Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital

Smart girls should trade on their 'erotic capital' to get ahead, says sociologist Catherine Hakim. Elizabeth Day begs to differ.
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Taking as her starting point Pierre Bourdieu 's well-established analysis of forms of individual capital — monetary capital itself, human capital intelligence potentiated by education and social capital patronage, nepotism and other network benefits — Hakim proposes another form: She acknowledges that this term has been used by sociologists in the US to refer to physical appearance and sex appeal, but claims that her definition — widened to encompass other skills such as charm, sociability and actual sexual expertise — is both original and powerfully explicatory.

In some ways I think she's right. There's something altogether refreshing about Hakim's spade-calling, which recalls to mind Schopenhauer 's infamous remarks in his essay "On Women": Hakim endorses Schopenhauer's characterisation of the "striking effect" of young women's beauty and sex appeal, and gives us cross-cultural statistics to prove that not only is their "erotic capital" consistently greater than that of young men, but that it is also always undervalued: This might seem counter-intuitive in a world seemingly plastered with images of this "striking effect", displayed in every possible state of dress and undress, but the strength of Hakim's analysis lies in the very crudeness of its metric.

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According to her, while young women may possess considerable charms, men's desire for them always vastly outstrips supply. The reverse is simply not the case: What Hakim terms "the male sex-deficit" underlies both the ubiquity of female sexual imagery — as pornography, as marketing adjunct — and the persistent unwillingness of society at large to "valorise" women's good looks.


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It is, quite simply, not in the interests of all those priapic patriarchs to allow women to actualise their erotic capital, for to do so would seismically alter the balance of power between the sexes. That the religiously dogmatic and the merely male chauvinist should have both demonised — and, paradoxically, diminished — the impact of female sexuality from time out of mind, is, following Hakim, only to be expected. In Anglo Saxon societies, such as our own, the net result is, she avers, that we have less sex overall than they do in steamier, less puritanical climes, while our sexual relations are mediated by a tiresome push-me, pull-you interaction: But while this part of Honey Money may be relatively non-contentious for feminists, Hakim does not spare them her condemnation.

The sexual revolution of the s — effective contraception, the loosening of monogamous ties, the devaluation of female virginity — far from enabling women to empower themselves, actually exposed them to still more male exploitation. The posts male assumption became that women not only wanted sex as much as them — but that they were obliged to provide it, and for free.

Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital by Catherine Hakim – review | Books | The Guardian

Free from the obligation to support children, free from the requirement to pay in any other way. Hakim's view is that the myth of "equality of desire" is endorsed by feminists, and that this leads to what she terms the "medicalisation of low desire", whereby therapists and counsellors try to convince women that their lack of sex-drive is a function of psychopathology rather than hormones. She anticipates being criticised by feminists as an "essentialist", who defines men and women by biological characteristic, but rejoins — I think fairly — that the feminist position is equally so.

I have necessarily outlined Hakim's arguments with a fairly broad brush here.


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It needs be noted that she pays particular attention to gay sexual interactions as a sort of "test case" for how male desire operates when there is no "sex deficit" to contend with — the results of this counterfactual are, at best, tendentious. But more destructive of Hakim's argument is her proposed solution: They have dieted, exercised, worn make-up and had cosmetic surgery; and they have overcome, or sidestepped, church teachings and puritanical social conventions that condemned feminine wiles as the work of the she-devil.

Recently, though, women seeking to invest in their erotic capital have come up against an even more unassailable obstacle.

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For too long women had been victims whose rights were trampled and voices silenced. This was true in many areas of life, and feminists earned the support and heartfelt gratitude of many when they helped extinguish, in much of the West, sex discrimination. Men were the winners in the competition of life; it stood to reason that their ways should be aped. Femininity was for losers and should be rejected as such.

Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital by Catherine Hakim: review

A woman who consciously tries to appeal to men is a traitor; the nurturing of her looks and sexuality is subversive. She rails against the elitism of feminists who urge all young women to find self-realisation in a great career: For these women, attracting either a rich man or securing a lucrative modelling contract would constitute a much better fate. For feminists to ignore their erotic capital is all the more foolish because it provides the sisterhood with a lethal weapon in their battle against the male enemy.

Men, poor things, suffer from a sex deficit that only women in the case of heterosexual men can fill. Hakim urges women to use this to their advantage: Needless to say, many already do; but they do so covertly, terrified lest they be chased out of town by the sisterhood. She grows less convincing when she champions prostitution and lap dancing as ways for women to exploit their erotic capital. Get the best at Telegraph Puzzles.

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