When pointing out the rise of male sexlessness, either as a problem or symptom of larger societal problems, I often see the talking point that the cause of this is because women are more sexually and financially liberated.

In order to really determine if this is actually the case, we need to examine the past 5 decades of the Feminist movement, the sexual liberation movement, and collected data of sexless men.

Firstly, the sexual liberation and financial independence of women are not new phenomena.

With regards to women's sexual liberation (and contrary to popular belief), it did not arise out of 1960s second-wave Feminism but rather alongside it. The sexual liberation movement has deeper and more direct ideological roots in the apolitical free-love/hippie culture than the overtly political Feminist movements which were vastly more concerned with women's structural and financial liberation than who women were jumping into bed with. Still, as the sexual liberation movement gained traction in the 1970s, it became a hotly debated topic within Feminist circles and caused deep ideological schisms within the second-wave movement that still exist to this day.

As the radicalism, free love, and counter-cultural movements of the 1960s and 70s started to settle and we entered the 1980s, the overwhelming majority of structural barriers controlling women's lifestyles had been removed. Women could open credit cards and bank accounts on their own. Women could rent/own property on their own. Women could casual date and sleep with whoever they wanted with little fear of structural and financial repercussions, although social consequences were probably highly varied depending on the geographic dating culture. All throughout this time we saw reflections of the "modern Western woman" who could make her own money and date whoever she wanted reflected in the broader culture medium. (i.e. Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City or Elaine from Seinfeld). With more openness regarding sex, sociologists finally started to feel more comfortable collecting data about virginity and sex frequency.

In an analysis comparing the sexual proclivities of college students in the late-1980s/mid-1990s to those of college students living in the mid-2000s, University of Portland sociologist Martin Monto discovered the following:

Monto examined the responses of 1,800 18- to 25-year-olds who had completed at least one year of college. He compared a first group of responses, taken as part of the General Social Survey between 1988-1996, with a second group who answered the same questions on a survey taken between 2002 and 2010.

College students from the contemporary or β€œhookup” era did not report having more frequent sex or more sexual partners during the past year than undergraduates from the earlier era, says Monto, who presented the findings at a meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York City on August 13. They also did not report having more sexual partners since turning 18.

Among the first cohort, 65.2 percent reported having sex weekly or more often in the past year, compared with 59.3 percent from the second, more recent, cohort. Additionally, 31.9 percent of the earlier cohort said they had more than one sexual partner in the past year, compared with 31.6 percent of the 2002–10 group.

Source

In other words, there were no significant changes in sexual activity in the past year or # of new sexual partners between the two eras. Also, notice the cutoff in the above general survey: 2010.

The findings of this analysis are consistent with another Washington Post general social survey charting the % of men under 30 who report zero female sex partners since they turned 18 between the years 1989 and 2018.. In this chart we see male sexlessness remain remarkably and relatively stable despite even further socioeconomic advancements for women in the same timeframe. Then, in just a 10 year time frame (2008-2018), we see male sexlessness jump from a near low of 8% to a record high of 27%. Why is this? What happened?

If you're going to make the claim that male sexlessness is directly caused by women's sexual and financial freedom, then you need to answer the following question:

How exactly did women's sexual/financial freedom change that supposedly caused this massive spike in reported sexlessness? Did women suddenly become 200-300% more sexually liberated or financially independent in 2018 compared to 2008?

My assertion is there are deeper, multivariate causes to why more men are sexless and most of them have very little to do with Feminism or the supposed "sexual liberation" of women. I am fairly certain this opinion is both obvious and non-controversial for the vast majority of you reading this. What I find curious is both ends of the RP-BP spectrum actually agree on what is essentially two sides of the same dismissive, myopic talking point.

With the radical-BPers, it's:

  • "Women make their own money and can fuck whoever they want, of course there are going to be more of you frustrated virgins πŸ’…πŸ’…πŸ’…"

With the radical- RPers, it's:

  • "Feminism, birth control, and slutty women with impossibly high looks standards riding Chad's cock are responsible for there being more incels"