Monday, August 25, 2008

Bartering for Sex

CNN reports on the fairly widespread phenomenon of bartering sex for something desired.

A recent study of 475 University of Michigan undergraduates ages 17 to 26 found that 27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren't in a committed relationship had offered someone favors or gifts -- help prepping for a test, laundry washing, tickets to a college football game -- in exchange for sex. On the flip side, 5 percent of the men surveyed and 9 percent of the women said they'd attempted to trade sex for such freebies.


Now, I realize these types of statistics are the least valuable. In fact, I'm not so sure that description above even makes sense. Nevertheless, it strikes me as credible enough. Do you think it's a sign of age that I shake my head at this and ask what's the world coming to? In these stats, 27% of men and 14% of women have actually done this. Is it the advertising that for decades has been using sex to sell? Is it rock and roll music and MTV? What is it?

Tell us your opinion? Feel free to link this question to the other threads, like, would you trade sex for a gun? Are college kids doing this because they never learned about evolution in high school? Or for you more conservative commenters, should this behavior be severely punished? Is it tantamount to prostitution?

2 comments:

  1. it's likely a sign of age if you think this is in any real sense new.

    well, maybe such large percentages admitting to it, that might be new. otherwise, this's likely been going on forever, with varying degrees of social sanction. no story here, CNN's using a smoke grenade to fool us into thinking there's a fire.

    ReplyDelete
  2. +1 to this...they don't call it the "World's oldest Profession" for nuttin'

    So long as these people are using protection, and aren't having abortions, I could give two shits who they hump, how, and when...

    ReplyDelete