Why We Think Sex is Bad

I keep wondering how “sex-positive” became a buzzword at the exact same time everybody started having less sex. When we live in a reality where medication protocols like PrEP and DoxyPEP can prevent a person from acquiring or shedding HIV and STIs, when U=U, why are we having less sex now than when sex was literally deadly?

Race Bannon, who writes the Substack Love At The Edges, shared a story in his post, From Passion to Performance, that may explain some of it.

“I was attending a large gay men’s kink play weekend. One of my friends there said he had talked to a guy who my friend had noticed was not interacting sexually or erotically with anyone, running counter to the weekend’s intent. My friend said the guy told him “he was afraid to do anything because he might make a mistake.”

In the United States, the sexual revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s made it seem like we were finally abandoning our sexual hangups. Then, pandemics, socializing on screens, and educational efforts, in both academic settings and niche sexual enclaves like the one Race shared, make us all feel more like we’re taking a final exam than experiencing sexual liberation.

If the idea of sex fills you with trepidation, like you might make a huge mistake engaging in it, that makes perfect sense. You have been told sex is physically, socially, and intellectually scary for decades.

But, with isolation and loneliness now killing men at an alarming rate, with gay men being impacted even higher than non-gay men, it’s foolish to ignore the positive physical, mental, social & romantic, and spiritual benefits of skin-to-skin orgasm.

There are many reasons why people think sex is bad, and once we admit to having that feeling, we might be able to ask why we feel that way and be able to move past it.

Let’s go way back.

The authors of Sex at Dawn, an anthropological study of human sexual behavior, argue that humans didn’t care about who was fucking whom until we started owning things. Before that, when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, the sperm donor was not all that important. Caring for the tribe’s offspring was.

When we became farmers, land and property ownership became tied to paternity: Who’s your daddy?” became a critical question, and sex started getting weird. It was no longer just about fucking; it was about property and power. Kings and peasants. Law and order.

In 1620, Puritans and Pilgrims settled in North America, bringing their hyper-paternal ideology with them that we still feel today: monogamous, baby-making sex is the only holy sex: end of message.

American politics illustrates our country’s ongoing devotion to scandalizing sex. Here’s a .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}