đŤ Hello, subs. Today, I ponder whether the Sex Recession is really a Celibacy Renaissance. On an unrelated note, if like me, you are morbidly fascinated by the downtown/Dimes Square/Red Scare/Vibe Shift discourse, read Mike Crumplarâs latest post âMy Own Dimes Square Fascist Humiliation Ritual.â If you have no idea what Iâm talking about, hold on to your mental health and run in the other direction. đŤ
Virgin Girlboss, Incarnate
Catholic all-girls high school. Yes, we wore little pleated skirts that grazed our mid-thighs and revolted when black opaque tights were mandated our junior year (#FreeTheKnee). Yes, there was a brief banning of grapefruits in the cafeteria when a new eating disorder caught wind: the gals were consuming one chilled, pink half-grapefruit for lunch and nothing else. Refreshing, but not food. And yes, even though this was LA and about 40% of our teachers were gay, and most parents were tax-evading social libs, we experienced year after year of abstinence-forward Sex Ed.
But, this wasnât your Holy Mother of Mercyâs abstinence education. I say âabstinence-forwardâ because it was a feat of subtle, feminine trickery. They didnât jump-scare us with gruesome, infected genitalia. They didnât talk about how wrong and dirty sex was, nor did they extol the inherent virtues of purity and chastity.
Jump cut to a small âseminar-styleâ classroom in Butler Hall. 81 years prior, the building had been a dormitory for nuns. In 2012, it was populated by teenage girls with MacBook Pros, flicking through cascading tabs of Wanelo boards of pink and teal impracticalities, Buzzfeed quizzes, and other ungodly distractions. Internet access was nearly unrestricted, though the Tech department imposed its authority from time to time, manually shutting down Facebook tabs. Big Brother of the Sailor Sisters.
Culturally speaking, Instagram posts were sickly saturated with the Nashville filter, people were âdip dyeingâ the bleached tips of their hair with Gatorade, fun! reigned the radio, Brandy Melville peddled sunflower patterns and skull bracelets, and YOLO was, ostensibly, the motto.
It was Period 1. Theology. I canât tell you what time of day it was, since the school boasted a rotating block schedule (you get what you pay for!). We were to have a guest speakerâthe Sex Lady.
The Sex Lady wasnât like the red-faced Drug Guy, who grimly looked back at his wrecked life and regrets. The Drug Guy cried in front of everyone while recounting the day he taught his little brother to do heroin. You felt bad for the Drug Guy. According to the sophomores, the Sex Lady was someone to look forward to. She was cool, nice and young.
A gorgeous brunette entered the room with the thickest bangs you could ever imagine. They were at least an inch thick, framing beachy waves that went halfway down her torso. She was a Jess from New Girl type, back when the girl was new. A 2012 ten.
With a dazzling smile, she introduced herself: Joanna Hyatt.
âMy name is Joanna and I am here to teach you how to have the best sex of your life!â
Collectively, we were like: đď¸đđď¸
The ensuing presentation had the grace, charisma, and manipulative meaninglessness of a TED Talk. To gain our trust, she shared a carefully crafted personal narrative, with a story arc that bent toward premarital abstinence. Her thesis was the following: to have the best sex of your life, you should wait to do it until you are married. But, like⌠You donât have to be a lame virgin to be abstinent! You can be beautiful and cool like me!
She told us all sorts of stuff. In college, she indulged in other bodily pleasures outside of vaginal intercourse (a classic case of âeverything but theâ). It wasnât easy remaining firm in her commitment to virginity, but some things made it worthwhile. After graduation, several male friends confided that she was the only female friend that they actually respected. As opposed to, you know, the sluts. One day, she met the red-haired, tattooed love of her life. He was perfect aside from the fact that he had had premarital sex.
Apparently, this was a hump they could get past. They got married and I suppose had rEaLlY aWeSoMe SeX, which is to say: sex. As proof, she revealed that she was pregnant with her first child!
Joanna presented herself as an open book, but something was glaringly missing. Religion. She left so much room for Jesus, that He wasnât even in the room. When asked about her motivations to remain abstinent before marriage, she alluded to âpersonalâ reasons. She tactfully avoided any mention of Christianity. To even ask was an uncouth invasion of privacy. To a room of uncertain freshmen, this seemed fair enough. We didnât probe further. We assumed that her virginity pact was a matter of dignity. Which left an implication hanging in the air: premarital abstinence was superior.
