The Significance of Sex-Ratio Imbalances: Myths and Realities

Excerpt

According to Mark Regnerus (see, “Contemporary Mating Market Dynamics, Sex-Ratio Imbalances, and their Consequences” [Society, Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 500–505]), because sex is cheap, women lose out. This is the basic thesis about the dynamics unfolding in searches for mates across the country. He seeks to account for why “corrosive sex-ratio imbalances,” combined with the “unintended legacy” of birth control, disadvantage women in the market for heterosexual marital partners. These “speculations” are derived from a model of “sexual economics”: the male sex drive makes women the sexual gatekeepers who prudently extract commitments and resources from men in exchange for sex. Prior to the Sexual Revolution, the “price” paid by men for sexual access was high, but modern technology in the form of the Pill (and presumably the latex condom and abortion) has since eroded the value of sex, leading to the formation of a “sex market” overpopulated by underachieving “omega males.” In contrast, the “marriage market” has too many women, which means that men in this market have the upper hand when negotiating relationships. The consequences of all of this are the proliferation of hooking up, friends with benefits, serial cohabitation, and the retreat from marriage. Women’s preferences, Regnerus concludes, are unfulfilled because these emergent power dynamics in mating markets impose coercive choices on them. In short, Regnerus’s sexual economics is a causal model of why (assumed) gender differences in sexual desire and technological changes in fertility control lead to sex-ratio and power imbalances, which then have wide-ranging negatives effects on women. …