Sex Power Money

by Sara Pascoe

  The couple split up. It turns out John Gage bought their new house. Diana confronts Gage, which seems to turn him on. He romances Diana by getting her to be an estate agent for him. He tells her a sad story about being stood up, buys some dogs and she is won over. Meanwhile, David rips up photographs, buys zero dogs and tries to punch John Gage but misses, falling on the floor. Having reached rock bottom (the pavement) he now decides to get a job, NOW. Casino cafe waitress would be rolling her eyes, like ‘Some people’, except she’s not in it any more.

  When he is back on his feet, both figuratively and literally, David turns up to speak to Diana at work. He is sorry: ‘I was afraid that you wanted him, I was afraid he was the better man.’ The only thing Gage had more of was money. Status and money are connected, it’s really shitty, but they are.

  With both Diana and David now working for a living, you might be wondering what happened to all that money. We find out as the posh new couple Diana and John enjoy a zoo fundraiser hosted by excellent comedian Billy Connolly. It’s so nice to see the American rich protecting African wildlife without a gun in their hand and a lion under their foot. Billy Connolly announces the next animal, it’s an ugly wet one, the hippopotamus. David rushes in, trying to impress Diana. ‘One million dollars!’ he shouts. He has saved the zoo and seemingly forgotten his lawyer’s commission. He will now need to raise 50K to pay for this hippo. With no wife who will he pimp?

  Luckily, he regains ownership of his wife a bit later. John Gage pretends that he doesn’t love her any more and gives her his lucky dollar, which is a massive pay cut but she doesn’t mind. ‘She never would have looked at me the way she looked at him,’ Gage explains to his driver. They drive off and Diana gets a coach to a pier, where David is coincidentally sitting sadly, and it’s all going to be okay because the zoo is saved.

  I hope you enjoyed my describing the film as much as I enjoyed watching it five times. Now, let’s consider how sex and money intersects in all of our lives.

  * Via his ghost? Not specified.

  The Economics of Dating

  Indecent Proposal is an extreme and fictional example, but we all experience romantic interactions with others where money changes hands. When you consider buying drinks and the other expenditures of dating, it’s apparent that money and choice underwrite each other, although we are often oblivious. Breaking it down—

  You’re not going to rap again?

  You wish. In 2015, back when people wrote blogs, a woman called Lauren Crouch used hers to moan about a guy she’d met through dating site Tinder.* She’d had a date with him in Costa Coffee but declined to go back to his house for dinner because she didn’t know him. They messaged and he invited her round the next day. Lauren said no, presumably because she doesn’t enjoy getting murdered, and he then asked her to refund him the cost of her coffee.

  It’s funny, isn’t it? All the newspapers picked it up because this was back before the Trump presidency and they had a lot of pages to fill. They printed Lauren’s description of the date, with the guy saying he had an Ocado delivery coming and had to hurry back. They printed screengrabs of the messages between them, with her saying no thank you to meeting up again, she hadn’t felt a ‘spark’, and his reply: ‘OK, fair enough. Can you pay me back for your coffee? I don’t like wasting money. Prefer to use it on a date with someone else.’

  The amount he wanted refunded was £3.50. I did some investigative procrastination journalism to find out what the hell you order in Costa that costs £3.50, and the only coffee of that price is called a ‘creamy cooler’, which sounds deliciously revolting. These creamy coolers are the coffee-shop equivalent of ordering lobster and champagne. ‘A creamy cooler to go,’ is what Kanye West would say if he popped into Costa on his way to a concert. Rappers would rap about creamy coolers if their music was set in cafes and not da club.

  NO—

  I wasn’t. We can all enjoy judging this guy – sure, he’ll splash out on Ocado for himself but the beverage he bought Lauren was a loan on the understanding of … what? Putting out? A guaranteed second date? Wanting the money back suggests there’s an unspoken deal which she broke. He demands reimbursement like she’s a shop that overcharged him or sold him a faulty product. He wants his £3.50 returned so he can ‘use it on a date with someone else’. He will replace her with a woman who functions correctly, accompanying him to his home and watching him unpack his upmarket food shopping with the proper appreciation.

