Honestly comes across to me some people cant comprehend the idea (especially in a modern context) someone might go through life with little interest in having sex with people they don't know well. Not to say people can't interpret characters differently & theres nothing wrong with multiple sexual partners but some people are just "Attractive 30 year old who never had sex? Unrealistic" same or worse w/WWX because he's also open and friendly so obv he'd have sex.
Tbh I feel this is a discussion that should proably be had in society in general. I feel that discussions about sex usually come in two flavours, one of which is ‘if you have sex then you are Sinning and you will be Punished, sex only for Procreation,’ and the other is ‘sex is the Best Thing, it’s Good for you, everyone should be following their Desires and be having Amazing Sex, and oh did we mention that it’s HEALTHY.’
And I think that both approaches are seriously questionable. Because let’s be real, speaking from a historical perspective, condemning sexual activity has prevented exactly 0 people from committing adultery or impregnating your maidservant or whatever. Banishment to hell is really not enough of a threat for some people not to fuck their hot milkman. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s useless and it ultimately just does a lot of harm.
On the other hand, overemphasising how supposedly empowering and important sex is creates a lot of unrealistic ideas and expectations. People feel pressured to reach certain ‘milestones’ until a certain age, or struggle with the sexual satisfaction that they are supposed to reach on a regular basis. With the prevalence of porn, a lot of people feel the need to ‘perform’ on the level that they see there. Which is just not how any of this works.
Sure, there are people who become sexually active in their teenage years and are pretty regularly sexually active until their old age. But for each of these people, there is another person that only becomes sexually active in their thirties or later, or one that gives up having sex (temporarily or permanently) for any number of reason, or one that just... doesn’t enjoy sex that much. And I’m not even talking about asexuality here. There are lots of people who aren’t having sex, or are only having sex very occasionally, and it’s fine.
And that’s really where we should bring this conversation tbh. People can choose to have or not have sex, but it should never happen under pressure, and right now, some parts of society are pressuring people not to have sex because it’s Bad, and the rest of it is pressuring people to have sex because it’s Good. We have been talking a lot about consent (which is super important folks, always get consent), but we are kind of failing on the ‘not wanting to have sex is not a value judgement or moral indicator regarding you or anyone else - just like wanting to have is not’ front.
There is a lot of stygmatisation going on regarding people who aren’t engaging in sex in the ‘right’ way, and it’s just so exhausting. And honestly, it would be good if fiction could do a better job of trying to get rid of this weird split between two frankly extreme options.
