Hello, and welcome to Group Chat, where culture reporters Rebecca Jennings and Alex Abad-Santos discuss the topics currently blowing up our (and probably your) phones.

Old people have fretted about the sex that young people are (or aren’t) having since time immemorial. But lately it feels like the tension has amped up in wilder and weirder ways. Under Trump 2.0, with a hedonistic vibe in the air and a palpable nihilism, you’d think we would collectively loosen up some of our oldest ideas about sex, but if the past week is any indication, that’s not happening yet.

This week, X (formerly known as Twitter) erupted into discourse about IUDs. Polyamorous people once again became the victim of the internet’s collective bullying, while the same old “Gen Z are puritans who can’t handle sex in movies” conversation reared its head again. Then, a magazine declared that “everyone is horny.”

But … are they? What’s actually going on here? Rebecca Jennings and Alex Abad-Santos attempt to have a discussion about sex on the internet that’s still SFW.

Rebecca Jennings: So it’s become increasingly evident that we can’t, as a society, have a normal conversation about sex anymore. More than that, it feels like sex positivity is … dead?

Earlier this week, a guy posted a photo of his roommate doing a happy little jig because his girlfriend got an IUD, and a lot of people criticized him for “celebrating women’s pain” (because IUD insertion is often very painful), for not getting a vasectomy instead, or for “not loving her.” What did you think of all that?

Roommates girl got an iud, safe to say he’s pretty excited pic.twitter.com/K0Dgv6JWBJ

Alex Abad-Santos: I mean, if you read the sentences you just wrote, I don’t think you have to guess how I feel. There is no winning on the internet. Social media, X especially, is a place where you could post that you love golden retrievers and someone would be like, “Wow I can’t believe you want to inflict harm on Chihuahuas, you ableist.”

Of course posting something personal about birth control and implicitly sex was going to end with the worst conversation possible. Weirdos being reductive about birth control! Internet users with anime profile pics being regressive........

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