Ever since I first discovered the vast nocturnal sexual playground of Hampstead Heath in London about twenty years ago, with the chip van doing a roaring trade outside and cheery volunteers handing out condoms to the cruising hordes, and realised the extent to which we can conspire to give each other pleasure wherever we possibly can, I’ve been wondering about how that phenomenon impacts on our lives and relationships. It has got me pondering on the economics of sex; and the psychological effects of the sexual free market, in all senses of the phrase, on our collective consciousness. But, just as computerization has done away with the bear pit of the 20th Century trading room floor, with frenzied boys shouting for attention to make deals, it has also transformed cruising beyond recognition and brought it into our living rooms; as Mark Simpson says, with the advent of the Internet, promiscuity has become a form of typing.

Sex has always been related to money, to value, in some cultures more so than others, literally and symbolically. Let’s start with the gold standard, the symbolic unit of highest value, that has been revered for millennia: the Virgin. A woman who has sex, in many parts of the world, becomes worthless, damaged goods, if she has it with a man who is not her husband. Such is the power of the symbolism of the act, it matters little whether it was something she chose to do or if she was raped. Woman is property, sold from family to family in wedlock, and one premature penetrative act of sex causes instant devaluation and can have disastrous effects on a village community, with the stock of one or more families crashing to bankruptcy. It can be as ruinous to those affected as a failed company on the New York Stock Exchange can have on the global economy. Viewed from this extreme angle, it makes economic sense to keep women shrouded behind sexless veils, concealing as much flesh as possible, for a lot more is riding on her than her own sexual morality. She has to be kept intact, wrapped, whole, unopened, unknown, unseen, (and preferably uneducated and unknowing) for her value to be preserved. But, lest we project all this nonsense onto dusty Indian villages and think we’re above all that primitivism, we only have to gaze at the entrails of the sad life of Diana, Princess of Wales, to see the human cost that is paid when, by accident of birth and timing, a shy young woman finds herself embodying the archetype of virgin. For England’s future king, nothing less would do.

In Marian cultures such as ours, of course, even post-Catholic as we may now be, the Virgin still holds sway in the consciousness of many women, and the concept of a sexual person being a devalued person holds strong. (Although buried in the archaeology of our unconscious, and in the storerooms of our museums, Sheela-na-gigs remind us of another, pagan, more celebratory perspective on female sexuality.) A woman is “cheap” if she doesn’t “save” herself for a husband. Young Irish women these days may be far more sexually liberated than previous generations, but most women I have talked to are fairly consistent on one thing – if she has sex on the first date with a man, it’s not likely the relationship will last; if it’s going to be a serious relationship, “holding out” is important in terms of maintaining self-respect, (not to mention control) and gaining the respect of the man she’s dating. Of course women these days are happy enough to have one night stands, in the same spirit as men, but the women I know do it with their eyes open and have no illusions or expectations about what might follow from them.

The heterosexual courtship ritual is a time-honoured waiting game for the man, with sex as a reward for patience, kindness and good intentions, and when the time is right (although rarely these days on one’s wedding day, and as this century advances it seems the waiting period is getting shorter and shorter) enough trust has been established to enable something special to happen. Women, in general, work hard to avoid feeling like an object in sex, a disposable thing for man’s pleasure, and use time and exclusivity as a filtering mechanism to ensure that those who stay around long enough in courtship are likely to treat them more like a subject, a person; a man who can make love and connect emotionally, not just fuck. Heterosexual men, in general, at least those who seek relationship, are willing to forego the pleasure of the instant objectifying fuck (which is the masturbatory fantasy of most men, I would suggest) in order to build up a stronger, more intimate connection that lasts, that is more emotionally supportive and satisfying for both. In terms of supply and demand, if women in a society collectively adhere to these principles, and prostitution is prohibited and dangerous, then heterosexual men have less choice in the matter – if they want sex, it has to be on women’s terms. Intimacy, however, is not pleasure per se. There can be pleasure in intimacy, but there is also, for many men, conflict and fear and loss of independence, something which many women seem unaware of. For those many men who are pleasure seekers, first and foremost, (and there are many), intimacy does not provide enough pleasure for it to be worth pursuing, and is often something to be avoided at all costs.

