Rediscovering desire in a panopticon of virtual pleasures.
Text by Dean Kissick
“A widely-shared chart from The Washington Post showed that the portion of men under 30 reporting no sex with an opposite sex partner in the past year had nearly tripled between 2008 and 2019, reaching 28%. For women, the number went up from 8% to 18%. While a rising acceptance of LGBTQ+ orientations and the number of people coming out may well account for part of this change, it surely does not account for all 28%. These are mad figures. And they are from 2019; given the last year of lockdown, financial hardship, and unemployment, they’ve likely increased. So, what happened in 2008, and why have our sex lives been in decline ever since?”