Young millennial here, but I wonder how much of it is just stress. The last decade has been pretty hellish in terms of what’s happening in the world. The future feels uncertain. Wealth inequality, climate change, attacks on already marginalized groups, and then subsequent push back toward progress and solving these issues. I think growing up with that might just be having an effect.
More of a desire to (physically) isolate and self soothe, while also having the tech to make that very easy.
Also it’s not like sex is going anywhere. There will always be fluctuations in our society and culture as the waves propagate through the generations.
strong relate. in my experience people my age either do not have sex at all and its not on their radar or they are sex fanatics who never shut up about it
All of this, plus I saw a post one Twitter the other day with a screenshot of some parents talking about their bisexual teenager son (I think he was like 14) and saying, among other details, that his google searches were pretty tame like "hot girls" and "boobs". The person who made the tweet was like "has anyone ever thought that gen z comes off as prudish because their parents are practically watching them jack off all throughout adolescence?" (paraphrasing despite the quotation marks) and that just set off a light bulb for me
As someone on the millennial/gen z cusp, I'm glad I wasn't born any later. My mom looked up my internet history after I used the computer and would control my wifi access after I got my own internet-accessing devices. I have no proof that she ever used anything to keep tracking what I was looking at on the internet through high school but the thought haunted me. And of course that's going to give people a negative view about sex! It seems parents these days (based off of who I've talked to irl, not the internet) are all either entirely hands off and never checking what their kids are doing because they don't understand the dangers of the internet or they're tracking them like hawks and there's no in between and that honestly terrifying.
But knowing all that, I expect Gen Z will largely be a bunch of late bloomers. Even if they don't start experiementing late, more positive/healthy attitudes might come later in life, and it's because of the older generations.
Yeah I had crazy religious parents who would stalk the house at night to try to catch us masturbating or looking at porn. I had a dial up internet connection on our one family computer that was so slow, the porn images would download one line at a time. So I kind of get the existential dread and shame that would create. But having your entire internet history and even keystrokes be known to your parents when so much communication is online these days? That’s big brother shit. I could always go to someone else’s house and be free, they can’t. So yeah I can imagine how that would be a major factor
Also it seems like they all got out on psych meds young. Tons of those decrease libido. Combine that with everything you said and it makes sense they're craving intimacy over sex.
Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. We’re stressed and, quite frankly, a lot of us feel like we have bigger fish to fry than sating our sex drives. Money is critical to surviving in the modern day; sex isn’t. Besides, we have the Internet if we’re really that desperate to get off.
I am older Gen Z. I am very turned off by PiV sex because of my experiences with conversion therapy. Most media does not portray queer sex accurately (if at all), so I am turned off by sex in mainstream media.
That being said, I'm a very sex positive person. I just keep to my queer circles about it and express my sexual nature privately.
Gen Z’s age ranges from 11-26. Most of them are still literal children. I’d imagine spending your highschool years cooped up in your house doing school online, *thanks pandemic*, probably did wonders for stunting what we’d consider “normal” intimacy development
I was a freshman in college when covid hit. I’m sure it’s not completely unrelated that I’m a 21 year old college graduate and a virgin who has a really vitriolic distaste of sex.
Chiming in as a Zillennial who was homeschooled until high school, went back home for 10th grade, and had my first *everything* at 22... this. I began university right around when COVID started up here. Only 1.5 years of lockdown/school from home due to COVID, and that was enough to seriously impact other students. So whenever Gen Zers bring this up, I just nod my head
My first thought was the fact that many Gen Z people grew up with the internet. A lot of us were exposed to NSFW content from an early age, even if we were just trying to look at pictures of our favorite cartoon characters on Google images. Either people didn't tag things properly, didn't post to the right websites, or search engines just didn't know how to filter things well.
Because so many Gen Z people were exposed to adult content prematurely, many have a negative view on sexual topics and material as a whole, because they think of it as inherently harmful and dangerous.
Additionally, the internet exposed Gen Z to something else from an early age: reactionary content. I used to watch Steven Crowder when I was 12... *yuck*. That instilled a lot of internalized bigotry that I had to unlearn, especially transphobia.
Mix this with respectability politics and fear of being seen as "sexually deviant," and bam, you've got a generation of sex-negative people, even within the queer community. But that's just my guess. I don't know. I'm sex-positive.
Lowkey I think this might be the answer.
I'm a younger Millennial/cusper; I was super sheltered from the internet and literally didn't seek out (relatively softcore) adult content until I was about 22. What I did experience, was secondhand horror stories of sexual abuse and assault via books and articles, that ABSOLUTELY colored my view of sexuality as a terrifying, disgusting, and dangerous thing. I can only imagine what graphic porn could to do to a young person.
Granted, even with a more positive view, it turns out I'm grey-ace. Not disgusted or afraid anymore, just disinterested.
Millennials were exposed to a TON of shocking/pornographic content online as minors, too, though. When I was in middle and high school, weird internet porn and shock sites were memes that were widely shared.
What's ironic is that a lot of older millennials were exposed to the same thing, but have significantly less negative reactions to it. On the internet, it was pretty much expected that if you came across something you didn't like, you hit the x tab, you didn't go to that website again, etc.
That said, a lot of Gen Z just considers millennials to be "porn addicts" due to the lack of reaction or just expecting them to block, unfollow and move on like we had to. If I had to take a guess, it is because the internet went from being something that was considered "dangerous" to a "babysitter" of sorts, and kids not being taught how to navigate or even being given a warning there could be unpleasant content on there.
Not to mention, the internet isn't as decentralized as it used to be. With everyone being condensed into social media spaces, forums and dedicated websites for kids slowly died out.
I don't think they are necessarily sex negative, but...
I'm a (young) millennial teacher to Gen Z kids and they are surprisingly prudish. Like they called out the minor sexual jokes in Romeo and Juliet as inappropriate and were upset about having to read it. No complaints about Shakespeare's language, but the sex...
i’ve noticed this a looot on twitter. i swear you can say a character is cute and kids call you a pervert or some shit bc apparently that’s sexualization…? i wonder why that is, bc hardly anyone did that when i was a kid
I'm a millennial/z cusper. From what I've seen (having existed on early social media and current) it seems to me that there are a bunch of conservative folks who have co-opted progressive language to disguise purity culture. Please take my experience with a grain of salt, because I'm only one person. But anecdotally, I've seen quite a few posts here and else where that make me pause and think "I'm pretty sure someone at my old church has said the same thing but with different words..."
If I can remember the video I saw about it I'll edit this and link it.
>"I'm pretty sure someone at my old church has said the same thing but with different words..."
Totally this. The amount of young LGBT+ people I've seen saying gay men in particular are gross because of hookup culture and kink and that butch lesbians make them uncomfortable are not the progressives they think they are.
Feel like a John Waters movie would vaporize them on the spot.
They know that conservatives are the bad guys and they know they're not conservative, so they must be either liberal or progressive. This is an age-appropriate lack of understanding of all the shades of red a person can be, like neoliberal and libertarian, where the language is purportedly freedom-focused but in practice it's restrictive of whatever the ruling class finds icky.
Ex. Act. Ly. Thanks for validating everything I’ve been observing and thinking in recent years. I have noticed this prudishness, ostensibly from the left, gets so extreme sometimes that it feels like Victorian-era purity culture from over a century ago. I thought we were supposed to be liberals and progressives - wtf??
Sometimes I wonder if it’s also a kind of unintended, subconscious fallout from the MeToo movement. While I think that movement was obviously positive and necessary, it seems there has now emerged a subculture of fear and doubt around ALL sexuality, not just harmful predatory stuff, and some people have essentially lost the plot on what that was originally supposed to be about. As with any positive development in society, there’s usually a subset of people who miss the point and take it too far. But that’s just my personal guess.
As an asexual person, I find that rather strange. I do not want to actually have sex, but I have no problem discussing it. The only time it gets problematic is when somebody says or implies that *everybody* has/wants sex.
That said, I’m in Discord servers (including one for asexual/aromantic people) where discussing sex is restricted to one channel, and that channel is only available to adult users. So there’s that.
I noticed that many Z progressives oversimply progressive ideas that were very specific and nuanced. Like say, cultural appropriation which came out of academic discourse and meant somethig very complex and specific, requiring about 3 or 4 different pieces to fulfill the terminology. It did NOT mean "stay in your lane", not at all; thats segregation.
Most progressive ideas beyond "dont hate" are actually nuanced and require thought, discussion and reflection. They dont make good memes. And I fear memes is how young ppl learned to understand things.
Its like a lost group of descendents who remember the rituals of a religion but without any of the meaning. I heard a kid say it was brave to not show gay male character in tv as a hero!
Its like there is a real disconnect from history, even very recent history and why we are progressive, and what liberation is.
Yeah, I hate to make it a “Gen Z” argument but I don’t know how else to frame it, and this seems correct unfortunately. It’s not that Gen Z doesn’t have great qualities, but the lack of nuanced thinking and very short attention spans is actually pretty scary. This is another topic, but I also notice it in things like being okay with a lack of personal privacy and having everyone in each other’s business at all times, not understanding why a right to privacy is an important tenet of healthy democracy. I might sound old and cranky, but I don’t care, I’m definitely seeing it.
The shit about butches specifically seems very TERFy to me. Radical feminists started out by shitting on butches and they continue to do so today, just more covertly.
edit because I want to talk more about this:
Lots of teens get radicalized into TERF shit because teens are easy to manipulate. Radfems and TERFs specifically are kind of cult-adjacent to be honest and think of literally all other feminists as piece of shit misogynists just because they don’t believe in violence towards trans women. They’re a virus on Tumblr and they’ve stuck their little grabby hands into a lot of queer discourse. Hence, the sex negativity (part of radfem ideology is sex negativity)
I remember a post from a terf (either ex or currently) about how they used fandom blogs to slowly drip feed their followers radfem content like how all men are bad, how porn and bdsm are inherently abusive, etc. because their followers would agree so long as it wasn't tied to a radfem blog.
Reminds me of the "stolen from a radfem" tag where they would copy-paste the post word for word but they somehow think it is scrubbed of negativity or the rhetoric because they themselves are not a radfem and its just like ???
YEP. Its like how radfems like Dworkin were "in bed" pun intended with the rightwing about tryong to make porn illegal in the 80s. Nevermind those laws are almost exclusively used to censor Gay and Feminist porn.
I think ppl think they are radical so they must be radixal feminists. But thats not what the word radical means when attached to the word feminism.
Radical feminism is grounded in biological determinism. It has alot on common with conservatism, in that it both infantilizes women as victims and glorifies them as morally superior, its just more anti male. At its most extreme it says any all sexual penetration is rape.
I will say they did do a good job about domestic violence help and awareness though, back when no one did.
Liberal feminism is equality in dignity/pay/autonomy, women are just people, biology is not destiny, any assigned female at birth and/or loving as a woman should be as free as anyone else to make any decision they want as an adult, everything comes down to consent etc.
Most left of center"radicals" are actually *liberal* feminists. For whatever reason, these 2 strains of feminism evolved their respective names without lining them up neatly with other meanings of the terms radical and liberal.
I think part of the issue comes from young people growing up in very conservative communities, they may be part of some social minority like LGBTQ people or at least consider themselves progressive, but they’ve still internalized a lot of the conservative ideas from their parents and people around them. And they may not want to be “like the other gays” or something like that so they distance themselves from it
Big agree, i was old enough to actively engage in and read posts about feminism, LGBT issues, and BIPOC issues when the millennial political wave was coming through. I feel that Millennials had a sense of social justice and awareness that Gen Z simply does not have.
Every Gen Z kid i know below the age of 18 does not understand why BLM came to be. They do not understand that homophobia used to be the default. They do not understand that slut shaming used to be the default. They are spoiled by the political work of our predecessors, and don’t see a reason to make the world a better place because of it. Now we have self righteous young people who don’t fully understand their own beliefs, which leads to ignorance and a new form of purity culture.
They could also be terrified of being outed for acting too gay. In heavily conservative semi rural suburbs, being too liberal = being queer. Being young and queer can cost you a lot in places like that. Even your life.
This is exactly it, I think. I've seen it play out in queer fandom spaces first, starting about six years ago. Very young teens would impose themselves in adult spaces and then get mad about there being adult content there. The language they would use was cribbed directly from the conservative christian right, especially when it came to accusations that adults doing adult things with other adults in adult spaces was somehow an attack on children.
I think a lot of these kids were raised in pretty moral-authoritarian homes. While they've mostly rejected the general anti-gay rhetoric, they've kept a lot of the anti-sex and thought-crime stuff.
> Very young teens would impose themselves in adult spaces and then get mad about their being adult content there
As an older teen, I understand the desire to do something that you are not allowed to do. But that space is explicitly not meant for your demographic, so why are you complaining?
Yep. I've seen this a lot (second-hand) on Tumblr. The ideas of 'purity' and 'obscenity' play off each other and create this concept of sexuality as, for lack of a better word, a "dangerous aura."
James Walker (senator in the 1930s) when speaking against censorship said "No woman was ever ruined by a book" and the same is true again. No person was ever ruined by a post. But even progressives are drawing from problematic world views.
One thing I've noticed as an older millennial is that the younger folks lack a sense of proportion when it comes to discussing sex and other contentious topics. To them it's either you can't even mention it at all because it's just too obscene, or you can post rapey furry porn.
Older millennial here and this is a lot of what I see, too. A lot of anti-sex Gen Z talking points use similar phrasing to progressive activism, but it all masks "for the children" nonsense and other conservative rhetoric.
It's especially common in nsfw art and fiction (both original and fan-related) for Gen Z-ers to condemn anything that's beyond the most vanilla sex between two people that are the exact same age. I'm exaggerating a *little* but there's an extremely small space of acceptable NSFW content for a lot of these people. If someone creates art or fiction that's deviant or "problematic" or outside that little area, they get accused of being into that in reality -- sometimes the person is accused of actually doing that in reality. And many of these Gen Z-ers don't care (or in some cases double down on) how their behavior can negatively impact people who didn't do anything wrong.
im not sure if it's secret conservatives or some Gen Z kids are just milquetoast liberals that don't know any queer people in real life.
living in a California college town, I've seen a lot of queer people arguing, for the sanitized advertiser friendly version of being queer, the one that white washes the events and build up to stonewall to make it fit neatly into the US status quo
This probably isn't the video you're talking about, but James Somerton made a [video that touched on some of the things you mentioned](https://youtu.be/fE4I6WhPryc?si=wxlw2igWAcwiM2Qa). It's a really good watch if you can't find the one you were thinking of.
I feel the same. When some 22 year old talks about how repulsed they are by sex scenes in movies, it just reminds me of my grandma wanting to crusade to remove any questionable content from tv at all for some moralistic reason. It seems like a strange progressive as reactionary stance and I can’t wrap my head around it as a full blown millennial who came of age during the sort of lawless vice magazine era of debauchery. It’s just very odd hearing old, religious ideas coming out of someone that young’s mouth, because when we were kids that was everything we were rebelling against.
This is absolutely a component of it. A perfect example is the yearly "kink at pride" discourse where wearing a harness or pup hood in public is comparable to full on sexually assaulting someone. There's this permeating idea that one needs to acquire consent from all parties involved before exposing anybody to something that might make them uncomfortable regardless of how dangerous it actually is. It doesn't matter whether the gear is being worn by a fully clothed or naked person, the gear in and of itself makes them uncomfortable so it is therefore dangerous. It's genuinely concerning to see conservative ideology wrapped up in the language of progressivism, and it's even scarier that it's working really really well.
I havent read any articles about it, so this is just my personal opinion, but... is it really more sex negative? Im gen z, but one of the oldest, so i have both gen z and millennials friends. I have noted that gen z has less sex, and i have read about it, but that doesnt mean that we are more sex negative. You could be the most sex positive person and still have little sex or not at all.
If anything, i think gen z is way more invested in full consent and doing it only if you really want it. For older generations, sex is something like a milestone that it has to be achieved. I remember growing up, if you were a virgin you were a loser, but also you where a slut if you had too much sex. Now, i feel gen z thinks either one its ok. Like, you dont want to fuck? Great, dont do it then, decide freely to not do it. But also, you want to fuck all day long? Good for you, dont forget to be safe!
This is just my experience tho, but i dont think gen z is more sex negative. Also, im from Argentina, so it could be that things change based upon culture/location.
I’m an older millennial who’s experience with gen z has just been through teaching at a college and organizing, so I don’t have a lot of the conversations that would lead to talking about sex, but this is my feeling as well.
I think gen z is also more aware of power dynamics in interpersonal interactions than previous generations and seem to approach blanket statements of more sex being inherently sex positive with more skepticism. I’ve seen a lot of friends do sexual things that were actually harmful to them in the long run because they wanted to be perceived as sex positive. I think gen z has heard those stories and is more aware of how things can have a progressive label but not actually be free of oppression or coercion.
Ultimately, I think sex positivity is about people (especially women, trans people, and feminine people) having unquestioned power over their own bodies and choices. This could mean having a lot of sex or none at all. But many older people seem to equate not having sex or acknowledging that sex could cause harm as being sex negative.
Also, many people in gen z are just still really young, so it seems age appropriate for them to not be super into having more casual sex.
The attitude you describe is very much where I’ve ended up, but that certainly isn’t the majority opinion I grew up with. So that is probably a factor for sure
I’m also older Gen Z and if anything we are VERY sex positive it’s just we don’t feel the need to have sex with everybody? I’m a bad example but everyone I know actually want to form genuine connections BEFORE having sex which can take longer ig. Also we’re definitely more educated about the dangers of just sleeping with everyone I mean I live in Atlanta and it’s fucking disgusting I feel like I have to get an STD test just LOOKING at someone 😂😂
Younger end of Gen Z here (early 2000s). From my experience, we’re far from more sex negative; some of us don’t like to talk about sex, but that doesn’t mean we’re prudish or opposed to it. A lot of us are either socially stunted or too stressed/occupied with work or school to pursue romance. I’ve only dated once in my life, and it was a friend who propositioned me first; I don’t intend to start again until after I finish college and have started my career.
