Good sex feels increasingly rare. We need to change that

September 6, 2026 — 4:23pm

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Last week at the park with our kids, my husband and I passed a car with towels covering the windows. Weird, but ok. My husband said the car’s occupants must’ve been having sex, which made sense, later, of the flushed faces of the young man and woman hovering near the car as they hugged. The prude in me was shocked, it being broad daylight and all.

Then, a second thought. If no one was getting choked (even consensually) during sex, or allegedly pack raped by private school boys, or allegedly having their boundaries crossed by drunk footballers, then today, consensual, legal, enjoyable sex counts as a win.

Good sex feels increasingly rare. Recent terrible headlines represent one distortion of sex. But there are other forces arrayed against us that are driving the sexes apart. We shouldn’t take this lying down.

The reported Gen Z sex recession, our phone addiction, the substitution effect of online porn: all culprits here. There’s more.

We’re addled by algorithms pushing content declaring the awfulness of the other sex: his situationship ways, her extreme pickiness in mate selection, his slackness around the house. As British feminist Louise Perry observes, the internet “exposes what the other sex is saying about you all the time”. Words meant for other men, or other women, can feed hostility between the sexes if a mixed audience listens in.

A teenage girl dies from........

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