Well... here we are again. It seems I've been a tad negligent to one of my RadCooks categories. When I revamped this glob, I took it from only hypotheticals and expanded it to everything satirical and feminist. Sadly, I have forgotten my roots, and so I shall go back to them. I was looking through my favorite feminist blog, Jezebel and it came to me. I read an article that seemed to be about a lot of things: fembots, porn, oversexualized children, Heidi Montag, ect. And I thought to myself, I said, "Bleecker, you need to write about this, but you need to make it your own and you need to make it structured, or else you'll go on and on in the opening paragraph about nothing and no one wants to read that." Of course I'm not doing that now... And so I thought and a light bulb flicked on. Sexual Economics! Sounds beautiful doesn't it? Well it's a new theory I have and it goes a little something like this... Hypothetically speaking... do we produce sex because there is a demand for it, or is there a demand sex because it is mass produced? Sex is fast, cheap, easy and accessible. We churn it out on a daily basis in mass. But do we have the capacity to consume it at the level it's being produced, or is sex soon becoming the next corn? Advertising. We are told to buy and we comply. Psychologists, group studies... all show advertisers how to best market a product. Will a product sell, even if there is no demand for it? I think the Snuggie speaks volumes on that. What we, as a modern American society have created is a Sexual Equilibrium. Using the "supply and demand" model to determine a woman's sexuality we see that: Men demand x and so Women become y. As Men are the dominant factor in our society, no one can deny this, women have to conform to their requirements. Porn is a prime example of an overly sexualized product that is mass produced. But is a male's desire for certain sexual qualifications a byproduct of porn or is porn a byproduct of male fantasy? Has society, in trying to satisfy the demand, oversupplied? Is there a surplus of sex that needs to be liquidated? This would explain the schism between uber-feminists and fembots. Some women feel the need to counterbalance our overly sexualized society. Jezebel says,

...instead of freeing women, the sexualization of culture has trapped young women in a double-bind: they must appear to be liberated and independent, while working daily to please their men...''But certainly the young women I have spoken to … aren't at all confident in negotiating sex. They still feel as though they have to meet the boyfriend's needs first before their own," she said. It seems that this is what it comes down to: how are women supposed to navigate a world where sex is highly visible, but still shrouded in a certain level of unreality? How does one be "sexy" when the messages are so mixed? Toy and Dana show us one side, yet there is another: the so-called "new prudishness." ... Ada Calhoun noted the backlash against promiscuity. Since then, the sides have been drawn with many women falling into one camp or the other. It's as though we're unconsciously dividing ourselves into the old Madonna/Whore categories, leaving little room for nuance. Instead of choosing sides...

In Sexual Economics we will equate sex as the product, quantity for product in our society is high (ie fembots), price for product is low (porn is free.). Demand correlates to quantity and price so if quantity is high and price is low there is less of a demand for the product. A person's sexuality is the intersection of these factors. Just because demand is low does not mean people will stop buying, there is a market for sex, and as long as the cost is low there will be vultures who are willing to buy low, exploit and publicize it and then make a profit when the demand goes up. Demand goes up because fashions change and trends start, trends start by advertising, be it in the media or on your neighborhood block, the publicity of an item usually correlates to how popular it will be, thus increasing the demand. Therefore, if we examine sex through a supply and demand model we can conclude that if there is a high supply of sex and the cost of that supply is low then the demand must also be low. We can only conclude that there is a set amount of female sexuality desired by a male, however since every male is different the scale for sexuality is sliding and determined by the individual. The problem in generalized Sexual Economics arises when one tries to privatize sexuality and average the desire for it. The Jezebel article concludes, "But for now, at least we can all agree on this: There has got to be a better answer to the question what is woman? than what do men want?" Now I know I've been yammering on for almost 1,000 words about the idea of Sexual Economics (what the fuck is that? Stop making shit up Bleecker!) but I think it's a valid question to ask, do we want all this sex or is it just being jammed down out throats? Judging purely based on the traffic of my glob, the kinkier the post the more people view it. So I'm saying, yes, there is a clear desire for sex... just maybe not the type women are being told to buy or buy into... hypothetically speaking. Side note: Did anyone else just get that? Because if you did you might need to explain it to me. I wrote this while on an ego trip after reading the Jezebel article and then a Wikipedia article on supply and demand in economics. I have no place in the economic world, I should probably get back in the kitchen...