Everything Is Sexual But Nothing Is Sexy
Why modern culture hurts women's sexual power
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Everything Is Sexual, But Nothing Is Sexy
Trojan priest Dares Phrygius described Helen of Troy as beautiful, ingenious and charming. A physical representation of both virginal purity and nature’s chaos and instability. A symbol in opposition to the archetypally masculine, heroic and honor-driven world of the Greek Gods. She can create the world and she can be the catalyst for its destruction. A daughter of Zeus; transcendent — godlike — but bound nonetheless to the same moral flaws and failings as man. Through one act of desire and jealousy — her capture by Paris — the story of The Iliad begins. She is both a lynchpin of hope and optimism and a chaotic spark that sets the world on fire. She is a symbol of feminine power. The seductress, maiden, and heroine embodied as one.
Women possess an equal — and at times greater — power than men. We can look at thousands of historical and fictional examples; Madea, Dido, Guinevere, Joan of Arc, and Cleopatra, to name only a few. But female power is illusive; shadowed and veiled. It has less to do with striking your opponent with a sword, and more to do with why the sword is being swung in the first place. The modern idea that women are “disempowered” comes from an educational misunderstanding of what makes male and female power different.
The Power of Female Sexuality
For the sake of simplicity, I want to focus on the component of female power most of us are familiar with. Sex. Not the act itself, but what it means to wield it. What is the difference between “sexiness” — allure — and just being sexual? Modern culture has told women that their sexual power comes from using it like a man; aggressively. Women possess a leveling power through their allure. This is because of our biology. Women accept a much greater physical and mental risk through sex than men do. A woman chooses; a man desires. A man can sleep with hundreds of women without consequence, but all it takes is one accident for a woman to become pregnant and bear the primary responsibility for the child’s future care.
Historically, this risk was mitigated through ritual and courtship. A man would have to demonstrate he was trustworthy, dependable, and able to provide. Divorce was either illegal or acceptable only in cases of spousal abuse or infidelity. Abortion was dangerous and taboo. And the idea of a once-a-day “birth control” pill was science fiction. This all changed during the sexual revolution of the 60's. Sixty years later and we’re living in a sex-obsessed culture. Everything is sexual, but it’s not sexy. The mystery, dignity, and power of female sexual allure have become commodified and warped. Women are not to blame for listening to what they’re being told by celebrities, educational institutions, and peers. They’re just following a new normal.
This is not “incel” rage (I’m happily married) but merely an observation that we’ve become sexually desensitized. And with it, women have lost power. This cultural tornado of sex and hedonistic liberation has paradoxically led us toward a sharply declining birth rate and fewer young people having sex. Data from UCLA’s California Health Survey found that In 2011, about 22% of Californians ages 18 to 30 reported having no sexual partners in the prior 12 months. That crept up to 29% in 2019 and jumped to 38% in 2021. The survey specifically asked about the frequency of sex; not differentiating between one-night stands, casual partners, and long-term relationships. Young porn-addicted men struggling to get erections with real women are getting Viagra prescriptions. Sexual activities and fetishes that once existed on the edge of normalcy have become normal prerequisites for a casual hook-up. Adults aged 18 to 45 — nearly all of the users of OnlyFans — comprise little more than a third of the U.S. population; just shy of 119 million in total. With 70% of the 1.3 million “creators” on OnlyFans being women, the extrapolated data show that around 2% of American women 18-45 are selling themselves on the platform.
We’ve forgotten that sexiness, the mysterious sense of physical attraction, is not purely defined by the physical. It has just as much to do with the mental and psychological as it does with the outline of an attractive figure. And women have the ability and power to totally control the engagement. Confident, intelligent, self-respecting women can basically get a man to do anything they want. Men desire this chase. They are given a mission; a safe to crack, a damsel to rescue, and a point to prove. It is a slow and deliberate unveiling of another person’s mind and body. Simply put, men are better men and women are better women when it is harder to see boobs.
Now the average eighteen-year-old boy today sees more in a few weeks than the average 80-year-old in 1940 saw in his entire life. The allure and mystery of female sexuality have transformed from something that holds a restrained power to another cheap and exponentially depleting dopamine fix. It makes sense that when we’re being bombarded by an endless stream of cheap sex, that both men and women come to devalue female sexuality. Men respond to “liberated” and sexually promiscuous women callously, without respect or foresight. Women respond by attempting to outdo each other’s sexual value in a marketplace that tells them they can always be more sexual and more “liberated”.
I should caveat this with a “some but not all”. Some people will take this post as a blanket statement about an entire generation of women; that I think we should live in a prudish, handmaid’s tale, dystopia where women need the length of their skirts measured in public. That is not the case. Our culture and media have shamed and stuck their nose up at the idea that a woman’s power comes from what she doesn’t show. And so it makes sense, given the incentives, that women respond by showing more. I’m only speaking as a man, a husband, and as the father of a daughter with whom I will do my best to raise with an understanding that the power and dignity of sexuality is preserved by guarding it with intention, and not by cheapening it.
As always, thanks for reading.
-Joe