What is Sexual Capital?

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The study of collective intimate life—including everything from with whom we “hook up” to whom we marry—has been rather devoid of sociological imagination. a b Seilhamer, M.F. (2019). Gender, Neoliberalism and Distinction through Linguistic Capital: Taiwanese Narratives of Struggle and Strategy. Encounters. Channel View Publications. p.173. ISBN 978-1-78892-303-3 . Retrieved 20 October 2023. More and more, "capital" is deployed for conceptualizing and theorizing around the many aspects of the self that can be leveraged for profit. In What Is Sexual Capital? Dana Kaplan and Eva Illouz take on the titular form of capital to examine how sexuality, as it has historically progressed from traditional religious morals through a more secular modernity and entered the neoliberal era, has become inextricable from capitalist social structures. Boysen, Benjamin. "Houellebecq's Priapism: The Failure of Sexual Liberation in Michel Houellebecq's Novels and Essays." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 43.3 (2016): 477–497. Smith, Jesus G.; Morales, Maria Cristina; Han, Chong-Suk (2018). "The Influence of Sexual Racism on Erotic Capital: A Systemic Racism Perspective". In Batur, Pinar; Feagin, Joe R. (eds.). Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp.389–399. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-76757-4_21. ISBN 978-3-319-76757-4 . Retrieved 17 October 2021.

a b Koshy, Susan (2004). Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-8047-4729-5.It discusses how the women develop and mobilize their sexual capital, using their bodies and sexual practices to constitute themselves as erotic Sexual capital can be present in both secular and religious settings. Willey has shown that in an Evangelical youth group, sexual and erotic capital still play a role in partner selection. [14] Young adults often find a romantic interest in their church groups, often by choosing a partner who has sought-after traits, or a desirable personal capital portfolio. [14]Within the Evangelical youth groups studied, sexual capital was displayed as virginal capital, in which an individual was considered more romantically desirable by the group when they had not engaged in sexual activity. [14] Additionally, some studies point out how adolescents may reduce their religious involvement around their sexual debut. [28] Pentecostal adolescents in Cape Town were shown to reduce their church attendance in early adulthood, with some resuming their previous attendance after finding a long-term partner. [28] These studies show some of the effects of religion on influencing sexual behavior norms of a community. While limited studies have been conducted on the effects of sexual and erotic capital within other religious communities, much has been written on how religion has shaped human sexuality. Sexual capital (or erotic capital) is the social value an individual or social group gets as a function of their sexual attractiveness. Like other forms of economic capital, sexual capital can be converted to other forms of capital. [1] [2] [3] [4] Sexual capital can be useful in getting social or economic capital. [4] British sociologist Catherine Hakim first used the term "erotic capital", in the early 2000s. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu had already defined other forms of capital, such as economic, cultural, or social capital. Hakim saw sexual capital as different. She says erotic capital is independent of class origin; for this reason, it enables social mobility. Hakim argues that this makes erotic capital socially subversive, which results in the prevailing power structures devaluing and trying to suppress it. [5] In the manosphere, the parallel term sexual market value or its abbreviation SMV is often used. [6]

Research with female sex workers (FSW) shows that communitarian social capital is associated with increased condom use and lower prevalence of sexually In this concise book, enriched with numerous examples, Dana Kaplan and Eva Illouz defend the concept of sexual capital as an analytical category, but make it more nuanced, while also freeing it from gender clichés and the simplifications of rationalism and identity politics. A second definition is developed by Hakim, treating erotic capital as the fourth personal asset. This definition is a multifaceted combination of physical and social attractiveness that goes well beyond sexual attractiveness that is the focus of the 'fields' perspective. Unlike Green's conception of sexual capital, Hakim's erotic capital is an individual capital with no necessary referent to a field. [2] a b Burchardt, Marian (2011). "Challenging Pentecostal moralism: erotic geographies, religion and sexual practices among township youth in Cape Town". Culture, Health & Sexuality. 13 (6): 669–683. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2011.566356. ISSN 1369-1058. JSTOR 41148834. PMID 21462006. S2CID 27232949. Howard, Khoa Phan (8 September 2021). "The Creepy White Guy and the Helpless Asian: How Sexual Racism Persists in a Gay Interracial Friendship Group". Social Problems. 70 (2): 361–377. doi: 10.1093/socpro/spab052.a b c d e Willey, Robin (12 February 2013). "The Evangelical Sexual Marketplace: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Exchange and Conversion of Erotic Capital in an Evangelical Church". Canadian Journal of Family and Youth. 5 (1): 1–37. doi: 10.29173/cjfy18946.