Sociology article about sex

There is a very long, interesting article from the Atlantic magazine about the sexual trends of the younger generations. In particular, why fewer of them are having actual, 2-person, in-person sex as compared to previous generations (apparently it’s a bit more complicated than the obvious answer, which is the easy availability of advanced-technology porn).

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/

By 2015, in Japan 43% of adults aged 18-34 were virgins. The US isn’t far behind. “…in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most (US) high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t.”

“…hitting on someone in person has, in a short period of time, gone from normal behavior to borderline creepy… 17 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 now believe that a man inviting a woman out for a drink “always” or “usually” constitutes sexual harassment.”

And online dating doesn’t seem to help much:

“… unless you are exceptionally good-looking, the thing online dating may be best at is sucking up large amounts of time…the company says it logs 1.6 billion swipes a day, and just 26 million matches…the overwhelming majority of matches don’t lead to so much as a two-way text exchange, much less a date, much less sex.”

There’s also a very long section about how porn is changing real-life sex for the worse. I discovered that myself when I was single back in the late 1990’s and dial-up internet porn was first reaching the average college guy. I cannot imagine how bad it must be out there now, two decades later. The learned-from-porn expectations are not only highly unrealistic, but the techniques are likely to be painful, traumatic, and potentially quite dangerous.

“…“I’ve noticed that they [the younger men] tend to go for choking without prior discussion.”, “…she’d been choked so many times that at first, she figured it was normal. “A lot of people don’t realize you have to ask,” she said.”

Holy shit. If someone tried to choke to me, I would assume I was being murdered and fight for my life. Someone could end up dead. No wonder people aren’t having sex anymore.