Why millennial sex sucks
Could sex for millennials get any worse? Late last month, researchers at Columbia uncovered a trend called “stealthing,” in which a man discreetly removes his condom during intercourse because he believes it’s a man’s right to “spread one’s seed.” According to the study women are calling rape crisis hotlines with stories of this practice and there are, of course, Internet chat rooms devoted to it.
We can now add stealthing to the growing list of trends that make sex seem anything but enjoyable for young adults today, and which seem to explain why millennials are having less sex than any generation in 60 years, according to a study published last year. Some believe young, ambitious adults are letting their careers get in the way of their sexual pursuits. But if you think about the sexual experiences available to most millennials, it’s a surprise more of them aren’t taking lifetime vows of celibacy.
Take the ubiquity of online porn. According to a Barna Group study from last year, 57 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 24) report “seeking out” porn regularly, compared to only 41 percent of Gen-X adults. For many young men, porn seems to be supplanting relationships as a way to, well, get their jollies.
In their 2011 book, “Premarital Sex in America,” Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker interview a young man who explains, “I think I like my own ‘personal time’ as much as I like having intercourse.” Regnerus and Uecker write that “if porn-and-masturbation satisfies some of the male demand for intercourse — and it clearly does — it reduces the value of real intercourse.” With the supply of sexual outlets rising, the “cost of real sex can only go down, taking men’s interest in making steep relationship commitments with it.”
But the effects of porn go even further than that. In a study in the Journal of Family Theory and Review, Kyler Rasmussen of the University of Calgary reviewed 600 pornography studies from the 1960s through 2014, and found that viewing porn “can reduce satisfaction with partners and relationships through contrast effects [i.e., where male viewers find their partners less attractive compared to the women they see in porn]; reduce commitment by increasing the appeal of relationship alternatives; and increase acceptance of infidelity.”
And if men aren’t enjoying sex because the women don’t look like porn stars, imagine how little women enjoy having to compete with porn stars. The number of women undergoing labiaplasty jumped 39 percent in the US from 2015 to 2016.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of ways to get sex outside of relationships now, thanks to technology. Apps like Tinder allow men and women to hook up with multiple partners within hours of each other if they like. And the technology allows people to keep such liaisons secret from their partners in ways that they never could have before.
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It seems like paradise for some, but this much casual sex with strangers seems to be having discernible health consequences. The Centers for Disease Control reported a 19 percent increase in reported cases of syphilis, a 12.8 percent increase in gonorrhea cases and a 5.9 percent increase in chlamydia cases from 2014 to 2015. In New York alone reports of syphilis grew by 29 percent from 2015 to 2016, mostly among young adults.
Even college campuses, which were supposed to be fun places for young people to party before they had to get real jobs and wake up at a reasonable hour, are failing to bring much sexual satisfaction. One of the women in Lisa Wade’s book, “American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus,” describes the atmosphere at college parties as “a bestial rubbing of genitals reminiscent of mating zebras.” After the initial excitement of finding out that sex was readily available, even the men Wade interviews seem kind of annoyed by the whole atmosphere.
Wade, a professor at Occidental College, finds that sexual encounters with women mean there is no possibility that a friendship can continue. After any hookup, there is a kind of contest to see who can care about it less. And in order for any sexual encounter to happen in the first place, everyone has to be rip-roaring drunk.
And let’s not forget all the other problems that come when young people purposefully lose control of their senses and then hop into bed. Did anyone consent? Will someone be mad in the morning? Didn’t the dean tell us to ask before unbuttoning someone’s shirt? Couples married for decades can experience more fun and spontaneity than these kids who practically need a contract before getting undressed. When it comes to sex, at least, it seems youth is no longer wasted on the young.
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