  In an interview with the Telegraph† Lauren was asked if she’d repaid the man, and replied, ‘I don’t come with a money back guarantee. Dates aren’t commodities.’ But her situation demonstrates that they are to some people – to at least one man, or he wouldn’t have asked for the £3.50 back. The difficulty with unspoken deals is—

  You can’t hear them.

  Of course, if they are silent and assumed, we can find ourselves at cross purposes in intimate situations. We can’t read each other’s invisible rule books. The Telegraph had a survey at the bottom of the article:

  SHOULD HE HAVE ASKED FOR HIS MONEY BACK?

  Yes, she wasted his money.

  No, it’s a little bit stingy.

  After voting you get the stats: 78 per cent of people agreed with me, ‘No’. Which means that 22 per cent of Telegraph readers had clicked ‘Yes’. Money spent on someone you don’t see again is a WASTE, apparently. Money is supposed to buy you things, and he got NOTHING. For those 22 per cent, if you have no intention of becoming romantically involved with someone or are as yet undecided, you shouldn’t let them pay for any drinks or snacks as they may feel resentful when you don’t want to see them again. And you know what, that’s fine. That is entirely reasonable.

  So why did 78 per cent say he was unreasonable? Is it the quibbley small amount that made him ‘a little bit stingy’? Would we have felt differently if he’d spent hundreds of pounds on Lauren’s meal? Or is it that 78 per cent of Telegraph readers accept a bizarre status quo where men of any income are automatically expected to pay for women on dates?

  Yes.

  I disagree. I took Lauren’s side against Ocado Man until I read her saying, ‘I always offer to pay anyway and women should always offer to pay.’

  Listen up, Lauren, ‘offering to pay’ is not the same as paying. Offering to pay is a gesture, paying is equality. ‘Women should always offer to pay’ strongly suggests that no man will ever let them. That by ‘offering’ you’ve excused yourself. To me women should always insist on paying, because we’re reinforcing our own infantilisation when we don’t.

  APPARENTLY it is ‘traditional’ for men to pay on dinner dates, and I say ‘traditional’ while rolling my eyes like a teenager listening to their stepdad. I was unaware of this ‘tradition’ because I’ve never dated, I’m too busy, there’s no time for sustenance – ‘You’re not hungry, get upstairs.’ I became enlightened via the reality TV show First Dates, a charming programme where supposedly well-matched people make small talk about previous relationships, dead parents and career goals. I like it: except for one thing, the show fetishises men in heterosexual couples paying the bill. Whenever a receipt hits the table, there is a tracking close-up creating tension: ‘Oooh, what’s going to happen?’ Then the camera zooms in on a man’s face, who’s often had quite a terrible time, and he’s juddering under the weight of expectation and sweeps the paper in a saucer towards him. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it.’ Then a woman puts up the least resistance you’ve EVER SEEN. ‘You sure,’ she intones with no upward inflection. Without waiting for a reply she turns to watch a couple on another table. Yes, Lauren, she is offering, but without intention or insistence.

  What is this silliness? I know that people pay for each other – ‘I’ll get this one,’ we proffer, ‘my treat,’ we assert to our friends, family and partner – but the idea that a man is expected, obliged to pay on a first date just because he is the man is shocking.

  Maybe I’ve been doing feminism too long. I thought we were all workin
g towards a society where there aren’t expectations prescribed by gender? Surely women are contradicting ourselves as we list our demands: ‘What do we want? Equality! Respect! Lasagne, green beans and small potatoes!’

  There’s an episode of First Dates where the man doesn’t offer to pay, he insists on splitting the bill, and everyone reacts like he shat on the table. The waitresses bitch about him in the corner. His date cries down the lens in her post-dinner interview: ‘I had to buy my own pie!’ The man is depicted as disrespectful, the woman grossly insulted. It plays out like a scene from Jane Austen, everyone talking about manners and gentlemanly conduct.

  If I was a man, I’d be angry about these kinds of double standards, but when men do reject ‘tradition’ or try to address the sexism of it they’re perceived as unmanly. This is how a sexist state of affairs is maintained – by reinforcing that it is ‘the norm’, with any deviation punished. This has always happened with feminists. When passionate and furious they’re dismissed as ‘mad’; when solidly reasonable – ‘Please don’t pat my bottom, sir’ – they’re overreacting about something harmless and need to ‘lighten up’. Men who question their prescribed roles are either vilified the way feminists always have been, or told it’s not a problem, it’s a little thing, don’t worry about it, men are winning, you can’t complain.

