The Conversation
The Sex Recession
In December, Kate Julian asked why young people are having so little sex.
Julian devotes extensive space in her article to the ways in which [apps like Tinder] fail to bring people together, even for casual intimacy … But then she notes in a parenthetical that the impact has been very different in the gay and lesbian community. There, the apps have been much more successful, and active dating is much more common. “This disparity raises the possibility that the sex recession may be a mostly heterosexual phenomenon,” she says.
That’s a very important aside … It suggests … that men and women increasingly just do not know how to relate to each other in intimate situations. The feminists may well be right that it’s straight men who have more adapting to do, but if the evidence is to be believed both straight men and straight women are suffering from the situation they’re in and both have a powerful incentive to find a way out.
American women’s cultural and political power has grown exponentially over the last 30 years, and it’s likely that people are having less sex for the same reason they’re delaying marriage and children: It’s what women want