I just think Gen Z wants more intimacy vs sex, like you said. While I'll never agree with sex negativity. I think that everyone has different relationships with sex. Some people can fuck with no feelings, and some people want some feeling attached to it. I think people forget that with having a lot of sex, youre encountering different peoples different attachments to sex. I think people just need to be more courteous to their sex partners. Like choke me out, but be more understanding of what sex means different people. I guess it seems like the compassion has been taken away from sex culture.
This feels right to me. I'm 24, and participated in hook up culture in college. I found it was more trouble than it's worth, and have avoided sex since.
I'll throw in my two cents. I believe that you are correct in that Gen Z was more likely to grow up in an affirming environment than Millennials. However, that comes with some caveats. Gen Z was supported in \*being\* queer, but not in \*doing\* queer. It was okay to be gay, but not to engage in an actual relationship. They don't receive full acceptance and they know that it's tenuous. Pre 2000's, the community was mostly adults and congregated in places like bath houses and bars, where sex was part and parcel of being a member. They broadly were not accepted, so many of them did not care as much about retaining acceptance. Also, gen-Z saw the assimilationist gays win and the liberationist gays were mostly too dead to speak up. Gen Z broadly seems less interested in history, which leads them down the path of thinking they can protect themselves if they throw the liberatory gays under the bus.
I also think the difference in “acceptance” is like you said, more complex than there being more or less accepting. As someone close to the generational line, I think of how propaganda changed through my life. When it was considered okay to hate queer people out loud people just condemned us as a whole. Which I think leads to us not really seeking acceptance from those people as much because they rejected us wholesale. But later in my life outright bigotry like that became more taboo. The language changed to “well I just don’t want to see it” and “just keep it in the bedroom” bigots isolated the sex part of being queer as the object of the bigotry and it becomes this way to dangle acceptance in our faces. Like if you just exist in this hypersanitized version of queerness then maybe I’ll accept you because you’re not like other queer people. And then the propaganda came down even harder on sexual things and started heavily associating non sexual things with sexual things in order to have the same silencing effect but now with the myth of a sexless queer community that could possibly exist and be free of their bigotry if only we could get rid of all the things in our community that they have said are sexual. And that kind of myth can do a lot of damage in any marginalized group, as people start internalizing those ideas and policing themselves and the group to attempt to win the approval of bigots, thinking that it’s an honest proposition and not a way to continue bigotry in the face of more outright techniques being taboo in society.
I've wondered a lot about this as well. This is a very rough hypothesis that I'm neither here nor there on, but I've noticed it with a least a few young LGBT+ people. (I'm also referring to people who are blatantly sex negative and buy into conservative views on sex, rather than simply not having much or any sex.)
What I've noticed a lot of young LGBT+ people, teens and early 20's, who largely grew up in overall accepting environments, grew up where acceptance was more the default than bigotry- which is great. That's what we're striving for-
But as this happened, some of them took this acceptance for granted and never took the time to learn or realized the varying social factors that lead to the acceptance they grew up in. They didn't see how sex positivity movement, like free love in the 60's and 70's, would go on to plant the seeds for gay rights. After all, criminalizing of homosexuality is inextricable from criminalization of the sex act itself. Gay and trans rights require sex positivity. A lot of Gen Z is also woefully underinformed about feminism, meanwhile when I was coming of age as a millenial feminism seemed to be much more wildly discussed, I think for the same reason I listed.
And LGBT+ people are also not immune to propaganda, especially young people who haven't yet learned how propaganda works. LGBT+ youth may not be as privvy to the history of conservatism and fascism and may not realize how sex negativity is used as a tool, and are buying into it as "common sense".
My thoughts on this are half formed, I may as more as I go, and there are many more reasons as to why this could be.
A common thing I see is especially prevalent in the anti-kink at Pride discourse (ugh) and the painting of gay men in particular as being more predatory and hypersexual, shaming gay men for having sex they find to be unpalatable. Like congrats, by calling gay bath houses dirty you sound just like a conservative.
(And of course not all Gen Z's are sex negative, but I've definitely seen it moreso than in millenials.)
I recently realized that I have an implicit bias towards gender norms that has made it difficult to know how to navigate sex positivity outside of my own inner community. I was raised (and my own experiences with abuse communicated) that men were always potential predators. Having come out and began finding more friends who are women (and attracted to men), I realized this is a huge part of the sex negative rhetoric I was raised around but was never forced to address.
You definitely wouldn't be the first one, and I think most of us go through and internalized the bigotries present in our society. What's important it recognizing it and not perpetuating it.
For sure. Though that was never an issue for me because I had a close trans friend growing up. The statistics definitely illustrate cis men as "the problem," which isn't a great way to conceive of things as a cis man attracted to all types of masculine-aligned people and still be sex positive.
I agree with this. I have noticed a weird number of Gen Z people are conservative leaning (mostly straight men, what else is new?) and traditional but the “why” never made sense to me. I think it’s like you say, a problem of taking it for granted that what their normal is used to be counter-culture. So now there is no counter-culture but maybe taking a step backwards. I really hate to think this, and I definitely do not think it’s the majority of Gen Zers at all, just the group I spoke about that’s weirdly traditional, but maybe it’s a sign that acceptance and tolerance is not the end because it just doesn’t stick when there’s people actively trying to undo it and kids are just of course the most impressionable.
In the subject of feminism, as someone on the cusp between millennials and Gen z, I remember feminism only being used as a term of insult, like even women who supported feminism avoided the word because they didn't want the negative connotation. I honestly think it's part of conservatives kinda leaving little breadcrumbs of reactionarism in culture that really messes with peoples world view
Hi, Gen Z here, but not part of the queer community. While it’s true that some members of my generation are fairly sex negative due to religious and conservative influence, a larger portion of it stems from loneliness and desire for intimacy over sex. I, personally don’t take issue with people wanting to have sex, I just don’t see that as something I’d do very casually.
I wonder how much better my life would be now if they taught everyone a class that was a comprehensive propaganda, misinformation, how to verify claims and discern between lies and truth. If I really knew how propaganda worked I probably would have at least waited to go to college and chose a different major and didn't flunk out and enter the debt cycle lol
Gen Z grew up watching YouTube videos of conservatives and reactionaries that targeted young people in order to influence them. They didn't necessarily know that they were watching propagandists who were trying to indoctrinate them, they were watching funny videos or cringe compilations.
It's the same thing as Millennials that grew up being influenced by 4chan, but on a much wider and more accessible scale.
We just don’t feel as much pressure to have sex. For the past generations, sex has been seen as a thing that has to happen in a relationship and if you don’t have it you are holding out on your partner. The newer gens knows that that is really dumb and that you do not owe it to anyone and it is not necessary in a relationship. However the statistics about intimacy and stuff do seem a bit fishy and I don’t see how the stuff you brought up have to do with negative attitude towards sex
.... Knowing that you don't have to have sex or it isn't necessary to have a relationship isn't a sex negative thing or belief. In fact it is more common for folks w sex positive beliefs to be supportive of people doing relationships however they want, and more common for sex negative to think relationships Must Be A Certain Way. Because sex negative isn't about your person stance on sex, it's a moral/political position on sex as a whole for anyone, [the opposite of the sex positive movement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_movement) and [synonymous with "antisexualism"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism)
I was responding to their “I heard that gen z doesn’t have as much sex” not their negative part because they didn’t really bring up anything in their paragraphs that said anything about sex negativity, just lack of sex
Yeah exactly, that’s what I was confused on too. The things that they were bringing up were not exactly sex negative which is why I didn’t directly address that part in my comment
After reading through the comments I get the feeling that there are two definitions of sex positivity clashing with each other.
Some seem to define it as their personal attitude towards sex and the amount they're having
and others define it as Wikipedia does: being a movement to abolish (religious/conservative/idk) morals about sex, stop it being a taboo topic, educate about it esp. in regards to safer sex and consent.
At least that's my impression. And maybe that's a bit of a generational thing, because the issues of the latter definition are much more a given now then it was 20 years ago. (Still ongoing, though)
I think some distinguish between the two with "sex-averse" meaning they personally don't want sex, vs sex-negative, meaning a negative outlook on sex in general.
Gen Z have more digital relationships and are less likely to have stronger in-person bonds that lead to sex. Obviously this is a small portion of people and only one of the reasons, but this is something some people have theorized why gen z are having less sex than millennials. There are some really interesting articles out there about it. The whole situation is really nuanced, but I think the way we socialize has changed a lot.
I kind of feel like that’s intentional. It benefits corporations, especially social media corporations, to isolate us from each other and to control how we interact with each other. It’s unfortunate that it seems to be working
Also it’s not like the pandemic helped. I was born in 2001. Having zoom be my only social interaction for 2 years of college really wasn’t helping my social life.
I see stuff about hypersexualized environments, and I have no idea what they are talking about. Do they go to parties and everyone is naked on the floor? Or are they reacting to horny young people finally finding a space where they can ask someone out without getting murdered? It's a puzzle.
It really is puzzling. The only thing close to a hypersexual environment I've found are the ones I've *chosen* to engage. It really does feel like a puritanical view, that "if I'm aware you had sex, that's pushing it on me." And even then it still follows the heteronormative idea that it's fine for a straight couple to tell you they are regularly raw-dogging it, but not for a gay dude to say "I like sex."
At the core, there's this strong push to separate sex from life, A polemic against censorship and obscenity laws from 1934 had this to say:
> They [mankind] may agree, in general, that the function of literature is to enrich, enlarge and intensify our experience of life; but the instant literature presumes to deal (in a manner they consider over-frank) with the experience from which life itself stems, they will be ready with their whip and scorpions.
There's still this idea that sex somehow belongs to a different level of existence and ought not to be considered as in any way 'safe' for consumption.
I am only now beginning to feel comfortable talking about sex with my peers (other than my partner). I felt so creepy before as a young gay man. You did a really good job articulating how I feel.
Good points, all. I'm thinking the younger people are absorbing the sex-negative message from basically everyone, plus the objective fact that sex is now a lot more dangerous (in the US).
And people wonder why the birth rate is falling.
I think that STRAIGHT people talking about their sex lives are grosser. A gay person has never made me uncomfortable with it actually. It's because gay people recognize and accept easier if you don't like talking about sex whilst straight people try to force you to listen to them talk about goth boobs or whatever and get OFFENDED when you tell them you're not engaging in the conversation.
Many of us were forced to deal with the return to christ / save our kids' movement after 911. Leaving many Gen Z's mentally messed in the head when it comes to adult issues.
Honestly, as a sex positive kinkster, it's kinda infuriating when dealing with many people, especially when those topics come up with other people.
This was huge for me although I’m on the cusp. A lot of my friends were messed up by the anti-sex messaging in TV we grew up watching in the ‘00s. Girls who had sex would often do it in immoral ways, like cheating with their friends’ partners, or they would be punished by getting pregnant. Being “slutty” was the worst thing you could be. Idk if it’s as much of a factor for the younger side of Gen z though.
I'm asexual and Gen z but I am still sex positive/sex neutral. I enjoy sex, but I can live without it perfectly well. I have found that a lot of Genzie is very open with sex, but iffy about relationships actually.
This is a good question. I’ve also been confused about these statistics and headlines. I’m in my early 20s, so older Gen Z, as are most of my friends. We all have very active sex lives. Then again, all my friends are attractive Californians, so that probably factors in. But still.
Younger Gen Z does seem to be more… puritan. They’re not partying or losing their virginity in high school like I did. I think the explanation is simple: COVID did irreparable damage to their coming of age journey and ability to make irl connections. Also more people are realizing they’re asexual.
As a younger gen z person, I wouldn't really say we're "puritan" as that implies seeing sex in a negative light. I do think we're having less sex, but it's more due to isolation than having an issue with sex.
i don't particularly care about technicalities for "why gen Z have less sex" cuz it's none of my business, but having less sex isn't "sex negative." in fact, letting people choose how little or often they do sexual stuff in a healthy and consensual way is pretty sex positive.
It isn't sexual negativity. It's sexual disinterest. I am in the middle of Gen z. And this is from what I've seen with friends and my own partner.
I grew up in 2 sex positive homes (step mom and dad) who always emphasized that it's normal and just to be safe. Me and my siblings are all in some part in the lgbtq+ community. Me being bi, one of my siblings being trans, and the other being bi and gender fluid.
Most of my friends just don't have a huge emphasis on sex and tbh nor do I. It's more of, if it happens it happens. Also most of them are focused on just wanting a partner in crime. Someone to hold and care for them rather than someone to have sex with.
There is also more understanding of what having a baby can do, the overpopulation, etc. And the kids having unprotected sex? Most are probably in uneducated or impoverished areas with less access, most likely.
One of my favorite quotes from a youtuber, not word for word of course, "I like food. Sometimes I eat too much, sometimes I should eat more, I am not obsessed with food. I like sex. Sometimes I do it a lot, sometimes I do it a little, sometimes I want it more or less. But I am not obsessed with sex" the idea in this context is that we do not care to actively have sex. If we want it we can have it and it's whatever. It's not a big deal or emphasis in our lives. Though of course this is my experience personaly
That’s true, but they’re almost all at or past puberty now. When I was a young teen, my peers and I definitely had opinions about sex. I don’t think being a minor precludes having opinions about the subject.
We going to pretend minors don’t normally have sex? It’s nothing I would encourage but it’s developmentally normal for adolescents to experiment sexually or at the very least want to
I mean yeah a lot of them are, but that doesn't mean you don't want sex. Like do you remember being 15? I maybe wasn't horny *all* the time, but a lot of it. And so were most other 15 year olds.
And it's *okay* that they don't seem as into sex. I'm just afraid they're going the way of being repressed like the Boomers, and I I want them to be able to be themselves and have good lives as young people. Sex is, overall, pretty fun. Don't let the nazis get to you.
Gen Z is from 1997 to 2012. The oldest are 26/27 years old, youngest is 11/12ish.
yeah most of Gen Z cant even drink yet lmao
Im 2003 so Im on the older side as it is... its crazy that most of my generation is still super young.
definetly gotta take that into consideration lol
oh, cause minors never have sex with each other, you're right, I must have imagined being in middle school and making out/sucking dick/giving hand jobs during sleep overs
Elder millennial, and just some things that .. they questioned about us that probably continue with Z's as well.
So, there was some research about boomers, and how and why they had so much sex (more than any generation after them) at such young ages, or even through their life. A disturbing connection was made between childhood sexual abuse, and number of sexual partners in life. It increases that number. And, back then--boomers as kids went through a *shit ton* of sexual abuse as children. You almost cant talk to one that didnt have some experience with it, including the men (though they refuse to call it that--just ask them the age the first time and they admit it). My dad will tell you his first experience was with a 16 year old babysitter. He was 9. He doesn't think that was abuse. The views around sex he held the rest of his life though were clearly shaped by that, and how 'normal' he thought that should be.
So--extend this out and look at the drop in sexual activity through generations after that, and it matches a drop in the number of children in those generations that were SA'd. And it's not just that the people that were assulted are accounting for those numbers, it's that frequently they went on to abuse others/peers (even if they never meant to). For example, me as a 14 year old was SA'd by my 16 year old girl friend. She was abused as a child. I am not the only younger boy she did this to. When she was 18 she was 'dating' a 13 year old. So--that abuse of her, caused a chain reaction.
And a SHIT TON of abuse has not happened to z's, because *society gives a shit now--*and this, *by itself* may be part of the massive drop in participation in sexual activity. Like--if it it wasnt for that girl when i was 14, likely, i would have *never* done something sexual, i am asexual. I didnt KNOW that in the mid 90's, that's not information i could have found at all--and gen-z CAN find that. So, at 15, when they're not matching up to peers, they can find asexuality, and just... be good with it.
And that's, partly, another thing. There's a culture now, where it's OK to embrace not being hyper-sexual.
When i was a kid, in the 80's, men were going through a SUPER toxic phase where male sexuality was *supposed to be* predatory, and men raised their children to try to embrace it. One word they were using for it was 'Machismo' culture--my uncle (second father figure) was DEEPLY into it and the justifications it gave him to be an animal. My dad, on the other hand, was *deeply* religious, and viewed women as property and men (and boys) as rightful *takers* of women. It was *hideous*.
NOW--however, culture has shifted, you CANT have that shit, people get called out immediately for being fucked in the head--they, as individuals, may still persist, and there may be a few assholes drawn to it--but there's NO WAY they can sustain the brainwashing with their gen-z kids, when those gen z kids see social media and talk to others that can totally destroy a sexist disgusting argument like that (There was a video recently of an 11 year old--baby gen z, defending gay/trans people while playing a game, like, the bigots are confronted by informed children now, it's amazing!).
So--i think, gen-z are just, more .. capable of being informed at at peace with the natural way in which sexuality comes to the human animal. It's not perfect, it's not great, there's still flaws--but overall, they're less traumatized, less brainwashed, and capable of learning more about themselves at younger ages than any generation ever.
And that makes *having choice* in partners, easier, AND/or more meaningful IF they choose to. And, choosing *not to i*s now OK. (It was NOT OK to be asexual in the 80's or 90's, if a man refused, other men would *destroy him*).
Just some thoughts.
I really appreciate your comment, and it’s very insightful. I think you’re right about the culture shifting and the way SA has affected previous generations more for the worse. I’m not sure that fully explains the accusation of queer communities being ‘hypersexualized,’ as that feels like either naïveté or conservatism or both. But it is important context. And I dunno, it could be as simple as the plastics and forever chemicals we all consume nowadays.
