Sex and taboo in the modern age | Zoe Strimpel, Myriam Franois and Louise Perry

to have non-reproductive sex as well whereas there is something about modernity because it's not just us right it's not just the UK that's in the sex recession I East Asian countries like South Korea and Japan are much more profoundly affected by by this trend and we see it across other developed countries and in America and Canada and so on there's something going on and I and

I I can't help but think that it just has something to do with affluence because that's the common theme across all of those countries it's not to do with a particular religious tradition or really any kind of unifying political ideology even I mean I'm not sure if you can really understand say Japan as being a liberal country it's kind of it's so it's so different it

almost doesn't work it but these these are all rich countries and is there may be something cost of living accepted is there maybe something about having an something about late modernity which makes people lonely and it's not just to do with um sexual relationships to do with all kinds of relationships you know the proportion of people who live on their own has gone up so steeply

I was looking up these figures last week just since the 1970s the proportion of people who live on their own has doubled this is largely a story of the elderly but it's also Malaysian younger people who are living on their own I mean I really appreciate Zoe saying that and and unwittingly maybe echoing the words of Hugh Hefner he was once asked um do you think

how do you feel about the dark consequences of the sexual Revolution that you set and train and he said it's the pro it's a price worth paying for sexual freedom and I think you know maybe it is maybe that that is the choice that we're faced with and maybe we should be honest about it and say I guess we choose Freedom maybe I was just this

is my query with all this I see a lot of people who choose to opt out of hookup culture I don't quite understand why there's this idea that there is an I think there's been a slippage here between real regimes of control and just cultural ones and I think like the fact that you know and I and I am critical of the whole like if I

pull Dance I'm liberated you know I I you know I choose my choice and that's a politics no not probably not but but I do think there's there's something that bothers me about the whole discussion I suppose which is this idea that we are dupes we have no agency we are living through false consciousness um to become like these like hook up culture uh victims and

you know we we probably all do it is hard to sidestep that I mean there is such thing as cultural pressure and and so there is there is there are scar tissues that develop and baggage it develops but I think it's a bit more comp it's a bit more nuanced than hookup culture has come along and destroyed you know all these things I think a lot

of people are finding other ways to do things um but I just want to say I think that the big word we might be missing here is the I word the internet which I think has definitely played to me there's a sort of dynamic um there's a certain kind of sensibility shift that occurs when you spend enough time of your time um you know doing whatever

different social media platforms including dating apps require of you and the thing that I've always noted about dating app Behavior recently or in the last you know however many years um I only started researching looking on dating apps after I did an M fill all of that online dating so I should get over but that was the year Tinder launched but there's a kind of jadedness

and I think this thing I actually don't agree that it's um so I think I think certain internet formats breed a kind of what we all know that but I don't think that it's about rich countries I don't think it's about affluences this issue I think it's about genuinely liberal countries like we are a politically liberal country and that therefore leads to a Marketplace in which

there is plenty so as soon as you have plenty sexual plenty say one of the countries in the world where dating apps are the biggest sellers in China which many things but certainly not a liberal country but it is a place where people are basically finding that actually in also a Place full of urban anime with new cities springing up you know every five minutes they

can't find and in a world you know of one one child policy so much pressure to get married for women I mean I don't think it is yeah those the dating apps but I would I would guess that the the experience of that that that J did sense of overabundance that we are talking about would play out differently in an environment where women are under a

huge stress to get married and to and to make an economic decision we we don't quite have that so I think it is probably different by yeah but sorry just this idea of abundance I have to like push back as a woman or like undating apps is there an abundance from a male perspective of course there is they're flipping through like who can I if you're

actually looking for anything more than that which I think by and large women do there's a study that came out last year looking at like satisfaction rates for casual sex amongst men and women and I mean I I thought I'd bring them out because it just was very interesting to me so casual sex generally leads to more positive emotional outcomes for men than for women anyone

surprised probably not but both reports engaging in both reporting engaging in sexual in casual sex but women are more likely to report feeling miserable lonely and pressured and having more negative outcomes like loneliness and unhappiness and rejection men are more likely to report positive emotional outcomes with casual sex the report concludes that women are engaging in casual sex in the hope of finding a partner men