  And lots of men don’t. Just recently there was a First Dates episode where a young woman called Cecilia insisted on paying for herself, and the Sun ran it as a story‡ with the headline ‘First Dates girl accused of “emasculating” date by refusing to let him pay the bill’. Accused? But by whom? Oh, the Sun, who printed educated opinions tweets from people insisting that ‘First Dates girl’ should’ve allowed the guy to ‘be a gentleman’. I like Cecilia. She asked her date, ‘Give me one rational reason why you should? There’s no rational reason why a woman shouldn’t pay.’ CECILIA, get over here and write my book for me. I agree with this queen, there is no rational reason for this type of gendered behaviour – but human beings are quite irrational, if you haven’t noticed. Some of the irrationality has a biological basis, some of it is cultural.

  Taking the latter first, I’ve a friend who dates a lot and I asked her, ‘When you go out with a man for the first time, do you expect him to pay for you?’ She replied slowly, abashed, ‘It’s not ideal. I know what you’re getting at, it’s not ideeeeeal. But it’s just …’ – she stared into space, then returned her eyes to me, pupils large – ‘… romantic!’ What is romantic about being treated like an invalid? Oh, it was sooooo romantic, he spooned soup into my mouth and helped me go to the bathroom.

  Why are romantic stories always about men rescuing women? As children we’re fed tales of princes saving thin, pale wenches from towers, ogres or long sleeps. As adults we read romance books that repeat the same man-saves-woman narrative, but this time with thrusting groins and glistening pudendas. Economic disparity is the crux of romance – female characters are never CEOs or Olympians, they are servants and slaves while the men are royalty or nobility. The importance of male status and female prettiness, beauty and the best, is repeatedly reinforced.

  One of the most famous and admired romantic stories is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The name ‘Mr Darcy’ is synonymous with chivalry, desirability, the ultimate gentleman. His union with Elizabeth Bennet is the happiest ending in literature until you examine it more closely …

  Once upon a time Mr Bennet has five daughters, none of whom can inherit their family home because they’ve neglected to be sons. Property in the Regency period passes to the nearest male relative, in this case Mr Collins, an idiot vicar cousin. Mrs Bennet is desperate to marry off her daughters before her husband dies and they are made homeless. This is not a whimsical urge – during this time women had the legal status of children, charges of their fathers until marriage, when custodianship was passed to their husband. These women were not well educated and did not, could not, work. The Bennet sisters are appendages that need to be fed, clothed and supported by men. Luckily, they manage to meet some very rich people with big houses, and three of the five become betrothed despite their poverty. Jane seduces Mr Bingley by being beautiful, incredibly quiet, patient and blushing. Lizzy seduces Mr Darcy by taking long walks and being able to keep a secret. Lydia runs away with soldier Mr Wickham on the sly and is punished by being sent up north.

  Hooray, the family are saved! And while it is the love between Lizzy and Darcy that makes this book so pleasurable, we must not forget that it is MONEY that saves the Bennets. It is a story of economic entrapment, but when women do not have the ability to earn money for themselves, what other option do they have? Pride and Prejudice is one of my favourite books, but I still realistically question whether Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy or with Pemberley, his nice big house. I question this sort of romance, because it looks a lot like Stockholm syndrome. Lost in the background of this novel is the Bennets’ friend Charlotte, who marries the annoying Mr Collins – not for lust or love but out of necessity. You wouldn’t want to share a train carriage with him, let alone your life, your bed. Another Indecent Proposal, but while Diana need only sell herself once, Charlotte and all women who marry for financial reasons might be expected to do it repeatedly.

  Don’t start picking on marriage.

  Don’t get me started on marriage. Does romance need inequality to blossom? Are the sparks of lust and longing strengthened by crossing a chasm of disparity? There was a study reported in the Daily Mail in 2014 that suggested equality was a turn-off: ‘Doing the housework means men get LESS sex’. I was baited by the intriguing headline. The article went on to wonder whether men performing traditionally womanly tasks like cooking and cleaning meant that no one wanted to shag them any more. Then the study itself was described. An institute in Spain had analysed data from 4,561 middle-aged American couples, a very specific amount of people. 4,561 isn’t a study size, it’s a PIN number. The couples had been interviewed about their sex lives and it turned out that the monsters men who did no housework at all had sex 1.5 more times a month than men who did their fair share.

