Bring Back Taboo and Shame

We normalized too many sex things, and it made those things less hot.

Photo by Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa on Unsplash

In general, I am glad we don’t live in the repressed, puritanical world of the Victorians. Sometimes, I see glimmers of that worldview in Gen Z, such as the never-ending horror at all the goofy sexual pantomime antics of Sabrina Carpenter, and I shudder a bit. It seems, overhyped scandal by overhyped scandal, Gen Z is “canceling sex.”

But millennials have done something else to cancel sex, or at least make it a lot less appealing. In our quest to “normalize” everything under the sun, to vanquish slut-shaming and repression, we have taken the taboo out of basically everything that isn’t illegal. And unfortunately, taboo is what makes something hot. Sure, you’re probably never going to develop a kink that hasn’t been “done before,” but at the very least, you should be able to feel like you’re doing something scandalous. It’s hard to feel that way when you’re ultra-aware of how normalized that thing has become.

It’s hard to feel like you have some super-sexy secret when literally every kink has a Reddit sub, full of people reminding each other about clear boundaries, respect, and linking to onerous FAQ pages, which confirm that you are definitely not the first person to be turned on by this thing. If you feel a tingle when thinking about something naughty, you will quickly discover that you are now, whether you like it or not, part of the XYZ Kink Community, and they have rules. If that wasn’t enough of a boner killer, you’ve got goofy cartoon infographs about every fetish under the sun, made by quirky, approachable, theater-kid-coded sex educators (While doing research for this article, I came across one about fisting, starring muppet-type characters.) Yes, it’s good for people to get clinical information about how to use lube, but do we really need to…Sesame Street-ify various kinks and fetishes? Is something really that hot if you’re imagining Big Bird explaining it to you? (Unless you have a Big Bird fetish—I won’t judge.)

Feels worth mentioning that I made this cake.

In millennials’ quest to normalize sex and kink, to kill taboos and make everyone unashamed of their proclivities, we did something else: we took all the sexiness out of sex.