You’ve heard the hysteria: young people are fucking like dogs. Teenagers and college students in North America (despite the governing from their “helicopter parents”) are blowing, sucking and fucking one another like it’s just a day at the office. “Hook-up culture!” “Raunch culture!” No one values “meaningful courting” anymore because we all are just so busy swiping “like” on Tinder, waiting to gather a little check mark of self-esteem from a random correspondent. We don’t value anything more than a one-night stand. Quick fix medicine. Self-esteem comes in a very short-term these days. Or, so we are told.
New York-based, Australian author Rachel Hills says this is a lie. In fact, she wrote a whole book on it called The Sex Myth (Simon & Schuster). Hills describes even herself as a fake. A woman who presented her public persona as a “girl about town” who was, in fact, a “secret sexual loser.” So, when the most outgoing, seemingly sexually successful and confident friend in her circle admitted she had not been in bed with another in a year, her brain did a summersault and puked in shock.
“Everything about sex,” Hills writes in her book, “from the stories we chose to share with our friends to the people we chose to do it with to the remarkably standardized sexual playbook that starts with kissing, followed by touching, and finally penetration – is influenced by social and cultural forces. Sex is not just physical, but symbolic, employed as a barometer of the success of our relationships and the degree to which other people want to be intimate with us.”
Hills knew she was not getting laid like culture was telling her everyone else was and she did not know why (no, she’s not stereotypically hideous). The numbers were not adding up, so she started to investigate. While researching The Sex Myth, she found out that people are actually having way less sex than imagined. According to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, our parents were having more sex with more partners than the 20-something generation is now.
College-aged people are sticking with one solid partner (literally one is the average number for 18-23-year-olds per year), so then why are we being told otherwise?
Why, in an era when sex is talked about as openly as anything else (hello, I can say FUCK and SUCK in this column and pretty much answer whatever I want to your deep, crude reader questions), are the data and cultural expectations not reflected?
“Forty per cent of college students hook up with three people or fewer over the course of four years,” according to Hills' research.
The Sex Myth is a “window into the truth of who we are as a species”, claims Hills. “It is a window into who we are as individuals.”
Then, she lays out an example as told by a cute, gay youngster.
How many times have you been rejected by someone, someone you did not even think was that great to begin with, but found yourself crushingly devastated? Admit it. It’s happened at least once (if you are not a sociopath).
The whole idea of capturing attention means, “if I’m good enough for you, you are good enough for me.” If that does not add up, your ego is curb stomped when rejected. Arguably, even more so by someone you deemed was punching below your weight class.
“I’ll think of another guy, one who is really good-looking, and think to myself, ‘That guy would never be rejected’,” explains said cute gay. Then, he’ll fuck someone lesser for a confidence boost. We have all been there.
So, look. What I am saying is two main things: 1) Fogies, your kids aren’t fucking like rabbits. In fact, they are trying to mate up like penguins. 2) Sex is a game that toys with our confidence until we can find it within ourselves.
I’ve fucked just over 20 people. I truly don’t even know. I’d have to think back. Hard. I’m now married and I believe in monogamy, so if I stick with my vows (which I plan to), that’s my top score. I spent most of my 20s in relationships (cheating, back-pedaling, gathering confidence in really regrettable ways), so I’m not like my cradle-robbing male friends who are skimming the 200 mark.
But who cares? The point is that fucking will always be sold and told to us, but at the end of the day, you kind of have to get all anarchistic about it, and just say “fuck it”, and fuck the way you want to fuck.
Because, who gives a fuck? Right? Fuck!
EMAIL MISH
Send Mish your own sex questions and queries to [email protected]
