It oppresses and stresses: have we lost interest in a hypersexualized world?

Sex is not what it used to be, at least according to a growing number of authors.

Columnist Katherine Dee, for example, anticipated last year, in

magazine , the arrival of a wave of "sexual negativity" in response to the new stigmas and anxieties generated by the narrative of hedonism and the idea (or fallacy, it nuances ) of free sex.

In this idea abounds now, Christine Emba, author of the book

(Rethinking sex: A provocation), where he argues that social hypersexualization has contributed to people believing they are guilty of not having relationships or ashamed of their own feelings in favor of an "appetite that has to be satisfied above all reproach".

There is not much data to support these opinions but what there is is convincing.

In 2016, the academic journal

published a study indicating that the amount of sex practiced by the millennial generation, at least those residing in the United States, was markedly lower than that of the X and closer to that of the

in their youth: more than 15% of those born between 1990 and 1994 did not sleep with anyone between the ages of 18 and 22, a figure that was only 6.3% when those born between 1965 and 1969 were in that age bracket.

In 2015, the US Centers for Disease Control also noted a decline in the percentage of high school students who had had sexual intercourse: 41%, compared to 54% in 1991.

The magazine

dedicated a cover to the phenomenon in 2018 and gave it a name: sexual recession.

By 2020, more studies already warned that it was applicable to the United Kingdom (according to

Switzerland (according to a consultant, United Mind), Japan (according to the Center for Family Planning) and Finland (according to the Population Research Institute).

And that was being repeated among the Z (the generation from 1997), who have come to be described as

, a contraction in English between the words

and

an indication that the so-called

, based on accumulating sporadic encounters without the need for emotional ties, had died.

At least culturally speaking.

And she has been buried under widely shared TikTok videos encouraging celibacy.

culture

is bad for your physical and mental health, and by normalizing it so much you lose the true value of sex.

I'm sick of wasting my time and energy on worthless connections,"

a 22-year-old student, Sarah Kabba, who lives in Brooklyn , explained to

The immediate consequence of sex becoming as easy as opening an

has already been identified: the commodification of sexual relationships and even of oneself.

For this reason, in addition to the above, there are analysts who believe that we should not miss the

culture .

"The ease of fucking ends up making it not so exciting and the emotional dimension is lost," reflects the writer Luisgé Martín, author of

(Anagrama, 2022), an essay that celebrates the right to explore desire without prejudice.

“We have gone from sex without love to not conceiving of sex with love, and that obviously baffles us as human beings.

I advocate untying sex from love, but not love from sex.

You have to learn to have sex without emotional implications, but not give up that those implications exist.

The proliferation of parties and plans to meet people and "pick up" the old-fashioned way indicates a general weariness towards the "tinder" culture.

Getty/Collage: Blanca Lopez

For Christine Emba, one of the keys is that sex has been liberated without first liberating women.

The columnist for

thinks it is a mistake that conversations about sex begin and end in consent: "A good ethical floor, but a terrible ceiling."

One of the examples he refers to is that of the successful story

, by Kristen Roupernian (published in

in 2017), a fierce x-ray of the figure of the

, a man who pretends to be charming and attentive with the simple objective of obtaining sex, whose personification in the story, at the moment of truth, does not show the slightest interest in the tastes and preferences of her bed partner.

Luisgé Martín, however, is concerned that “morality” dominates the conception of pleasure: “I think that the opposite movement to what should have been produced is taking place.

Instead of a female sexual expansion, it is becoming a repression for all.

In relationships, social class, power links, age, the normativity of bodies are interpreted... You have to use an algorithm to know if you can desire someone, and that kills desire or destroys it.

Be that as it may, the times of hypersexualization are declining in public discourse: the old humiliations of voluntary or involuntary chastity have given way to the reasonable idea that experiencing pleasure is not something that should be subjected to pressure, nor to productivity rates. .

Because, as someone long before generation Z sang, "not everything is going to be fucking, you will also have to buy some socks".

A spear for corporeal materialism

In

, Luisgé Martín depathologizes erotic perversion, addresses affiliations and brings up cases such as that of some followers of the filmmaker John Waters who replaced the skin of the scrotum with a transparent membrane to see their testicles.

Martín defends an egalitarian “corporal materialism” that recognizes “the reification, the dehumanization of the body, as well as the arbitrary expiration of desire” against the confusion of “the dignity of persons and mandatory consent with the puritanism of souls and transcendent sex. 

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