Last week, I mentioned having run across an article on the Daily Record (a UK publication) website which was titled “More women having sex on first date … but they won’t admit it to their friends”. It was written by Craig McQueen and was dated March 19, 2010.
In my comments last week, I explained one of the reasons why women will understate the amount of their sexual behavior (and the speed with which they “gave it up”) when these topics come up in their discussions with their female friends.
To recap, a big part of the reason for this relates to “status”. Almost any woman can get laid just by showing up and then not saying “no”, so there’s no status for a women in being able to get laid (any more than you’d impress your buddies because you know how to take a leak, since every guy knows how to do that).
And therefore, her status will come from how hard guys will work to get her before she puts out (or without her putting out at all). The more hoops the guy will jump through in the hopes of getting her and the longer he’ll wait before moving on to greener pastures, the hotter she must therefore be.
So if she wants to brag to her friends (and, more importantly, one-up them), she’s likely to portray herself inaccurately as having been a whole lot harder (and slower) to get than she really was.
The Carrot and the Stick
But that’s only half of the picture: there’s both a carrot and a stick at work here. The carrot is her gaining status amongst her female friends from the fact that guys allegedly will woo her relentlessly while she takes her sweet old time before dispensing with her “favors”. Her female friends will think more highly of her for that, she hopes.
The “stick” comes if her friends decide that she was too easy, willing or quick to hop in the sack with a new guy. In that case, she won’t just not gain status (that is, not get the carrot). She’ll also feel their active wrath.
And make no mistake about it … women can be exceedingly vicious with each other. At the high school level, it’s not uncommon for girls to beat up other girls who are thought to have been a bit “too easy”, or even who were just thought to have been flirting a bit too much.
“Cartel Logic 101”
Why would her friends give a rip one way or the other about her bedroom activities? That can be explained with some simple economics theory.
For example, any basic Economics class will explain that “Price” reflects the effects of “Supply” and “Demand” … the lower the supply (relative to the demand), the higher the price that can be charged.
Therefore, it is in the interest of producers and suppliers to try to limit the supply of what they’re selling, as that will let them charge a higher price. Conversely, it’s in the interest of purchasers and consumers that this limitation on supply not be allowed to happen, as they would be the ones who would have to pay that higher price.
As a result, most modern industrial countries make it illegal for producers or suppliers to collude in an effort to hold down supply. Of course, a lot of shady business practices take place anyway, but it requires a bit of subtlety for businesses to get away with it.
In the international arena, however, there is a well-known cartel which colludes to hold down oil supplies and thus to push up oil prices: OPEC (the “Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries”).
The math is simple enough: if they can reduce the amount of oil supplied by 8% and the price per barrel of oil goes up by 22% as a result, their total oil sales in dollars would go up by more than 12%. And they’d have more oil left to sell in future years.
But that dynamic works only if they can reduce the amount of oil supplied. And therein lies the rub: it’s extremely tempting for cartel members to cheat. Why? If you cheat but none of the other members cheats, then you get the benefit of a higher oil price without having to limit your total revenues by limiting the quantity of oil sold (on which you’d earn that higher price).
So using the numbers in the above example, your total revenues would go up by more than 20% rather than by only 12% (if you cheated and no other cartel members did). And that is very tempting when the amounts involved are large. So it’s no surprise that OPEC members do cheat.
What does that have to do with women? Plenty!
Look at it this way: more than half of the population of the world is female. Therefore, there are literally more vaginas than penises in the world. And that makes it challenging for women to command a high price (in the broadest sense) for sex … unless they can convince other women to limit supply.
Maintaining “Cartel Discipline”
Something like that does happen. There’s no formal cartel (such as OPEC), but women serve to enforce an informal cartel by ganging up on other women who seem a little too available and engaging.
Once in adulthood, women generally don’t beat the crap out of each other physically, but they’ll sometimes spread vicious rumors, snub offenders and insist that the rest of their friends also snub those perceived offenders (under pain of being ostracized themselves if they balk at “piling on” the recipients of this ire).
That heavy level of effort will usually be saved for egregious offenders, but “egregious” in this context often relates more to the man who was targeted by the “overly friendly” rival than to the specific details regarding how those attentions were conveyed.
The key word there is rival. If an interloper seems to be making a subtle (or, worse yet, unsubtle) play for a man that another woman considers to be her own (her husband, her fiancé, her boyfriend or even just a new guy that she fancies for herself), that will get a much stronger reaction.
And that makes sense. After all, wouldn’t you get more worked up about seeing another guy putting a move on your girl (versus your reaction had he put a move on some other girl you’ve never seen before)?
The difference between women and men is that we men tend not care one way or another if another guy puts the move on a woman we have no interest in. Women, however, often do get bent out of shape if they see another woman “coming on” a bit too eagerly even to a guy that the woman getting bent out of shape has zero interest in ever being with herself.
It’s not only a rivalry over a particular guy (the object of the friendly woman’s attentions) that upsets women … there is also a concern with maintaining the price-fixing cartel, and any woman giving it up “too easily” threatens that cartel.
The Rational Strategy
However, the fact is that many women do put out quickly and easily, and they gain a real advantage (in terms of attracting men) over those other women who follow “the rules” and play hard to get. So women who don’t break ranks with “the cartel” are much more likely to end up with the leftovers (those being the guys who don’t have much going for them).
Given that large carrot and that large stick (pressing them to comply with “the cartel”) but also a huge opportunity cost (missing out on the better guys) if they do comply, what would a rational woman do?
In public, she’d maintain the impression of being a tough judge who makes men wait and wait and wait some more (with him wooing her all the while). But, in private, she would be very much a different person. If a particular guy looked worth having, she’d not risk making him wait … she’d have his pants down on the first date (but keep it a secret).
She won’t take the chance of letting him get away.
In a way it’s similar to the political arena, where candidates have to pretend to care about the general public (to get the votes to win) but behind the scenes they’re selling you out to special interests (to get humongous campaign contributions so that they can run for reelection as well as to repay their IOUs from the humongous campaign contributions they received for the preceding election).
Since the two imperatives (looking out for you or selling you out) are mutually exclusive, devious deception is their only option.
And so also it is with women … to get what they want (a high-quality guy) while keeping the peace (with other women), devious deception is their only option as well.
More next week.
Stay tuned,
Mack Doppler
