驾照预约考试网站查询:男女平等是否扰乱了性行为的供给平衡？

男女平等是否扰乱了性行为的供给平衡？

Marina Adshade on September 21, 2011, 10:47 AM 

作者Marina Adshade（译者注：作者系加拿大达尔豪斯大学的教授，他为本科生讲授一门叫做《爱与性的经济学》的课程），本文发布于2011年9月21日上午10：47。

Over the past couple of weeks practically every media site has run a piece on a new “economic theory” that argues that gender equality is driving down the price of sex. Valid critiques have been made but analysts are missing one very important point: This is not an economic model and if it was it wouldn’t be a very good one.*

在最近两周里，几乎各家媒体网站都在转载一篇关于一种新的“经济理论”的文章，该文探讨性别平等正在令性交易价格下降。尽管各种批评质疑四起，但大家似乎都遗漏了一个非常重要的观点，即：这根本就不是一个经济模型，就算是，也不是个好的经济模型。（注：见文尾）

Here is the basic argument by social psychologist Roy Baumeister. Men like sex more than women and so in the market for sex they represent the “demand.” Women like sex less than men, so in the market for sex they are the “supply.” In short, men have to compensate women in order to entice them into having sex. In a simple supply & demand model then, the price of sex is the point at which supply equals demand.

    由社会心理学家Roy Baumeister（译者注：Roy Baumeister是美国佛罗里达州立大学教授，为国际著名的社会心理学家）提出的基本论据是这样的：由于男人比女人更喜欢性，因此在性交易市场中，男人代表需求方；而女人不如男人喜欢性，因此在性交易市场中，女人代表供给方。简单地讲，就是男人得向女人付钱进行补偿来诱使女人与其进行性交。那么在一个简单的需求与供给模型中，性交的价格就锁定在供求平衡点之上。

Now, to complicate matters, this is not a perfectly competitive market. In this market the women collude with each other by agreeing to reduce the supply of sex which has the effect of driving up the price. So, this is very much like the OPEC oil crisis in the 1970’s when oil producers created massive inflation by reducing the supply of oil on the world market, except sex inflation is happening a much larger scale since it involves all the women in the world.

    不过令情形复杂化的是，这并非一个完全竞争市场。这个市场中，女人们彼此串通，一致同意减少性供给，这样一来将抬升性交价格。这情形与70年代石油输出国组织那场原油危机十分相似，当时石油出产国利用减少全球原油供给造成了巨额通胀。而所谓的性交泡沫由于牵扯全球妇女，因此其涉及的范围比那场石油危机广泛得多。

Now the OPEC cartel’s strategy to raise world prices didn’t last very long and that is because oligopolies tend to break down fairly quickly. On a market for sex where women are colluding to keep prices high there is always an incentive for one woman to deviate; she can always offer sex at a lower price and capture a large share of the market. Okay, so all the other women call her a slut, but she is getting more resources and more sex so who could blame her?

        欧佩克抬升全球油价的策略并未持续太长时间，因为寡头垄断格局很快就被打破了。而在性交市场中，女人们联合起来抬升性交价格，可总是会有某位出轨的女士存在。她总是能以低价提供性交，并以此占领了大片市场。好吧，就算别的女人叫她荡妇，可是她正在攫取更多的资源并享用更多的性交，管谁来辱骂她呢？

Economic theory predicts that with a large number of suppliers on the market there is no hope for an oligopoly and that market price is set at the perfectly competitive level. Apparently though, according to the authors of this study, the extent of human history has been an insufficient amount of time to reach this market equilibrium. Instead this cartel among women did not break down until women began to gain financial independence from men. Only then, when women no longer needed men’s resources, did women begin to increase their supply of sex on the market.

经济理论认为在一个供给充分的市场中，垄断行为是很难发生的，因此价格水平将稳定在充分竞争水平之上。不过显然，根据这一性学经济的研究论断，人类目前的历史进程还不足以达到性市场均衡的程度。反而是女人们的这一联盟，只要女人们得从男人那里获得经济独立它就不会被打破。只有到某一个时期，那时女人们不再需要男人这种资源，她们才会在性交市场上增加供给。

So to recap, women with little or no power used sex to extract resources from men by withholding sex, and now women who have more power no longer use sex to extract resources from men because…maybe they no longer want men’s resources?  I don’t have the answer for that since it isn’t discussed in the paper and I myself can think of no reason why it would be true.

所以综上所述，女人在用克制性交从男人那里获取资源这一点上基本上是无所作为的，并且，那些有点儿手捥能从男人那里获取资源的女人也不再需要利用性交来实现……因为……她们可能不再需要男人这种资源了？这篇文章里没讨论这个事儿，所以我也没答案，并且我自己觉得这事怎么也没道理是个真实的情况。

The authors prove this point by using data on sexual behavior in 37 different countries collected by Durex’s website (yes, the condom producer) combined with gender gap data from the Global Gender Gap Report 2006. They find that countries with greater gender equality are also those with more promiscuity measured in terms of: greater number of sexual partners, more one-night stands, lower age at first sex and a more liberal attitude toward sex before marriage.

