I mean, if I were selling my virginity, I think I would probably hold out for something more than £10,000 (which, for you non-Economist readers, is just $20,167.90).
I don’t fault her for selling it, necessarily. While most people don’t put a dollar-denominated monetary value on their virginity, the fact remains that most people consider it to be inherently valuable. And as any good economist will tell you, anything that is inherently valuable can be assigned a dollar value. You can actually do practical experiments to figure out how much people value things, and economists aren’t the only people who do that. Remember the House episode where House keeps borrowing money from Wilson that he doesn’t need, explaining it to an incredulous Wilson by saying that, “I was just trying to figure out how much you value our friendship?” Kind of like that… only more formal.
So I obviously believe that virginity has a value. My point here, though, is that her price was too low. Clearly this is subjective, but let me explain.
Think about the different things you’d have to factor in here:
1) It’s your virginity. You only get to lose it once. Before you kill me for stating the obvious here, think about the fact that people who still have it can’t appreciate the potential regret that people who no longer have it may (or may not) feel about having lost it. And given that she’s, you know, going to be losing her’s to an unknown partner, I feel like the potential for regret down the line is probably enhanced. And who knows? She might not ever want it at some point in the future, but then again, she might really really want it sometime. So you have to take that into account when you’re putting the value on it.
2) The kid of guy who’s going to respond to this ad… I mean, this isn’t an opportunity that I would necessarily pursue. There was this really weird SVU episode I saw once where there was this guy whose weird sex fetish was virgins; needless to say, things didn’t end particularly well for them. And while I’m not suggesting that the person who ends up purchasing her virginity is a sexual predator, I mean, there has to be at least a little something wrong with him, right?
3) Obviously the person who answers this will feel no obligation to you whatsoever (which is fair, given that he’s paying you 20 grand). So I mean, this is probably not going to be a particularly pleasant experience. It could be, of course, but that would be a bonus that you certainly can’t count on.
4) You’re going to be the person who sold his/her virginity online. I feel like that might follow you for a little bit. I mean, I could be wrong, but in this case, I feel like the people at her school, given that she didn’t do this anonymously, might go in with some knowledge of this.
5) There’s not, to my knowledge, a market that brings together people selling virginities with people looking to buy them. So as an economist might point out, there are inefficiencies here to be exploited. You could ask for £10,000, sure, but it would be a pretty arbitrary number. People don’t know what the going rate for virginity is… you could ask for, say, £15,000 and probably still find a buyer. And given that in this case, and that her school bills that she’s trying to cover are apparently in the neighborhood of £20,000, who not ask for that? Or more, so you could get a pretty good stereo or something for your trouble?
So that’s five things right there that would contribute to pushing the price up for a potential seller, in my opinion.
That said though, I certainly have suspicions as to why her price is so low:
She admitted doing nothing more than holding hands with a guy – and didn’t want to go to university a virgin.
So I guess there’s some urgency there. And I don’t need to tell you that it’s also well known that urgency on the part of a seller is certainly the best thing possible for a buyer, because it provides leverage and ends up keeping the price lower than it should be. So there’s clearly an opportunity for someone to get quite a deal here. I’d encourage everyone reading this to put in a bid… offer less, see what happens, why not?
Anyway, if it was me pricing it, I’d have held out for something more. But given that there is no market for virginities, what do you guys think would be a reasonable price for virginity?
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(UPDATE: It just occurred to me that if it were a commodity, virginity would both hold value well and appreciate in value over time… so selling it young would be like cashing in a CD before it matures. On the other hand, the value would probably peak at a certain time, say, age 24 or something. Something to take into account.
The more I write about this, the more I want to do an independent study and write a thesis about this.)
July 4, 2007 at 12:43 am
While I agree with the notion that it increases in value over time, I don’t know that you can accurately measure when it peaks in value (and I’d argue that 24 is too late). That depends entirely on the consumer.
July 4, 2007 at 1:21 am
Well, you’re certainly right that every individual has a personal preference… for example, if we assume that this girl’s virginity is correctly priced (although we have no reason to believe this, given the lack of a market), the people who will be bidding on it are likely to have preferences close to 18. On the other hand, a man who prefers his virgins to be more, um, mature, would probably not pay for hers unless the price was too low (which, again, it might be).
Anyway, if there was a virginity market (we should set this up somehow… there’s clearly market failure here), the more I think about it, the more I think that there would be different markets for virgins of each age. For example, 18 year old virgins at one price, 19 year olds at a different price (and so on) with each market’s price determined by laws of supply and demand.
So a virgin of each age would have a different price… right? The greater demand there is in a given market (and let’s assume that a guy would have demand in the market at his preference), the higher the price would be (all other things equal).
Of course, we know that all other things are not equal. In fact, they are most decidedly not equal. The supply obviously declines as age increases, and probably declines precipitously in the late teens/early 20’s. So actually, I think price would probably increase to a point around age 20, and then what the price did from there would depend on whether the supply would decline faster than the demand (because as we said, there’s less demand for a 60 year old virgin). It would actually probably stay roughly the same for a little while (or even go up a little ), and then go down.
I say this because there’s no way a guy could convince himself that there’s a huge difference between a 25 year old and 22 year old, for example, while there are clearly more 22 year old virgins… and obviously a guy can rationalize a lot (to make up for the increasing age) as supply declines… And there’s added value to taking an older person’s virginity. I mean, if you have a certain income level, you can get a 19 year old to give it away for free, right?
