Sorry, everyone: The future of sex is total apathy

As feminist Jillian Horowitz has explained, “being sex-negative means acknowledging that sex, and kink, have nothing intrinsically ‘good’ or ‘positive’ about them.” In the ways I’ve most recently seen it used online and in person, a sex negative or “sex blahsitivist” stance doesn’t call for a return to shaming or ignorance around sex. Rather, it dismisses sex as a fundamentally interesting, “good,” or necessary lens for understanding and actualizing one’s self.

As self-identified “sex skeptic” Isabel Slone recently wrote, “referring to yourself as ‘sex negative’ is simply one way to eschew the constant pressure to enjoy and experiment with your sexuality.” Because “the performative enjoyment of sex has essentially become a mandatory part of being alive,” sex itself can often feel like “an imposition.” Where’s the space for those who believe many of our qualities, maybe even most of our qualities, are more integral to our selfhood than what type of sex we pursue or prefer? What about asexuals or voluntary celibates? Why do any of us have to make a point of applauding the sexual practices of strangers like we’re bedside Little League coaches? Sex, and a largely uncritical attitude toward it, has been made compulsory. That’s a categorically bad effect of the sexual revolution.

Granted, savvy sex-positive spokespeople add caveats that abstaining from sex is fine, too! But this feels like lip service given that it’s rarely paired with a push to establish personal sexual practices as, well, not actually anyone else’s business—or even more radically, with the notion that sex may not be a hugely important aspect of each human life. Sometimes—and for some people, all the time—sex simply doesn’t matter that much.

Not so long ago, in certain circles, an eager embrace of all things sexual was a sign of sophistication and political enlightenment. Our collective sex mania still holds tremendous social cache and publicly professing your fixation on sex can still serve as shorthand that you’re proud of your body and highly erogenous, experienced and confident, free from shame or other embarrassing anxieties. Or at least, sex obsession when practiced by white able-bodied cis people works that way. (As always, different rules apply for anyone outside the cultural ideal.)

Soon, sex nonchalance is going to be the norm, and we’ll have a chance to recover from our collective burnout.

But that conviction is crumbling, and the blooming trend towards sex apathy seems to bridge many of these demographic divides. I’ve seen women of color and trans women, as well as those who are cis and white, express eagerness to move on to other topics of discussion and political engagement. “Sex is bad” is a handy, tongue-in-cheek refrain for anyone who has experimented with casual sex and the pursuit of genital pleasure as a gateway to a better life and found it ineffective, or anyone who finds sex (re)traumatizing or otherwise unappealing. It’s not usually meant as condemnation so much as dismissal, a derisive aside to let everyone involved change the subject. Fucking doesn’t solve many or even any of our problems, and it often creates even more. “Sex might be perilous to a woman’s well-being,” writes Alana Massey, “and often, if we’re honest, a physically substandard experience.” Sorry, straight ladies, but it’s true: men care a lot less about getting a girl off when they’re not in a committed relationship with her.

Mounting sex fatigue isn’t just about ideological differences around feminism or sex positivity. Apps and the internet have notoriously made casual sex easier than ever before. We’re inundated by sex in the media if not sex in our beds—though a lot of us might be getting that, too. From how we should judge a political candidate to how we’re going to relieve headaches, get fitter, and prevent cancer, sex is the go-to answer. Stressed from work? Sex should fix it. Need a raise? Have extra sex. Are you masturbating enough? Are you orgasming in every possible way? It’s a constrictive, neoliberal hellscape, not a permissive pleasure utopia.

As Rachel Hills detailed extensively in last year’s The Sex Myth, this climate produces as many anxieties and untruths as it alleviates, making the sex wars a zero-sum game. That’s why more and more people are removing themselves from the front lines. “I was always sort of ‘sex shrug,’” journalist Melissa Gira Grant said recently on a podcast. “I’m tired. This conversation just keeps happening, and I can exit.” “I’m sex negative in that I don’t think sex is real and I don’t want to talk about it, and it’s boring,” host merritt k replied. “How much can you really say?”

We’re at a sex saturation point. After centuries of denial, we spent a few decades bingeing hard and now we’re dealing with a hangover that won’t quit. Appetites are eliminated when they’re satisfied and if you’re sated for long enough, you might forget you were ever hungry at all. In a world where sex is de rigueur and overabundant, sex forfeits the propulsive pressure associated with the taboo and unknown.

That’s not a bad thing. With sex no longer withheld, we can come by our rejections of it and hesitations around it more honestly. Getting here sucked, no pun intended, but the end is in sight. Soon, sex nonchalance is going to be the norm, and we’ll have a chance to recover from our collective burnout and finally explore what sex could mean, or not mean, for our larger lives. The United States has long seemed embarrassingly juvenile to, say, parts of Europe; maybe we’re finally catching up with them. In the future, sex will finally be like eating: You can obsess over your diet, you can rail at people who do it differently than you, you can build your whole life around your culinary preferences. But most people don’t really care what you do or don’t put in your mouth, and that’s the way it should be.

Charlotte Shane has written for Matter, Pacific Standard, The Verge, and is the author of Prostitute Laundry.