This post got the screws, cogs, and gears turning in my head, leading to this article/post here.

TLDR: Women charge men for access to a sex using an (approximate) third-degree price discrimination strategy that attempts to offer a man the highest price for sex he would be willing to pay. It is in your best interests to portray yourself as a man with an extremely low reserve price.

THE ACTUAL POST

Price discrimination strategies

Women are always trying to estimate your "reserve price" to have sex with her. In economics, the "reserve price" is the highest price a buyer is willing to pay (or conversely, the lowest price a seller is willing to charge).

No woman ever has a "fixed price" for sex, except for prostitutes. All women practice what is known in economics as "third-degree price discrimination," where different groups of "customers" get a tailor-made price (intended to estimate their reserve price) based upon characteristics of that group. Price discrimination is a big reason Silicon Valley is so rich - they do intensive research with their huge data sets with different prices being offered to people just like you. With these kinds of controlled experiments, they can charge the price that maximizes revenues - which is essentially "what the market will bear." The airlines do it, too. Even McDonald's does it, with the cheap "senior's discount" coffee.

A woman's criteria for estimating a man's reserve price

While every woman is different, their criteria for offering their "reserve price" is probably very close to these four points:

  • How sexually attracted is she to you? If she's biting her lower lip at the sight of you, the price goes down. If you got a big beer belly, it goes up.
  • How thirsty are you? If she has serious competitors, then she has no choice but to drop her price. If she senses you are thirsty as hell, she will charge what the market will bear. This bullet in particular is why I no longer tell them I am an engineer, because they falsely assume I will pay through the nose because I am thirsty. I suspect physicians also suffer the same problem.
  • How attractive is she? Despite all that female empowerment propaganda crap, women often have extremely precise estimates of their own sexual marketplace value, based almost entirely on her percentage body fat and her age.
  • How much money or other resources does this man have access to? If she infers he makes a lot of money, she will try to grab as much as she can, simply because she knows he can theoretically pay it. The interplay with the other three bullets constrains how much she can raise the price on a wealthy man. Bear in mind, women are not trying to lower their price to comport with your budget. If you are failing hard on the other three bullets, then the lowest price she is willing to charge is simply above your means to pay. That's when you get told, "You're going to make some girl sooooo happy one day!"

This price discrimination strategy can also lead to a woman being rejected. If the girl is of poor worth compared to the man, then she must offer an extremely low reserve price to have a chance of getting his "business." Males however, often have a budget and a minimum price they are willing to spend to get a quality woman into bed. If she has no choice but to offer a reserve price of "x", but the man is willing to pay at least "10x" to get a woman into bed, she will almost certainly be rejected for not bringing enough to the table.

While I lack hard evidence for this conjecture, I suspect the "weightings" of these four bullets are nearly equal, e.g. being very physically attractive but not very wealthy is probably not much better or worse than being of poor to average looks but being wealthier.

A comparison of two cases

Suppose we have Male A trying to court Female A.

Male A:

  • Female A is very attracted to him, because Male A clearly works out and is in excellent physical shape from being the military. Not everything is based purely on looks - women dig males that beat up and kill other males for a living, or otherwise exert authority over them. The price goes down.
  • Female A is not stupid, and clearly sees that Male A is not wanting for female attention. She knows there are superior competitors that can undercut her on price every time. The price goes down.
  • Female A, her Facebook "worship me please beta orbiters" messages aside, knows she is probably close to a 6 or a 7. Male A is clearly at least an 8, and probably closer to 8.5. The price goes down.
  • Male A is no longer in the military. He has child support obligations to his ex-wife. He works as a schoolteacher now. She wants him, but knows he can't possibly pay an exorbitant price, so the price has to come down.

Now suppose we have Male B trying to court Female A:

  • Male B is somewhat overweight - not terribly so, but outside of Female A's comfort zone. He's not very muscular, and has a bald spot. He also has a humdrum job which does not involve physical violence or exercising authority over other males. The price goes up.
  • Male B is not being paid much attention to any woman nearby, and her girlfriends did not react favorably to a picture of him she sent to her friends. Women often consult the hottest friends they have AND the ugliest friends they have to properly bracket her competitors price offers (the hot ones will offer the upper bound, the ugly ones the lower bound). The unfavorable reactions of all the women she consulted make the price go up.
  • Female A, to reiterate, knows she is physically attractive to men based on the quality of men that hit on her, and the quality of men that she's slept with before. Male B is not in the same league as most of those men, so the price goes up.
  • Male B works as a junior engineer at a software firm. He pays for her dinner and drinks. She knows she has "a whale" on the line, and correctly infers he's got serious bucks and is willing to pay a lot for sex. The price skyrockets.

Male A is very likely to get a "fire sale" price offer, while Male B is likely to get a lecture about her "commitment to Jesus Christ" and how she doesn't practice sex before marriage (despite her gynecologist lecturing her the week before to "hit the brakes").

The wrap-up

Like I said in another post, I don't tell women I'm an engineer anymore. I won't lie, I'll just dodge, ignore, or vaguely answer the question. A far better strategy is to workout and get a good physique, and disguise yourself as a man whose reserve price must be low.