[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