Monday, August 25, 2008

Bartering with bodies

Perhaps I was more surprised that CNN would write an article concerning bartering with sex than with the actual result, but I thought the statistics were interesting and raised a few questions:

- 27 percent of male and 14 percent of female University of Michigan undergrads have "offered someone favors or gifts...in exchange for sex." This seemed low to me. Though perhaps this is pointing towards the actual completed transactions-- I'd be willing to be that those transactions in which one party thought they'd get sex would be much higher.

- Statistics on repeat dealings would be of interest; clearly, there's an issue of credibility on both sides of the market. That'd make a good paper.

- The article mentions only unattached undergraduates, presumably if you're in the survey you're welcome to define "attached" as you see fit. How vastly would this change in looking at those who would define themselves as attached? If you track the transactions and could make generalizations between the attached and unattached groups, could you isolate a rough estimate of the value of a relationship?

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