Resources for orgasms

Resources for orgasms or resources for sex is the evolutionary hypothesis common in the manosphere that women have evolved to be dependent on men, and that men having a higher sex drive (due to lower parental investment allowing men to afford more promiscuity), women can effectively trade orgasms (or sex) for resources. A stronger variant of the hypothesis is that women's genetically determined behavior is strongly shaped around this exchange, leading for example to whoring behavior. Due to this exchange, with men being much more interested in sex (on average), women also tend to have a surprising amount of decision power in this exchange (at least in sexually liberated cultures), by virtue of the principle of least interest.

The resources for orgasms hypothesis may serve as an alternative explanation to some phenomena that have been explained by women supposedly preferring high status partners (hypergamy).

The field of sexual economics also considers sex and resources in human sexual relationships as an exchange of goods, and further investigates dynamics of individual's "market value" that arises from their possession of sexiness, resources and other traits that are linked to mating success. This concept was first popularized by the 1918 Marxist book entitled Women As Sex Vendors.

Hypotheses and evidence

• Self-sexualization: Women are widely observed to self-sexualize in times in times of economic hardship, e.g. in one study economic inequality explains women's self-sexualiation in social media (not gender inequality).
• Independent women not marrying: There is a high incidence of highly educated women and women with careers and high status positions not marrying and more likely remaining single and virgins. While one explanation might be not having time or not making it a priority to marry, another explanation may be that they are facing an evolutionary mismatch, not being able to trade orgasms for resources.
• Independent women losing sex drive in marriages: In one study, married couples in which the man has higher education status, women tended to lose their sex drive sooner. Another study, however, did not find power differentials (in terms of income or education) to affect marriage satisfaction nor the likelihood of women's divorce initiation.
• Infidelity: The primary motivation for extra-pair mating in human females is probably resource accrual (along with mate switching).
• Low-income male marcels: Different from women, men face a higher chance of remaining sexless when they provide less than 20% of the household income (aOR = 2.27, however only at p <.05).
• Women baiting men to get free meals: As many as 23-33% of women have admitted to only go on dates to get free meals, which can also be regarded as an instance of exploiting men's higher sex drive by feigning sexual willingness in order to obtain resources from them.
• Blaming men for lack of sexual satisfaction: One frequently hears about women claiming men would lack skill or drive to sexually satisfy them, often relying on the argument that women less frequently have an orgasm than men. This could also be regarded as another instance of women feigning sexual willingness (or rather sexual neediness) in order to trick men into trying harder and investing more in them.
• Intrasexual competition: There is evidence that throughout history, women constrained each other's sexuality because "sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage".
• Most women have faked their orgasms: As many as 53-68% of women have admitted to having faked their orgasms. Further around 80% of women have moaned without having an orgasm. Such behavior can be understood as an attempt at pleasing the male partner and ensuring his investment. Indeed, pleasing the partner and uncertainty about the bond are some of the most commonly reported as reason for faking orgasms and much more common in women and then men, while men rather faked an orgasm due to wanting to end the sex due to being drunk or tired without losing faith and a reproductive reputation not being able to ejaculate. Female jealousy in great apes related to humans, in fact, also mainly derives from a dependence regarding for protection and support.
• Prostitution is a sexual substitute for marriage: Data from countries adopting the Nordic model approach to prostitution shows that marriage rates increase in response to restrictions put on prostitution, which suggests marriage satisfies a similar need for exchanging resources for sex. The increase in marriages was stronger among lower socioeconomic strata.
• Economic distress reduces women's willingness to provide sex: Self-reported economic distress predicted the wives' rejection of their partner's sexual advances, but not in case of the husbands.

Counter-evidence

However, the fact that more women have recourse to faking orgasms than men is may be merely evidence of the fact that the female orgasm is inherently more difficult to achieve than the male orgasm via sexual intercourse. Only about 25% of women report routinely achieving orgasm through penile-vaginal penetration alone. Due to their sexual naivete/or lack of concern for their female partner's pleasure, many men only perform PIV intercourse with a female partner.

On average, women climax less often with a male partner than while masturbating, indicating that it is something to with their partner and not an innate female anorgasmia that is the cause for this lower frequency of orgasm during sexual intercourse. The prevalence of female faked orgasms indicates that many men lack knowledge of techniques necessary to sexually satisfy women consistently. Research shows that men understand the importance of clitoral stimulation but overestimate their own effectiveness at providing sufficient levels of that stimulation, which may be related to men's general tendency to overestimate women's sexual interest in them.

Coincidentally, in some cases this could provide a strong impetus for female infidelity during midlife. The men who are able to bring a woman to climax are much more sexually desirable than those who are not, although many women will be too sexually inexperienced to understand this until middle-age (when they are likelier to be married in the first place). This is a reverse modality of "resources for orgasms" in which a woman who is seeking orgasms that she is not receiving otherwise can be induced to relinquish resources of her own.

See also

• Hypergamy
• Whoring
• Hypoagency