As students returned to campus this fall, many of them sat through orientation weeks with presentations that included guidance on safe sex practices. Foregrounded by concepts such as “consent” and “sex positivity,” there is often little to no vision of what healthy relationships look like, and no question as to whether physical intimacy should be a part of that picture. Universities continue to pursue this type of programming even as Gen Z becomes increasingly aware that concepts like “consent” and “sex positivity,” however much they comport with the progressive policies they support, have little to offer when it comes to finding real love.
Sex Positive = Sex Negative?
Between the record-high rates of sexual assault, the ubiquity of hookup culture, and the death of shared dating norms, young people are left to their own devices as today’s categories for understanding sexual encounters do little to help them cultivate the qualities that would help them discover and cultivate lifelong love. As Captain Renault observes of his friend Rick Blaine in the movie Casablanca, “My dear Ricky, I suspect that under that cynical shell, you’re at heart a sentimentalist.” Despite the pervasive cynicism one sees in the way they speak about sex, Gen Z’ers recognize the naïveté of “sex positivity.” Gen Z is, as this Buzzfeed article put it, “a generation raised in sex-saturated environments, yet also increasingly sexless” according to a cited study about the decline of sexual activity in that age group. They are much wiser than their forbears in this respect – in spite of being taught that romance is dead and marriage is outmoded, they long for the kind of love that lasts beyond one night, the kind that monogamous marriage is intended to nurture. The problem is that they rarely receive any comprehensive vision of a healthy, happy, long-lasting marriage from popular culture or society at large.
An Unhappy Inheritance
Unlike generations before them who sought to liberate sex from the confines of marriage, monogamy, and heterosexuality, this generation has been the first to experience the unintended consequences – no-fault divorce, pornography, sexual assault, sexualization, and commodification are the fruits of a project which promised to empower and include. As a result, Gen Z shoulders the burden of figuring out, absent clear moral guidance from trusted adults, the need for affirmative consent and sexual integrity in addition to a positive vision of sex as a beautiful, good thing. Without the moral vocabulary to differentiate between ideas and behaviors that dignify human beings and those that degrade them, Gen Z gets to experiment with consent contracts and sexual acts that leave them feeling violated and stripped of agency.
What “Liberation” Has Wrought
Consent and sex positivity were supposed to operate amorally so as to accommodate any and all definitions of goodness, and yet they do so at the expense of the good – that is, the safety, health, sanity, and happiness – of young people who find themselves caught up in a sexual zeitgeist of murky origin. The de-stigmatization of commercial sex such as pornography and prostitution (and rightly so for its corrosive effects on individuals, families, and societies) was famously lauded by the sex and gender theorist Gayle S. Rubin in her 1984 essay “Thinking Sex” as the new horizon for sexual liberation. With maximal leeway to pursue one’s own sexual agenda, the result is not so much a younger generation with greater ability for self-determination as much as another way to conscript young, impressionable minds into a story of another’s making. The result is not just a distortion of the truth about human beings, but the destruction of young people’s ability to pursue their own dreams.
Where Does Gen Z Go From Here?
Though universities continue to push concepts like “consent” and “sex positivity” in order to avoid falling victim to the latest social media imbroglio at the hands of their inmost radical factions, they do their students no favors in helping them consider, each for his or herself, what it takes to start and sustain a healthy relationship. Without consulting the best of tried-and-true tradition, it is apparent they would rather take a shot in the dark than help their students aim successfully at their target. A generation that has been brought up to antagonize historical ways of thinking will have to rediscover this tradition through trial and error. This year, we hope that our supporters will help shatter the lies that persist about the purpose of marriage and family. We hope that our students will join with their peers in bringing about a better culture, where sexual acts are expressions of love and devotion within their proper context of marriage; where every person is honored and loved, body and soul, in healthy relationships; and where marriage and family are valued as means of strengthening the social bonds that hold us together, acknowledging the gravity of an encounter.
