 The term erotic capital was first used by British sociologist Catherine Hakim in the early 2000s.Hakim defined it as separate from and building upon French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of economic, cultural and social capital.She says erotic capital is independent of class origin and therefore enables social mobility, and argues that this makes erotic capital socially subversive, which results in the prevailing power structures devaluing and trying to suppress it.