Hi everyone, I hope you’re all well.
There’s been a bit of commentary over the last few years about how millennials are actually
having less sex than gen x and baby boomers.
The most recent data on this was reported in the Washington post in April, and comes
from the General Social Survey, or GSS.
It found that while there is a general decline in sex among adults in the USA, with 23% of
people over 18 reporting they had had no sex in the past year, this was, surprisingly,
largely driven by the young.
The survey revealed that 23% of millennials, so people aged 18-29, reported no sex in the
past year, which has gone up about 15% since 2008.
A much bigger spike than any other age group.
This would seem very surprising, given the fact millennials never seem to stop talking
about sex.
They’re probably the most sexually liberated generation ever.
They’re perfectly comfortable with pre-marital intercourse, LGBT sexuality has well and truly
gone mainstream, polyamory is not a dirty word, the idea of sexual deviance has been
stripped of it’s negative connotations and re-labelled with words like kink or curious.
There’s a big push against slut shaming women, and not only that, there’s a huge
and in some cases over the top conversation about consent.
They’re hardly a generation of prudes.
Not to mention that thanks to the internet, we’re right in the middle of what is often
termed hook up culture.
Sex is very readily available, thanks to social media and dating apps and websites like OK
Cupid and Tinder and Grinder.
You can have sex on the hour, every hour if you want, just by swiping right on a few profile
pictures.
It has never been easier to meet people in the same zip code who what the same thing
at the same time.
But while it seems millennials can talk the talk, they don’t seem to be able to walk
the walk.
And while this might seem surprising, there are actually some simple explanations for
it.
First and foremost is the fact that the age of marriage is getting later and later, so
generally millennials don’t have a live in partner.
Having a live in partner, and being in a stable relationship, is the most reliable way to
guarantee regular intercourse, so since millennials aren’t doing that, of course they’re having
less sex.
But wait!
What about dating and hookup apps, surely they counter that?
Well, no.
These apps are actually the problem.
While seemingly limitless people are available, finding a match and getting a yes is a whole
nother story, particularly if you are less than attractive.
In the old days, when first impressions involved more than just a profile picture, you could
compensate for a lack of looks with a sparkling personality.
But not so any more, since the first impression you get of someone is 100% a visual.
Therefore, the only people dating apps actually help are hot people who had an advantage anyway.
Everyone else will most likely get shunted aside.
Now, I’ve read an awful lot of commentary on this in preparation for this video, and
I have put the sources in the video description if you would like a citation, or further information.
Amidst all this commentary, one specific data point has people particularly interested,
and that is the gender disparity between sexless millennials.
Male and female millennialshave gone from being roughly on-par when it came to celibacy,
to a full 28% of men aged 18-29 abstaining, as opposed to only 18 percent of young women.
And while celibacy among young women has gone up 8% since 2008, the amount of young men
not having sex has almost tripled since then, going up 18%.
Big big disparity.
So why are people freaking out over this?
Well, there is a social stigma placed on young men to be sexually virile.
They are depicted as typically spending every weekend proudly adding notches to their bedposts.
But as we can see, not just from the 2018 data, but also from years prior, that is simply
not the case.
Nearly every year since 1989, women aged 18-29 have had somewhat more sex than their male
counterparts.
This is not surprising at all, because despite how young men have historically been depicted,
in the game of love and sex, the vast majority of the time men are doing the propositioning
and women are making the final call.
So, men face a lot of rejection, while women on average have their pick.
But given the quite dramatic spike in young male celibacy over the past 10 years, relative
to the lack of spike in young women, this indicates that nowadays, there is more going
on than just a lady’s choice, a gentleman’s agreement.
So what has caused this young male celibacy spike?
Well, there are the typically millennial factors I mentioned earlier, but there are also some
that are specific to young men.
Video games, streaming, regular viewing of graphic stimuli on the internet that starts
with p that I don’t want to say because YouTube might ping me for it, also the fact
that women are under less pressure to find a man in their 20s because they now have equality
of opportunity and can take care of themselves, these all contribute.
There is also decreased workforce participation; you’re more likely to have a partner if
you’re employed than if you’re unemployed.
Failure to launch is another reason; young men are more likely than young women to live
at home, which makes bringing home a potential love interest for Netflix and chill a little
bit tricky since your parents are in the next room.
