“At War With Sex”

On 2/14/2022, the Twitter account for the website Novara Media tweeted the following:

From TikTok’s #CancelPorn movement to annual battles over kink at Pride, Gen Z appears to be at war with sex. In fact they’re continuing one started by feminists in the 70s, writes @asaseresin.

Of course, the description of being “at war with sex,” caught my eye, if only because that’s such a ridiculous thing to write about anybody who is not part of a celibacy cult.

To be fair, the article the tweet is promoting — “Why Is Gen Z So Sex-Negative?” by Asa Seresin — is much more thoughtful and interesting than the tweet promoting it might make it sound. It mainly compares the anti-pornography views of certain young people, especially those on the app TikTok as well as in the halls of academia, with the views of second wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s.

The biggest issue with the article is its use of the phrase “sex negative,” to describe modern young people who are skeptical of pornography and its impact on society. When most people think of someone who’s “sex negative,” they think of someone who’s in favor of banning pornography, wants to reintroduce sodomy laws, or whose ultimate goal is to erase sexuality from every aspect of our popular culture. Even many of the second wave feminists Seresin discusses in her article were in favor of direct…