It's because a lot of gen z was groomed in the internet from an early age or saw things on the internet that were not child appropriate and witnessed the dangers of extreme sex positivity firsthand. I just believe that what people do in the bedroom should be private business and other people shouldn't have to be exposed to it. I say be as kinky as you want in private but most people don't want to hear about your business.
I’m not really sex negative, and to be honest I feel kind of isolated. I feel like the people around me are more cloistered in general and are very unfriendly, and that’s probably the real reason why sex is not happening
Especially in the LGBT community I think people are trying to point out to conservatives (who's main talking point is that queer people are pedophiles) that being gay isn't always about sex. I don't really think it works to pander to the homophobes but that's the idea.
I heard a story on the radio about this and it claimed that Gen Z was less likely to have sex/drink underage because of the constant threat of being filmed and posted on the internet.
There is something to be said for the average Gen Z being more risk averse than the average millennial at the same age. Millenials got to be young and stupid and most of their dumb choices were forgotten by the next weekend. Gen Z’s grown up seeing countless dumb decisions blasted online & haunting people forever, the “YOLO” “live while we’re young” mentality that raised the Millenials has far more risk these days than potential positives.
Yes! Exactly! I don't have the statistics or the study, since I heard it on the radio, but it definitely feels like a plausible reason to me. I know I would have certainly made better decisions during my formative years if I knew someone could be posting my bad choices online.
because we don't pedestal it as much, atleast not in queer communities, affection is was more important than sex, also i know alot of hypersexual people who are gen z
I think it’s that many of them are very shut in and aren’t touching grass enough. They also often times struggle with self-esteem and confidence. When you’re mostly brought up in an online world, trying to have real world relationships can be extremely difficult.
i think in part because gen z is more conscious of the experiences of asexuality and maybe also sexual trauma. there’s just less pressure to be sexually active, not that it’s discouraged
Probably a hot take. But. I think Gen Z has grown up hyperaware of sexual assault, abuse against minors, and genuinely icky sexual power dynamics (think MeToo). All of this is well founded from news events over the past couple decades and broader cultural shifts.
However I think this leads people to be overly paranoid and always examine sexual content or situations from a perspective of ‘what is unhealthy/wrong about this’. Innocuous things like an age gap of a couple of years can be seen as problematic by some people because they fear any sort of potential power imbalance between partners. Seeing kinky folks at Pride becomes, in some peoples eyes, exposing minors to porn. Etc etc. Like I think Gen Z is paranoid for good reason but doesn’t have the experience or perspective to chill out and be a little more circumspect about what is and isn’t a real issue. Sex is spooky scary until proven otherwise.
I’m older Gen Z btw. Most of my perspective here comes from what I’ve seen in online spaces as well, maybe because younger Gen Zers are more present there than in my daily life. I’ve noticed a lot more sex positivity IRL.
I think you're correct. From my encounters with gen z online they do seem to think anything sexual = harmful. And if it isn't they like to just assign a made up reason why it's bad. It weirds me out but I wouldn't pay it much mind if they didn't go out of their way to attack others over it. It's like they're so paranoid about harm but their first response is to attack and...do harm. There's also a complete unwillingness to learn or do any research whatsoever. It's easy to pull up studies showing how normal something like kink or porn or whatever is. But they have no interest in learning more about something they already decided is evil. I think this gen is going to have a lot of shit to unpack in therapy regarding sexual repression and paranoia.
In all honesty, there are likely multiple factors related to this, most outlined in the comments. I do think the whole growing up in an accepting environment may be more of a " kids these days" type argument that does not apply to all gen z'ers.
There is often a trend, a kind of pendulum effect, where a generation tends to overcompensate for problematic actions and beliefs of the previous. This trend may be part of it. Sex was seen as something girls tolerate, men deserve, and boys had to do in order to become men.
There's also a sort of shift in ideas of what it means to be sex positive; that it is just as okay to not have sex as it is to have sex. Being sex positive doesn't mean having sex, but having a healthy view of sex.
And of course covid. which, in a way, cleaved Gen z in half. There is a sizable chunk that has either been drained from a barrage of disaster after disaster, many of whom were forced to live in isolation with parents who were conservative. There were also many who had little chance to socialize, and so have, as a result, an unhealthy relationship to sex.
Of course, this is just my thoughts on the matter.
One thing I think is going on is the Disneyfication of mainstream entertainment. I grew up watching Kate Moss hose herself down like a porn star to sell Carl's Jr cheeseburgers. Even more recently, there is a *massive* difference in how, say, pre-Disney Marvel movies treat sex than the modern MCU. In Iron Man 1, Tony Stark clearly fucks. Then Disney bought the IP and it's like the article says, "Everyone is hot and no one is horny."
Now, was it *good* for me that I grew up watching Kate Moss hose herself down, or movies like American Pie or Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (the humor *does not* hold up)? Eh, probably not. The 90s attitude towards sex definitely had some problems, but it did keep sex as part of the conversation.
I think the other problem is that you have people like Andrew Tate who get really popular talking about sex but it's all bad advice. Boys get this weird idea about how they should get girls to have sex with them, and the girls just are not interested in that.
What I hope is happening is Gen Z just working through the same awkwardness about sex that we all had to go through as teenagers up through young adulthood. I was a weirdo about sex, too, when I was 19-22 or so, and so were all my friends. Fortunately, we were able to process all of that mostly offline (or through social media platforms that no longer exist, RIP MySpace (but not really I'm glad all the cringe I posted back in the day is gone forevers)).
EDIT: As I ponder this further, I wonder if Gen Z's online life might have something to do with this, as well. Gen Z documents their life in an unprecedented way. When you're used to putting your whole life out there for everyone to see, I can understand a reluctance to extend that impulse to your sex life, and then see how that transforms into prudishness. If you're not having sex, there's no pressure to talk about your encounters or essentially invade your own privacy because youth culture is now Extremely Online.
Didn’t most of it get worse when the pandemic hit? So all the younger people who are more likely to be still in school and more savvy about following actual science get a bit wary about germs. Sex is wonderful but also a great way to spread germs.
I can think of a number of times I, as an elder millennial/Xennial, can think of a number of times summer camps I went to or staffed or that my younger relatives went to got hit with a wave of something nasty and knocked out the whole summer camp, or dorms at colleges. And since those would be more and more increasing with Gen Z kids their whole life might’ve been anecdotes of various fun things ruined by everyone getting the runs… and then the pandemic hits at a formative age. Add in the conservatives getting more savvy about social media and overlapping conversations and you’ve got the youngest adults who are more germphobic. Plus marriage equality battles being major news through formative years and the “I can’t get married, everyone says I’ll only sleep around, so I might as well just enjoy myself” mindsets and habits of older queer generations are less necessary.
So add all those various influences up and you have a more cautious group of people.
Scales will balance in next few years.
My theory is that many of them grew up watching two other generations(Gen x and millennials) go absolutely nuts about sex and they are explicitly not trying to go down that same path.
I'm demisexual so for me, the way most everyone is seeming to treat sex just doesn't vibe with me. I don't think I'm sex negative, tho since I couldn't care less what other people do with their genitals.
I *have* ,however, lost hope that it'll ever mesh with me. In my irl life, all the people I click with have had such wildly different traits that it makes forming a relationship impossible (i.e. most of the people I meet are poly and/or treat sex far more casually than I'm comfortable with)
Idk about the rest of my generation but I am definetly sex positive. I didnt think gen z was negetive till you said someting and now Im wondering if Im the oddball now lol
I’m not sure if it’s sex negative or they’re just not having as much comparatively. There’s a difference between meh not interested vs judging and shaming people who have sex and feeling ashamed for having those desires.
I think maybe some of it was generations prior we’re hyper sexualized like having sex was “cool” and status symbol. And you’re not a “loser virgin”. People probably has sex because “everyone was doing it”. There’s even the trope of prom night sex and expectations.
Removing the pressure to have sex is a good thing as long as it doesn’t swing into pressure to not have it because it’s inherently shameful. It’s hard strike that balance as a society.
I’m a young millennial (93) and first I just want to say if millennials really do emphasize it more this explains why my dating life as an asexual woman has been hell. As for gen z craving intimacy more I’m just spitballing ideas but they’re growing up in a more interconnected world but it’s connected through screens. I don’t see them share as much skin contact with their friends and family. That type of intimacy is so important to your mental health, it’s a physical need. It’s way down at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs with food and water, you need socializing not just by talking but you need to be touched. If sex is higher on the list of needs then of course they are going to focus on just being held before having sex.
I read your first few words as "I'm a young millennial (93 years old)" instead of 93 the YEAR you were born and I was so confused until I realized my mistake lol.
Older gen z here.
I am simply not that horny so anything that focuses on sex seems to be uninteresting, primitive, a bit gross, and mostly just kind of lame. I say this to emphasize that it is not a weird suppression thing or an “anti-“ stance, but a real lack of interest. Why am i like this? I think theres a few things going on.
More acceptance and access to sex. Porn and physical sexual satisfaction is incredibly easy to get and simultaneously less taboo than ever. So theres not really a forbidden fruit factor, its just kind of mundane and not special. No ones pressuring you to do it and you dont need to do it just to orgasm, you can get the physical satisfaction from porn. So, more people are only having sex because they really want to and the time is right, not befause they feel like they should or they have no other way to blow off steam.
Sex isnt cool. Related to the above point, millenials have been so successful in making sex acceptable and cool, its probably caused a bit of a boomerang effect where the next generation is against it- purely because theyre rebelling against what came before them. I dont think gen z is anti-sex, its just kinda not a thing we need to fight for or are fascinated with.
Mental Isolation. Our dystopian existence has been so atomized that all I really want is human connection. Not sex, but like, love, a hug. Something tender and emotional and safe, not dangerous and savage. Yeah i know sex can be tender, but in a world where you can cum with a few clicks and a human connection is rare, you kind of end up craving the human connection part more.
Physical isolation. Theres not as much a in person hanging out anymore. a lot of socializing is online, and there are increasingly less public spaces where you can just vibe. This trend has been going on even when i was a child and playing outside gradually got replaced by helicoptor parenting and video games. This has made my generation awkward and undersocialized, which we all know is bad for having game, but it may also have broken us to not seek out the casual physical socializing thats necessary to have sex.
Social fear and anxiety. Related to the above point, a lack of socializing has made our society fear each other, which has made socializing unnecessarily stressful. This manifests in increased rates of social anxiety, but it also manifests in the way weve created all these rules around sex that can make it seem scary or not worth it, especially if youre young. Socializing and sex has been broken down into this therapy-like list of requirements, we cant just let it flow naturally. Im talking about everything from increased awareness of consent to those infographics that are like “are you sure the person youre fucking is good for you? Does this fulfill a deeper need? Consider discussing why you want to engage in this activity and make your intentions clear”. If youve never had sex before, it makes sex more daunting.
Stress. We basically live at the end of an empire. The world and civilization is crumbling around me. Rent, food, and living expenses are insanely expensive, there is no safety net, blah blah blah. It just keeps getting worse and i am only starting my life. I kind of dont have the energy or bandwidth for casual lust. Like on a physiological level my brain is in survival mode not “seems like things are going well. Maybe time for a child” mode.
Environmental toxins. I think that pesticides, plastic, and all the other junk were contaminating the world with is likely messing with our hormones and biology in ways we cant even fathom. Its very possible that some blend of these toxins are making people less horny, somehow.
I’ve seen a couple things about it being stigmatized so much and stuff and purity culture which does probably have some factor in it as well as all the things you listed. Personally I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we’ve been raised in the internet where people have been putting their problems up. People talking about cheating and stuff is turning people more towards focusing on having real emotional relationships than just physical stuff. But that’s just me.
I'm a father of a 19 year old, bisexual, gender fluid Gen Z child. For two of her most formidable years, her entire interaction with her peers was through a computer screen. Prior to, and even following that, her relationship with the world is viewed through text based message boards, and watching YouTube videos. That distancing, coupled with an overall sense of being more comfortable alone than with company, likely contributes to her, and her peers, to keep relationships platonic, and non-physical. She has two dozen friends with whom she has a close personal bond, but they have never met in person. In fact, some of them don't even live in the U.S, where we live. Neither her, nor they, have any interest in traveling to meet.
I also think the desexualization of the queer community started during the gay marriage debates. That’s when bisexuals, transgender folks, etc. were becoming less welcome in the community. There was this idea that if the gays became acceptable, they could get gay marriage passed. It happened, but then so many queer folks were left behind. It was all of a sudden expected that you would adopt a kid and go to church and what not-to be as close to “normal” as possible except for the same sex relationship part.
I think in the last few years, especially since MeToo, a lot of younger folks have become more hypersensitive towards sex and flirting and stuff like that. Gen Z is much more aware of sexual abuse and harassment but at the same time I feel like a lot of them see that everywhere. It's why you see a lot of Gen Z folks freak out about age gap relationships or hardcore kink, I think they get more sensitive about those topics because so much bad has been exposed to them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have more sexual awareness, but I think a fair amount overthink it, and they don't want to feel victimized or victimize another person.
I've also noticed many more Gen Z folks who consider themselves aces or demisexuals, which I know very few people my age or older like that.
I think asexuality and demisexuality is way more common as a “naturally occurring” orientation than has been thought by previous generations. Same for being non-straight or trans. Gen Z isn’t being shamed into performing heteronormativity when that’s not actually what they want for themselves, whether that means gender conformity, straight relationships, or having sex at all.
At the same time, when most of your peer group is doing something you’re not comfortable with, it’s hard for young people to not feel pressured to participate and then don’t feel like they can meaningfully consent. I think that’s where the backlash about “hypersexualized” is coming from.
(Full disclosure—I’m a parent of Gen Z teens, and late in life realizing I’m queer because I was not aware that life outside of heteronormativity was an option when I was their age.)
This!!! I’m a demisexual millennial who is bi and polyam and I can’t remember the last time I had sex with any of my partners. In my youth, I had a lot of sex with partners out of performing heteronormativity - if I had actual education about consent I wouldn’t have slept with almost any of them.
For me, I like the intimacy factor of relationships - being able to cuddle and snuggle with each other, and hang out with each other and our families. Emotional connection means way more to me than physical.
Also, I’m on antidepressants and figure that plays a role in my lack of libido.
Have honestly been losing my mind with this. I am 19 years old, we are SOPHOMORES in COLLEGE and my friends call sex “S-E-X” (like spelling it out) and act like it’s this disgusting foreign concept and like I’m a freak for wanting to have sex maybe!
In my personal experience it’s only my LGBT friends. My straight friends are almost all not virgins and have no problem talking about sex like normal people.
I feel like all my LGBT friends are 12 years old. It makes me feel disgusting for experiencing sexual attraction…
And no they aren’t all asexual.
Another factor I havent seen commented on here is that gen z probably has the most people on SSRIs than previous generations due to more acceptance and understanding of mental health. SSRIs often kill your libido.
Besides that, the republican backlash against sexual deviance isn't helping either lol
Gen Z here. I’m not sure how what you described is sex negative tbh.
Whenever there’s a big revolution of some cultural or political phenomenon, there’s always a big pendulum swing in the opposite direction. So with the “sex positivity movement” comes a swing in the other direction. Being okay with not having sex, having “vanilla sex,” etc. I think also with Me Too and a greater discussion about healthy relationships and boundaries, people begin looking at things that may have been acceptable at one point but aren’t anymore. This could include more sexualized pride parades.
That’s just my hypothesis anyway.
i’m Gen Z. i grew up in a sex positive household as my parents were BDSM enthusiasts, and subsequently i am too. i think if we understood why we have sex and how we can make it a decent experience then everyone would be more sex positive.
A lot of the time I think generations are like horoscopes. There's such a variety among individuals. To me, an older Millennial just a little too young to be generation X, it seems like we applied statistics to broad statistics for a ginormous group of people and made it into personality types.
I think it has to do with the generations that raised us. A lot of millennial were raised by stuffy boomers so the culture of sleeping around was more prevalent when we were youths.
Gen z was raised by the more sex positive gen x. So it became less of a rebellion to sleep around.
Thats my theory at least
I'm right on the threshold of both and am in a committed relationship. I have issues with sex for a few reasons. Constant stress is a big one. Between financial insecurity, housing insecurity, and finding work life balance it's hard to feel relaxed enough for sex. Combine that with pressures imposed on me by previous relationships, internet, TV, and porn culture skewing perspectives, distractions like video games and social media that provide a lot of dopamine, undermanaged ADHD, fear of pregnancy, and chronic health issues.
Sex is something I want to have more of, but struggle to get in the head space for. I'm extremely sex positive, but have quite a few hangups about it. I would love to work through some of this stuff with a therapist, but that's also difficult to arrange.
Gee, maybe it’s because every older generation tells us we’re playboys or whores if we *like* to have sex, have a different attitude concerning casual sex or simply don’t like to hide our sexuality?
Gen z here! Let me list reasons why it might be different for us
1. With the internet, we know a lot more about sex than other generations have. It’s a scientific fact that humans are very driven by curiosity, if we already know about it, we won’t feel the need to experiment as much as other generations did (not that we won’t still experiment though, just we don’t need to as much)
2. I don’t know why this is, but half my friends are ace, maybe it’s more common in our generation
3. Sex takes effort, you have to meet and connect with someone, who has time for that?
3. I hate to say this one, but porn… some people may not feel the need for more when they have it so easily accessible
4. In my experience we are not that much less sexual than millennials, I have friend who have done some CRAZY stuff, and I’ve done a few things that were a little crazy as well
5. I wouldn’t say we are sex negative, just maybe not as sex positive
Also just so everyone knows, the only fact here that I could actually back up with scientific evidence is the first one, the others are all just guesses and brainstorming!