  At first I got distracted pondering this half sex, the 0.5. Is that a blow job, a lost erection, or when it slips out and you’re laughing too much to finish? Then I remembered how averages work, how it’s all divided between everyone, and I moved on to more serious thoughts. Why the extra sex? Could it be that some couples find nagging makes them horny? Would a couple who row more about a husband’s laziness end up having make-up sex which ups their average? OH, it suddenly strikes me, what if the kind of chauvinist who won’t run a hoover round is also pushier, sexually insistent, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer with his wife? I don’t want to accuse men who don’t iron their own shirts of being rapists—

  I think you just did.

  Whoops. The researchers of the study had the same worry and ruled out coercion by checking that women in those households were as happy and satisfied with their sex lives as the women in the shared-housework homes.

  I have another thought: what about the women who do no housework? I don’t do any and I’ve never had a problem getting people to kiss me. Maybe this isn’t so much about gender, perhaps people who are covered in crumbs are just sexier? That’s why when someone’s really sexual we’ll say, ‘Oooh, she’s so dirty, oh yeah, filthy,’ stuff like that. That could be a very literal compliment.

  The study’s researchers did not make that suggestion. Instead they took it to prove, in the words of co-author Julie Brines, that ‘men and women have deep-seated ideas about what is masculine and feminine’. Scientific American interpreted it like this: ‘Displays of masculinity may evoke feminine displays in women, which activates or intensifies sexual charge. Put the man on a rider mower, in other words, and boom – fireworks. Stand him at a sudsy sink, and it’s a probable no go.’

  I find this so hard to believe. I can’t imagine finding mowing man attractive, on his little grass car? No thank you. I do like the sound of dishwash man but I’m b
iased – I don’t have a garden, I do have a sink. For me the idea that housework is emasculating to the point that it dampens passion for your partner is depressing. This gendered perception of housework was oddly repeated by Prime Minister Theresa May when she was interviewed along with her husband on The One Show in 2017. She talked about ‘boys’ jobs’ and ‘girls’ jobs’ around the house; apparently he puts the bins out and she puts gender relations back to the 1950s. AND HERE IS THE RELEVANT THING, Theresa May is old. So were the American couples interviewed for this study; they’d all got married in the 1960s and 70s. When it was repeated by Cornell University with younger couples, the data showed that men who did chores had more sex, and more satisfying sex, than men who didn’t.

  This means attitudes have changed. It means that Julie Brines was wrong with her assertion of ‘deep-seated ideas about what is masculine and feminine’. Turns out they weren’t deep-seated, just regular-depth ideas that are formed by the society we grow up in and that’ll alter and vary as our culture does. Hooray! This isn’t merely about who tidies up after whom, this isn’t point scoring. It’s about healthy relationships where people respect each other’s time and input. Freedom from chauvinism benefits everybody. But while household roles appear to be culturally influenced, is the same true of our expectation that men should pay?

  Season one, episode five of Sex and the City is not generally considered an academic resource, but while we’re assessing how culture affects and reflects our attitude to masculinity we can watch TV programmes and pretend we’re working must engage with and analyse that culture. This episode is very relevant to our deliberations. It revolves around Carrie, she’s the main character, an exceptionally thin woman with resplendent hair. She’s been on a date with a French guy and slept with him. In the morning, he doesn’t go into her flatmate’s room and do it with her, like when my friend Michelle had sex with a Frenchman. Instead he leaves an envelope full of dollars next to the bed! Carrie freaks out – oh no, the French guy thought she was a hooker (her word), which is stupid because a professional would’ve got the money up front. Then Carrie’s friends come over to be in Sex and the City with her. Samantha, also thin, doesn’t know what the problem is: ‘What are you getting so uptight about?’ Samantha speaks like a cat who is smug but also aroused. ‘Money is power. Sex is power. Therefore, getting money for sex is simply an exchange of power.’§