Your comment also raises the possibility that society has a lower esteem for male virginity than men themselves do. “Risky Business” sticks out 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…

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.

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…