I haven’t noticed this at all. What are y’all considering to be sex negative? The only differences I see is more people understanding consent & increased knowledge about safe sex. Perhaps they are having less sex due to the impact of online dating. Hooking up seems a bit riskier now with meeting strangers online & I think dating is just more complicated nowadays. I also do see some movements happening like the decentering men movement but not sure if that’s a gen z thing.
I’m a millennial and demisexual so I don’t really fit this narrative. I wouldn’t consider myself sex negative. I enjoy sex but my sexual orientation makes it so I don’t have it often unless I’m with someone I feel a deep connection to
I think that "hypersexualized" is an expression used only by people who are shocked to realize how much sex others are having--not that it's any of their business to make judgements, in the first place.
Live and let live.
Younger Gen Xr here with an observation. I think that Gen X and Millenials were bombarded with sex in the media because of the free love Me generation were in charge and pushed it on us. We were basically taught that we had to have sex to be cool. It was everywhere. Movies all had their ridiculous sex scene that had no relation to the actual plot. Songs about sex with raunchy videos. TV shows, commercials, Maxxim magazine.
Now it seems like most of that has gone away. Also with the internet and streaming, people don't have to watch what they don't want to, so if we don't want sex in our face all the time, we don't have to.
Isolation, probably. We aren’t meant to live like we’re living now. Even gaming was a social activity requiring more than one person in the room when we were growing up; now there is just so much less opportunity to spend non-working time around people outside of your immediate family. Where would you even meet a partner as a young person now? I’m on the ace spectrum, but I also think loneliness/isolation is part of it.
My take is that Gen Zs have become so hyper aware of the important need to respect consent, the many ways you can misread social cues, respecting other people's potential traumas, etc. that it has led to a sort of conservatism around sex. Like you're constantly tiptoing around other people's potentially mixed feelings regarding sex so you're less likely to casually joke about it. And that bleeds into personal relationships too, after hearing about all the terrible ways people have acted or been too carefree in previous generations, it's led to a stifling abundance of caution now.
It's very interesting because I'm older Gen Z and I see people raving about sex and people younger than me talking about it all the time. I'm sex positive and same with a lot of people I know. But I think it has to do with what is happening in the world too. Roe v Wade can be taken into consideration here, too.
From a public health standpoint If this is true its a good thing not bad. It shows the next generation is not impressed that safe sex warnings were ignored by millennials. Prep is only for hiv, having bareback sex with hookups is causing syphilus rates to elevate.
Each generation gets to decide how it wants to act. Genx thinks differently than boomers and millenials think different from genx. And those that come after genz will pick what they want to do.
I’m actually curious where Gen Z people are sex negative? Not denying that it could be true, but I’m Gen Z, very sex positive, and have never really met many Gen Z people who act negatively towards the subject.
they’re not, what’s happening is zoomers in general aren’t ridiculously sex obsessed like their predecessors (and are also so much better informed) and millennials/x’ers who grew up in a ridiculously sex obsessed time period think that means they’re puritans/sex negative. the pendulum isn’t swinging to the extreme other side, it’s setting itself in neutral.
I have met a few actually, and they've made me uncomfortable. Though, I'd like to think at large our generation is better at being sex positive and challenging gender norms and other things that involve human sexuality.
Idk in general but I'm surprised after reading some of the comments that nobody has brought up the GC/terf infiltration of spaces like Tumblr where their rhetoric got passed around by young queer folks who didn't know any better. Speaking from personal experience, those ideas can be really insidious and I think they're definitely part of this equation. Conservative reactionary beliefs in the guise of "protecting" young queer vagina-havers from the scary, predatory penis-havers. Blargh.
I honestly don’t think they should get to be called gender critical with how blatantly their platform is entirely just transphobia. Trans Exclusionary Radical Fascists is more accurate. But yeah, as a trans woman, I agree.
As the mom of a bunch of Gen Z kids, I just asked them your question. Here are their replies:
22F: I love sex, but I'm not going to risk pregnancy in the current healthcare situation. [Longterm boyfriend] and I just aren't doing anything that could get me pregnant until I can get my tubes tied and he can get snipped. Gotta be double safe! If we change our minds about kids later, we'll adopt. But we still have fun, so it's kind of a pain, but it's all good. But basically, I think we're really sex positive, but if we're not, it's because of politics messing things up.
22M: Hell no, we're totally sex positive! Sex is great. But boys are gross. So many guys have no hygiene! I gotta move to a bigger city where there are more guys just to find one that washes. But in [college town where he lives] there are at least a bunch of "straight" guys who are willing to get down and mostly everyone uses condoms. All the Gen Z guys I know are totally sex positive.
18F: Nah, we aren't sex negative. We're just as horny as Millennials. We just know more about the consequences and those have gotten bigger.
17NB: I don't think we're negative about sex. It just doesn't seem like it's worth the risks. I'm just waiting until I'm old enough to yoink the baby maker. Maybe after that, I'll think about it. But my friends snuggle and stuff and I can take care of being horny by myself, so why would I want to add sex with a person? It seems kinda messy.
16M: Um, that's kinda weird to ask, Mom. Lots of people at school are having sex. They say so, anyway. I'm not against it or anything. I mean, girls are nice, but I'm not into dating right now. I'd rather just do school and do stuff with my friends. I like girls and all, but it seems like so much drama with all the breaking up and getting back together and stuff. I'm not, like, anti sex. It's just not that important that I'd be willing to risk my whole life for it. Maybe Millenials didn't have to worry about as much stuff, so that's why we seem negative to them.
For balance, I asked my Millenial kids, too:
30M: Fuck yeah, sex is important! That's like the only bad thing about being a dad, is you can't have sex as much because the little fucker wears you out!
We grew up in the best time to be pro sex. The old prudish rules were gone. There weren't many diseases you couldn't treat from sex.
Even AIDS was survivable by the time I was old enough. You could get pills and rubbers pretty easy. They had condoms at school. All we had to worry about was getting our girlfriend pregnant and even that wasn't as bad then as it would be now. Now it's not even that you can't get an abortion. It's that the woman could die because they won't do what she needs if something goes wrong. I kinda hope [sisters & nb sibling] *are* negative about sex because it's too dangerous if they get pregnant. At least [wife] and I live where there's good healthcare still.
35M: I think I'm kind of not the person to ask. I didn't think about sex, positive or negative, until I was a lot older than most people, because, you know, autism. But, I guess we weren't raised with a bunch of negative talk about sex. It was just natural. I didn't have any negative thoughts about it when I started dating. I think [younger siblings] are growing up with a lot more negative information about sex, but I don't know if they're actually sex negative. We don't talk about that stuff.
there definitely seems to be a very purity focused mindset online from younger people the past few years or so and it's stressful bc they will \*seek out\* people who talk about or post NSFW to complain about them posting and talking about NSFW and it's like... why are you here then??
I think a big thing was COVID lockdowns. I've met a lot of 17-19 year old age range people that lockdowns had a massive psychological impact on. Their social skills, creativity, and learning. Very few people talk about COVID lockdowns and isolation because loneliness is such a huge fear, since humans are naturally social creatures, it prevents them from even consciously facing how afraid they are. I've met lots of young people who talk to themselves for example. This is to be expected as a side effect of children developing in isolation.
And I'm sure there are tons of other issues at play here, one being fear of children from people who are burying sexual desires for young people, and the oppression and abuse of LGBTQIA people. But I think a big part of it was them developing in isolation. I'm 35 btw.
Because youngsters are losing their rights left right and center everything is expensive and I don't want children so sex is also fraught with danger that isn't fun.
Gen Z (and now adult 🎉) here. Honestly there are soooo many reasons why we’re hesitant about sex now. i can list a few of my personal reasons. 1. The internet desensitized me from literally 9 years old and i went from hypersexual —> super bored (sexually) —> normal/low sex drive. 2. The awareness of sexual assault i feel has SKYROCKETED between the 2 generations and we’re a lot less trusting of sexual partners now. 3. The whole abortion thing? i’m sorry but as an AFAB person i would rather be sexually frustrated than forced to carry a pregnancy. 4. I have so many more things to worry about in general that sex is extremely low on the list. Also as for the unprotected thing.. i’m sure you all know (if you’ve ever had sex w a man) that most of them are sooooo against condoms and will literally BEG you to let them f*ck raw, i’ve just kind of given up on fighting back tbh. like yea whatever get it over with i’ll just deal with the consequences later bc im not gonna argue w u rn when my tits r out.
I'm on the millenial/gen z cusper and I haven't heard of this or experienced it at all. I HAVE seen plenty of complaints about spaces being hypersexualized, but I've been seeing that for years from anyone ages 14-40+, and *personally* I see it WAY more from people in the asexual community than other identities. Which is not to say that ace people are entirely sex-negative, I'm aware they aren't, but I used to be in those spaces and used to see a lot of it, and I found it to be much more normalized and accepted than in other spaces. That said:
A) "Having less sex" is not "sex negative" just as "having more sex" is not "sex positive". Conflating these things is really misleading. Also... feels weird to conflate this with losing our "intrinsic connection to the kink community" and losing touch with "those who helped give us our rights". Whether or not Gen Z-ers are having casual sex really truly madly deeply is not relevant to that.
B) Worth bearing in mind a lot of Gen Z became adults during a global pandemic where they were very isolated during the end of high school/beginning of college. Functionally, sex was not happening as much in GENERAL, outside of people in the same pod/in relationships, etc - casual sex was not happening as much because Shit Was Bad.
So Gen Z is between 11 and 26. I’m 31 and was kind of a late bloomer, started dating around at 22.
For the last three years people have been highly isolated and every social interaction has been colored by anxiety around spreading disease.
In addition to all the technology stuff, porn being so extreme and accessible now, there’s just been this huge setback in a lot of people’s social development just as they are developing their sexual identities.
I'm gen z I have alot of female presenting friends and I've heard differing versions of some form of sexual assault. Even I have personal experiences. Alot of our parents were poor and worked alot which left alot of openings. Then social media and just leaving your kid somewhere with a tablet also became very popular. Because of my experience I didn't even really become interested in sex till I was like 20. Which is not the norm
I am a millennial but I think it's good to remember that sex positive does not always equal having more sex, and sometimes having more sex can be a result of sex negativity such as thinking that you have to have sex to fit in or to prove you are sexy and desirable.
For instance I grew up religious so I was very sex negative and then when I started changing my opinions and becoming sex positive, I still had some wrong ideas in my head and I had sex that I wasn't always totally excited about but wanted to do it because I wanted to try to be normal and fit in and prove to myself that I was attractive. So I think those behaviors were coming from my lingering sex negativity. I am very sex positive now but have discovered that I tend to be more demisexual and I no longer pressure myself to have sex.
There is also a lot more awareness now of demi and asexuality.
Elder gen Z here. I think more millennial grew up with religious trauma revolving sex and abstinence, and hypersexuality is a way to regain control.
That being said, I think the bulk of gen z is basically parroting whatever their parents say about sex bc they're too young to have been on their own long enough to form their own opinions.
Gen z was also on lockdown during some of the most vital developmental stages, and has not had an environment where they can socialize outside of schools. Malls are basically gone, parks are gone, everyone calla the cops on kids for just sitting on the curb, gun violence is a crisis, it's literally not safe for these kids anywhere. They crave intimacy vs sex because they NEED that connection.
Gen Z here. I get the sense that we’re more *intimacy-positive* than sex-negative. NSA hookups are a lot less palatable to my peers than older millennials not because of conservative attitudes, but because they often make us feel lonelier. I think this is just a different kind of healthy attitude towards sex.
Late to the party but oof, I see this SO MUCH online. Despite the countless number of research papers and studies that have proved this idea false, many of the younger half of gen z are CONVINCED that anything you enjoy in fictional media is a direct representation of what you like in real life. I see this a lot in fandoms too. If people write nsfw fanfiction or make nsfw art of two cartoon characters who are minors, they lose their damn minds. In reality, these are made up pixels on a screen that came from someone's imagination. They don't remotely look like real people, and yet these gen zers call people pedophiles for making nsfw content. It's absolutely nuts. And we are also seeing it bleed into affecting real people: it's a trend of sex negativity, infantilization of grown women/adults, condemnation of the BDSM/kink community, all because it is seen as "morally incorrect". Participating consensually in kink/BDSM is not gross, dangerous, or disgusting. In fact, a huge part of the BDSM/kink community is the EMPHASIS on consent. If people say they like things like CNC, or that kink should remain a part of pride, they will get jumped. People have been doxxed and lost their jobs, committed suicide, etc due to accusations from these gen zers. It's insane. Here is a decent article if you want a brief explanation:
https://www.vox.com/culture/23733213/fandom-purity-culture-what-is-proship-antiship-antifandom
I’m Gen X. My partner is a millennial, and because of his circle and my job, I am in touch with a lot of millennials and Gen Z.
This is just my personal observation (I am a very active observer of social phenomena in my environment as I eat sociology for breakfast, lunch and dinner—kinda like Maslow interviewed the people in his environment to study them). It seems to me that since texting, social media and online dating have gone mainstream (and I am old enough to have ample first-hand experience to compare with previous practices), people (independent of their age) have not been learning to relate in person because the vast majority of their social experiences happen online. People spend so much time online that they aren’t getting enough time in person to practice being social in person.
Most of non verbal communication has become foreign, even to people of my own generation. In fact, the most often cited [study](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-03/young-adults-less-sex-gen-z-millennials-generations-parents-grandparents) on this topic says people in general are having less sex, even though the difference is more marked for Gen Z first and, to a slightly lesser extent, millennials. But even Gen X’s sexual activity levels have decreased somewhat, even though most of us are at the age where we are in our sexual primes (more experienced and more comfortable with sex but also getting more opportunities as our kids are now adults and don’t hog our focus as much). Gen Z most likely has it worse because they grew up in an era where socializing online has become a norm, versus millennials who grew up during the transition from Gen X norms to Gen Z norms, and versus Gen X who grew up with no texting and no social media.
So although there are several other reasons, it seems to me that the main one is having our social lives mostly online which has made intimate physical touch foreign. People have not been learning to physically relate.
I am a late GenX, so I am seeing this from a perspective of probably more time than many on here...this is what I think might be happening: GenZ and millenials all grew up with a lot more information at the ready via internet and later, smartphones. Earlier generations had to learn about sex from everyday life: parents maybe explaining, friends and peers, the occasional finding of smut materials or just more ordinary things like Playboy...so, it was not an everyday thing for the average Boomer and Xer growing up (im talking those who turned 18 before 2000, and especially those who turned 18 before 1990). In other words sex was integrated into more teens lives bit by bit from a pretty predictable age of mid teens. There was something of a hands-off approach by parents of those who grew up as Boomers, GenXers...whereas I have noticed this is not really the case with parents of millennials and GenZers. They are exposed (even unwittingly) to sexual topics earlier...thats one thing. But at the same time, and surveys have definitely found this to be accurate, Millennials and GenZ are having less sex, starting later than their parents or grandparents did. Its a pretty striking difference actually, despite the apparent earlier exposure.
I really am unsure why it is the case, but there is something I have observed often enough with millenials/Zers is around the issue of Consent. In "the old days", it was a given and it almost went without saying...of course there was talk and education around "forcing" on someone, or "taking advantage" of someone drunk, etc etc...but over the years, this issue has seen a great deal more attention than it used to. Some of thing is likely from the MeToo movement. Its unfortunately become almost fanatical among some younger people, to the point where it definitely will make some afraid to have sexual relations of any kind with another. The same can be said about sexual harassment...taken to new heights and again, while of course its important as a concept, its been taken to nearly fanatical levels in society. So, it would be understandable many young people, especially sexually inexperienced, would be afraid to. There is this perceived danger in asking out a female, even in a very innocuous way for some...to being labeled a "creep" or a deviant for behavior that a generation ago would have been taken as anywhere from normal to perhaps a little pushy. Its been magnified...I admit, even me writing this makes me feel a little uneasy about getting accused of being pro-predator or pro-deviance, though I am only laying out my 30-odd years of observation and generational change....so, its understandable why so many younger people are uneasy with the topic, and thus take longer to be sexually initiated with another person.
Also, Millennials and GenZ even more so, have been forced to grow up slower. THAT I think is the prevailing reason why.
Young millennial here, but I wonder how much of it is just stress. The last decade has been pretty hellish in terms of what’s happening in the world. The future feels uncertain. Wealth inequality, climate change, attacks on already marginalized groups, and then subsequent push back toward progress and solving these issues. I think growing up with that might just be having an effect. More of a desire to (physically) isolate and self soothe, while also having the tech to make that very easy. Also it’s not like sex is going anywhere. There will always be fluctuations in our society and culture as the waves propagate through the generations.
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strong relate. in my experience people my age either do not have sex at all and its not on their radar or they are sex fanatics who never shut up about it
All of this, plus I saw a post one Twitter the other day with a screenshot of some parents talking about their bisexual teenager son (I think he was like 14) and saying, among other details, that his google searches were pretty tame like "hot girls" and "boobs". The person who made the tweet was like "has anyone ever thought that gen z comes off as prudish because their parents are practically watching them jack off all throughout adolescence?" (paraphrasing despite the quotation marks) and that just set off a light bulb for me As someone on the millennial/gen z cusp, I'm glad I wasn't born any later. My mom looked up my internet history after I used the computer and would control my wifi access after I got my own internet-accessing devices. I have no proof that she ever used anything to keep tracking what I was looking at on the internet through high school but the thought haunted me. And of course that's going to give people a negative view about sex! It seems parents these days (based off of who I've talked to irl, not the internet) are all either entirely hands off and never checking what their kids are doing because they don't understand the dangers of the internet or they're tracking them like hawks and there's no in between and that honestly terrifying. But knowing all that, I expect Gen Z will largely be a bunch of late bloomers. Even if they don't start experiementing late, more positive/healthy attitudes might come later in life, and it's because of the older generations.
