It’s 3:15AM and your typical West Campus rager is winding down. Empty kegs float sadly in their icy bathtubs while those seeking late-night nourishment have already left on a quest for Kerbey Queso. An intoxicated couple who only met a few hours prior are making out on the couch, trying to decide their next step. To the outside observer, sex might seem like the obvious endpoint, but appearances can be deceiving.
In his latest book, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, Mark Regnerus, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas, uses the economic model of supply and demand to explore shifts in modern heterosexual relationships.
“There’s plenty of women who like sex as much as men do, and plenty of women who like it more than men do, but on average the claim still holds,” said Regnerus, “On average, men want it more than women do.”
In the past, this disparity between the number of men wanting sex, and the women who are willing to supply it, has given sex a “price,” a set of conditions that limits access. Think third date, nice dinner, and holding the door open for her.
But according to Regnerus, in recent years the price of sex has dropped. Due to a number of factors such as Internet pornography, relaxed social mores, and more women on campus, sex is cheaper than ever. Though on college campuses, it’s not always as cheap as people might think.
“One could walk around [the University of Texas] and see a panoply of flesh and think the market is inexpensive, but I think it’s not,” said Regnerus, “Here there is a segment of the population that hooks up. There’s plenty of college students who don’t, plenty of college students who just have regular relationships.”
What Regenerus says might be skewing the perception of market price is the high profile of the student sub-culture most committed to casual, hook ups.
“When you think of the quintessential college student, I think people still think of the Greek system… Sex is cheaper in the Greek system, especially in the fraternity system, because fraternities create micro-economies of cheap sex by throwing parties with some regularity and restricting the number of men, opening up to all women. That means a micro-economy for a night.”
Those micro-economies are probably how UT earns its Playboy certified party school reputation, but they hardly represent the entire student body. However, sometimes even the larger, less sexual segment of UT students fall victim to their peers’ sexual myths.
Mary Lingwall, author of The Daily Texan’s “Hump Day” sex column, wrote her honor’s thesis on sexual relationships at UT, eventually titling it “Surprisingly Tame: Sex on The College Campus.” Though the average sexually active UT student has only had one partner in the last year, the majority of students Lingwall interviewed assumed 30-70% of their peers had been with three or more partners since entering UT. In fact, student sex lives are more based around relationships than anything else.
“I assumed that sex was seen as something that belongs to the sex and pleasure world and that sometimes it is co-opted into the relationship-world, but that the two spheres were fundamentally separate,” wrote Lingwall. “What I found was that sex was intimately tied to relationship-making intentions and desires, even among college students who seem so horny and carefree.”
Despite common assumptions, and E-Bus anecdotes to the contrary, perhaps UT is not the hook up haven we’ve been lead to believe. As much time as students spend socializing, maybe finding a date is more of a priority than landing a temporary mate. But, if that is the case, then how can we assume our hypothetical couple, last seen making out on a couch, ended their evening? Two words: oral sex.
