books
sexist cheap shots
by pilar gonalons-pons and shelly ronen
Cheap Sex: The Transformation of
Men, Marriage, and Monogamy
By Mark Regnerus
Oxford University Press
280 pp.
Reading the news today one cannot help
but notice that the gendered sexual order
is in crisis. As shockwaves of the #MeToo
movement run through different occu-
pational sectors, we scholars of gender,
sexuality, and family look on with ample
curiosity and cautious hope. The enor-
mous shift in public attitudes toward
sexual harassment—dare we remember
what happened when Anita Hill testified
about sexual harassment by Clarence
Thomas in the early 1990s?—provides
the backdrop for the release of Mark Reg-
nerus’s Cheap Sex, helpfully subtitled The
Transformation of Men, Marriage, and
Monogamy. Indeed, Regnerus focuses
his book on social transformation that
verges on crisis.
But it may not be the crisis that read-
ers expect.
At the heart of Cheap Sex is the
argument that contraceptive technolo-
gies (i.e., the Pill), the rise of online
pornography, and online dating eased
access to sex, flooding the modern mat-
ing market with “cheap sex.” But more
than merely observing this shift, Regnerus
raises an alarm: cheap sex, in his estima-
tion, is responsible for declining marriage,
men’s falling economic achievement, and
women’s relational dissatisfaction. At its
64 contexts.org
core, this book advocates for the return
to a conservative social order. Lest this
sound too much like the “elegy for a
lost era” (p. 6) he denies he is writing,
Regnerus at least wants to recast delay-
ing sex until marriage as the true feminist
panacea. Cheap sex, he says, is not a
reflection of women’s empowerment in
society, but a result of women’s “subjuga-
tion to men’s interests” (p. 214).
One could (and should) criticize Reg-
nerus’s conservative agenda and marriage
evangelism; we would have a lot to say
about that. For example, and perhaps
most offensive to our taste, was that
the text seemed to require the reader to
accept a priori moral condemnation of
casual and LGB sex. Not to mention that
disgraced former editor of alt-right Breit-
bart News Milo Yiannopoulos makes an
appearance as an expert on pornogra-
phy and social cohesion, introduced only
as a “provocateur and British writer” (p.
129)! But, setting aside Regnerus’s political
agenda, we chose to evaluate the book’s
claims on the merits of its methods and
theory. Neither is persuasive.
First, let’s consider the book’s meth-
ods. Regnerus frames his assertions with
interview data that regrettably suffer
from selection on the dependent vari-
able. By interviewing only unmarried
individuals who engage in casual sex,
he gives the impression that casual sex
always leads to “nothing” and neglects
that plenty of committed relationships
begin with casual sex. Additionally, the
book makes sweeping claims about
change over time without presenting
any data (primary or secondary) from
the past about these supposed changes.
These sampling methods, as well as the
rudimentary analysis of survey data and
instrumental use of personal anecdotes,
give the impression that Regnerus’s proj-
ect is more ideological than analytical.
As to theory, the logic of Regnerus’s
argument rests on classic sexist ideology
that depicts men as overpowered by high
sex drive and women as responsible for
keeping desire under control. His main
story is as follows: Before the Pill, women
kept men’s sexuality in check for their own
sake (to avoid pregnancy). Sex was expen-
sive because women demanded marriage
or commitment before “giving it” and
this meant that men had to work hard
to become marriageable to “get some.”
After the Pill, women no longer had any
incentive to keep their legs closed and
began—mistakenly thinking they were
becoming liberated—flooding the market
with inexpensive sex. Thus women inad-
vertently produced their own misery—and
men’s, too. The result is that marriage rates
fell and men’s economic position in society
declined. An innocent observer might be
persuaded by the co-occurrence of the
rise in casual sex with the decline in mar-
riage rates and men’s employment. But
any well-trained sociologist knows that
correlation is not causation.
If Regnerus’s theory is right, we
should observe that marriage and men’s
careers decline the most with the greatest
access to cheap sex. And this is simply
not true. Let’s take our own workplaces:
elite college campuses. There, young men
are pursuing education and careers in
contexts that arguably offer the greatest
access to cheap sex. We do not observe
these men dropping out en masse.
Instead, these elite college men go on
to careers and get married (in fact, more
than any other group of men, as Alli-
son Aughinbaugh, Omar Robles, and
Hugette Sun find in a 2013 Bureau of
Labor Statistics report). Thus, it cannot
be that cheap sex is responsible for the
“missing men” (p.11) who fail to pursue
stable employment and become “mar-
riageable.” Might we suggest that labor
deregulation and the rising precarity of
the working class might offer some more
valid explanations?
