A survey by the French Institute for Public Opinion (IFOP) shows that 24 percent of French adults aged 18 to 69 said they had not had any sexual contact in the past 12 months, compared with 9 percent in 2006, according to The Telegraph.
People don't want to have sex anymore PHOTO Shutterstock
The percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who have never had sex is 28%, up from 5% in 2006. Overall, 43% of the 1,911 respondents said they had sex at least once a week, compared to 58% in 2009.
Overall, the proportion of French people who have had sex in the past year – 76% on average – is at its lowest level in 50 years.
The results are echoed in other Western countries, including a study last year showing that the number of British teenagers starting their sexual experience by the age of 15 has fallen by up to a third in the past decade.
Is this a sign of individual sexual liberation and the decline of any sense of sexual (marital) duty? Or is it a symptom of collective depression? How often should we have sex?
Outside of Europe, the most abstinent seem to be the Japanese. According to a survey this month, more than 68 percent of marriages in Japan are completely sexless or almost devoid of a physical element, underscoring the challenges the government faces in reversing the nation's declining birth rate.
In South Korea, about one in three adults in Seoul have not had sex for over a year, according to a 2021 study by Professor Youm Yoo-sik of Yonsei University's Department of Sociology.
South Korea is even facing a boycott of tens of thousands of women who are actively choosing a single life. Called 4B, where the B refers to the Korean prefix bi-, meaning “not”, the movement is based on four commandments: “Say no to dating, no to sex with men, no to marriage and no to childbirth.”
Also, another study published this month in the Journal of Sex Research examined data from 180,000 teenagers in 33 countries over 10 years.
It found that in 25 countries, the number of 15-year-olds who reported having had sex fell significantly, and it did not increase in any country.
In the French survey, too, many respondents prefer surfing social media, playing video games, watching TV or reading a book instead of getting close to their partners.
This trend was also noted in a US study, which also found that US adults and youth appear to be having less sex than previous generations. Mobile phones and other media devices are said to be the cause of this change in behavior. The findings are based on data from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), comparing more than 8,500 individual responses from 2009 and 2018.
These results mirrored a similar study in the UK, the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Styles (Natsal), which has been collecting information on the public's sexual experiences for more than three decades.
Contrary to what some people think, parents have the most sex PHOTO Shutterstock
With each survey, Natsal found that the average number of sexual intercourses per week decreased: in 1991, respondents said they had sex five times a month. In 2001, this dropped to four times a month, and by 2012, the average number was three a month. Delayed by Covid-19, the fourth study is due to be published later this year.
Declines were also reported in Australia, Finland and Germany, where a 2019 study by the Free Time Monitor (Freizeit-Monitor) showed that only 52 percent of Germans have sex at least once a month. Five years earlier, the percentage was 56%.
The study found that single people and retirees have the least sex, and contrary to what some believe, parents have the most. He mentioned an increase in “non-professional stress” as the main culprit. Bombarded by images of other people's perfect lives, it is argued that people increasingly feel an obligation to “perform excessively” in their spare time. As a result, the people of Germany “devote less and less time to sex and eroticism”, says scientific director Prof. Ulrich Reinhardt.
The world is definitely having less sex, confirms Soazig Clifton, academic director for Natsal at University College London and NatCen Social Research. Clifton says one potential cause is that “people feel more comfortable talking about sex now compared to the 90s“.
“Maybe people are now better able to tell us they're not having sex. There's some statistical work we've done that shows that we tend to hide data less.”
“What one generation does intensively, the next does less”
Another potential cause that Clifton and her colleagues detected—at least among middle-aged respondents, mainly women—is burnout. “Women are too tired to have sex. They have so many other things going on in their lives.”
Although the decline in the birth rate is due to a variety of factors, France's National Institute of Demographic Studies showed in a recent report that regular intercourse “plays a role in determining the fertility level of couples“.
Observers have suggested that there may also be a positive side to the decline in sexual activity, namely a form of release from social pressure to be sexually active, as well as people simply finding other things to do. Women, for example, are less likely to accept sex with their partners as a matter of marital duty than they were a few generations ago.
