SEX, POWER, MONEY

David P Bryden wrote “Of course, men often ‘use their economic superiority to gain sexual advantages,’ but women often use their sexual superiority to gain economic advantages. So who is the extortionist?” Chuck Palahniuk (the author of Fight Club among other great novels) wrote “It’s all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.” Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her novel Eat, Love, Pray “I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, ‘There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who’s in charge?”

Equally, having power – in all its forms; political, economic, physical – is a great turn on. Especially for women, though men get in on the act through their love of Dominatrices or political and business leaders such as Hillary Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg. Margaret Thatcher was not a classical beauty, but apparently her focus power and authority made her enormously erotic. A French President once described her as having the lips of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula.” But in the real world that the majority of us live in, women have the power of beauty and the power to give or deny sex. And men have the power of money and status. In the world of high class escorts in Marbella and places like it, the direct trade off is explicit and open. In most “normal” relationships it is covert and not consciously recognised. Or at least, not consciously discussed.

It has always been thus. Maybe that will change over the decades to come, but I suspect that since it is the same throughout the world in every culture, and always has been, then it might be a little unrealistic to expect a total reversal of that dynamic. There exists what social scientists such as Catherine Hakim (the author of Honey Money) calls a sexual deficit, in that men want more sex than they are getting. And they are also drawn to young and fertile women in the same way that birds are drawn to fly south for the winter. And they are willing to exchange financial support and gifts in order to meet those deficits.