But it goes beyond those factors.
I think at least part of this issue is cultural.
Young women receive every encouragement nowadays that they can do and be whatever they want.
They are rarely criticised in the public arena as a group, and are told relentlessly that
they can put any missed opportunity down to the patriarchy.
Young men, on the other hand, especially young white men, are living in a time where in the
mainstream, cultural arena, they are blamed for absolutely everything.
Whenever women, non-white people, LGBT people, immigrants, or anyone else who isn’t a man
have a problem, it is dumped squarely on the collective shoulders of white men.
And for anyone who disputes this, think of it this way.
Straight white men are the only identity group that it is politically correct to publicly
disparage for their race and gender.
You can’t do that to anyone else without being called a bigot.
I mean, which statement is more likely to get you, say, fired?
“Stupid women, they ruin everything!” or “stupid white men, they ruin everything!”
Older white men, while needless to say, may be irritated by this social stigma, have largely
built up the resources, and resilience to roll their eyes and continue living their
best life.
Younger men, not so much.
They have spent their formative years trying to navigate this social attitude, and have
the added problem of being accused of toxic masculinity by simply voicing their attraction
to a woman.
And while this trend of male celibacy started before the metoo movement, this demonizing
of male heterosexual urges started well before that.
The anxiety a lot of young men harbour now is that if they go to a bar and approach a
girl, that she’ll take it the wrong way, scream sexual harassment, and ruin his life.
This is not entirely the fault of young women; they have been fed lie after lie from feminists
about how they are always going to be the subject of male victimisation, so it’s no
wonder they’re a little bit paranoid, they think abusers are everywhere and that we’re
in a sort of gender war.
As such, the confidence of young men has been knocked right over, and since their every
impulse is demonized, that‘s not a lot of encouragement to go out and meet someone the
traditional way.
And given the fact we have access to a lot more leisure activities from the comfort of
our armchairs, staying in and playing video games is a much easier, safer bet than going
out and risking the perils of socialising.
So where does this leave young men?
Well, they’re competing with older men for women their own age, who while they may not
be gorgeous looking, have the resources to compensate.
They can be addicted to video games.
Their perspective of what women want has been completely warped by online 18 plus stimuli,
they are hindered by the futility of dating apps, and more than anything else, they are
facing an identity crisis.
They have lost all confidence in themselves because they are dealing with a zeitgeist
that is blaming them for all the world’s problems, and insisting they’ve got it better
than everyone else when in many cases they actually have it worse.
They are told that their every primal urge is somehow wrong and evil, and they should
be ashamed of it and behave, well, more like women.
Considering all of this, my interpretation of that disproportionately large spike in
young male celibacy, and that’s the key word there; disproportionate, is that we are
facing a retreat of young men.
They are giving up.
And I don’t mean in the sort of cynical MGTOW collectivist way, I mean they are just
too down to pull themselves up again.
And while not having sex is hardly the end of the world, there are other ways to spend
your time, it’s the companionship that accompanies physical intimacy in the form of relationships,
which is what they’re missing out on, that is my worry.
None of that is healthy.
We’re about to have a generation or two of men who will go into their 30s having not
developed the skills to form relationships with potential partners.
Everyone will suffer as a result, namely the young men themselves but women aren’t going
to have an easy time either.
When their biological clocks inevitably kick in, all those older rich men they flirted
with in their 20s are already married with kids, and since they didn’t invest the time
in their 20s to form a steady relationship because they were too busy being all feminist
about things, they’re in a bit of a pickle.
So, they’re faced with the prospect of IVF and going it alone, which is not ideal, or,
shacking up with one of those socially ostracised young men who is now over 30 for the sake
of simply having a provider for their children.
It’s a bleak prospect, and will leave everyone involved, men and women, very unhappy.
So what’s to be done?
Well, I don’t really know.
It’s not like women can or should be forced to do anything, or socially engineered to
date particular men, that’s absurd and authoritarian.
I think perhaps things like video game addiction should given some mainstream attention, and
dealt with accordingly.
Obviously we need to keep pushing back against the negative stigma of white men.
Perhaps young people generally need to rally against dating apps and make a resolution
to date the old fashioned way, despite the risks.
I don’t know.
Either way, this is something I am very concerned about, and will look into further.