3,000 people have downloaded the Radical Sex book since its release at the end of December 2015. Here is in excerpt from Chapter 3 – Of Porn and Prostitutes.

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In their book Superfreakonomics, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Steven D. Levitt, and journalist Stephen J. Dubner examine prostitution and point out the dramatic change sex has gone through in the last century alone. Prostitution has always existed based on a simple fact of economics, men have always wanted more sex than they could get for free. In more traditional cultures in order to have sex at all, unmarried men would have to pay for it. It is estimated that at least 20 percent of American men born between 1933 and 1942 had their first sexual intercourse with a prostitute.[1] As a result this was an economically booming time to be in the prostitution business. In fact, in the 1910’s, they estimate that 1 of every 50 American women in their twenties was a prostitute![2] Yes, I know. Crazy right? Go check the footnote. I didn’t believe it either. Now, what does this have to do with anything?

Well, how is business today? The prostitutes “wage premium” today pales in comparison to the one enjoyed by even the low-rent prostitutes from a hundred years ago because “demand has fallen dramatically.” Not the demand for sex. That is still robust. But prostitution, like any industry, is vulnerable to competition.” Who poses competition for a prostitute? Simple; “any women who is willing to have sex with a man for free.”[3] And of course, it is precisely this market that has taken off in the last century. “It is no secret,” Dubner and Levitt say, that sexual mores have “changed substantially in recent decades. [As] the phrase ‘casual sex’ didn’t exist a century ago (to say nothing of ‘friends with benefits’)….The shift in sexual mores has given [us] a much greater supply of unpaid sex.”[4]

This approach to life, wherein we offer our bodies and ourselves on the alter of impatient pleasure, casual sex, and sex-as-entertainment, has a staggering effect on our culture as a whole, but most prominently on male culture. In their book, The Demise of Guys, Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan, address the impact:

This is the first time in U.S. history that our sons are having less education than their fathers. When confronted with an abundance of women, men become promiscuous and unwilling to commit to a monogamous relationship. Today’s well-educated, empowered, successful women don’t want lame, slacker husbands, and most men don’t want to feel inferior to their wives. Will this push us into becoming more of an individual, rather than a family-based, society?  “Men are as good as their women require them to be,” said one 27-year-old guy we interviewed. This statement made us wonder about how easy access to sex affects men’s motivation to achieve other life goals. Given the choice between masturbating over online pornography and going out on a date with a real girl – that is to say, a girl who doesn’t look like a porn star and isn’t wearing lingerie – more and more young men [say] that they prefer online porn.[5]

All of this has created a culture in which sexual exchanges, whether real or virtual, are viewed more flippantly than any other point in Western history. How has all of this affected us? Zimardo and Duncan hint at a few important cultural trajectories (for example, causing us to become more of an individualized rather than a family-based society and the lack of motivation in men to have real relationships), and there is a long list of other negative impacts of which sociologists warn as well…

Get the Radical Sex ebook free HERE!

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[1] Steven D. Levitt, and Stephen J. Dubner, Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (Toronto: Harper Collins Publishers LTD, 2009), 23.

[2] Ibid. 30.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan, The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It (New York: Ted Conferences, 2012) <http://www.contentreserve.com/TitleInfo.asp?ID={E7E5D67C-E030-4902-AA9C-43122E53BB79}&Format=50>.