One of the important factors that persuades a heterosexual man to enter into relationship with a woman is the belief that she is worth it; unconsciously, as long as she is saving herself sexually for him, and him alone, there is a certain proprietorial dynamic at work, almost a territorial claim – he has worked hard to be allowed into her bed, invested a lot of time and energy and risked being emotionally open and vulnerable to get there, and although in the modern era he may well know she’s not a virgin, the dynamics are very similar in terms of his sense of knowing he’s had a good return on his investment. A woman sets her own value, and the higher she sets it, the more satisfaction a man can have in pursuing and eventually possessing it, sharing it with her. However, sadly, her own self-evaluation is not enough to guarantee suitors (if only it were) – all sorts of other factors come into play, to do with body image, fashion, ideals of beauty and sexiness.

As women have long complained, there is a double standard at play, for men tend to increase their worth, their social standing – at least amongst their male peer groups – if they score with a woman, because men together spend a lot of time savouring and comparing their pleasurable experiences, especially their sexual ones. (As opposed to women together, who will spend their time discussing their feelings). Men egg each other on to pursue pleasure, and men will do lots of often risky things to pursue it. Many heterosexual men will enjoy no strings sex on a one night stand if they can get away with it, saying all sorts of plausible things before breakfast to get it, that they may even believe at the time. But, if they can’t manage it, they will often pay for sex, so insistent is the lunacy of desire. Working girls know just how badly men seek pleasure, and although few women manage to survive prostitution without damaging emotional and psychological problems, it is a paradox that, in our society, those who set a price for sex are often those who have little or no sense of self-worth. The Madonna/Whore polarity is a psychological reality.

Men rarely share their vulnerabilities and pain in conversation with each other – it is seen as weakness – so a man with lots of male friends will find it hard to separate from the pack and enter into the scary business of forming a serious relationship with a woman, because the challenges of relating do not tend to fit into male discourse. A man has to really fall in love with a woman to be motivated enough to change his ways, and even then may find he can only open up to her, not anyone else.

In deconstructing heterosexuality like this, I realise I’m using broad brush strokes and stereotypes that many people may think ridiculous and antiquated. But heterosexuality works, as a relational model, despite its many flaws, to foster relationship, largely due to the demands and standards of women, and, incidentally, largely to the benefit of men in terms of emotional well-being. For the same reasons, lesbianism “works”. But with the majority of gay men living single lives, and (I believe) not satisfying or emotionally fulfilling lives, it’s essential that we address the reasons why. And this may also cast some light on the difficulty that many single women I know have in forming relationships with men – and it’s not for the want of trying, it’s for the lack of relationship-orientated men. To understand something about men and our values, an examination of how men treat each other when they have sex with each other is highly relevant.

In the chaotic free-for-all that is online cruising, the pursuit of pleasure is paramount, and with so many men engaging in it, it cannot but have a corrosive effect on the body politic of gay men, how we form relationships, what we expect from them. And, increasingly, more and more bisexual men are joining in, which must, in time, have a powerful affect on the wider society. The infinite choice available to us on cruising sites like gaydar, imagined or real, creates an enormous expectation that our sexual desires will be gratified. And the fact that they often are magnifies this expectation to a mind-boggling and ultimately unsustainable degree. With no one holding out on sex, prioritising the slow but necessary process of trust-building and the awkward-but-essential nurturing of intimacy and relationship, everyone is judged solely on their capacity to offer pleasure, and in the dizzying escalation that ensues, with men falling over each other in the rush to gratify each other, nothing really satisfies. Sex is not a reward or a precious commodity or a symbol of trust or love; our bodies are not precious or valuable symbols of anything, but merely heightened erogenous zones, simulations of pornographic images and experiences, the pleasure principle run riot. The gold standard of sexual modesty and virtue, the principle of exclusivity and specialness, the connection between emotions, intimacy, fidelity and sex, has long gone, replaced by a manic, anarchic hyperinflation. And with that comes an extreme emotional and spiritual poverty.