are engaging in casual sex in the hope of finding several Partners there is a stark difference when we swipe we're hoping for the one they're hoping for the many it's abundant for them no I I I I I just don't I just don't think that's true that as a generalization yeah of course it's not everything but I think there's definitely something I'm not going to deny

that I think you're right that that casual sex I mean this is there's nothing new about that plays out differently for men and women that's true but I think so much in the narrative me to pose me to me too narratives assumes that women can never be driven by desire alone like for women it must always be attached to this bigger emotional edifice of commitment and

I I do struggle with that I think who are we to know there is there is if you really don't believe there's such thing as autonomous female desire that can exist as a kind of thing that needs to be dealt with and that that's only a masculine thing I I just don't think that's that I don't think that's true I it doesn't mean that women should

therefore have to experience callous callousness and bad treatment which I think does happen more as a result of hookup culture but my concern about this idea like imagine we had this world or potential Utopia where we got rid of dating apps and we got rid of casual sex and this idea that women will wait until there's the one so many women do not find the one

and then are they supposed to just be numbs but no no hold on you're confusing sexual desire on this occasion with having a orgasm which is a big difference like on this occasion women going for casual hookups by and large we know you're not getting your dues you're not you're not they're getting theirs you're not getting yours so as a rule we're not getting ours so

we are looking for someone who's invested enough to actually want to do the work necessary to deliver the goods and unfortunately the truth is many of you don't I want to bring in Louise here because apart from the US Lewis is actually written an entire book which is taking issue with many aspects of the sexual sexual Revolution as is emerged particularly in Britain since the 1960s

is the conversation you're hearing Louise between uh Miriam and Zoe one that strikes a chord with the thesis that you've put forward uh very much so and I think also that the two positions are reconcilable absolutely to the extent that obviously individual preference varies a great deal in there I I mean average differences in um sociosexuality so that's your desire to have casual sex the two

bell curves the male and the female one they overlap very very horny people are much more likely to be male and vice versa but clearly there's there are a lot of individual exceptions that I will but also at the population level you're completely right say that that is really evident in hookup culture um it's worth saying I find myself sitting on stage defending insults it is

worth saying that actually most men do not experience hyper abundance on dating apps because the the nature of how dating apps operate is that women tend to be as a rule lots of exceptions yada yada throat clearing women tend to be more drawn to status than our men um and men tend to be more drawn to looks than States so men are basically I mean we

all know the stereotype of the the ugly rich guy with the gorgeous wife there's there's a reason that that stereotype exists because it does to some extent demonstrate slightly different drives among men and women and it means that women for instance are are more likely to on dating apps accumulate their their likes towards the most high status men on the apps and ignore the sort of

bottom 90 so I think the figure on Tinder is it's a 10 most attractive men are getting 60 of likes um so they are experienced absolutely they are experiencing hyper abundance and they are also experiencing a social environment in which they can basically do what they want yeah and there are no real consequences and obviously contraception means in Practical terms there are no consequences and also

socially there are no consequences from ghosting from all of these things which the internet enables because you're now able to basically pluck out strangers from your 10 mile radius in a huge City like London and you never have to see them again you have so you have no social connection to them cheating therefore becomes much easier because you don't have to cheat with people that you

actually have any social connection with so you can get away with it you know there are all sorts of bad behaviors which are definitely enabled by the apps there are also bad behaviors that 90 of men actually don't really have access to even if they would even if they might like to because they're not getting as much attention as they would hope and this is of

course why we part of the reason why we have all of these young men who are um remaining virgins not having relationships feeling very feeling very unhappy about it and I think often being unfairly maligned as political extremists or whatever when many of them are just unlucky could I just come in with a counter-intuitive question which maybe you can't do because it it doesn't have any

basis but just to ask Louise is there any social good overall that you could see from the statistical reality that seems to be emerging that at least in the UK in the 2020s people are having young people having less sex than would have been the case with their predecessor Generations is there any upside to it at all well there's also a lot less teen pregnancy the

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