobs for disrespectful comments about women… all of these have one thing in common: they protect the exchange value of female sexuality even of unattractive and older women who, in case of inflationary access to more attractive females, would be much lower.

On the face of it, many of these regulations are gender neutral. In practical terms, they mostly apply to men.

From another perspective, it is considered sensible and natural, that a woman will engage in sexual activity with a man she loves, even when the woman herself is not sexually aroused at that time. She still can derive satisfaction from such conduct. The satisfaction, however, is not strictly sexual. The satisfaction is her awareness that she provides something very important to the man she wants to bind to herself, and indeed, a man who experiences sexual bliss is usually a good provider and protector.

This is the context in which women want to be sexually desired even when they are not sexually aroused, and this is why women have a sense of fulfillment when willingly granting sexual access in exchange for commitment.