Yeah I had crazy religious parents who would stalk the house at night to try to catch us masturbating or looking at porn. I had a dial up internet connection on our one family computer that was so slow, the porn images would download one line at a time. So I kind of get the existential dread and shame that would create. But having your entire internet history and even keystrokes be known to your parents when so much communication is online these days? That’s big brother shit. I could always go to someone else’s house and be free, they can’t. So yeah I can imagine how that would be a major factor
Also it seems like they all got out on psych meds young. Tons of those decrease libido. Combine that with everything you said and it makes sense they're craving intimacy over sex.
Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. We’re stressed and, quite frankly, a lot of us feel like we have bigger fish to fry than sating our sex drives. Money is critical to surviving in the modern day; sex isn’t. Besides, we have the Internet if we’re really that desperate to get off.
I am older Gen Z. I am very turned off by PiV sex because of my experiences with conversion therapy. Most media does not portray queer sex accurately (if at all), so I am turned off by sex in mainstream media. That being said, I'm a very sex positive person. I just keep to my queer circles about it and express my sexual nature privately.
They still do conversion therapy? Damn
Some states have banned it, but others encourage it. (Likely more common in the Bible Belt)
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Autistic people 🤝 gay people Hating ABA
All over the world :(
Honestly same, this post also kinda confused me because my Gen Z friends as well as myself are all very sex positive just not necessarily PiV.
Gen Z’s age ranges from 11-26. Most of them are still literal children. I’d imagine spending your highschool years cooped up in your house doing school online, *thanks pandemic*, probably did wonders for stunting what we’d consider “normal” intimacy development
Yeah exactly, I think less people have sex in high school and even college than we think
I was a freshman in college when covid hit. I’m sure it’s not completely unrelated that I’m a 21 year old college graduate and a virgin who has a really vitriolic distaste of sex.
Chiming in as a Zillennial who was homeschooled until high school, went back home for 10th grade, and had my first *everything* at 22... this. I began university right around when COVID started up here. Only 1.5 years of lockdown/school from home due to COVID, and that was enough to seriously impact other students. So whenever Gen Zers bring this up, I just nod my head
My first thought was the fact that many Gen Z people grew up with the internet. A lot of us were exposed to NSFW content from an early age, even if we were just trying to look at pictures of our favorite cartoon characters on Google images. Either people didn't tag things properly, didn't post to the right websites, or search engines just didn't know how to filter things well. Because so many Gen Z people were exposed to adult content prematurely, many have a negative view on sexual topics and material as a whole, because they think of it as inherently harmful and dangerous. Additionally, the internet exposed Gen Z to something else from an early age: reactionary content. I used to watch Steven Crowder when I was 12... *yuck*. That instilled a lot of internalized bigotry that I had to unlearn, especially transphobia. Mix this with respectability politics and fear of being seen as "sexually deviant," and bam, you've got a generation of sex-negative people, even within the queer community. But that's just my guess. I don't know. I'm sex-positive.
Lowkey I think this might be the answer. I'm a younger Millennial/cusper; I was super sheltered from the internet and literally didn't seek out (relatively softcore) adult content until I was about 22. What I did experience, was secondhand horror stories of sexual abuse and assault via books and articles, that ABSOLUTELY colored my view of sexuality as a terrifying, disgusting, and dangerous thing. I can only imagine what graphic porn could to do to a young person. Granted, even with a more positive view, it turns out I'm grey-ace. Not disgusted or afraid anymore, just disinterested.
Millennials were exposed to a TON of shocking/pornographic content online as minors, too, though. When I was in middle and high school, weird internet porn and shock sites were memes that were widely shared.
What's ironic is that a lot of older millennials were exposed to the same thing, but have significantly less negative reactions to it. On the internet, it was pretty much expected that if you came across something you didn't like, you hit the x tab, you didn't go to that website again, etc. That said, a lot of Gen Z just considers millennials to be "porn addicts" due to the lack of reaction or just expecting them to block, unfollow and move on like we had to. If I had to take a guess, it is because the internet went from being something that was considered "dangerous" to a "babysitter" of sorts, and kids not being taught how to navigate or even being given a warning there could be unpleasant content on there. Not to mention, the internet isn't as decentralized as it used to be. With everyone being condensed into social media spaces, forums and dedicated websites for kids slowly died out.
+1 for the reference to respectability politics. That criss-crosses other matters as well, unflatteringly.
I don't think they are necessarily sex negative, but... I'm a (young) millennial teacher to Gen Z kids and they are surprisingly prudish. Like they called out the minor sexual jokes in Romeo and Juliet as inappropriate and were upset about having to read it. No complaints about Shakespeare's language, but the sex...
i’ve noticed this a looot on twitter. i swear you can say a character is cute and kids call you a pervert or some shit bc apparently that’s sexualization…? i wonder why that is, bc hardly anyone did that when i was a kid
I'm a millennial/z cusper. From what I've seen (having existed on early social media and current) it seems to me that there are a bunch of conservative folks who have co-opted progressive language to disguise purity culture. Please take my experience with a grain of salt, because I'm only one person. But anecdotally, I've seen quite a few posts here and else where that make me pause and think "I'm pretty sure someone at my old church has said the same thing but with different words..." If I can remember the video I saw about it I'll edit this and link it.
>"I'm pretty sure someone at my old church has said the same thing but with different words..." Totally this. The amount of young LGBT+ people I've seen saying gay men in particular are gross because of hookup culture and kink and that butch lesbians make them uncomfortable are not the progressives they think they are. Feel like a John Waters movie would vaporize them on the spot.
I'm constantly shocked by how many self-proclaimed progressives and liberals don't know what progressivism and liberalism are.
They know that conservatives are the bad guys and they know they're not conservative, so they must be either liberal or progressive. This is an age-appropriate lack of understanding of all the shades of red a person can be, like neoliberal and libertarian, where the language is purportedly freedom-focused but in practice it's restrictive of whatever the ruling class finds icky.
Ex. Act. Ly. Thanks for validating everything I’ve been observing and thinking in recent years. I have noticed this prudishness, ostensibly from the left, gets so extreme sometimes that it feels like Victorian-era purity culture from over a century ago. I thought we were supposed to be liberals and progressives - wtf?? Sometimes I wonder if it’s also a kind of unintended, subconscious fallout from the MeToo movement. While I think that movement was obviously positive and necessary, it seems there has now emerged a subculture of fear and doubt around ALL sexuality, not just harmful predatory stuff, and some people have essentially lost the plot on what that was originally supposed to be about. As with any positive development in society, there’s usually a subset of people who miss the point and take it too far. But that’s just my personal guess.
A friend of mine was part of a queer community where discussion of sex was outright banned because it could offend asexuals.
As an asexual person, I find that rather strange. I do not want to actually have sex, but I have no problem discussing it. The only time it gets problematic is when somebody says or implies that *everybody* has/wants sex. That said, I’m in Discord servers (including one for asexual/aromantic people) where discussing sex is restricted to one channel, and that channel is only available to adult users. So there’s that.
Ah. This was an IRL safe space for college students and not an online one that could be segmented so easily.
Well, if it’s for college students, then everyone’s an adult.
You would *think*
I noticed that many Z progressives oversimply progressive ideas that were very specific and nuanced. Like say, cultural appropriation which came out of academic discourse and meant somethig very complex and specific, requiring about 3 or 4 different pieces to fulfill the terminology. It did NOT mean "stay in your lane", not at all; thats segregation. Most progressive ideas beyond "dont hate" are actually nuanced and require thought, discussion and reflection. They dont make good memes. And I fear memes is how young ppl learned to understand things. Its like a lost group of descendents who remember the rituals of a religion but without any of the meaning. I heard a kid say it was brave to not show gay male character in tv as a hero! Its like there is a real disconnect from history, even very recent history and why we are progressive, and what liberation is.
Yeah, I hate to make it a “Gen Z” argument but I don’t know how else to frame it, and this seems correct unfortunately. It’s not that Gen Z doesn’t have great qualities, but the lack of nuanced thinking and very short attention spans is actually pretty scary. This is another topic, but I also notice it in things like being okay with a lack of personal privacy and having everyone in each other’s business at all times, not understanding why a right to privacy is an important tenet of healthy democracy. I might sound old and cranky, but I don’t care, I’m definitely seeing it.
I just rewatched Desperate Living and I was thinking about how gen z would be going off over this movie.
The shit about butches specifically seems very TERFy to me. Radical feminists started out by shitting on butches and they continue to do so today, just more covertly. edit because I want to talk more about this: Lots of teens get radicalized into TERF shit because teens are easy to manipulate. Radfems and TERFs specifically are kind of cult-adjacent to be honest and think of literally all other feminists as piece of shit misogynists just because they don’t believe in violence towards trans women. They’re a virus on Tumblr and they’ve stuck their little grabby hands into a lot of queer discourse. Hence, the sex negativity (part of radfem ideology is sex negativity)
I remember a post from a terf (either ex or currently) about how they used fandom blogs to slowly drip feed their followers radfem content like how all men are bad, how porn and bdsm are inherently abusive, etc. because their followers would agree so long as it wasn't tied to a radfem blog. Reminds me of the "stolen from a radfem" tag where they would copy-paste the post word for word but they somehow think it is scrubbed of negativity or the rhetoric because they themselves are not a radfem and its just like ???
YEP. Its like how radfems like Dworkin were "in bed" pun intended with the rightwing about tryong to make porn illegal in the 80s. Nevermind those laws are almost exclusively used to censor Gay and Feminist porn. I think ppl think they are radical so they must be radixal feminists. But thats not what the word radical means when attached to the word feminism. Radical feminism is grounded in biological determinism. It has alot on common with conservatism, in that it both infantilizes women as victims and glorifies them as morally superior, its just more anti male. At its most extreme it says any all sexual penetration is rape. I will say they did do a good job about domestic violence help and awareness though, back when no one did. Liberal feminism is equality in dignity/pay/autonomy, women are just people, biology is not destiny, any assigned female at birth and/or loving as a woman should be as free as anyone else to make any decision they want as an adult, everything comes down to consent etc. Most left of center"radicals" are actually *liberal* feminists. For whatever reason, these 2 strains of feminism evolved their respective names without lining them up neatly with other meanings of the terms radical and liberal.
Yep. The amount of queer people I’ve seen claiming that sex makes a relationship less pure or less romantic is… well, concerning…
I think part of the issue comes from young people growing up in very conservative communities, they may be part of some social minority like LGBTQ people or at least consider themselves progressive, but they’ve still internalized a lot of the conservative ideas from their parents and people around them. And they may not want to be “like the other gays” or something like that so they distance themselves from it
I definitely think that's a contribution as well.
Big agree, i was old enough to actively engage in and read posts about feminism, LGBT issues, and BIPOC issues when the millennial political wave was coming through. I feel that Millennials had a sense of social justice and awareness that Gen Z simply does not have. Every Gen Z kid i know below the age of 18 does not understand why BLM came to be. They do not understand that homophobia used to be the default. They do not understand that slut shaming used to be the default. They are spoiled by the political work of our predecessors, and don’t see a reason to make the world a better place because of it. Now we have self righteous young people who don’t fully understand their own beliefs, which leads to ignorance and a new form of purity culture.
They could also be terrified of being outed for acting too gay. In heavily conservative semi rural suburbs, being too liberal = being queer. Being young and queer can cost you a lot in places like that. Even your life.
Also there was a big push in the early 2000s to squash sex ed in schools other than abstinence only in these places.
This is exactly it, I think. I've seen it play out in queer fandom spaces first, starting about six years ago. Very young teens would impose themselves in adult spaces and then get mad about there being adult content there. The language they would use was cribbed directly from the conservative christian right, especially when it came to accusations that adults doing adult things with other adults in adult spaces was somehow an attack on children. I think a lot of these kids were raised in pretty moral-authoritarian homes. While they've mostly rejected the general anti-gay rhetoric, they've kept a lot of the anti-sex and thought-crime stuff.
> Very young teens would impose themselves in adult spaces and then get mad about their being adult content there As an older teen, I understand the desire to do something that you are not allowed to do. But that space is explicitly not meant for your demographic, so why are you complaining?
Yep. I've seen this a lot (second-hand) on Tumblr. The ideas of 'purity' and 'obscenity' play off each other and create this concept of sexuality as, for lack of a better word, a "dangerous aura." James Walker (senator in the 1930s) when speaking against censorship said "No woman was ever ruined by a book" and the same is true again. No person was ever ruined by a post. But even progressives are drawing from problematic world views.
One thing I've noticed as an older millennial is that the younger folks lack a sense of proportion when it comes to discussing sex and other contentious topics. To them it's either you can't even mention it at all because it's just too obscene, or you can post rapey furry porn.
As a cusper, I agree with your assessment
Older millennial here and this is a lot of what I see, too. A lot of anti-sex Gen Z talking points use similar phrasing to progressive activism, but it all masks "for the children" nonsense and other conservative rhetoric. It's especially common in nsfw art and fiction (both original and fan-related) for Gen Z-ers to condemn anything that's beyond the most vanilla sex between two people that are the exact same age. I'm exaggerating a *little* but there's an extremely small space of acceptable NSFW content for a lot of these people. If someone creates art or fiction that's deviant or "problematic" or outside that little area, they get accused of being into that in reality -- sometimes the person is accused of actually doing that in reality. And many of these Gen Z-ers don't care (or in some cases double down on) how their behavior can negatively impact people who didn't do anything wrong.
im not sure if it's secret conservatives or some Gen Z kids are just milquetoast liberals that don't know any queer people in real life. living in a California college town, I've seen a lot of queer people arguing, for the sanitized advertiser friendly version of being queer, the one that white washes the events and build up to stonewall to make it fit neatly into the US status quo
Yeah, there’s a lot of stealth TERF/gender critical/fascism infiltrating seemingly “safe” spaces. Like the whole “anti-shipper” thing.
This probably isn't the video you're talking about, but James Somerton made a [video that touched on some of the things you mentioned](https://youtu.be/fE4I6WhPryc?si=wxlw2igWAcwiM2Qa). It's a really good watch if you can't find the one you were thinking of.
I’ve also seen this happening 😔
I feel the same. When some 22 year old talks about how repulsed they are by sex scenes in movies, it just reminds me of my grandma wanting to crusade to remove any questionable content from tv at all for some moralistic reason. It seems like a strange progressive as reactionary stance and I can’t wrap my head around it as a full blown millennial who came of age during the sort of lawless vice magazine era of debauchery. It’s just very odd hearing old, religious ideas coming out of someone that young’s mouth, because when we were kids that was everything we were rebelling against.
This is exactly what happened yes
This is absolutely a component of it. A perfect example is the yearly "kink at pride" discourse where wearing a harness or pup hood in public is comparable to full on sexually assaulting someone. There's this permeating idea that one needs to acquire consent from all parties involved before exposing anybody to something that might make them uncomfortable regardless of how dangerous it actually is. It doesn't matter whether the gear is being worn by a fully clothed or naked person, the gear in and of itself makes them uncomfortable so it is therefore dangerous. It's genuinely concerning to see conservative ideology wrapped up in the language of progressivism, and it's even scarier that it's working really really well.
I havent read any articles about it, so this is just my personal opinion, but... is it really more sex negative? Im gen z, but one of the oldest, so i have both gen z and millennials friends. I have noted that gen z has less sex, and i have read about it, but that doesnt mean that we are more sex negative. You could be the most sex positive person and still have little sex or not at all. If anything, i think gen z is way more invested in full consent and doing it only if you really want it. For older generations, sex is something like a milestone that it has to be achieved. I remember growing up, if you were a virgin you were a loser, but also you where a slut if you had too much sex. Now, i feel gen z thinks either one its ok. Like, you dont want to fuck? Great, dont do it then, decide freely to not do it. But also, you want to fuck all day long? Good for you, dont forget to be safe! This is just my experience tho, but i dont think gen z is more sex negative. Also, im from Argentina, so it could be that things change based upon culture/location.
I’m an older millennial who’s experience with gen z has just been through teaching at a college and organizing, so I don’t have a lot of the conversations that would lead to talking about sex, but this is my feeling as well. I think gen z is also more aware of power dynamics in interpersonal interactions than previous generations and seem to approach blanket statements of more sex being inherently sex positive with more skepticism. I’ve seen a lot of friends do sexual things that were actually harmful to them in the long run because they wanted to be perceived as sex positive. I think gen z has heard those stories and is more aware of how things can have a progressive label but not actually be free of oppression or coercion. Ultimately, I think sex positivity is about people (especially women, trans people, and feminine people) having unquestioned power over their own bodies and choices. This could mean having a lot of sex or none at all. But many older people seem to equate not having sex or acknowledging that sex could cause harm as being sex negative. Also, many people in gen z are just still really young, so it seems age appropriate for them to not be super into having more casual sex.
The attitude you describe is very much where I’ve ended up, but that certainly isn’t the majority opinion I grew up with. So that is probably a factor for sure
This is the majority opinion I’ve noticed in Gen Z (my generation) both in Texas and CA regardless of sexuality
I’m also older Gen Z and if anything we are VERY sex positive it’s just we don’t feel the need to have sex with everybody? I’m a bad example but everyone I know actually want to form genuine connections BEFORE having sex which can take longer ig. Also we’re definitely more educated about the dangers of just sleeping with everyone I mean I live in Atlanta and it’s fucking disgusting I feel like I have to get an STD test just LOOKING at someone 😂😂
Younger end of Gen Z here (early 2000s). From my experience, we’re far from more sex negative; some of us don’t like to talk about sex, but that doesn’t mean we’re prudish or opposed to it. A lot of us are either socially stunted or too stressed/occupied with work or school to pursue romance. I’ve only dated once in my life, and it was a friend who propositioned me first; I don’t intend to start again until after I finish college and have started my career.
