[ErrantX]

She knows she'll sleep with a guy for a million dollars. She's thought about it.

A reasonable point; except you've asserted that and I'm not sure it's true. Do you have any data to back up the theory? Because one of the things that became clear to me was people hadn't really and truly considered it; there was a lot of thinking going on.

I realise the experiment was flawed; and we tested too few people to really make any definite observations.

However the aim was not to present it as a serious offer; but as a thought exercise. Once over the "wtf is this guy asking me" moment at the start we spent quite a while with each person (in private) discussing his/her thoughts. This made it a little more solid.

I agree with the idea that the joke is idiotic; clearly it is just misogynist crap (or, very occasionally just a racy joke - I've pulled it out maybe once to rescue a date :)).

[dkarl]

It doesn't matter how many people you test, because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money. Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered? Of course both of those scenarios would be far outside chances compared to the chances that somebody was just trying to play a humiliating joke on her or steal her identity.

The question a woman's brain is really engaged with in these scenarios is, "What's the safest way to deal with this situation?" That applies even if she actually knows you and is a modern liberal woman, because she's got to walk a line between seeming prudish or dishonest and triggering the insecurity thats lurk in every male breast.

[Edit: sorry for all the unacknowledged edits; since HN has no "preview" button I just post and edit.]

[ErrantX]

because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money

Of course you can; that is pretty easy to do. (also you might note we tried a lot more credible monetary amounts as well).

Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered?

This is something of a strawman... because clearly it all depends on the individual and how they perceive a situation. But it seems reasonable to suppose you can ask the person (as I did) to visualise a situation where they were receiving a serious offer (a lot of phsyc testing uses this premise).

"What's the safest way to deal with this situation?"

When I said bartering I should point out it wasn't actively bartering over the idea of sex; it was a discussion about the ideas and this concept of a "price". Or in opther words it was explained what the point was. Most said it was an interesting thought experiment.

So where your seeing this as the individuals thinking "oh crap, this crazy person is saying really weird/scary things" that was not the situation. We used the opening line as a gambit to provoke this idea of a "price".

I'm actually most interested in your currently undefended assertion that people have thought about their "price". It's the most interesting part of this for me.

EDIT: it's worth pointing out this is less about establishing what cash amount people want for having sex with you than about getting people to discuss a social idea that is almost certainly frowned upon, but which could make them rich via minimum effort/skill. We could have tried something like.. would you kill for £1 Million - but there were strong reasons against that (sex itself is not frowned on (just paid-for), where murder is. Sex is more interesting because there is a divide between how men and women react to it).

[dkarl]

If you say that the whole point was to provoke people to think, and not to glean any information about what they would actually do, I'm fine with that. However, I'm skeptical that women would devote much thought to the imaginary situation that will never happen when they were in a real situation where they were being asked to discuss their sexuality. It's kind of like you've never seen or heard a goat before, so you walk up to someone with your pet tiger on a leash and ask them to do an impression of a goat. You're going to get an impression calculated not to excite the tiger, without much thought to what a goat looks and sounds like.

I'm actually most interested in your currently undefended assertion that people have thought about their "price". It's the most interesting part of this for me.

As a kid I had multiple conversations in different groups of guys where the question of having sex with another guy for money came up, so I think I can vouch for guys. Even in groups of guys who weren't particularly intimate and didn't trust each other, you'd get exchanges like, "Dude, you are so in love with that guy you would suck his duck." "Fuck you, I'm not sucking anybody's dick." "So you wouldn't even for a million dollars?" "You saying you wouldn't? What are you trying to hide?"

As for girls, girlfriends have told me about giggly conversations they had with their friends when they were thirteen. The question naturally arises from the question of whether you would marry a gross old guy who had billions of dollars -- and that's something that all young girls talk about. It's an irresistible mixture of horror and fantasy. Start altering that story and you're only two or three steps from outright prostitution. (Amusingly, in the one story I remember pretty well, the question posed was, "Would you have sex with a guy for a million dollars, even if you didn't love him?" I guess to thirteen-year-old girls, love is the factor that makes everything okay or not okay, even prostitution.)

Another reason is how people reacted to the movie Indecent Proposal with Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson. It wasn't an alien idea for most people. Anytime people talked about it, they seemed to be picking up the threads of conversations from a long time ago. Of course, people are a lot less likely to talk about it with people they don't trust, especially when the intent seems to be hostile or transgressive.

[ErrantX]

I suspect what you're talking about is something entirely different... because they are just jokey/giggly conversations with no real meaning (there are all sorts of social pressures that set your price, for example).

Have you, as an adult, considered your price? My suggestion is few people have.

[dkarl]

I've thought about it enough to know that I don't have a single price. The price depends on attraction, how much I like and trust a person, assurances of discretion and safety, etc. My "ideal" price is zero; I sleep with people for free all the time. Above that, it gets complicated. For example, I can think of a certain girl who's extremely unattractive, abrasive, not very bright, always hard up, and likes me a lot. I definitely wouldn't do her for free; I've been tested on that extensively. $500 would be enough. However, she's in debt, she's a friend of some friends, and she can't keep her mouth shut. Everybody would despise me for taking that much money from this girl who's struggling personally and financially. There's no good price for that example, but it's the most likely example I could come up with in real life. If I imagined she was better-off, $500 would be plenty for ninety minutes of work (including drive time, chit-chat, etc.)

[ErrantX]

This is an interesting, and IMO uncommon, response. Thanks for the honesty! :)

You're right social constraints are going to modify each condition; many people sleep with others in sympathy, for example.

If I imagined she was better-off, $500 would be plenty for ninety minutes of work (including drive time, chit-chat, etc.)

That's an interesting figure; because it is roughly how much a prostitute would be paid (I use that example only because it is the most readily available price for sex we have). So, possibly, there is an inherent social value for non-free sex we subscribe too.

My "ideal" price is zero; I sleep with people for free all the time

This syncs almost exactly with the response most men gave in our survey