Looking back, Joannaâs lesson feels so insidious because it was a standard, conservative, Christian abstinence lecture in the packaging of sex positivity. Her opening line about having the best sex of your life could have introduced a very different lecture, covering any number of topics such as anatomy, pleasure, consent, unpacking shame, birth control, and STI prevention. While sex positivity was certainly not the educational or cultural norm in 2012, the path was leaning in that direction. Religious conservatism wasnât cool, so Joanna coopted the aesthetics of empowerment to make premarital virginity seem appealing.
I sincerely wonder if the schoolâs administration asked Joanna to pose abstinence as a rational decision, rather than a religious one. Did they think that this would be more effective, given the audience? I certainly think it was. We were smart enough to roll our eyes at traditional lectures on celibacy, but more susceptible to the layers of slut-shaming applied to her stories, smooth as icing on a cake. As an insecure 14-year-old, there was no siren song more bewitching than that of a confident, happy 28-year-old. Being 14 is the worst. Joannaâs life was aspirational. Maybe abstinence wasnât just for radical religious folks. Itâs also for quirky brunettes!
Interestingly, it seems that Joanna has owned her Christianity in recent years. The Word of God is now infused into her personal branding, as a âmama of four beauties,â âa nerd who loves to talk about controversial issues (abortion! sex! Jesus!),â and a âPerson of the Cross who lives with Grit & Grace.â
Perusing her website, I encountered her self-published booklet entitled âA New Position on Sexâ (pun surely intended). I couldnât resist inserting my email for the free download. Itâs a jumbled, 22-page manifesto against allegedly modern pillars of wokeness, like consent or the existence of trans people or prioritizing personal pleasure. She attempts to take down the historical flaws of both the secular and Christian approaches to sex, to forge a new path. This new position boils down to the idea that itâs okay to enjoy sex in the context of a marriage between a cis man and cis woman. Itâs sophomoric, full of typos and does not dignify much of my time here.
At the same time, it was oddly cathartic to read. If she had just presented herself as a conservative Christian advocate for premarital abstinence, her lectures wouldnât have left such a bad taste in my mouth. It was Catholic school. Of course they were going to push abstinence education. Thereâs nothing wrong with believing that sex should integrate the mental, physical and spiritual self. Live your truth, Joanna.
Frictionless
Thereâs a perception that weâre living in a more sexless time, both statistically and anecdotally.
Statistically:
Since 2018, there have been sweeping declarations that Americans have entered a Sex Drought, a Sex Recession, or even *gasp* a Great Sex Depression. This all sprung from data from the General Social Survey, conducted every other year since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The statistics pointed to emerging trends: young adults were having sex later, less, and with fewer partners than prior generations.
Anecdotally:
A 2018 Atlantic article listed many of the âmodern blightsâ that might be to blame: dating apps, the prevalence of antidepressants and vibrators, the way our hormones are getting fucked up by all the plastic in our drinking water.
In the pandemic years, writers have thoughtfully added to the conversation. The general consensus is that the internet is the primary puppetmaster. Last week, Daisy Alioto wrote a compelling post for Dirt about the blueballing of Instagramâs userbase. Amidst the 2021 âhot vax summerâ that never was, Dean Kissick published a piece titled Rediscovering desire in the panopticon of virtual pleasures. In February, Haley Nahman wrote an intriguing article about The death of sex, which contextualized the trend toward celibacy in the post-Vibe Shift world. The writers lament the malaise that has prevailed as our online lives have become more gratifying than our embodied ones.
Dean: âWhatâs left is the new aesthetic of lifelessness and void, a consumer culture of throwaway experiences that wash right over you like an Ambien. Itâs made to be experienced without friction: seamless post-death entertainment from an empire ruled over by a sleepy, old man.â
Haley: â[Sexuality] is the ultimate euphemism for earthly pleasures and all its attendant qualities: desire, touch, anguish, longing, satisfaction, thrill, connection, presence. Essentially everything the internet canât meaningfully give us.â
But, despite the despair of cultural commentators, some folks are choosing a transgressive reclamation. I never thought weâd be in the midst of a Celibacy Renaissance. But, Iâve learned to forgo all expectations in the increasingly post-woke, post-MeToo, post-Trump, post-CultureWar New York.
Incels, Femcels, and just Cels
The figure of the incel has loomed prominently in the public imagination for a decade, even if we havenât always had the word for it. From Newtown to Parkland to Q-Anon to the Capitol Riots to Uvalde, the past decade has been punctuated by horrors committed by incel archetypes, radicalized, isolated, validated and conditioned on the internet.
The last few months have brought the concept of the âfemcelâ to the fore. I struggle to describe what the feminized involuntary celibate looks like, and I think thatâs because itâs not actually an archetype.