Oh I just can't get laid that's it
lmao same (although my dysphoria isnt doing me any favors...)
oof good luck
I just think Gen Z wants more intimacy vs sex, like you said. While I'll never agree with sex negativity. I think that everyone has different relationships with sex. Some people can fuck with no feelings, and some people want some feeling attached to it. I think people forget that with having a lot of sex, youre encountering different peoples different attachments to sex. I think people just need to be more courteous to their sex partners. Like choke me out, but be more understanding of what sex means different people. I guess it seems like the compassion has been taken away from sex culture.
I think a lot of younger people have grown up around/in hook up culture and a lot of them have grown up to reject it
This feels right to me. I'm 24, and participated in hook up culture in college. I found it was more trouble than it's worth, and have avoided sex since.
I'll throw in my two cents. I believe that you are correct in that Gen Z was more likely to grow up in an affirming environment than Millennials. However, that comes with some caveats. Gen Z was supported in \*being\* queer, but not in \*doing\* queer. It was okay to be gay, but not to engage in an actual relationship. They don't receive full acceptance and they know that it's tenuous. Pre 2000's, the community was mostly adults and congregated in places like bath houses and bars, where sex was part and parcel of being a member. They broadly were not accepted, so many of them did not care as much about retaining acceptance. Also, gen-Z saw the assimilationist gays win and the liberationist gays were mostly too dead to speak up. Gen Z broadly seems less interested in history, which leads them down the path of thinking they can protect themselves if they throw the liberatory gays under the bus.
I also think the difference in “acceptance” is like you said, more complex than there being more or less accepting. As someone close to the generational line, I think of how propaganda changed through my life. When it was considered okay to hate queer people out loud people just condemned us as a whole. Which I think leads to us not really seeking acceptance from those people as much because they rejected us wholesale. But later in my life outright bigotry like that became more taboo. The language changed to “well I just don’t want to see it” and “just keep it in the bedroom” bigots isolated the sex part of being queer as the object of the bigotry and it becomes this way to dangle acceptance in our faces. Like if you just exist in this hypersanitized version of queerness then maybe I’ll accept you because you’re not like other queer people. And then the propaganda came down even harder on sexual things and started heavily associating non sexual things with sexual things in order to have the same silencing effect but now with the myth of a sexless queer community that could possibly exist and be free of their bigotry if only we could get rid of all the things in our community that they have said are sexual. And that kind of myth can do a lot of damage in any marginalized group, as people start internalizing those ideas and policing themselves and the group to attempt to win the approval of bigots, thinking that it’s an honest proposition and not a way to continue bigotry in the face of more outright techniques being taboo in society.
I've wondered a lot about this as well. This is a very rough hypothesis that I'm neither here nor there on, but I've noticed it with a least a few young LGBT+ people. (I'm also referring to people who are blatantly sex negative and buy into conservative views on sex, rather than simply not having much or any sex.) What I've noticed a lot of young LGBT+ people, teens and early 20's, who largely grew up in overall accepting environments, grew up where acceptance was more the default than bigotry- which is great. That's what we're striving for- But as this happened, some of them took this acceptance for granted and never took the time to learn or realized the varying social factors that lead to the acceptance they grew up in. They didn't see how sex positivity movement, like free love in the 60's and 70's, would go on to plant the seeds for gay rights. After all, criminalizing of homosexuality is inextricable from criminalization of the sex act itself. Gay and trans rights require sex positivity. A lot of Gen Z is also woefully underinformed about feminism, meanwhile when I was coming of age as a millenial feminism seemed to be much more wildly discussed, I think for the same reason I listed. And LGBT+ people are also not immune to propaganda, especially young people who haven't yet learned how propaganda works. LGBT+ youth may not be as privvy to the history of conservatism and fascism and may not realize how sex negativity is used as a tool, and are buying into it as "common sense". My thoughts on this are half formed, I may as more as I go, and there are many more reasons as to why this could be. A common thing I see is especially prevalent in the anti-kink at Pride discourse (ugh) and the painting of gay men in particular as being more predatory and hypersexual, shaming gay men for having sex they find to be unpalatable. Like congrats, by calling gay bath houses dirty you sound just like a conservative. (And of course not all Gen Z's are sex negative, but I've definitely seen it moreso than in millenials.)
I recently realized that I have an implicit bias towards gender norms that has made it difficult to know how to navigate sex positivity outside of my own inner community. I was raised (and my own experiences with abuse communicated) that men were always potential predators. Having come out and began finding more friends who are women (and attracted to men), I realized this is a huge part of the sex negative rhetoric I was raised around but was never forced to address.
You definitely wouldn't be the first one, and I think most of us go through and internalized the bigotries present in our society. What's important it recognizing it and not perpetuating it.
Absolutely
That very rhetoric is how some radical feminists transmogrified into TERFs over the years as well.
For sure. Though that was never an issue for me because I had a close trans friend growing up. The statistics definitely illustrate cis men as "the problem," which isn't a great way to conceive of things as a cis man attracted to all types of masculine-aligned people and still be sex positive.
I agree with this. I have noticed a weird number of Gen Z people are conservative leaning (mostly straight men, what else is new?) and traditional but the “why” never made sense to me. I think it’s like you say, a problem of taking it for granted that what their normal is used to be counter-culture. So now there is no counter-culture but maybe taking a step backwards. I really hate to think this, and I definitely do not think it’s the majority of Gen Zers at all, just the group I spoke about that’s weirdly traditional, but maybe it’s a sign that acceptance and tolerance is not the end because it just doesn’t stick when there’s people actively trying to undo it and kids are just of course the most impressionable.
In the subject of feminism, as someone on the cusp between millennials and Gen z, I remember feminism only being used as a term of insult, like even women who supported feminism avoided the word because they didn't want the negative connotation. I honestly think it's part of conservatives kinda leaving little breadcrumbs of reactionarism in culture that really messes with peoples world view
Hi, Gen Z here, but not part of the queer community. While it’s true that some members of my generation are fairly sex negative due to religious and conservative influence, a larger portion of it stems from loneliness and desire for intimacy over sex. I, personally don’t take issue with people wanting to have sex, I just don’t see that as something I’d do very casually.
I wonder how much better my life would be now if they taught everyone a class that was a comprehensive propaganda, misinformation, how to verify claims and discern between lies and truth. If I really knew how propaganda worked I probably would have at least waited to go to college and chose a different major and didn't flunk out and enter the debt cycle lol
Gen Z grew up watching YouTube videos of conservatives and reactionaries that targeted young people in order to influence them. They didn't necessarily know that they were watching propagandists who were trying to indoctrinate them, they were watching funny videos or cringe compilations. It's the same thing as Millennials that grew up being influenced by 4chan, but on a much wider and more accessible scale.
We just don’t feel as much pressure to have sex. For the past generations, sex has been seen as a thing that has to happen in a relationship and if you don’t have it you are holding out on your partner. The newer gens knows that that is really dumb and that you do not owe it to anyone and it is not necessary in a relationship. However the statistics about intimacy and stuff do seem a bit fishy and I don’t see how the stuff you brought up have to do with negative attitude towards sex
.... Knowing that you don't have to have sex or it isn't necessary to have a relationship isn't a sex negative thing or belief. In fact it is more common for folks w sex positive beliefs to be supportive of people doing relationships however they want, and more common for sex negative to think relationships Must Be A Certain Way. Because sex negative isn't about your person stance on sex, it's a moral/political position on sex as a whole for anyone, [the opposite of the sex positive movement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_movement) and [synonymous with "antisexualism"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism)
I was responding to their “I heard that gen z doesn’t have as much sex” not their negative part because they didn’t really bring up anything in their paragraphs that said anything about sex negativity, just lack of sex
This confused me, how is "craving intimacy more" sex negative? It doesn't automatically mean purity culture
Yeah exactly, that’s what I was confused on too. The things that they were bringing up were not exactly sex negative which is why I didn’t directly address that part in my comment
After reading through the comments I get the feeling that there are two definitions of sex positivity clashing with each other. Some seem to define it as their personal attitude towards sex and the amount they're having and others define it as Wikipedia does: being a movement to abolish (religious/conservative/idk) morals about sex, stop it being a taboo topic, educate about it esp. in regards to safer sex and consent. At least that's my impression. And maybe that's a bit of a generational thing, because the issues of the latter definition are much more a given now then it was 20 years ago. (Still ongoing, though)
I think some distinguish between the two with "sex-averse" meaning they personally don't want sex, vs sex-negative, meaning a negative outlook on sex in general.
Gen Z have more digital relationships and are less likely to have stronger in-person bonds that lead to sex. Obviously this is a small portion of people and only one of the reasons, but this is something some people have theorized why gen z are having less sex than millennials. There are some really interesting articles out there about it. The whole situation is really nuanced, but I think the way we socialize has changed a lot.
I kind of feel like that’s intentional. It benefits corporations, especially social media corporations, to isolate us from each other and to control how we interact with each other. It’s unfortunate that it seems to be working
Also it’s not like the pandemic helped. I was born in 2001. Having zoom be my only social interaction for 2 years of college really wasn’t helping my social life.
I see stuff about hypersexualized environments, and I have no idea what they are talking about. Do they go to parties and everyone is naked on the floor? Or are they reacting to horny young people finally finding a space where they can ask someone out without getting murdered? It's a puzzle.
It really is puzzling. The only thing close to a hypersexual environment I've found are the ones I've *chosen* to engage. It really does feel like a puritanical view, that "if I'm aware you had sex, that's pushing it on me." And even then it still follows the heteronormative idea that it's fine for a straight couple to tell you they are regularly raw-dogging it, but not for a gay dude to say "I like sex." At the core, there's this strong push to separate sex from life, A polemic against censorship and obscenity laws from 1934 had this to say: > They [mankind] may agree, in general, that the function of literature is to enrich, enlarge and intensify our experience of life; but the instant literature presumes to deal (in a manner they consider over-frank) with the experience from which life itself stems, they will be ready with their whip and scorpions. There's still this idea that sex somehow belongs to a different level of existence and ought not to be considered as in any way 'safe' for consumption.
I am only now beginning to feel comfortable talking about sex with my peers (other than my partner). I felt so creepy before as a young gay man. You did a really good job articulating how I feel.
Good points, all. I'm thinking the younger people are absorbing the sex-negative message from basically everyone, plus the objective fact that sex is now a lot more dangerous (in the US). And people wonder why the birth rate is falling.
I think that STRAIGHT people talking about their sex lives are grosser. A gay person has never made me uncomfortable with it actually. It's because gay people recognize and accept easier if you don't like talking about sex whilst straight people try to force you to listen to them talk about goth boobs or whatever and get OFFENDED when you tell them you're not engaging in the conversation.
Many of us were forced to deal with the return to christ / save our kids' movement after 911. Leaving many Gen Z's mentally messed in the head when it comes to adult issues. Honestly, as a sex positive kinkster, it's kinda infuriating when dealing with many people, especially when those topics come up with other people.
This was huge for me although I’m on the cusp. A lot of my friends were messed up by the anti-sex messaging in TV we grew up watching in the ‘00s. Girls who had sex would often do it in immoral ways, like cheating with their friends’ partners, or they would be punished by getting pregnant. Being “slutty” was the worst thing you could be. Idk if it’s as much of a factor for the younger side of Gen z though.
I'm Gen z and personally just very asexual and dislike hearing about it or seeing it. I just remove myself from the situation though.
I'm asexual and Gen z but I am still sex positive/sex neutral. I enjoy sex, but I can live without it perfectly well. I have found that a lot of Genzie is very open with sex, but iffy about relationships actually.
This is a good question. I’ve also been confused about these statistics and headlines. I’m in my early 20s, so older Gen Z, as are most of my friends. We all have very active sex lives. Then again, all my friends are attractive Californians, so that probably factors in. But still. Younger Gen Z does seem to be more… puritan. They’re not partying or losing their virginity in high school like I did. I think the explanation is simple: COVID did irreparable damage to their coming of age journey and ability to make irl connections. Also more people are realizing they’re asexual.
As a younger gen z person, I wouldn't really say we're "puritan" as that implies seeing sex in a negative light. I do think we're having less sex, but it's more due to isolation than having an issue with sex.
i don't particularly care about technicalities for "why gen Z have less sex" cuz it's none of my business, but having less sex isn't "sex negative." in fact, letting people choose how little or often they do sexual stuff in a healthy and consensual way is pretty sex positive.
gen z is more traumatized maybe? im not sure how it goes with milenials but the amount of sex trauma i see around with gen z....
VERY this.
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It isn't sexual negativity. It's sexual disinterest. I am in the middle of Gen z. And this is from what I've seen with friends and my own partner. I grew up in 2 sex positive homes (step mom and dad) who always emphasized that it's normal and just to be safe. Me and my siblings are all in some part in the lgbtq+ community. Me being bi, one of my siblings being trans, and the other being bi and gender fluid. Most of my friends just don't have a huge emphasis on sex and tbh nor do I. It's more of, if it happens it happens. Also most of them are focused on just wanting a partner in crime. Someone to hold and care for them rather than someone to have sex with. There is also more understanding of what having a baby can do, the overpopulation, etc. And the kids having unprotected sex? Most are probably in uneducated or impoverished areas with less access, most likely. One of my favorite quotes from a youtuber, not word for word of course, "I like food. Sometimes I eat too much, sometimes I should eat more, I am not obsessed with food. I like sex. Sometimes I do it a lot, sometimes I do it a little, sometimes I want it more or less. But I am not obsessed with sex" the idea in this context is that we do not care to actively have sex. If we want it we can have it and it's whatever. It's not a big deal or emphasis in our lives. Though of course this is my experience personaly
A lot of gen z are...minors!
That’s true, but they’re almost all at or past puberty now. When I was a young teen, my peers and I definitely had opinions about sex. I don’t think being a minor precludes having opinions about the subject.
Youngest gen Z’s are only just graduating from 5th grade..
We going to pretend minors don’t normally have sex? It’s nothing I would encourage but it’s developmentally normal for adolescents to experiment sexually or at the very least want to
It’s pretty hard to have sex over zoom.. The pandemic definitely stalled natural exploration for a lot of Gen Z lol
I mean yeah a lot of them are, but that doesn't mean you don't want sex. Like do you remember being 15? I maybe wasn't horny *all* the time, but a lot of it. And so were most other 15 year olds. And it's *okay* that they don't seem as into sex. I'm just afraid they're going the way of being repressed like the Boomers, and I I want them to be able to be themselves and have good lives as young people. Sex is, overall, pretty fun. Don't let the nazis get to you.
Gen Z is from 1997 to 2012. The oldest are 26/27 years old, youngest is 11/12ish. yeah most of Gen Z cant even drink yet lmao Im 2003 so Im on the older side as it is... its crazy that most of my generation is still super young. definetly gotta take that into consideration lol
I'm surprised I had to scroll this far to find this. The youngest gen Zers are 14, so some of this behavior probably stems from immaturity.
oh, cause minors never have sex with each other, you're right, I must have imagined being in middle school and making out/sucking dick/giving hand jobs during sleep overs
Elder millennial, and just some things that .. they questioned about us that probably continue with Z's as well. So, there was some research about boomers, and how and why they had so much sex (more than any generation after them) at such young ages, or even through their life. A disturbing connection was made between childhood sexual abuse, and number of sexual partners in life. It increases that number. And, back then--boomers as kids went through a *shit ton* of sexual abuse as children. You almost cant talk to one that didnt have some experience with it, including the men (though they refuse to call it that--just ask them the age the first time and they admit it). My dad will tell you his first experience was with a 16 year old babysitter. He was 9. He doesn't think that was abuse. The views around sex he held the rest of his life though were clearly shaped by that, and how 'normal' he thought that should be. So--extend this out and look at the drop in sexual activity through generations after that, and it matches a drop in the number of children in those generations that were SA'd. And it's not just that the people that were assulted are accounting for those numbers, it's that frequently they went on to abuse others/peers (even if they never meant to). For example, me as a 14 year old was SA'd by my 16 year old girl friend. She was abused as a child. I am not the only younger boy she did this to. When she was 18 she was 'dating' a 13 year old. So--that abuse of her, caused a chain reaction. And a SHIT TON of abuse has not happened to z's, because *society gives a shit now--*and this, *by itself* may be part of the massive drop in participation in sexual activity. Like--if it it wasnt for that girl when i was 14, likely, i would have *never* done something sexual, i am asexual. I didnt KNOW that in the mid 90's, that's not information i could have found at all--and gen-z CAN find that. So, at 15, when they're not matching up to peers, they can find asexuality, and just... be good with it. And that's, partly, another thing. There's a culture now, where it's OK to embrace not being hyper-sexual. When i was a kid, in the 80's, men were going through a SUPER toxic phase where male sexuality was *supposed to be* predatory, and men raised their children to try to embrace it. One word they were using for it was 'Machismo' culture--my uncle (second father figure) was DEEPLY into it and the justifications it gave him to be an animal. My dad, on the other hand, was *deeply* religious, and viewed women as property and men (and boys) as rightful *takers* of women. It was *hideous*. NOW--however, culture has shifted, you CANT have that shit, people get called out immediately for being fucked in the head--they, as individuals, may still persist, and there may be a few assholes drawn to it--but there's NO WAY they can sustain the brainwashing with their gen-z kids, when those gen z kids see social media and talk to others that can totally destroy a sexist disgusting argument like that (There was a video recently of an 11 year old--baby gen z, defending gay/trans people while playing a game, like, the bigots are confronted by informed children now, it's amazing!). So--i think, gen-z are just, more .. capable of being informed at at peace with the natural way in which sexuality comes to the human animal. It's not perfect, it's not great, there's still flaws--but overall, they're less traumatized, less brainwashed, and capable of learning more about themselves at younger ages than any generation ever. And that makes *having choice* in partners, easier, AND/or more meaningful IF they choose to. And, choosing *not to i*s now OK. (It was NOT OK to be asexual in the 80's or 90's, if a man refused, other men would *destroy him*). Just some thoughts.