The cornerstone of Regnerus’s
theory, which he spends most of his book
on, is the idea that men have higher sex
drives than women. That is, men want
sex more than women do, and women
want relationships more than men do. To
convince readers, Regnerus uses survey
data showing that men report mastur-
bating more often than women. He also
uses studies comparing gay men and
lesbian couples that suggest gay men
have more sex than lesbians. He asserts
that women who pursue casual sex do
so either because they feel it’s the only
way to attract men’s attention or because
they have erroneously bought into liberal
lies about the sexual revolution. By his
account, expressing sexual desire makes
women unhappy and depressed, and he
concludes that this is evidence that sex
drive doesn’t come naturally to them.
We argue that these pieces of evidence
are not, as Regnerus holds, conclusive
proof of inevitable biological destiny, but
proof of how cultural ideas about gender
shape our sexuality and sexual relations.
A wealth of feminist scholarship shows
that men are not inevitably trapped in
the urges of their sex drive, rather, they
are trapped in our beliefs that they are.
This idea is foundational to how we
think masculinity differs from femininity,
as scholars Raewyn Connell and Anne
Fausto-Sterling have argued.
Because we as a society believe
that men have higher sex drives than
women, we encourage and expect them
to express and pursue their sexual desires
with a lot more leeway than we allow
women to do the same. Because we also
believe high sexual drive is a core feature
of masculinity, men feel compelled to
continually express their desire for sex
in doing masculinity: by masturbating,
making aggressive advances on sexual
partners, or displaying availability for sex
24/7. And because we believe that men’s
sex drive is more brutish and difficult to
control, we burden women (who are
understood as having little sexual desire
to begin with) with the responsibility to
control it, to be “gatekeepers” in inter-
action, deciding when the time is right.
When it is women’s responsibility to
Contexts, Vol. 18, Issue 1, pp. 64-65. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2019 American
Sociological Association. http://contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504219830680
hold men’s sexuality at bay, these same
women are more likely to be blamed for
violence perpetrated against them. That
is rape culture. And the myth of men’s
insatiable sexuality harms men as well as
women. Recent research by sociologist
Jessie Ford found men sometimes engage
in unwanted sex because it is an expected
way to perform masculinity.
All in all, if the accomplishment of
masculinity wasn’t so reliant on enacting
a myth of high sex drive, these gendered
divergences in sexual behavior would
Mark Regnerus is grasping for the wrong crisis
in masculinity.
soften greatly, likely receding into an
insignificant source of population diver-
sity. Why would Regnerus ignore how
social forces shape gender differences
in sexual expression? We suspect it is
because it would contradict his ultimate
political project, which is to claim that
there is only one way forward out of this
crisis and it is for women to lock up the
gates on sex!
According to Regnerus, if women
refuse access to sex, men will regain their
interest in work, careers, and marriage
(so that they can leverage these things
to “get” sex). The economy will bloom
again. And this is to women’s advan-
tage too, Regnerus writes, since they
will see their true desires for relationships
realized. Not only is denying men sex
better for their prospects of becoming
marriageable, but it will allow for true
female solidarity—bringing up the price
of sex requires a collective, Lysistrata-
style strike. This mélange of collective
action with a return to regressive gender
politics is very troubling. We believe a
real remedy would look very different.
We should stop exaggerating whatever
differences biology might produce in sex
drive and behavior; we have to defend
against the misuse of biological legiti-
macy for social-political ends. We must
fight against essentialist justifications for
sexual violence against women. We need
to reconstruct masculinities in a way that
is not focused on demonstrating sexual
voracity, and reconstruct femininity in a
way that acknowledges sexual desire.
For the first time in a long time we
have a real opportunity to tilt the levers of
social change towards greater protections
for women from sexual violence. This
is a transformational moment precipi-
tated by a crisis in masculine entitlement
and impunity. Cheap Sex’s argument,
troublingly packaged as scientific find-
ings, represents ideas that encourage a
backlash against #MeToo. Regnerus is
grasping for the wrong crisis in mascu-
linity. Rather than holding men account-
able for their transgressions, Regnerus
would have us let them continue hiding
behind their uncontrollable sex drive,
and women’s failure to gatekeep appro-
priately. Rather than putting educational
and marital shifts in political economic
context, Regnerus would have us blame
women’s growing enjoyment of sex.
We don’t need gatekeeping. We
don’t need books like Cheap Sex with
their cheap analyses.
We need norms that guarantee that
all sex is mutually consensual, and fun,
and desired. We need better education,
accountability, and non-punitive penalties
for violations of consent. And while we’re
at it, we need good jobs that provide
everyone with a sufficient living that can
facilitate economic independence and
individuals’ ideal family formations. It
won’t be cheap, but it will be worth it.
Pilar Gonalons-Pons is in the sociology department
at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies how
work, families, and public policies structure inequalities.
Shelly Ronen is in the sociology department at Haver-
ford College. She studies cultures of work, theories of
moral worth, and gendered sexuality.
WINTER 2019 contexts 65