Having been single and American for all 22 years of my existence, I think I can distill all of my observations on the state of sex in our society down to a single sentence:
Sex means everything to us, and yet it means nothing to us.
Don’t get me wrong: the human capacity for sexual misanthropy goes back a long, long way. There has hardly been a western society without brothels, adultery, or scandal. Even today, we have not moved beyond the dehumanizing grasp of rape, or sexual assault, or the global sex trade. But for much of American history, rooted in prudishness or not, our petty promiscuity was something we sought to hide. It was something that made us feel shame. Today, we don’t feel shame over sleeping with people we don’t know and to whom we feel no emotional connection. We boast of it. Our entire society boasts of it.
On TV and in movies and advertising, we are bombarded with images that use sex to market themselves. There’s a reason that “sex sells” is one of the older axioms of advertising. But when we as a society use sex to market our products, for years and years and years, eventually it’s no longer the products that are being marketed: it’s the sex itself.
Sex has become a product. Sex has become a commodity.
We have apps that serve to perpetuate sexual economies of sorts; Tinder and Grindr enjoy massive amounts of user traffic - sexual exchanges which are rooted entirely in superficial evaluations of prospective “partners.” Does this human appeal to the most primitive elements of your sex drive? Swipe right. Does that human need to put more effort into being/looking/feeling “hot?” Swipe left.
My generation believes that we are sexually free: that we can indulge in our fantasies with strangers, no longer bound by the personal commitment that once served as the glue that kept couples together. But what we perceive as sexual liberation is ultimately a form of sexual slavery: without looks, without cute pictures, without a net in which to snag attractive strangers or bait with which to seduce them into chowing down, we are nothing. Sexual emptiness begins to expand into personal emptiness.
There are people who greatly value their ability to fuck whomever they want whenever they want. But these are often the same individuals who complain that most men are “assholes,” or that most women just play “hard to get.” Somehow, we have to grasp the connection between the way we have come to see sex as a thing that exists for casual gratification and the way that we no longer seem to practice the values of true commitment.
When you treat sex like a toy – when you start seeing it as something that exists for your own gratification, instead of something that requires respect – you start to see the people helping you to indulge your desires as things that exist for your own gratification, rather than as people deserving of respect. Treating sex like a toy often leads to treating people like toys.
Our society wants to have it both ways. We want to believe that sex doesn’t matter while also maintaining real relationships and real commitment. But this line of thinking will never be able to manifest in the real world, because sexual encounters and genuine relationships are both things that happen between people – and often involving the deepest, most sensitive aspects of those people.
You cannot disrespect sex or commitment without disrespecting the person at the other end of that connection. You can’t reduce sex without reducing the respect sexual partners are supposed to have for each other. You can try, and people – particularly those of my generation – certainly do. But when I look at the experiences of my friends and acquaintances, I see an awful lot of pain.
I see people scared because they’ve “caught feelings” for someone who was supposed to be a sexual tool. I see people hurt because a one-night partner they thought they had a “connection” with turned around and did the same to someone else. I see people yearning for something deeper but afraid to ask for it. I see people who ask for something deeper and can’t find anyone who’s offering. I see people who can't help but view committed relationships as being "tied down," even when commitment is the very thing they want. For all the ways our society has given us to find, use, and abuse sex, I see people who feel like they don’t have any options. I see jealousy, envy, and self-deprecation.
If this is what sexual freedom means, maybe it's better to be tied down.