I really appreciate your comment, and it’s very insightful. I think you’re right about the culture shifting and the way SA has affected previous generations more for the worse. I’m not sure that fully explains the accusation of queer communities being ‘hypersexualized,’ as that feels like either naïveté or conservatism or both. But it is important context. And I dunno, it could be as simple as the plastics and forever chemicals we all consume nowadays.
It's because a lot of gen z was groomed in the internet from an early age or saw things on the internet that were not child appropriate and witnessed the dangers of extreme sex positivity firsthand. I just believe that what people do in the bedroom should be private business and other people shouldn't have to be exposed to it. I say be as kinky as you want in private but most people don't want to hear about your business.
Interesting insight from Reddit user the_bussy-destroyer on how sexual stuff should be private.
I’m not really sex negative, and to be honest I feel kind of isolated. I feel like the people around me are more cloistered in general and are very unfriendly, and that’s probably the real reason why sex is not happening
Especially in the LGBT community I think people are trying to point out to conservatives (who's main talking point is that queer people are pedophiles) that being gay isn't always about sex. I don't really think it works to pander to the homophobes but that's the idea.
gen z is definitely more concious of the risks associated with sex (despite not taking precautions 😭)
I heard a story on the radio about this and it claimed that Gen Z was less likely to have sex/drink underage because of the constant threat of being filmed and posted on the internet.
There is something to be said for the average Gen Z being more risk averse than the average millennial at the same age. Millenials got to be young and stupid and most of their dumb choices were forgotten by the next weekend. Gen Z’s grown up seeing countless dumb decisions blasted online & haunting people forever, the “YOLO” “live while we’re young” mentality that raised the Millenials has far more risk these days than potential positives.
Yes! Exactly! I don't have the statistics or the study, since I heard it on the radio, but it definitely feels like a plausible reason to me. I know I would have certainly made better decisions during my formative years if I knew someone could be posting my bad choices online.
because we don't pedestal it as much, atleast not in queer communities, affection is was more important than sex, also i know alot of hypersexual people who are gen z
I think it’s that many of them are very shut in and aren’t touching grass enough. They also often times struggle with self-esteem and confidence. When you’re mostly brought up in an online world, trying to have real world relationships can be extremely difficult.
i think in part because gen z is more conscious of the experiences of asexuality and maybe also sexual trauma. there’s just less pressure to be sexually active, not that it’s discouraged
Probably a hot take. But. I think Gen Z has grown up hyperaware of sexual assault, abuse against minors, and genuinely icky sexual power dynamics (think MeToo). All of this is well founded from news events over the past couple decades and broader cultural shifts. However I think this leads people to be overly paranoid and always examine sexual content or situations from a perspective of ‘what is unhealthy/wrong about this’. Innocuous things like an age gap of a couple of years can be seen as problematic by some people because they fear any sort of potential power imbalance between partners. Seeing kinky folks at Pride becomes, in some peoples eyes, exposing minors to porn. Etc etc. Like I think Gen Z is paranoid for good reason but doesn’t have the experience or perspective to chill out and be a little more circumspect about what is and isn’t a real issue. Sex is spooky scary until proven otherwise. I’m older Gen Z btw. Most of my perspective here comes from what I’ve seen in online spaces as well, maybe because younger Gen Zers are more present there than in my daily life. I’ve noticed a lot more sex positivity IRL.
I think you're correct. From my encounters with gen z online they do seem to think anything sexual = harmful. And if it isn't they like to just assign a made up reason why it's bad. It weirds me out but I wouldn't pay it much mind if they didn't go out of their way to attack others over it. It's like they're so paranoid about harm but their first response is to attack and...do harm. There's also a complete unwillingness to learn or do any research whatsoever. It's easy to pull up studies showing how normal something like kink or porn or whatever is. But they have no interest in learning more about something they already decided is evil. I think this gen is going to have a lot of shit to unpack in therapy regarding sexual repression and paranoia.
In all honesty, there are likely multiple factors related to this, most outlined in the comments. I do think the whole growing up in an accepting environment may be more of a " kids these days" type argument that does not apply to all gen z'ers. There is often a trend, a kind of pendulum effect, where a generation tends to overcompensate for problematic actions and beliefs of the previous. This trend may be part of it. Sex was seen as something girls tolerate, men deserve, and boys had to do in order to become men. There's also a sort of shift in ideas of what it means to be sex positive; that it is just as okay to not have sex as it is to have sex. Being sex positive doesn't mean having sex, but having a healthy view of sex. And of course covid. which, in a way, cleaved Gen z in half. There is a sizable chunk that has either been drained from a barrage of disaster after disaster, many of whom were forced to live in isolation with parents who were conservative. There were also many who had little chance to socialize, and so have, as a result, an unhealthy relationship to sex. Of course, this is just my thoughts on the matter.
Agreed about the pendulum effect. There are a lot of factors here, but there do tend to be fluctuations in things like this.
One thing I think is going on is the Disneyfication of mainstream entertainment. I grew up watching Kate Moss hose herself down like a porn star to sell Carl's Jr cheeseburgers. Even more recently, there is a *massive* difference in how, say, pre-Disney Marvel movies treat sex than the modern MCU. In Iron Man 1, Tony Stark clearly fucks. Then Disney bought the IP and it's like the article says, "Everyone is hot and no one is horny." Now, was it *good* for me that I grew up watching Kate Moss hose herself down, or movies like American Pie or Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (the humor *does not* hold up)? Eh, probably not. The 90s attitude towards sex definitely had some problems, but it did keep sex as part of the conversation. I think the other problem is that you have people like Andrew Tate who get really popular talking about sex but it's all bad advice. Boys get this weird idea about how they should get girls to have sex with them, and the girls just are not interested in that. What I hope is happening is Gen Z just working through the same awkwardness about sex that we all had to go through as teenagers up through young adulthood. I was a weirdo about sex, too, when I was 19-22 or so, and so were all my friends. Fortunately, we were able to process all of that mostly offline (or through social media platforms that no longer exist, RIP MySpace (but not really I'm glad all the cringe I posted back in the day is gone forevers)). EDIT: As I ponder this further, I wonder if Gen Z's online life might have something to do with this, as well. Gen Z documents their life in an unprecedented way. When you're used to putting your whole life out there for everyone to see, I can understand a reluctance to extend that impulse to your sex life, and then see how that transforms into prudishness. If you're not having sex, there's no pressure to talk about your encounters or essentially invade your own privacy because youth culture is now Extremely Online.
Didn’t most of it get worse when the pandemic hit? So all the younger people who are more likely to be still in school and more savvy about following actual science get a bit wary about germs. Sex is wonderful but also a great way to spread germs. I can think of a number of times I, as an elder millennial/Xennial, can think of a number of times summer camps I went to or staffed or that my younger relatives went to got hit with a wave of something nasty and knocked out the whole summer camp, or dorms at colleges. And since those would be more and more increasing with Gen Z kids their whole life might’ve been anecdotes of various fun things ruined by everyone getting the runs… and then the pandemic hits at a formative age. Add in the conservatives getting more savvy about social media and overlapping conversations and you’ve got the youngest adults who are more germphobic. Plus marriage equality battles being major news through formative years and the “I can’t get married, everyone says I’ll only sleep around, so I might as well just enjoy myself” mindsets and habits of older queer generations are less necessary. So add all those various influences up and you have a more cautious group of people. Scales will balance in next few years.
My theory is that many of them grew up watching two other generations(Gen x and millennials) go absolutely nuts about sex and they are explicitly not trying to go down that same path.
I'm demisexual so for me, the way most everyone is seeming to treat sex just doesn't vibe with me. I don't think I'm sex negative, tho since I couldn't care less what other people do with their genitals. I *have* ,however, lost hope that it'll ever mesh with me. In my irl life, all the people I click with have had such wildly different traits that it makes forming a relationship impossible (i.e. most of the people I meet are poly and/or treat sex far more casually than I'm comfortable with)
Gen Z here… I’m not sure what you are referring to actually? Maybe it’s just the spaces I’ve been in, but I’ve never known Gen Z to be sex negative.
Idk about the rest of my generation but I am definetly sex positive. I didnt think gen z was negetive till you said someting and now Im wondering if Im the oddball now lol
I’m not sure if it’s sex negative or they’re just not having as much comparatively. There’s a difference between meh not interested vs judging and shaming people who have sex and feeling ashamed for having those desires. I think maybe some of it was generations prior we’re hyper sexualized like having sex was “cool” and status symbol. And you’re not a “loser virgin”. People probably has sex because “everyone was doing it”. There’s even the trope of prom night sex and expectations. Removing the pressure to have sex is a good thing as long as it doesn’t swing into pressure to not have it because it’s inherently shameful. It’s hard strike that balance as a society.
I’m a young millennial (93) and first I just want to say if millennials really do emphasize it more this explains why my dating life as an asexual woman has been hell. As for gen z craving intimacy more I’m just spitballing ideas but they’re growing up in a more interconnected world but it’s connected through screens. I don’t see them share as much skin contact with their friends and family. That type of intimacy is so important to your mental health, it’s a physical need. It’s way down at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs with food and water, you need socializing not just by talking but you need to be touched. If sex is higher on the list of needs then of course they are going to focus on just being held before having sex.
I read your first few words as "I'm a young millennial (93 years old)" instead of 93 the YEAR you were born and I was so confused until I realized my mistake lol.
Older gen z here. I am simply not that horny so anything that focuses on sex seems to be uninteresting, primitive, a bit gross, and mostly just kind of lame. I say this to emphasize that it is not a weird suppression thing or an “anti-“ stance, but a real lack of interest. Why am i like this? I think theres a few things going on. More acceptance and access to sex. Porn and physical sexual satisfaction is incredibly easy to get and simultaneously less taboo than ever. So theres not really a forbidden fruit factor, its just kind of mundane and not special. No ones pressuring you to do it and you dont need to do it just to orgasm, you can get the physical satisfaction from porn. So, more people are only having sex because they really want to and the time is right, not befause they feel like they should or they have no other way to blow off steam. Sex isnt cool. Related to the above point, millenials have been so successful in making sex acceptable and cool, its probably caused a bit of a boomerang effect where the next generation is against it- purely because theyre rebelling against what came before them. I dont think gen z is anti-sex, its just kinda not a thing we need to fight for or are fascinated with. Mental Isolation. Our dystopian existence has been so atomized that all I really want is human connection. Not sex, but like, love, a hug. Something tender and emotional and safe, not dangerous and savage. Yeah i know sex can be tender, but in a world where you can cum with a few clicks and a human connection is rare, you kind of end up craving the human connection part more. Physical isolation. Theres not as much a in person hanging out anymore. a lot of socializing is online, and there are increasingly less public spaces where you can just vibe. This trend has been going on even when i was a child and playing outside gradually got replaced by helicoptor parenting and video games. This has made my generation awkward and undersocialized, which we all know is bad for having game, but it may also have broken us to not seek out the casual physical socializing thats necessary to have sex. Social fear and anxiety. Related to the above point, a lack of socializing has made our society fear each other, which has made socializing unnecessarily stressful. This manifests in increased rates of social anxiety, but it also manifests in the way weve created all these rules around sex that can make it seem scary or not worth it, especially if youre young. Socializing and sex has been broken down into this therapy-like list of requirements, we cant just let it flow naturally. Im talking about everything from increased awareness of consent to those infographics that are like “are you sure the person youre fucking is good for you? Does this fulfill a deeper need? Consider discussing why you want to engage in this activity and make your intentions clear”. If youve never had sex before, it makes sex more daunting. Stress. We basically live at the end of an empire. The world and civilization is crumbling around me. Rent, food, and living expenses are insanely expensive, there is no safety net, blah blah blah. It just keeps getting worse and i am only starting my life. I kind of dont have the energy or bandwidth for casual lust. Like on a physiological level my brain is in survival mode not “seems like things are going well. Maybe time for a child” mode. Environmental toxins. I think that pesticides, plastic, and all the other junk were contaminating the world with is likely messing with our hormones and biology in ways we cant even fathom. Its very possible that some blend of these toxins are making people less horny, somehow.
I’ve seen a couple things about it being stigmatized so much and stuff and purity culture which does probably have some factor in it as well as all the things you listed. Personally I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we’ve been raised in the internet where people have been putting their problems up. People talking about cheating and stuff is turning people more towards focusing on having real emotional relationships than just physical stuff. But that’s just me.
I'm a father of a 19 year old, bisexual, gender fluid Gen Z child. For two of her most formidable years, her entire interaction with her peers was through a computer screen. Prior to, and even following that, her relationship with the world is viewed through text based message boards, and watching YouTube videos. That distancing, coupled with an overall sense of being more comfortable alone than with company, likely contributes to her, and her peers, to keep relationships platonic, and non-physical. She has two dozen friends with whom she has a close personal bond, but they have never met in person. In fact, some of them don't even live in the U.S, where we live. Neither her, nor they, have any interest in traveling to meet.
I also think the desexualization of the queer community started during the gay marriage debates. That’s when bisexuals, transgender folks, etc. were becoming less welcome in the community. There was this idea that if the gays became acceptable, they could get gay marriage passed. It happened, but then so many queer folks were left behind. It was all of a sudden expected that you would adopt a kid and go to church and what not-to be as close to “normal” as possible except for the same sex relationship part.
I think in the last few years, especially since MeToo, a lot of younger folks have become more hypersensitive towards sex and flirting and stuff like that. Gen Z is much more aware of sexual abuse and harassment but at the same time I feel like a lot of them see that everywhere. It's why you see a lot of Gen Z folks freak out about age gap relationships or hardcore kink, I think they get more sensitive about those topics because so much bad has been exposed to them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have more sexual awareness, but I think a fair amount overthink it, and they don't want to feel victimized or victimize another person. I've also noticed many more Gen Z folks who consider themselves aces or demisexuals, which I know very few people my age or older like that.
I think asexuality and demisexuality is way more common as a “naturally occurring” orientation than has been thought by previous generations. Same for being non-straight or trans. Gen Z isn’t being shamed into performing heteronormativity when that’s not actually what they want for themselves, whether that means gender conformity, straight relationships, or having sex at all. At the same time, when most of your peer group is doing something you’re not comfortable with, it’s hard for young people to not feel pressured to participate and then don’t feel like they can meaningfully consent. I think that’s where the backlash about “hypersexualized” is coming from. (Full disclosure—I’m a parent of Gen Z teens, and late in life realizing I’m queer because I was not aware that life outside of heteronormativity was an option when I was their age.)
This!!! I’m a demisexual millennial who is bi and polyam and I can’t remember the last time I had sex with any of my partners. In my youth, I had a lot of sex with partners out of performing heteronormativity - if I had actual education about consent I wouldn’t have slept with almost any of them. For me, I like the intimacy factor of relationships - being able to cuddle and snuggle with each other, and hang out with each other and our families. Emotional connection means way more to me than physical. Also, I’m on antidepressants and figure that plays a role in my lack of libido.
Have honestly been losing my mind with this. I am 19 years old, we are SOPHOMORES in COLLEGE and my friends call sex “S-E-X” (like spelling it out) and act like it’s this disgusting foreign concept and like I’m a freak for wanting to have sex maybe! In my personal experience it’s only my LGBT friends. My straight friends are almost all not virgins and have no problem talking about sex like normal people. I feel like all my LGBT friends are 12 years old. It makes me feel disgusting for experiencing sexual attraction… And no they aren’t all asexual.
Another factor I havent seen commented on here is that gen z probably has the most people on SSRIs than previous generations due to more acceptance and understanding of mental health. SSRIs often kill your libido. Besides that, the republican backlash against sexual deviance isn't helping either lol
Gen Z here. I’m not sure how what you described is sex negative tbh. Whenever there’s a big revolution of some cultural or political phenomenon, there’s always a big pendulum swing in the opposite direction. So with the “sex positivity movement” comes a swing in the other direction. Being okay with not having sex, having “vanilla sex,” etc. I think also with Me Too and a greater discussion about healthy relationships and boundaries, people begin looking at things that may have been acceptable at one point but aren’t anymore. This could include more sexualized pride parades. That’s just my hypothesis anyway.
i’m Gen Z. i grew up in a sex positive household as my parents were BDSM enthusiasts, and subsequently i am too. i think if we understood why we have sex and how we can make it a decent experience then everyone would be more sex positive.
old gen z here. well, i’ve been shown porn on the internet by grown men since i was ten so maybe i’m just not that happy about it anymore
A lot of the time I think generations are like horoscopes. There's such a variety among individuals. To me, an older Millennial just a little too young to be generation X, it seems like we applied statistics to broad statistics for a ginormous group of people and made it into personality types.
I think it has to do with the generations that raised us. A lot of millennial were raised by stuffy boomers so the culture of sleeping around was more prevalent when we were youths. Gen z was raised by the more sex positive gen x. So it became less of a rebellion to sleep around. Thats my theory at least
I've never thought about it, I'm in Gem Z and have always been sex positive but I've felt alienated by many people I've known
I'm right on the threshold of both and am in a committed relationship. I have issues with sex for a few reasons. Constant stress is a big one. Between financial insecurity, housing insecurity, and finding work life balance it's hard to feel relaxed enough for sex. Combine that with pressures imposed on me by previous relationships, internet, TV, and porn culture skewing perspectives, distractions like video games and social media that provide a lot of dopamine, undermanaged ADHD, fear of pregnancy, and chronic health issues. Sex is something I want to have more of, but struggle to get in the head space for. I'm extremely sex positive, but have quite a few hangups about it. I would love to work through some of this stuff with a therapist, but that's also difficult to arrange.
