自考4月考试时间:便宜的性

原文Mark Regnerus(译者注：作者为德州大学奥斯丁分校的社会学副教授，层合著《美国婚前性行为》一书)发表于2011年2月25日，12：23 PM。1

We keep hearing that young men are failing to adapt to contemporary life. Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women's: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships.

在现代社会青年男子无法适应生活的故事已经越来越普遍，相比1971年的青年，现处于25到34岁的男子的经济前景要落后了20%。而今天，男性的大学入学率也低于女性，美国的在校大学生中仅有43%为男性，去年就业人群中女性所占比率也首次超过了男性。但有一项数据男性却依然处于遥遥领先地位——婚前性行为。2

When attractive women will still bed you, life for young men, even those who are floundering, just isn't so bad. This isn't to say that all men direct the course of their relationships. Plenty don't. But what many young men wish for—access to sex without too many complications or commitments—carries the day. If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we'd be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on. Instead, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (which collects data well into adulthood), none of these things is occurring. Not one.The terms of contemporary sexual relationships favor men and what they want in relationships, not just despite the fact that what they have to offer has diminished, but in part because of it. And it's all thanks to supply and demand.

对于一个青年来说，只要依然还有美女愿意和自己上床，生活即便再艰难，就依然不是最糟糕的。这并不是说男人总是在两性关系中占据主动，至少很多不是。但事实依然是大多男性仅仅希望得到简单的性——不需要纠缠不清和承诺，假设两性关系更多是女性处在主导地位，那我们应该能够看，更多的亲密举动，更加持久的关系，更少的婚前性伴侣，更少的同居而更多人选择了结婚，但根据全国青少年研究纵览收集的大量数据显示以上事实并没有发生，而当代性行为更符合男性的期望，尽管不能说这是因为男性主导造成的，但这至少是一项主要原因。而这些实际上完全符合供需法则。2

To better understand what's going on, it's worth a crash course in "sexual economics," an approach best articulated by social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs. As Baumeister, Vohs, and others have repeatedly shown, on average, men want sex more than women do. Call it sexist, call it whatever you want—the evidence shows it's true. In one frequently cited study, attractive young researchers separately approached opposite-sex strangers on Florida State University's campus and proposed casual sex. Three-quarters of the men were game, but not one woman said yes. I know: Women love sex too. But research like this consistently demonstrates that men have a greater and far less discriminating appetite for it. As Baumeister and Vohs note, sex in consensual relationships therefore commences only when women decide it does.

如果要更好的理解这个观点，可能需要举办一个“性经济学”短期培训班，介绍社会心理学家Roy Baumeister和Kathleen Vohs提出的观点。正如Baumeister、Vohs以及其他人反复指出的，男性的性需求比女性更强，不管我们把这种多余的性欲称作什么，但无数证据证明这一事实。一个被广泛提到的案例是，一些年轻貌美的研究人员向佛罗里达州立大学的实验对象私下提出性需求，三分之一的男性实验对象答应，但没有一个女性答应。没有人否认女性同样有性需求，但一个又一个如此的实验显示，男性对性更随意，需求也更多。但同时Baumeister和Vohs提出，性是一种双向交互的关系，也只有当女性同意的时候才会发生。

And yet despite the fact that women are holding the sexual purse strings, they aren't asking for much in return these days—the market "price" of sex is currently very low. There are several likely reasons for this. One is the spread of pornography: Since high-speed digital porn gives men additional sexual options—more supply for his elevated demand—it takes some measure of price control away from women. The Pill lowered the cost as well. There are also, quite simply, fewer social constraints on sexual relationships than there once were. As a result, the sexual decisions of young women look more like those of men than they once did, at least when women are in their twenties. The price of sex is low, in other words, in part because its costs to women are lower than they used to be.

但现在实际是，尽管女性手握着性的钱袋子，但她们并没有要求回报什么，在市场上，性的价格很低。这有很多可能的原因：其一是泛滥的色情信息，借助网络的飞速发展，多样的色情内容为男性的性需求提供了新的需求，这一定程度削减了女性的定价权。同时性行为的成本也在降低，现今相比从前，对于性行为的社会约束也越来越少，现在女性可以更轻易的同意性行为。现在性的价钱事实上很低，实际从某方面是因为对于女性来说性行为的成本正在降低。

But just as critical is the fact that a significant number of young men are faring rather badly in life, and are thus skewing the dating pool. It's not that the overall gender ratio in this country is out of whack; it's that there's a growing imbalance between the number of successful young women and successful young men. As a result, in many of the places where young people typically meet—on college campuses, in religious congregations, in cities that draw large numbers of twenty somethings—women outnumber men by significant margins. (In one Manhattan ZIP code, for example, women account for 63 percent of 22-year-olds.)

但另一个关键的事实是，相当多的青年男性在日常生活表现越来越糟，同样的现象也开始出现在约会中。这并不是说国内性别比例已经失调，而是由于年轻的成功女性和年轻的成功男性数量差别越来越大。因此，在大学校园、宗教集会场所、现代市区这些20多岁的年轻人活动场所中，女性的数目要显著超过了男性。（例如在曼哈顿的一个区，22岁的年轻人中63%是女性）

The idea that sex ratios alter sexual behavior is well-established. Analysis of demographic data from 117 countries has shown that when men outnumber women, women have the upper hand: Marriage rates rise and fewer children are born outside marriage. An oversupply of women, however, tends to lead to a more sexually permissive culture. The same holds true on college campuses. In the course of researching our book Premarital Sex in America, my co-author and I assessed the effects of campus sex ratios on women's sexual attitudes and behavior. We found that virginity is more common on those campuses where women comprise a smaller share of the student body, suggesting that they have the upper hand. By contrast, on campuses where women outnumber men, they are more negative about campus men, hold more negative views of their relationships, go on fewer dates, are less likely to have a boyfriend, and receive less commitment in exchange for sex.

由于性别比例的改变显而易见会导致性行为的改变。根据117国的人口统计数据分析得出，如果男性数量超过女性，女性会在两性关系中占据主动，结婚率上升，非婚生子数降低。而由于女性数量的供过于求，则会导致更加随意的性行为，同样趋势也很容易在大学校园里出现。为了完成《美国婚前性行为》一书的调研中，我和我的合作作者评估了性别比例和女性性行为以及对待性态度的关系，我们发现在女性越少的校园里面处女比例越高，很显然在这里女性占据着主动。相比之下，在女生比例超过男生比例的学校，男生则更拥有主动权，女生则在两性关系中更加被动，男生则可以通过更少的约会、更少的付出、更少的交流便会得到性。