Generation Uptight is missing out in its pursuit of perfect sex
omehow, those of us born around 1980 did not get the memo about sex. I can safely say I didn’t. The memo, of course, is that sex is a quasi-sacred act, to be performed only with someone with whom you have a meaningful connection – especially the first time. That it’s a true meeting of minds and souls as well as bodies, fitting only for the one “right” person or, at the very least, for a loving relationship.
Not for us it wasn’t. We were grateful to lose our virginity, particularly those of us still burdened thus at the end of our teens. At 19, I practically thanked the perfectly nice man who relieved me of mine, even though he dumped me soon after (hello Jim, if you’re out there!). It was a drunken affair that I remember quite blurrily. It was neither good nor bad. But it happened. Hurrah!
To us, the idea that sex was sacred seemed alien, as was the concept that, in order to be psychologically tenable, it needed to be a tsunami of tender meaning right from the get-go or we’d be scarred for life. This sort of thing smacked to us of an old-fashioned morality that our parents’ generation had thankfully worked hard to trounce. We took it for granted, mostly, that sex starts off badly and gets better over time – or so we hoped (I can report, 16 years in, that we were right).
But the present generation is quite different. They’re obsessed with flawlessness full stop – why should sex be any different? And this, many think, could be why so many youngsters are now abstaining; a recent study by the Department of Health and UCL that tracked 16,000 young people born in 1989-90 since they were 14 has found that one in eight 26-year-olds are now virgins. The true figure, say the experts, could be even higher – a sharp increase over previous generations.
In light of the growing group of (male) online troublemakers and hate-stirrers known as incels, or “involuntary celibates”, such data now has chilling resonances. Last month’s Toronto terror attack was carried out by an “incel”; as was the horrendous spree by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista, California, in 2014. Incels turn their sense of being left out of the world’s sexual hurly-burly into a deadly rage against women and the kind of men they perceive as being successful with them. It’s grim.
But the rising numbers of virgins
Samong the nation’s young aren’t, I’m sure, channelling anything nearly so dark. What they suffer from is the idea that, like the rest of their lives, sex should be perfect and they’d much rather have none than risk anything too messy, humiliating or disappointing. Some have speculated that they aren’t having sex because they are worried that their bodies won’t live up to the images they’re used to seeing on porn sites, or that they are holding out for something that will transport them spiritually and emotionally well beyond the mundane.
The testimony offered to this very newspaper last week by Alice Riley, a 26-year-old virgin, illustrates the latter quite clearly. “I have just never met the right guy… I’ve just never found anyone I’ve really clicked with,” she wrote. And, with a melancholic honesty, she went on to observe that “although it may be easier to find sex than ever before, it’s often harder to find the sex you want to have”. When you’re used to holding out for an ideal, no doubt this is true.
Of course, the sooner young people ditch their punishing view of the world the better – but I fear this is going to be a struggle for them. New research from the American Psychological Association, echoing plenty of other surveys, has underlined just how widespread is the perfectionism of today’s student generation. Having come of age via a million posed selfies, young millennials are much more ill at ease with their bodies in the fleshy, offline and messy world, while also feeling the added pressure to be socially perfect. They chase perfect health and want to be in perfect control: rates of teetotalism among 20-somethings have also soared in recent years, while rising numbers are vegan and gluten-free.
At their age, Generation X-ers were renting grimy bedsits in the worst parts of town and were fine with it. But for this new generation, flats must look tickety-boo or else; think chunky vintage reclaimed wood, scented candles and Oliver Bonas objets galore in a hip location. Generations before them embraced an experimental and sometimes a downright grim start to their adult domestic lives because there was a sense that things would improve in due course.
The same is true of sex, which is best left to develop in its own way, under its own steam. So I feel sorry for this generation. By seeking perfection, they’re missing life. There’d be far fewer 20-something virgins stewing away these days, alone and behind a screen, if they did what we did and what our parents did and just tried things out, and, above all, accepted what things were, rather than worrying about what they should be. The perfect meeting of minds, bodies and souls comes much later. If you are lucky.
Iused to devour books; the longer the better. As a quite grumpy and geeky teen, there was nothing I liked more than getting stuck into a George Eliot or a Dickens.
That was then and this is now; I can barely concentrate long enough now to read short novels set in the present, let alone Victorian whoppers.
It’s completely understandable, then, that many people – including those with learning disabilities, difficult life circumstances, or poor health – are feeling totally alienated from the pleasures of literacy.
Which is why I’m full of admiration for bestselling novelist Jojo Moyes, who has donated £350,000 of her money to save the Quick Reads literacy scheme from closure. Quick Reads commissions authors such as Andy McNab and Jeffrey Archer to write short novels for distribution at £1 a pop to libraries, prisons, adult education centres and colleges.
Anything dedicated to re-establishing a love of books amid the technological overdrive of modern life should be applauded. The end.
‘Although it may be easier to find sex, it’s harder to find the sex you want to have’