So I feel like there would probably be a sweet spot range where the price stays roughly the same from like 20-30 or something. I maintain that pre-20’s will go for bargain basement prices (huge supply relative to other ages, low value added as compared to a 22 year old, etc). And I’m still not sure about the upper end of the range… I think it depends on how many guys have old people fetishes.
Of course, the problem with this entire thing is that even within age cohorts, physical attractiveness varies tremendously. Like, a really hot 45 year old, given supply at her age combined with her attractiveness, would probably be among the highest overall prices you’d pay. This market has no way to take that into account; clearly we need to really sit down and design this for real…
July 4, 2007 at 1:22 am
Sorry that was so rambling… but the question remains, what’s a reasonable price? How much would you pay/charge?
July 4, 2007 at 1:57 am
I forwarded this to Drew Beauchamp because his econ thesis is about sex. To augment point 3, because she’s entering a contractual agreement, albeit informally, she’ll have some trouble making sexual assault allegations if the deal goes sour.
What’s a reasonable price for virginity? This is a lot different from something like corn or gasoline because the market is all over the place. I also think people would bluff with you here. They’d quote a much higher price than they’d actually accept because they’re uncomfortable with the concept of selling it. So a girl might as for a hundred thousand but let it slip away after getting trashed at a party for dating a boy for a month during freshman year of college, for example. There are also these groups to consider:
1) The majority of men would pay you something between $10 and $3000 for their virginity, assuming no hidden costs like disease or pregnancy. This doesn’t have to be prostitution; one of my Duke friends went on a thousand mile road trip for this.
2) Some people would sell it, but only if their loved ones were in serious peril or debt. This is the scenario in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.”
3) Some people would never sell it, ever. A group which would not sacrifice ethics for family members would be a small one, indeed.
My personal position is that virginity is priceless, though I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t seriously struggle with Scenario 2. My guess about where the market would price it, though, is $100,000 or double your current assets, whichever price is higher. Most people who were offered an improvement in social station for their virginity would seriously consider it. Just look at the way people have used marriage, a much bigger asset than virginity, for all of history.
July 4, 2007 at 2:16 am
Wow. So much to go on here.
Okay, first of all, I agree with the fact that the girl can’t make sexual assault allegations. In fact, that’s basically what I was getting at, albeit in a more tactful way… Basically my point there was that you could really end up having a shitty experience, up to and including physical/mental trauma, and have no recourse.
Second of all, people “bluffing” would be either a negotiation tactic or would legitimately represent the fact that they’re uneasy with a transaction, in which case their price really would be higher, so it’s not really a “bluff,” per se. I think both of those fit under legitimate issues that would be straightened out by a more formal market.
As for girls who put out their first month of college, that just represents the fact that they either don’t value it enough (anyone who actually valued their virginity at $100,000 wouldn’t put out a month into a relationship), or just that she overvalues her relationship (far more likely). For example, if you were a girl who was under the impression that your boyfriend would break up with you if you didn’t sleep with him, and you really really liked him and desperately wanted to prevent him from breaking up you, it simply comes down to what you value more. If you, for whatever reason, value your relationship more than your virginity, that’s not at all an unreasonable transaction to make.
Third, regarding your point 1, that is not true. Like it’s just not. While I too lament the crass culture of sex, blah blah blah and everything else, most guys are not paying people to take their V-cards. I agree that guys generally value their virginity less than girls (I’m guessing this is based on societally defined gender roles/stereotypes), but come on. That’s bullshit. And while everyone knows people who do crazy shit, myself included, if most guys were willing to pay $3000 to lose their virginity and didn’t care who it was too, then most guys wouldn’t be virgins. $3000 doesn’t just get you a hooker, $3000 gets you a high-class escort. Hell, I bet $200-300 gets you someone who’s not particularly unattractive and possibly even disease free. So that’s just wrong.
And yes… paying someone to have sex with you would be considered prostitution. I don’t really see a way around that.
Fourth, regarding your point 3, that is not true either. Everyone has a price, for everything. What you’re really saying is that there are people for whom their personal price is too large as to be practically met by anyone. And while that might be true (though I doubt it), everyone has a price. This is incontrovertible.
I agree there are people for whom the price would need to be high enough to represent a clear increase in quality of life (I was kind of thinking that a reasonable price would be, say, the going rate for a small house or a college education), and that a lot of people would jump at this chance. But, as you noted in your point 1, there are certainly many people who would hold out for much less. I know you were making your point about guys, but James, our society is seeing gender roles become more and more obscured. This isn’t the 1600’s. I feel like the differences between girls and guys are not that wide here…
July 4, 2007 at 2:38 am
You’re right; I jumped the gun there and ended up with a ridiculous conclusion. Saying that guys would pay to lose their virginity implies negative value, which is a way-too-strong statement. Men may be eager to have sex, but they always imagine it being the perfect situation, with someone attractive and whom they like and so on. When you’re at the mercy of the market, the situation is muuuch different. So a guy who pays $1000 for a plane ticket to see his girl in L.A. is expecting something much higher than $1000 in return, all the benefits considered.
Your comment also raises the possibility that society has a lower esteem for male virginity than men themselves do. “Risky Business” sticks out here.
July 4, 2007 at 9:30 pm
This is a very interesting conversation. We should further explore this issue. I feel we should conduct some research on this, though I’m already struggling with a way to get people to quote their actual price.
July 5, 2007 at 1:24 am
Duke has an anonymous survey system, right?
July 5, 2007 at 11:27 am
Maybe. But a blind study just doesn’t seem like as much fun…