You're listening to the microversion of the Savage Love cast at Savage.loaf.

I guess I've failed. According to a story in the Guardian, fewer people these days are having sex.

There's a steep rise in what Guardian, Future Writer, I mean, Sainer calls the voluntarily

celibate. People who've had sex and maybe could have sex again, but can't be arsed, as the

Brits would say, to have sex now or ever again possibly. Sainer sites, the National Survey

of Sexual Health and Behavior in the United States, which found a steep rise in young people,

adolescents who reported no sexual activity at all, partnered or alone, 28.8% to 44.2% of young men

and from 49.5% to 74% of young women. That's a lot of young people, particularly guys who aren't

jerking off or not willing to admit they're even jerking off. It's also an enormous range,

those percentages, somewhere between 28.8% and 44.2% of young men and 49.5% and 74% of young women,

that spread. Those spreads kind of makes you doubt the data, but let's take it at face value.

Quoting from Sainer's piece in the Guardian, the studies author raised several possible

contributing factors, including gaming and social media, taking time in precedence, more awareness,

of asexuality, and identity, a decline in alcohol use, and an increase in rough sex practices,

such as choking that may be frightening or off-putting to many and lower incomes.

Toss-in, the wider availability of porn, toss-in, the pandemic, those national

survey of sexual health and behavior results were published in 2019. So before the pandemic,

before the lockdowns, before the DOBS decision. And yeah, the number of young people just saying,

no, to partnered sex and maybe even too afraid to jerk off, probably higher now than 2019,

when that study was released. And yet, at the same time, more and more people are identifying as

queer, LGBT, QI plus, one in four high school students, according to new data from the Centers

for Disease Control, and one in five members of Gen Z, according to Gallup. At first glance,

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