Playboy Says We're in a Sex Drought

By now, you’ve probably heard some talk of the great American sex recession. After months of debate over whether Americans really are having less sex and, if so, who’s to blame, Playboy decided it was time to chime in. According to the magazine that was once at the forefront of American sexuality, we are indeed in the throes of a sex recession.

A study conducted for Playboy‘s Summer 2019 Gender and Sexuality issue found that more than half of Americans are unsatisfied with their current level of sexual activity and think they should be having “way more” sex. While many of those Americans also expressed a belief that they were having less sex than their peers, the survey results suggest sex rates are down across the country, despite signs that may lead people to believe others are having more sex than they are.

“We’re in a sex drought; a sex recession,” Playboy Executive Editor Shane Michael Singh told Cheddar in an interview Wednesday.

While the idea of a so-called sex recession is nothing new, Singh offered a potentially controversial new explanation for the nation’s dwindling sex drive. “People are less interested in sex,” he told Cheddar. “They’re afraid to have sex because of MeToo and [Harvey] Weinstein-gate and all those things.”

Singh also suggested that the country’s shifting sexual attitudes may not actually mirror a corresponding shift in sexual practices. While nontraditional sexual dynamics and structures such as polyamory, kink and nonmonogamy have increasingly entered mainstream conversations and media in recent years, Singh argued that Americans are “actually still pretty conservative” when it comes to what’s actually going on in the bedroom.

“We still value emotional connection; we value long-term intimacy; we still value sex with spouses,” he said. “So this dating app culture and this idea of polyamory and open relationships becoming a little more exciting isn’t changing how we feel about who we actually want to go to bed with at night.”

According to Singh, the survey also found that longterm monogamy may be more satisfying than it gets credit for. “We found that [out of] LGBTQ people, one in five have more than 25 sexual partners in their lifetime, but their sex lives are less satisfactory to them,” Singh said. “Most heterosexual people think that their sex lives are very satisfying to them and they’ve only had, you know, one partner.”

The jury may still be out on the whole sex recession thing, but when Playboy is preaching the value of lifelong monogamy, surely it must be the end times for sex.

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