Donald Trump is tanking the economy with his here-today-no-wait-here-in-two-weeks-no-wait tariff game, but that’s not the only recession he’s responsible for: he’s ruining our sex lives. The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently released a report about the continuing sex recession in which Americans of all ages are having less sex, and I’m blaming our pussy-grabber-in-chief. The lack of sex among young people has been well documented. Teens and young adults are waiting longer to have sex and doing it less. In 2010, 12% percent of young people (18-29) said they hadn’t had sex in the previous year. By 2024, that number had doubled to 24%. One reason for this is that fewer people in this age group are married or living with a partner than in years past. While we like to think it’s the single people who are out there boffing like bunnies, having a partner in your bed every night does make it more likely that you’ll get some. Most experts blame young people’s expanding digital life for their shrinking sex lives. Easy access to porn is part of it, but the changes that smart phones and social media brought to our society go way deeper. Most notably, young people are spending far less time with their friends. Between 2010 and 2019, the average time young adult spent with friends each week fell by nearly 50%, from 12.8 hours to just 6.5 hours. That was pre-pandemic. During the pandemic it dipped to 4.2 hours for understandable social-distancing reasons. But the post-Covid recovery has been minimal. In 2024, young adults spent just 5.1 hours with friends in any given week. Sure, you can send a sext, but if you’re not even hanging out with your peers, you’re definitely not making out in the backseat of your mom’s Subaru Outback. (Okay, fine, if you’re in your 20s, you shouldn’t be making out in your mom’s car or living in her basement, but you should be making out somewhere.) It wasn’t that long ago that we were spending billions of dollars telling young people that sex was dirty and dangerous. Is it possible that in addition to getting iPhones and a PlayStation 3s they got the message? Could the sadness and sexlessness be the lasting legacy of the abstinence-until-marriage movement? I’m not suggesting that getting laid is the solution to all of young people’s mental health challenges, but I would argue that not getting laid is both a symptom and a cause. Sex is connection. It's not just young, single people who are going through a collective dry spell. Married people of all ages are getting less than those who came before (see what I did there?). Between 1996 and 2008, 59% of married adults ages 18-64 reported having sex once a week or more. That number fell to 49% for the period of 2010 to 2024. Screen time—which used to be a group activity—is one of the problems. Instead of binging Buffy, married people are retreating into their own screens. A 2023 IFS study found that people are putting off going to bed in favor of doomscrolling or playing video games. The authors dubbed these people bedtime procrastinators (a habit we parents most associate with toddlers) and found that many of them consume two hours of digital media in the three hours before bed. If your bed is empty because your partner prefers Pinterest, you’re probably having less sex. For her piece about the sex recession in the Wall Street Journal, writer Elizabeth Bernstein interviewed couples and sex therapists to get a better understanding of why there’s so much less sex. Social media and digital devices made the list but so did concerns about the economy, a loss of reproductive rights, and the barrage of daily news. As one therapist told her, we’ve been in a constant state of fight-or-flight for years and it just keeps getting worse. This is how I can get away with blaming Donald Trump for a recession that started before he was president. The sexual predator in the Oval Office has dominated our political discourse for an entire decade now (he announced his candidacy in June of 2015). He’s a hateful narcissist who cares about no one but himself, and many of us are a mess because of it. It’s hard to want sex when you feel angry and defeated all the time. But we should. As sex therapist Laurie Mintz told Bernstein, “Sex is like going to the gym. Sometimes you feel like you don’t want to do it, but you always feel better afterwards.” And like going to the gym, sex is good for us. It gets our hearts pumping, boosts our immune systems, relieves pain, helps us sleep, lowers stress, sharpens memory, builds confidence, deepens intimacy, and increases relationship satisfaction. Plus, sex begets sex. The more you have, the more you want, and the more you want, the more you have. So, let’s do it with a partner, a friend, or all by ourselves. Sex on Wednesday was never meant as a directive or even a suggestion of what we should all be doing mid-week, but maybe that should change. At least for today. We can’t let the bastards win, and if the best way to prevent that is by having an orgasm tonight, who are we to argue? Instagram, X, laundry, dishes, and the fight for democracy can wait. (I mean, penetrative sex lasts less than 6 minutes on average, so even with foreplay and basking, it won’t have to wait very long). Comstock But Worse: South Carolina’s New Law Bans Abortion Information (Birth Control Could be Next)South Carolina Republicans have scheduled a hearing on SB 323 which could be the most extreme abortion ban yet. South Carolina already has a law which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be heard. As we’ve discussed many times, this isn’t actually a heartbeat, and it often happens long before a woman knows she’s pregnant. The new law would get rid of the heartbeat as the point at which abortion becomes illegal and replace it with the minute the stick could have turned pink, which happens even earlier. It would also get rid of any exemptions for rape, incest, or fetal anomalies. Women have died because of laws like this, but that’s not what makes this one extreme. This bill would make abortion at any stage a felony akin to the murder of a person. Anyone who has an abortion could go to prison for up to 30 years. (Yes, this was always about punishing the women.) Anyone who aids in an abortion could also go to prison for up to 30 years. This may sound like a provision designed to deter providers, but it’s worse than that. Lawyers in South Carolina told Abortion, Every Day that even buying gas for someone who wants to leave the state for an abortion could put you in the crosshairs of SB 323. But wait, there’s more. The bill makes it a felony to provide information about abortion—including via a website or a phone call. Anthony Comstock would be so proud. (Just a few days ago, I might have said the law was clearly unconstitutional, but I lost the last shred of faith in SCOTUS with this week’s ruling condoning racial profiling by ICE.) It’s unclear how South Carolina would enforce this law because that same informational websites deemed criminal in Charleston would still be legal in Raleigh and Atlanta, but Pornhub has shut down on a state-by-state basis, so we know it’s doable. Plus, they’re banking on us all to censor ourselves. But wait, there’s more. Like most legislation, SB 323 starts with a set of definitions. These are intended to get all readers on the same page before they look at the rest of the bill. Sometimes, however, lawmakers sneakily slip in the biggest changes right up front. This is one of those bills, and once again Anthony Comstock would be so proud. The bill defines conception as “fertilization of an ovum by sperm.” Remember conception is not a medical term, it’s a religious one. Fertilization is the medical term. They could have left it at that. What’s more concerning, though, is that the authors then change the definition of contraceptives. It used to read:
That definition isn’t great because we know that none of our modern contraceptive methods actually prevent implantation, but the new shorter definition is may be worse.
The South Carolina ACLU suggests that not specifying methods that prevent ovulation or implantation in the official definition of contraceptives opens the door to banning them. That sounds counterintuitive, but it actually makes sense: you take them off the list of contraceptives before you go back and put them on the list of abortifacients. Did I mention that this bill also makes it unlawful to possess, advertise, or provide information about abortifacients. For now that “includes mifepristone, misoprostol, or any other chemical or drug dispensed with the intent of causing an abortion.” But from there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump before your lo-loestrin and my newsletter become illicit materials. (The first hearing on this bill is scheduled for October 1, and I will keep my eye on it for us.) Sex on Wednesday is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Sex on Wednesday that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Everything Is Awful
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