Itâs what you like. Not what you are like.
As a writer put it in an i-D article: âthe social media femcels of today use the term less as an indicator of how much sex theyâre unable to have, and more as a way to express their personality traits that are perceived as pathetic or manipulative or toxic in some way.â Itâs apparently about identifying with Mitski, Sylvia Plath, Fleabag and Catholic iconography.
Like so many things these days, the concept of the femcel is metaironic. Itâs both joking and sincere: we are living through a statistically less sexual time, so why not flirt with fringe culture for shock value and cultural cachet?
I think itâs important that the term femcel loses the âin-â prefix. It seems that this new celibacy is, well⌠voluntary.1
One facet of femcel-adjacent culture that intrigues me is the downtown Tradcath revival. The kids are going to church. Itâs a meme but itâs also not. Itâs a fashion aesthetic but itâs also creeping into peopleâs language and values. Walking near Dimes Square a few weeks ago, there was a group of scenesters congregating near a venue. I literally overheard a punky dude say: âPeace be with you, brother in God.â
Back in April on the Wet Brain podcast, Walter Pearce, Jordan Castro and some guy Pat held a joking-but-not intervention for Honor Levyâs crisis of faith. In their conversation, Honor grapples with âliving in a state of sin.â The way they engage with religious topics is earnest and thoughtful, even when softened with irony.
Honor: I just like, you know, Iâm like having premarital and like doing all sorts of things like that ⌠Cause weâre trapped in the material world. What else am I supposed to do? Like she already bit that apple.
Walt: It was bussin.
Honor: Yeah, Iâm fallen.
The conversation is funny and edgy because it feels so bizarre for a cohort of artsy young literati to be speaking this way after a decade of cool falling on the side of secularism and sex positivity. Listening to the episode, itâs pretty clear that none of them think premarital sex is actually a bad thing. This may seem like hypocrisy, but Catholics have been having premarital sex since Catholicism was invented.
Itâs tempting to speculate whether these people are actual believers, or if they are just participating in a trend for clout. But, this distinction doesnât really matter. Whatâs more interesting is how this moment is a reaction to the flatness of a shame-free, sex positive world. I watched one episode of the Netflix atrocity âHow to Build a Sex Roomâ with friends, and we all laughed at how empty and sexless the show felt. Sex columnist Dan Savage often talks about how a shame-free world is a distinctly unsexy one. Itâs hotter to break the rules.
Joanna Hyattâs Virgin Girlboss approach was transgressive because it taught premarital abstinence by using the aesthetics of the movement that was cooler in 2012: sex positivity.
Now that sex positivity isnât cool, the latest way to transgress is to coopt the aesthetics of conservatism. Whether the downtown Tradcath scene is just being edgy for edgyâs sake, is actually trying to espouse Christian values or something else entirely⌠itâs too soon to tell. Regardless, itâs interesting how many roads lead to no sex.
5 Songs for the Sexless
Sometimes music is about other things!
âTrying To Make Heaven Home,â The Gospel Chimes
Because if anything is sexless, itâs religion. Right guys? This song is just crawling with longing, fervor and desperation. Listen to it really, really loud.
đś I started to make heavenâa long, long, time agoâmy home. đś
âFight This Generation,â Pavement
Pavement has always struck me as a pretty sexless band.
đś God damn the guts and the gore. Nobodyâs crying cause thereâs no one to score. đś
âBlue Red and Grey,â The Who
Ok this song isnât completely sexless, but itâs mostly about embracing life.
đś Some people go for those sultry evenings sipping cocktails in the blue, red and grey. But I like every minute of the day. đś
âNo Surprises,â Radiohead
Gotta throw one in for the incels.
đś A heart thatâs full up like a landfill; a job that slowly kills you; bruises that wonât heal. đś
âNewspaper,â Fiona Apple
Fetch the bolt cutters, femcels!
đś I wonder what lies heâs telling you about me to make sure that weâll never be friends. đś
Quote of the week:
âWhen you operate from a place of insecurity, your whole life becomes focused on alleviating that feeling.â (Is New York overrated? âHaley Nahman)
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Why am I tempted to call it something like âVolcel,â when it could just be called âCel?â Itâs like how at McDonaldâs you can order an âUnsweet Iced Teaâ rather than just⌠âIced Tea.â The long and winding road.
Stunning writing as always <3 You should read The Right to Sex... brilliant essays about sex and incels
Also can't help but think of Lana Del Rey and Addison Rae for Praying bringing religious themes and imagery back to the mainstream