Bartering With Sex

Sex is all about give and take. A study at the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that even though 475 U of M undergrads didn’t need to use sex to get provisions (that’s what parents’ bank accounts are for), many did use it to get other things—help with Econ 302, maybe? Since the students didn’t have any needs that they actually had to use sex to fulfill (i.e., hummingbirds mate to gain access to the most productive flowers guarded by larger males), this suggests something hard wired about the behavior.

The study found that men are more likely to attempt to exchange investment for sex, while women are more likely to do the opposite. This means that men will spend time taking you out to dinner, helping you hang art high on your walls, and walking next to you slowly as you limp along in your heels. And we give guys sex so they’ll do these things for us. Nice arrangement, right?

Well, the study found that attempting to exchange investment for sex is only successful about 25% of the time. Some of the attempted trades in the study included tickets to the U of M vs. Ohio State football game, laundry washing, and a Louis Vuitton bag. I’m not sure whether these “investments” were successful or not, but a Louis Vuitton bag would not work on me. A Miu Miu bag? Maybe. [ScienceDaily]