Sex Repression Critique

Israel Centeno 

“The so-called sex recession is puzzling in part because sex has seemingly never been less stigmatized or easier to procure. As Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker observes, “The electronic devices in our pockets contain not only a vast universe of free porn but also apps on which casual sex can be arranged as efficiently as a burrito delivery from DoorDash.” In today’s society, desire is no longer shameful. Kinks are considered healthy. Mutual pleasure is prioritized. People are free to do what they want in the bedroom—as long as all parties are pleased.”

So why aren’t young people hooking up?

There’s a deeper contradiction that the mainstream media refuses to confront. Younger generations have been caught in a tortured dance between backlash and progress. On one hand, we live in a world filled with instant gratification—bukkake, dick pics, and hookup apps. On the other, conservative institutions enforce invisibility or punishment for any sex outside of marriage and procreation. “

Tolentino rightly notes this duality.

But what she fails to note—either out of bias or convenience—is the influence of progressive moralism. Yes, the Right has its puritanical tendencies. But the Left has weaponized shame under new names: consent protocols so strict they kill spontaneity, identity politics that pathologize desire, and an intellectual environment where sex is a minefield. One wrong move, one misunderstood message, and you’re a social pariah. You’re canceled. Advised. Silenced. Or sued.

It’s not just the right-wingers. In fact, under the Biden and Obama administrations, we saw more censorship and suppression than in decades prior—soft censorship by publishers, platforms, and cultural gatekeepers. Eroticism had to sneak into the mainstream as sanitized romance novels. Anything too explicit, too raw, too male, too female, too binary, too real—was exiled.

Meanwhile, woke culture and the market merged into an unholy alliance. Pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter are transformed into symbols of feminist “progress” by committees that couldn’t define femininity if their grants depended on it. We live in an airless bubble where sexuality is constantly discussed, but rarely lived.

This is the spiritual sterility of our age. The desexualization of a supposedly sexually liberated culture. People are alone, afraid, and hyper-aware. The real issue isn’t sex—it’s fear. Fear of judgment. Fear of misstep. Fear of genuine intimacy.

So yes, the sex recession is real. But no, it’s not the fault of a law, or a court decision. It’s not Roe v. Wade. It’s the result of a culture that uses freedom as branding, while policing desire with more algorithms, more labels, more surveillance, and more shame.

This isn’t liberation. It’s bureaucratic puritanism.

And until we face that, there won’t be a renaissance of eros. Only more hashtags, more confusion, more control