Women are too tired to have sex PHOTO Sutterstock
François Kraus, IFOP director of politics and current affairs polls, says: “The central theme emerging from this data is that there is a growing proportion of French people for whom sex is not an obligation.“
“We are witnessing the deconstruction of the concept of marital duty. This is a major anthropological shift, because since Christian marriage was conceived beginning in the Middle Ages, it has always been presented culturally as the place of procreation, of legitimate sex.”
“For a long time, the concept of marital rape was not considered. All this has changed.” Another factor is a significant minority of citizens, mainly Muslims, who abstain from sex before marriage. Muslims make up 10% of France's population.
#Metoo and the lack of sex
The #Metoo movement has spawned two significant books in France. First, “I consent,” by Vanessa Springora, revealed her destructive relationship as a minor under the influence of Gabriel Matzneff, which effectively amounts to an anti-pedophilia manifesto called “The Under Sixteens“.
Second, “To the big family”, by Camille Kouchner, revealed his twin brother's incest with their stepfather, a well-connected well-known political commentator Olivier Duhamel.
In his forthcoming book, “Impossible City”, Simon Kuper devotes a chapter “France's sexual reconciliation with the year 1968” and the student revolution with its playful slogans such as “Enjoy without restrictions” and “It is forbidden to prohibit“.
“When the French version of #MeToo took off around 2020, the soixante-huitard generation was caught off guard by the shift in sexual mores,” he writes. The shockwaves continue, most recently with the indictment and disgrace of actor Gérard Depardieu following allegations of rape and public fantasizing about a minor.
The French study, like others, finds that social pressures to have an active sex life – or at least to be perceived as having one – are decreasing. For example, 12% of respondents defined themselves as asexual.
This is the case of Anna Mangeot, who has just published “Asexual” about “a woman who loves without making love“.
Anti-Metoo protest in South Korea PHOTO Guliver Gettyimages
“I'm not sexually abstinent, I'm asexual. I was born this way, it's innate,” she says. An asexual is “a person who feels little or no sexual attraction to others,” even though they may have libido and auto-erotic pleasure, she says.
“But that didn't stop me from falling in love and being in a relationship. So I've always been in relationships without any sexual attraction and they've always worked pretty well, even perfectly in my relationship today.“
“Solo pleasures are more democratic than they used to be“
In the IFOP study, 52% of French women said they sometimes had sex without really wanting to. In a similar survey in 1981, the proportion was 76%. “Awomen's financial autonomy has allowed them to realize that they don't always have to say yes if they don't want to,” says Kraus.
Video games vs. sex
3% of respondents said they avoided sex with their partner at least once to watch a TV series, read a book, go on social media or play video games. The trend was particularly common among men under 35, with 53% of them admitting to eschewing sex in favor of a video game at least once.
French sexologist Aurore Malet Karas says that screens, apps and pornography are definitely having their say when it comes to physical sex, as they question the effort-pleasure ratio of real encounters versus the virtual world.
“Does the reward of dating in real life live up to expectations when you can put in less effort and have the same pleasure? The people I consult often think it's not worth it. When you're single, you have to find a partner, meet up, catch a train, pay for a meal, have a conversation, all for a result that might not be up to par.“
Abnousse Shalmani: “Sex without consent and desire is violence and rape” PHOTO Shutterstock
Often, as in the dystopian universe depicted in Woody Allen's 1973 film, “Sleeper”, people are looking for quick and efficient solutions such as “the orgasmatron”, a rapid device for inducing sexual orgasm. In the world of the film, help is needed because almost all people are impotent or frigid, except for men of Italian descent.
Regardless of these externalities, Malet Karas warned that the issue of sexual desire should not be glossed over.
In the “L'Express“, columnist Abnousse Shalmani added: “Sex without consent and desire is violence and rape. But not all sex is submission. By mixing the two, neo-feminists extract women from physical love.”
She says that intercourse itself has been scientifically proven to be beneficial to us both physically and mentally. “What if eco-anxiety, collective depression, greeting aggression and indifference to others were the consequence of one thing: the absence of a sex life?she asked.
