“37% of Gen Z reported no sex in the last month — less than half the rate of Millennials and Gen X, and on par with those in their 60s.”
-The Kinsey Institute
Let that sink in.
Perhaps they just take the creed of the millennial workplace literally:
“We must all agree that none of us watch porn, women aren’t wearing makeup to look more attractive, and you’ve certainly never had a daydream about sleeping with your co-worker. That would be unprofessional.”
If asked:
“have you ever been sexually attracted to a co-worker?”
The required response,
”Of course not!”
The more enthusiastically you tell this lie, the safer you are.
Around 1% of the population is actually asexual, however, in the workplace, letting it slip that you are part of the 99% that is attracted to the opposite (or same) sex is the fastest, most certain form of career suicide.
That’s right — new graduates, with their sex drives at an all-time high, are expected to switch their sex drive to airplane mode as soon as they enter the office in order to create a “safe and welcoming” work environment, or suffer the consequences.
This gets even more ridiculous in fields like advertising, where much of the content is barely wearing a fig leaf — sex sells, after all. The sex drive is more directly acknowledged in the subject matter of the work than it is allowed to be in the workplace where it is being created and discussed.
The irony of the chaste professional is that in the pre-remote world, 20% of couples met at work (still 10% today), so somehow many people have managed to navigate past the HR policies to arrive at mutual acknowledgement of each other’s genitals.
This dynamic is most apparent in the workplace, but it even carries over to a nightclub, where direct acknowledgement of sexual attraction is considered “creepy” or “desperate”. It’s much easier to get socially punished for acknowledging your sexual attraction than it is to be rewarded.
So perhaps Gen Z is just unable to decode the ever-more-advanced cryptography required to avoid punishment for acknowledging one’s sex drive.
They’re watching more porn than ever though, might we hope the real thing will stage a comeback?