       这些文章的作者们都引述杜蕾斯网站上搜集的对37个不同国家性行为的研究数据（没错，杜蕾斯就是那家生产避孕套的公司），结合《2006年全球性别差异报告》中显示的数据来佐证其观点。他们发现，那些两性更趋平等的国家也正是滥交更泛滥的国家，而他们定义的滥交是根据下述情况进行的：更多的性伴侣数量、更多的一夜情发生率、首次性行为的低龄化以及对婚前性性为更为开放和容忍的态度。

Some excellent points have already been made in the argument that this relationship between promiscuity and gender equality is probably attributable to factors other than a breakdown of the female sex cartel (see for example, Amanda Marcotte’s piece on Slate) but I have a purely economic theory – one, in fact, that we have discussed before here on Dollars and Sex.

       还有一些貌似精彩的观点说滥交和两性平等的关系对女性联盟这一现象可能是个积极因素而非对其不利（例见Amanda Marcotte发表在Slate杂志上的文章）。可是，其实我只是发表了一个纯粹的经济理论，对，事实上只有这一个，就是我们曾经在这里讨论过的《美金与性行为》。

There is a strong correlation between gender equality and national income; it is the wealthiest nations in the world that allow women the greatest independence. You could argue that sex is a luxury good (one that you consume more of as your income increases) and that would give you the simple statistical relationship between more sex and greater gender inequality. But, I suspect that the relationship is more complicated and comes down to what makes nations wealthy in the first place; laws and social norms that place limited controls on individual behavior.

两性平等与国民收入间是存在非常强有力的正相关性的。世界上只有最富有的国家才能有女人最大程度上的独立。你可以将其理解成性是一种奢侈品（所谓奢侈品消费就是随着你收入的增加你对它的消费也会增加），并且你也可以用简单的统计学数据来证明，更多的性交意味着更加平等的两性地位。不过我仍然对此持有质疑，实际上性行为这种关系是更为复杂的，归根结底对其有所影响的因素：国家财富排在首位，其次是法律及社会规范，它们用以约束个人行为。

To quote my previous post: …cultural traits that encourage [economic] growth are openness to new ideas, trust, and a willingness to accept risk.  It is possible that these same characteristics are ones that encourage promiscuity.  After all, what can be more trusting, and more risky, than sex with a stranger? If I am correct, it is not income that leads to promiscuity, but rather other characteristics of a free society that lead to both high income and high promiscuity.

我在这里要引述一下我从前的文章：……激励（经济）增长的文化特质包括：对新思想的开放度、信任以及接受风险的意愿。难道这些特质也成了鼓励滥交的特质不成？毕竟，还有什么比和陌生人性交能体现出我们变得更富信任、更具冒险精神？如果我是正确的，与其说高收入导致了滥交，毋宁说一个自由开放的社会同时带来了高收入及滥交。

You won’t be surprised to learn that I do think economics can tell a story about human sexual and mating behavior. But economic theories are complex, just like human sexuality, and go far beyond a primitive understanding of supply and demand.  Much of the criticism of this paper, focusing on whether or not men are buyers and woman are sellers of sex, somewhat misses the point; that even you accept that premise the theory is seriously flawed because it ignores basic economic principles on the way that markets operate.

对于我确实认为经济学家会讲故事这一点你别感到惊奇，他们确实会编造关于人类性行为及伴侣关系的天方夜谭。经济理论是复杂的，正像人类的性行为是复杂的一样，它们远远超越了对供给需求论的原始理解。很多对这篇论文的批评者都在关注是否男人就是买家而女人就是卖家，他们忽视了重点是：就算你接受了这个理论的假设前提，这个理论也是有着严重缺陷的，因为它根本就忽视了市场运行的基本的经济原则。

*  Commentators seem to have had a difficult time locating the paper that all this debate has spawned and, in fact, I contacted the author who wrote me back to say there was in fact no study with the title "Sexual Economics: A Research-Based Theory of Sexual Interactions, or Why the Man Buys Dinner" which has now been widely cited. The actual paper is the more blandly titled “Cultural Variations in the Sexual Marketplace: Gender Equality Correlates with More Sexual Activity” published in the Journal of Social Psychology in April.

注：大家在找这篇引起争议的原文时似乎有困难，实际上，我联系了原作者，他回信给我说他们在题为《性经济学：基于性交的理论研究，或为什么由男人买单》这一课题上根本就没做什么研究，可这个题目已经被广泛地引用了。而事实上的论文题目是《性交市场上的文化多样性：两性平等与更多性行为发生的相关性研究》，发表在今年4月的《社会心理学》杂志上。