Sexual market value (SMV) is a manosphere term gaining popularity in social media spaces. Women and men are anonymously seeking partners in online platforms. They are describing their preferences of mates. Men with substantial masculinity are evidently interested in beautiful and childless women.

It is mainly men without frame (read unconfident, purposeless, physically unfit, or resources-deficient men) indicating that they are interested in older women with careers and financial stability. Women directly indicate that they have nothing to do with men without resources, that’s hypergamy, a topic for another day. It tells that the sexual market value of men depends on their productivity. How about the sexual market value of women?

Men who want to be politically and socially correct indicate that they prefer career women who can engage in intellectual conversations to contribute to planning and provisioning in the family. Such men are deaf to the explicit declaration by the career women that “your money is ours, my money is mine.” Notably, majority of the same men are busy but secretly chasing after campus girls, begging them to sire children with them. Girls aged 18-24 years who entertain “sponsors” can attest how frequently they hear the word “Nizalie.”

The “beautiful and childless” descriptions of women preferred by the anonymous men seeking mates in digital spaces points to young and fertile women who can give sexual exclusivity. It is not strange since social and religious establishments have historically held sexual exclusivity with high regard.

A story published in the Daily Nation on 17^th September 2022 regarding virgins preparing to dance for King MisuZulu demonstrates the social value placed on sexual exclusivity by men. The selection of the tens of thousands of young virgins to dance in royal palace is so serious that there is a warning legend about it. The legend claims that the tall reed each girl presents to the new king will wilt if the holder is not virgin.

Besides, the interested girls in their high numbers have to undergo virginity testing to be considered for the reed dance. Which eligible girl would skip an activity from which the king would select wives? Hypergamy can’t allow.

The social construct where virginity is revered is in line with the manosphere’s definition of women’s sexual market value as dependent on their age. Young or virgin girls are more fertile, are less likely to be having kids, and are more likely to offer the sexual exclusivity men would do anything to get.

The next questions are: which age bracket is synonymous with “young women?” At what age does the women’s SMV start diminishing? Since all the descriptions of preferences by men point to highly fertile women, I attempt to answer the questions using biological evidence on fertility.

First, basic biology indicates that women’s number of oocytes decrease with age until menopause. Germ cells in women are not replenished as life progresses. Besides, the quality of oocytes progressively decreases with age.

A study published in the scholarly journal Human Reproduction analyzed the direct effect of aging on fertility while putting the sexual frequency factor constant. It used data from a large multinational European prospective cohort. The cohort comprised couples aged 18-40 years who only used natural methods of family planning. The researchers found that women aged 19-26 years have twice as high the probability of pregnancy compared to women aged 35-39 years.

The findings agree with a study by Jane Menken, a distinguished professor of sociology, and other researchers. Menken and the other scholars reported that the risk of childlessness increases with the age of the woman as follows: 5.7% (20-24 years), 9.3% (25-29 years), 15.5% (30-34 years), 29.6% (35-39 years), and 63.6% (40-44 years). Therefore, it seems the SMV of women starts decreasing beyond 24.   

According to the ESHRE Capri Workshop group, which focuses on scientific research on fertility, age-related infertility has increased. The rise in age-related infertility is attributed to the 20^th-century trend of women delaying the birth of the first child until when their reproductive capacity is low.

Among women in mid-30s, even assisted treatment reproduction cannot compensate for the low fertility associated with delayed conception. The likelihood of a woman aged 35 years having a healthy baby is half that of a woman aged 25 years. The probability of first-time conception when an ovulating 35-year-old woman has sex with a 40-year-old man is less than 2/10.    

In attempts to match men’s competitiveness at the workplace, feminism encourages women to delay conception of the first child. The aim is to become established careerwise before spending time on taking care of pregnancies and nurturing children.

Men are tamed from marrying younger women through shaming statements such as “he is marrying an immature girl” and “he fears empowered women.” In contrast, I have heard several married men state that the reasoning of women doesn’t change with age. Our fathers and grandfathers have emphasized the statement to those of us who spend some time with older men.

So, men marry career women with low ability to conceive due to advanced age to please the society. However, they secretly obey their biological drive to have sex with younger women in campus, 18–24-year-olds. Unlike the young girls who participate in reed-dancing for King MisuZulu, the young women in secret sexual relationships with married men have no hope of marriage with the men. They opt to cash out the sex by having the married men as “sponsors” and “wababa.”    

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References

AFP. (2022). South African virgins to dance for King MisuZulu Zulu amid succession row. https://nation.africa/africa/news/south-african-virgins-to-dance-for-king-misuzulu-zulu-amid-succession-row-3950774

Dunson, D. B., Colombo, B., & Baird, D. D. (2002). Changes with age in the level and duration of fertility in the menstrual cycle. Human reproduction, 17(5), 1399-1403. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/17.5.1399

ESHRE Capri Workshop Group. (2005). Fertility and ageing. Human reproduction update, 11(3), 261-276. https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmi006

Menken, J., Trussell, J., & Larsen, U. (1986). Age and infertility. Science, 233(4771), 1389-1394. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3755843