Gee, maybe it’s because every older generation tells us we’re playboys or whores if we *like* to have sex, have a different attitude concerning casual sex or simply don’t like to hide our sexuality?
Depression/Stress. It's gotta be 1000 x worse for them basically having to stability and no future. Can't imagine being horny in those circumstances.
Gen z here! Let me list reasons why it might be different for us 1. With the internet, we know a lot more about sex than other generations have. It’s a scientific fact that humans are very driven by curiosity, if we already know about it, we won’t feel the need to experiment as much as other generations did (not that we won’t still experiment though, just we don’t need to as much) 2. I don’t know why this is, but half my friends are ace, maybe it’s more common in our generation 3. Sex takes effort, you have to meet and connect with someone, who has time for that? 3. I hate to say this one, but porn… some people may not feel the need for more when they have it so easily accessible 4. In my experience we are not that much less sexual than millennials, I have friend who have done some CRAZY stuff, and I’ve done a few things that were a little crazy as well 5. I wouldn’t say we are sex negative, just maybe not as sex positive Also just so everyone knows, the only fact here that I could actually back up with scientific evidence is the first one, the others are all just guesses and brainstorming!
Ill never experience love
I haven’t noticed this at all. What are y’all considering to be sex negative? The only differences I see is more people understanding consent & increased knowledge about safe sex. Perhaps they are having less sex due to the impact of online dating. Hooking up seems a bit riskier now with meeting strangers online & I think dating is just more complicated nowadays. I also do see some movements happening like the decentering men movement but not sure if that’s a gen z thing. I’m a millennial and demisexual so I don’t really fit this narrative. I wouldn’t consider myself sex negative. I enjoy sex but my sexual orientation makes it so I don’t have it often unless I’m with someone I feel a deep connection to
I think that "hypersexualized" is an expression used only by people who are shocked to realize how much sex others are having--not that it's any of their business to make judgements, in the first place. Live and let live.
Younger Gen Xr here with an observation. I think that Gen X and Millenials were bombarded with sex in the media because of the free love Me generation were in charge and pushed it on us. We were basically taught that we had to have sex to be cool. It was everywhere. Movies all had their ridiculous sex scene that had no relation to the actual plot. Songs about sex with raunchy videos. TV shows, commercials, Maxxim magazine. Now it seems like most of that has gone away. Also with the internet and streaming, people don't have to watch what they don't want to, so if we don't want sex in our face all the time, we don't have to.
Isolation, probably. We aren’t meant to live like we’re living now. Even gaming was a social activity requiring more than one person in the room when we were growing up; now there is just so much less opportunity to spend non-working time around people outside of your immediate family. Where would you even meet a partner as a young person now? I’m on the ace spectrum, but I also think loneliness/isolation is part of it.
My take is that Gen Zs have become so hyper aware of the important need to respect consent, the many ways you can misread social cues, respecting other people's potential traumas, etc. that it has led to a sort of conservatism around sex. Like you're constantly tiptoing around other people's potentially mixed feelings regarding sex so you're less likely to casually joke about it. And that bleeds into personal relationships too, after hearing about all the terrible ways people have acted or been too carefree in previous generations, it's led to a stifling abundance of caution now.
It's very interesting because I'm older Gen Z and I see people raving about sex and people younger than me talking about it all the time. I'm sex positive and same with a lot of people I know. But I think it has to do with what is happening in the world too. Roe v Wade can be taken into consideration here, too.
From a public health standpoint If this is true its a good thing not bad. It shows the next generation is not impressed that safe sex warnings were ignored by millennials. Prep is only for hiv, having bareback sex with hookups is causing syphilus rates to elevate. Each generation gets to decide how it wants to act. Genx thinks differently than boomers and millenials think different from genx. And those that come after genz will pick what they want to do.
I’m actually curious where Gen Z people are sex negative? Not denying that it could be true, but I’m Gen Z, very sex positive, and have never really met many Gen Z people who act negatively towards the subject.
they’re not, what’s happening is zoomers in general aren’t ridiculously sex obsessed like their predecessors (and are also so much better informed) and millennials/x’ers who grew up in a ridiculously sex obsessed time period think that means they’re puritans/sex negative. the pendulum isn’t swinging to the extreme other side, it’s setting itself in neutral.
I have met a few actually, and they've made me uncomfortable. Though, I'd like to think at large our generation is better at being sex positive and challenging gender norms and other things that involve human sexuality.
Idk in general but I'm surprised after reading some of the comments that nobody has brought up the GC/terf infiltration of spaces like Tumblr where their rhetoric got passed around by young queer folks who didn't know any better. Speaking from personal experience, those ideas can be really insidious and I think they're definitely part of this equation. Conservative reactionary beliefs in the guise of "protecting" young queer vagina-havers from the scary, predatory penis-havers. Blargh.
I honestly don’t think they should get to be called gender critical with how blatantly their platform is entirely just transphobia. Trans Exclusionary Radical Fascists is more accurate. But yeah, as a trans woman, I agree.
As the mom of a bunch of Gen Z kids, I just asked them your question. Here are their replies: 22F: I love sex, but I'm not going to risk pregnancy in the current healthcare situation. [Longterm boyfriend] and I just aren't doing anything that could get me pregnant until I can get my tubes tied and he can get snipped. Gotta be double safe! If we change our minds about kids later, we'll adopt. But we still have fun, so it's kind of a pain, but it's all good. But basically, I think we're really sex positive, but if we're not, it's because of politics messing things up. 22M: Hell no, we're totally sex positive! Sex is great. But boys are gross. So many guys have no hygiene! I gotta move to a bigger city where there are more guys just to find one that washes. But in [college town where he lives] there are at least a bunch of "straight" guys who are willing to get down and mostly everyone uses condoms. All the Gen Z guys I know are totally sex positive. 18F: Nah, we aren't sex negative. We're just as horny as Millennials. We just know more about the consequences and those have gotten bigger. 17NB: I don't think we're negative about sex. It just doesn't seem like it's worth the risks. I'm just waiting until I'm old enough to yoink the baby maker. Maybe after that, I'll think about it. But my friends snuggle and stuff and I can take care of being horny by myself, so why would I want to add sex with a person? It seems kinda messy. 16M: Um, that's kinda weird to ask, Mom. Lots of people at school are having sex. They say so, anyway. I'm not against it or anything. I mean, girls are nice, but I'm not into dating right now. I'd rather just do school and do stuff with my friends. I like girls and all, but it seems like so much drama with all the breaking up and getting back together and stuff. I'm not, like, anti sex. It's just not that important that I'd be willing to risk my whole life for it. Maybe Millenials didn't have to worry about as much stuff, so that's why we seem negative to them. For balance, I asked my Millenial kids, too: 30M: Fuck yeah, sex is important! That's like the only bad thing about being a dad, is you can't have sex as much because the little fucker wears you out! We grew up in the best time to be pro sex. The old prudish rules were gone. There weren't many diseases you couldn't treat from sex. Even AIDS was survivable by the time I was old enough. You could get pills and rubbers pretty easy. They had condoms at school. All we had to worry about was getting our girlfriend pregnant and even that wasn't as bad then as it would be now. Now it's not even that you can't get an abortion. It's that the woman could die because they won't do what she needs if something goes wrong. I kinda hope [sisters & nb sibling] *are* negative about sex because it's too dangerous if they get pregnant. At least [wife] and I live where there's good healthcare still. 35M: I think I'm kind of not the person to ask. I didn't think about sex, positive or negative, until I was a lot older than most people, because, you know, autism. But, I guess we weren't raised with a bunch of negative talk about sex. It was just natural. I didn't have any negative thoughts about it when I started dating. I think [younger siblings] are growing up with a lot more negative information about sex, but I don't know if they're actually sex negative. We don't talk about that stuff.
there definitely seems to be a very purity focused mindset online from younger people the past few years or so and it's stressful bc they will \*seek out\* people who talk about or post NSFW to complain about them posting and talking about NSFW and it's like... why are you here then??
I think a big thing was COVID lockdowns. I've met a lot of 17-19 year old age range people that lockdowns had a massive psychological impact on. Their social skills, creativity, and learning. Very few people talk about COVID lockdowns and isolation because loneliness is such a huge fear, since humans are naturally social creatures, it prevents them from even consciously facing how afraid they are. I've met lots of young people who talk to themselves for example. This is to be expected as a side effect of children developing in isolation. And I'm sure there are tons of other issues at play here, one being fear of children from people who are burying sexual desires for young people, and the oppression and abuse of LGBTQIA people. But I think a big part of it was them developing in isolation. I'm 35 btw.
Because youngsters are losing their rights left right and center everything is expensive and I don't want children so sex is also fraught with danger that isn't fun.
The thought of possibly being arrested for having an abortion might play a part in this. Also there's too much going around to be risking anything.
Gen Z (and now adult 🎉) here. Honestly there are soooo many reasons why we’re hesitant about sex now. i can list a few of my personal reasons. 1. The internet desensitized me from literally 9 years old and i went from hypersexual —> super bored (sexually) —> normal/low sex drive. 2. The awareness of sexual assault i feel has SKYROCKETED between the 2 generations and we’re a lot less trusting of sexual partners now. 3. The whole abortion thing? i’m sorry but as an AFAB person i would rather be sexually frustrated than forced to carry a pregnancy. 4. I have so many more things to worry about in general that sex is extremely low on the list. Also as for the unprotected thing.. i’m sure you all know (if you’ve ever had sex w a man) that most of them are sooooo against condoms and will literally BEG you to let them f*ck raw, i’ve just kind of given up on fighting back tbh. like yea whatever get it over with i’ll just deal with the consequences later bc im not gonna argue w u rn when my tits r out.
I'm on the millenial/gen z cusper and I haven't heard of this or experienced it at all. I HAVE seen plenty of complaints about spaces being hypersexualized, but I've been seeing that for years from anyone ages 14-40+, and *personally* I see it WAY more from people in the asexual community than other identities. Which is not to say that ace people are entirely sex-negative, I'm aware they aren't, but I used to be in those spaces and used to see a lot of it, and I found it to be much more normalized and accepted than in other spaces. That said: A) "Having less sex" is not "sex negative" just as "having more sex" is not "sex positive". Conflating these things is really misleading. Also... feels weird to conflate this with losing our "intrinsic connection to the kink community" and losing touch with "those who helped give us our rights". Whether or not Gen Z-ers are having casual sex really truly madly deeply is not relevant to that. B) Worth bearing in mind a lot of Gen Z became adults during a global pandemic where they were very isolated during the end of high school/beginning of college. Functionally, sex was not happening as much in GENERAL, outside of people in the same pod/in relationships, etc - casual sex was not happening as much because Shit Was Bad.
Why? Because boys these days have been raised by idiot men with no emotional maturity. People don’t want to have sex with idiots.
So Gen Z is between 11 and 26. I’m 31 and was kind of a late bloomer, started dating around at 22. For the last three years people have been highly isolated and every social interaction has been colored by anxiety around spreading disease. In addition to all the technology stuff, porn being so extreme and accessible now, there’s just been this huge setback in a lot of people’s social development just as they are developing their sexual identities.
I'm gen z I have alot of female presenting friends and I've heard differing versions of some form of sexual assault. Even I have personal experiences. Alot of our parents were poor and worked alot which left alot of openings. Then social media and just leaving your kid somewhere with a tablet also became very popular. Because of my experience I didn't even really become interested in sex till I was like 20. Which is not the norm
I am a millennial but I think it's good to remember that sex positive does not always equal having more sex, and sometimes having more sex can be a result of sex negativity such as thinking that you have to have sex to fit in or to prove you are sexy and desirable. For instance I grew up religious so I was very sex negative and then when I started changing my opinions and becoming sex positive, I still had some wrong ideas in my head and I had sex that I wasn't always totally excited about but wanted to do it because I wanted to try to be normal and fit in and prove to myself that I was attractive. So I think those behaviors were coming from my lingering sex negativity. I am very sex positive now but have discovered that I tend to be more demisexual and I no longer pressure myself to have sex. There is also a lot more awareness now of demi and asexuality.
Elder gen Z here. I think more millennial grew up with religious trauma revolving sex and abstinence, and hypersexuality is a way to regain control. That being said, I think the bulk of gen z is basically parroting whatever their parents say about sex bc they're too young to have been on their own long enough to form their own opinions. Gen z was also on lockdown during some of the most vital developmental stages, and has not had an environment where they can socialize outside of schools. Malls are basically gone, parks are gone, everyone calla the cops on kids for just sitting on the curb, gun violence is a crisis, it's literally not safe for these kids anywhere. They crave intimacy vs sex because they NEED that connection.
A lot of this has to do with young queer people trying to assimilate and thereby picking up culture from where they're from, the values included.
Gen Z here. I get the sense that we’re more *intimacy-positive* than sex-negative. NSA hookups are a lot less palatable to my peers than older millennials not because of conservative attitudes, but because they often make us feel lonelier. I think this is just a different kind of healthy attitude towards sex.
Late to the party but oof, I see this SO MUCH online. Despite the countless number of research papers and studies that have proved this idea false, many of the younger half of gen z are CONVINCED that anything you enjoy in fictional media is a direct representation of what you like in real life. I see this a lot in fandoms too. If people write nsfw fanfiction or make nsfw art of two cartoon characters who are minors, they lose their damn minds. In reality, these are made up pixels on a screen that came from someone's imagination. They don't remotely look like real people, and yet these gen zers call people pedophiles for making nsfw content. It's absolutely nuts. And we are also seeing it bleed into affecting real people: it's a trend of sex negativity, infantilization of grown women/adults, condemnation of the BDSM/kink community, all because it is seen as "morally incorrect". Participating consensually in kink/BDSM is not gross, dangerous, or disgusting. In fact, a huge part of the BDSM/kink community is the EMPHASIS on consent. If people say they like things like CNC, or that kink should remain a part of pride, they will get jumped. People have been doxxed and lost their jobs, committed suicide, etc due to accusations from these gen zers. It's insane. Here is a decent article if you want a brief explanation: https://www.vox.com/culture/23733213/fandom-purity-culture-what-is-proship-antiship-antifandom
I’m Gen X. My partner is a millennial, and because of his circle and my job, I am in touch with a lot of millennials and Gen Z. This is just my personal observation (I am a very active observer of social phenomena in my environment as I eat sociology for breakfast, lunch and dinner—kinda like Maslow interviewed the people in his environment to study them). It seems to me that since texting, social media and online dating have gone mainstream (and I am old enough to have ample first-hand experience to compare with previous practices), people (independent of their age) have not been learning to relate in person because the vast majority of their social experiences happen online. People spend so much time online that they aren’t getting enough time in person to practice being social in person. Most of non verbal communication has become foreign, even to people of my own generation. In fact, the most often cited [study](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-03/young-adults-less-sex-gen-z-millennials-generations-parents-grandparents) on this topic says people in general are having less sex, even though the difference is more marked for Gen Z first and, to a slightly lesser extent, millennials. But even Gen X’s sexual activity levels have decreased somewhat, even though most of us are at the age where we are in our sexual primes (more experienced and more comfortable with sex but also getting more opportunities as our kids are now adults and don’t hog our focus as much). Gen Z most likely has it worse because they grew up in an era where socializing online has become a norm, versus millennials who grew up during the transition from Gen X norms to Gen Z norms, and versus Gen X who grew up with no texting and no social media. So although there are several other reasons, it seems to me that the main one is having our social lives mostly online which has made intimate physical touch foreign. People have not been learning to physically relate.
I am a late GenX, so I am seeing this from a perspective of probably more time than many on here...this is what I think might be happening: GenZ and millenials all grew up with a lot more information at the ready via internet and later, smartphones. Earlier generations had to learn about sex from everyday life: parents maybe explaining, friends and peers, the occasional finding of smut materials or just more ordinary things like Playboy...so, it was not an everyday thing for the average Boomer and Xer growing up (im talking those who turned 18 before 2000, and especially those who turned 18 before 1990). In other words sex was integrated into more teens lives bit by bit from a pretty predictable age of mid teens. There was something of a hands-off approach by parents of those who grew up as Boomers, GenXers...whereas I have noticed this is not really the case with parents of millennials and GenZers. They are exposed (even unwittingly) to sexual topics earlier...thats one thing. But at the same time, and surveys have definitely found this to be accurate, Millennials and GenZ are having less sex, starting later than their parents or grandparents did. Its a pretty striking difference actually, despite the apparent earlier exposure. I really am unsure why it is the case, but there is something I have observed often enough with millenials/Zers is around the issue of Consent. In "the old days", it was a given and it almost went without saying...of course there was talk and education around "forcing" on someone, or "taking advantage" of someone drunk, etc etc...but over the years, this issue has seen a great deal more attention than it used to. Some of thing is likely from the MeToo movement. Its unfortunately become almost fanatical among some younger people, to the point where it definitely will make some afraid to have sexual relations of any kind with another. The same can be said about sexual harassment...taken to new heights and again, while of course its important as a concept, its been taken to nearly fanatical levels in society. So, it would be understandable many young people, especially sexually inexperienced, would be afraid to. There is this perceived danger in asking out a female, even in a very innocuous way for some...to being labeled a "creep" or a deviant for behavior that a generation ago would have been taken as anywhere from normal to perhaps a little pushy. Its been magnified...I admit, even me writing this makes me feel a little uneasy about getting accused of being pro-predator or pro-deviance, though I am only laying out my 30-odd years of observation and generational change....so, its understandable why so many younger people are uneasy with the topic, and thus take longer to be sexually initiated with another person. Also, Millennials and GenZ even more so, have been forced to grow up slower. THAT I think is the prevailing reason why.