Let’s Talk About All The Sex Articles In The New York Times

Last week I had some interesting text chats with a few girlfriends about a series of articles in The New York Times about some eye-popping sexual mores that I am completely and prudently shocked by. I'm still wrapping my head around some of them.

The first came courtesy of a story about what the teenage kids are doing these days. The headline alone, “The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex,” made my heart instantly palpitate, even though my 12 year old son seems light years away from dealing with some of this sex stuff. (I can only pray.) Even the URL was ominous: www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage. 

Brain damage???

The gist is that teenagers are doing some seriously violent and violating things with each other, namely asphyxiation. It’s somehow become de rigueur to choke a female during sex. A few weeks ago I finally watched a few episodes of Euphoria and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I don’t know what finally made me curious about this show that, at its outset, I figured would be disturbing to any parent of certain-aged children. I was not wrong. In the first episode there was a scene during which a young man thinks the young woman he’s having sex with “likes it rough,” so he starts choking her. She fends him off (thank god), and they have a quick check-in to assess that no, she is not into that stuff, and they proceed with their business. 

The NYT article cites that scene as one piece of evidence of how mainstream this choking business has become. There was one quote in the article that has stuck with me: “Sexual trends can spread quickly on campus and, to an extent, in every direction. But, at least among straight kids, I’ve sometimes noticed a pattern: Those that involve basic physical gratification—like receiving oral sex in hookups—tend to favor men. Those that might entail pain or submission, like choking, are generally more for women.”

WTF???

This imbalance is not shocking to me. Women—young, old, and everything in between—still struggle with power imbalances with men—in the classroom, the office, and, yes, the bedroom. I think what is shocking is the depravity we’ve arrived at, where young men think it’s OK to choke young women. The researchers in the NYT article say that some of this is from the porn they’re watching, which is normalizing this stuff. 

What I appreciated is how the author establishes that she’s not there to “kink-shame” anyone. That’s an important disclaimer because, you know, to each their own. I’m not here to do that, either. But it worries me that a young woman’s first sexual encounters could involve such violence, and from such a submissive position. I don’t think I’m being an overly prude person here. The article included several admissions of young men wondering why “girls like to be choked” and young women wondering why “all guys want to choke you.” There’s a disconnect. How does it get rectified so that both sexes come to their first sexual encounters from a more fully consented, equitable place? Sigh. My head hurts wondering about this. 

The second article that came across my transom in the same week was about “polycules.” I had never heard of this term. I had heard of people being poly, as in polyamorous, but not this word. For those who haven’t read the NYT article, a polycule is a group of people engaging in multiple romantic relationships, which can be sexual, sensual, or even platonic. 

The story centered on this one polycule of 20 people living near Boston. I can’t even describe the complexity of some of these relationships in this one group of people. The participants represent every spectrum of sexual and gender identity. Some people in the polycule are married, and also in relationships with other couples or other individuals in the group. 

It sounds more “anything goes” than it is in actuality, because apparently the interactions of the group—and who hooks up with whom—only occur after some serious communication that’s required to establish the boundaries of the relationships. It’s lots of talking and assessing, as this person in the polycule attests: “Adhering to other people’s boundaries is a big part of being in the polycule. That’s paramount. In the polycule, it ranges from people who really don’t have rules to we’re only going to date people together or we’re going to participate in the group only as friendships, or as sensual friendships, or we’re only going to be sexually intimate at gatherings, and outside of that we’re not going to date anyone individually. We keep track in group chats.” 

Those group chats must be interesting!

My girlfriends and I weren’t judging the polycule in our text chat, but it did seem, to us, anyway, like there’s a lot of work involved in this type of intimacy. I got tired just reading about it. 

The one insightful comment that really struck a nerve—and probably because I read this NYT article a few days after the choking one—was this person talking about empowerment: “There’s something that feels radical about it, that feels liberating, that really speaks to empowerment, especially for women or queer or nonbinary individuals. It’s loving people in a very unapologetic way, not conforming to norms. We know why monogamy is still the dominant structure. The patriarchy. The lack of rights women had. As a woman, and as a queer woman, being able to live my life as authentically as possible without needing my husband’s permission, that’s empowering.” 

I get that. Good for her. 

All of which brings me to the third article about sex that I read in the NYT this week. Granted, the paper’s magazine had an issue themed around modern love, so that’s why all these sex stories are circulating. Good on them. They got people like me talking and thinking about their content. 

The third article was titled, “Can a Sexless Marriage Be a Happy One?” I mean, give it to the NYT editors for coming up with all the grabby headlines. This article is about how some people are challenging the idea that everyone must be having lots of sex to be happy in a relationship. It gets into the honest to god doldrums that impact lots of people who’ve been together for a long time. It’s hard keeping that flame glowing at full power! 

I have to say, it was refreshing to read something that was brutally honest about what I imagine most marriages are like after a certain number of years. Usually what we see in movies and TV shows are hypersexed couples who haven’t lost a beat no matter how long they’ve been married. I’m sure those people exist, but I don’t think they’re the majority. Just read the comments in this NYT story and you'll see what I mean. 

Some of this seems to come down to the fact that life is hard, and life is busy, and some things, like sex, often take a backseat. Whether good or bad, depending on the person, I think it’s helpful to show couples talking about the other important aspects they value in their relationships. 

But it’s not just older, married people who are finding pleasure, ahem, in other things. Younger women are, too, as this quote from the NYT article suggests: “Many younger women, for instance, shaped in part by the #MeToo movement, are engaging in intentional abstinence. There are trends on TikTok about going ‘boysober,’ a word coined by the comedian Hope Woodard, who says that taking a break from sex can be empowering for women who previously altered their desires to accommodate men.” 

There’s that idea of how we accommodate men at our own personal loss again. Harumph. 

I guess this week’s reading just goes to show that lots is changing and happening, or not happening, between the sheets.

Last weekend I enjoyed the Los Angeles Times’s annual Festival of Books. For a booklover like me, it’s like my Coachella (which, coincidentally was going on at the same time). I think some people even refer to Festival of Books as Bookchella. Cute. 

Anyway, I found myself going to a bunch of romance writer panels. As a writer myself I’m curious about this genre. If I’m being honest it’s because I know it’s highly marketable and lucrative to be a romance writer these days. I’ve just never imagined myself writing in this genre, but you never know. 

During these romance writer panels there was a lot of discussion about a woman’s sexual desire and how it’s something to be celebrated—in these books, sure, but also in the culture at large—and no longer shuffled off to the side. There was such an ownership about this, a fuck-you attitude to anyone clutching their pearls about a loose woman on the loose. It was pretty baller. 

The Ripped Bodice, an awesome romance bookstore (with an equally awesome name) in Culver City near where I live, had a booth at Festival of Books that was continuously crowded with women, and men!, grabbing romance novels and lining up to have them signed by the authors who routinely showed up. Romance is good! Sex is good! 

I guess at the end of the day, it all comes down to the fact that women’s sexuality and sensuality comes in all forms and that we all deserve our proclivities and desires to be respected, just as we deserve to be respected. I mean, come on, this isn’t groundbreaking stuff. But the fact that my weekly news consumption compelled me to write this blog post, in the year 2024, is the thing to clutch pearls about.