By the sex contract, we mean the requirement to deliver sex in exchange for some proportionate amount of some sort of compensation. By writing this, my intent is to make explicit and more systematic, the questions we have to answer around this concept in order to make coherent policy decisions. Here, I am not trying to make your decision; I’m trying to convey the understanding of the different systems you could implement with a sex contract (or the lack thereof).
First, by way of defining the opposite, that to say someone makes a contract, they should at the time of making that contract, be able to refuse it, be able to provide their end of the bargain, and receive a compensation that is a fair market value (or otherwise justified threshold). So, although you hear me talk about “the Pakistani solution” and similar, the point here is not to reduce women to slavery (the effective way of life in many parts of South Asia) but to give some concrete examples of what it means to have sex contracts and to enforce them.
Similarly to disambiguate: in a typical marriage contract, there is a sex contract, a child contract, and a roommate contract, along with possible additional financial considerations and other stipulations e.g. on how much weight you can gain, etc. To simplify the discussion here, we’re only talking about the sex contract, and consider the other items in this bundle as a scalar benefit value (though of course we all recognize the emotional benefits, etc.) or as the financial/objective benefit, and the emotional/aesthetic benefit.
Next, we need to be able to talk about providing their end of the bargain. In normal business it certainly happens that contracts are broken or infringed due to the nonperformance of the parties. For us to treat a sex contract in this way, we must have a “bankruptcy” procedure for men who become impotent, etc. The usual means of return is the restitution of payments – so that would imply a schedule of payments that plays out over the remaining life of the contract. However, we should talk a bit about fair market value before going too deeply into this topic.
In regards to the fair market value of the sex contract: there are a wide variety of possible prices. One could objectively grade looks/body type; one could grade the quality (related: frequency and duration/number of acts) of the sex; exclusivity/multiple partners, both during the sex contract and before; and other such factors. One also could resort to a regulated free market pricing mechanism, and set the prices accordingly. The most important note is that individuals’ value for a given person, varies widely, so we have to recognize that any free-market type mechanism will have wildly varying clearing prices, and any schedule/checkbox based system will have serious mispricings.
The question upon entering the contract, is what is the fair market value of the contract? To abstract the above a bit, there are two key metrics:
- Cost per insertion (CPI) (which could be fixed or market variable)
- Quality per insertion (QPI) (that implicates essentially the previously mentioned factors e.g. about partner attractiveness and exclusivity)
and therefore the combination of these two is compared against the generic scalar benefit value, or against the financial and emotional gain. Absent any interrupting events, the valuation of the contract then is a straightforward calculation of the number of insertions, which is correlated with the length of a contract. Thus, as the CPI is considered to be based in some fixed value or per-year/time period cost, the primary risk adjustment for the value of the contract is the risk that the counterparty does not provide the number of insertions and/or the quality of those insertions declines.
Improper capitalization of the contract is a significant aggravator to the risk. The classic instance is when a woman is deflowered, and then the man sets her aside and/or casts her out of the house. If the man doesn’t have enough funds to pay off the contract, then the woman bears all the sex contract risk. Similarly, if a woman pledges her sex in exchange for children and financial support, then stops delivering because of e.g. menopause, then the man bears the sex contract risk.
Another key risk to the contract concept, is a unilateral decision to decrease QPI. One example is the “no more oral sex” type of giving up, or in general the lack of the foreplay and emotional intimacy. However, the most difficult situation is (clandestine) cheating. It not only constitutes a contract breach, but as a result of the misrepresentation, poses health risks to the other partner. Strictly, in this text, I do not mean to deal with this specific health consequence and the legal aftermath (that is straightforward for you to decide based on the type of VD), but because it is a risk the parties must accept, it has to be accounted for in the valuation/pricing of the contract. The risk of illegitimate children, that affect the ability to pay out in the contract bundle as a whole, also can be a major factor in the pricing of the sex contract.
With these factors noted, we need to give some concrete examples of CPI and QPI to motivate the actual policy tradeoffs you face.
First, in the matter of CPI for single episodic sex: in the developing world, CPI is very low, to the point that you can buy sex slaves for less than ten thousand dollars – hence CPI is then on the order of less than ten dollars, becoming negligible. Next, we come to the relatively regulated world of street and red-light district prostitution, where a low-to-mid-range QPI (an hour or two of sex, mostly customer specified, but condoms) costs somewhere between $50 and $200 dollars. Next, we come to the “dating market” where costs wildly vary based on the woman, QPI, and the man soliciting the act (on the order of $0-$1000); and finally we reach the high class escorts who cost thousands of dollars per night (albeit in many cases this still is low-to-mid-range QPI due to condoms).
In the matter of CPI for current contract sex and relationships: prices vary wildly. A sampling of cases:
- Two unmarried lovers with compatibility: on the order of $100 (e.g. dinner and drinks) with high QPI
- Sugar daddies: on the order of $500-$2000, but presumed solid QPI (I am not so familiar with the condom use etc. in sugar daddy arrangements)
- Married couple with two kids, sex a little less than once a week, with a 10-year divorce: on the order of $1000, likely high QPI to start and then declining to low
Don’t forget to account for the price of babies/child support (especially in casual sex encounters) for younger women, and divorce/alimony.
The QPI grading naturally has a lot of subjectivity, but major categories that define price bands include:
- Attractiveness
- Sizes of things
- Types of sexual activity
- Number of prior sexual partners (especially before/after the first)
- Amount of VD (in contrast to previous note, here the point is that two HSV-2 positive adults would find the quality acceptable, but the QPI for non-positive takes a nose dive)
- Condoms or not
- Childbirth, menopause, and other similar damaging events
and hence there is a commodity aspect to the market, as well as tiers in which different people would choose whether to participate or accept.
So we come to the question of the general structure of sex contracts in this context, with some examples of working down from the most valuable sex contract to the least:
- A long-term exclusive sex contract (therefore no condoms needed) that cannot be annulled. (But you accept that rape will occur in the average case, as the value being provided in exchange for the sex may not be worth it; that is, similar to the negotiation between a prostitute and the john, the prostitute is raped if the john is not paying the prostitute what was agreed up front)
- A long-term exclusive sex contract that can be annulled, but has high capitalization and/or low price, so that the exit costs are reasonable.
- A long-term exclusive sex contract that can be annulled, but is undercapitalized and will leave the parties with serious costs in the event of dissolution.
- A limited-partner sex contract, and the partners are tested, and any children indemnified, so you don’t have to use condoms
- A limited-partner sex contract, but with condoms
- Discount program at the brothel
and finish by noting that once the QPI has gotten to condoms and VD, the prostitution market forms the floor on the CPI, and hence a sex contract doesn’t make sense except as an economic concept.