The other sexual revolution: Not tonight, darling — Aphrodite has a headache
By Josée Blanchette (translated from French)
The poor migraine has been carrying the blame for years. After decades of being told that sex is the glue holding relationships together, the mattress springs seem to be squeaking out a different tune. It’s becoming almost less embarrassing to admit you’d rather do Pilates than the Kama Sutra. As in: “Uh… move over, will you? I’m watching an episode of ‘Double Occupancy’, but solo, while I finish my knitting.” Or: “Go ahead, but make it quick — I’ve got an almond cake in the oven.” That’s what used to pass for “conjugal duty,” as you know. It comes bundled with any routine that involves sharing a double bed—and losing appetite in more ways than one.
But here’s the twist: even after countless special issues in Chatelaine about female desire and the art of blowing on the dying embers, young people are having less and less sex. A pumpkin-spice latte seems to be doing a surprisingly decent job as a substitute.
Voices are now pointing to the last great taboo:
sexual load (on top of the contraceptive load, the mental load, the emotional load…). Women’s libido running on empty sometimes leads them to a sexologist for a little seasonal tune-up.
“Setting boundaries means risking the revelation of the unequal bargain that heterosexuality represents—and the couple, its prophet. It means making visible what no one wants to see: that sex is a story of power long before it’s a matter of sensuality.”
—Maylis Castet, «Corvée de sexe» [Sex Chore]
There also seems to be a small revolution brewing among the ranks of this relatively new profession, where the dogma of desire—and its revival—helps many of its card-carrying members pay their mortgages. As the guest on Everybody’s Talking About It last Sunday pointed out, Kanica had to basically ‘defrock’ herself from her professional order just to be allowed to speak freely to the public. The author of Survival Guide to the Dating Jungle also mentioned the decidedly unsexy subject of sexless couples, or what French sexologist Maylis Castet sums up with the acronym SSE (sex without desire) in her sharp-edged essay Sex Chore: Why Women Still Force Themselves. And believe me, she doesn’t sugarcoat it. The sexpert doesn’t hesitate to call out her own profession and the overuse of the DSM-5—the holy manual of mental and behavioral disorders—for classifying low female libido as FSIAD, Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder.
“A whole fifth of the alphabet hijacked to manufacture a specifically ‘fanny-related’ disorder.” And gendered since 2013. Here, the feminine wins by default.
Appetite doesn’t always come with eating
To all the trad wives devoted to missionary position (because God apparently signed off on that one) and salvation-by-motherhood, Maylis recommends a few weeks of flirting with the Amish. Guaranteed detox.
For the other members of Club SSE — the ones who don’t film viral TikToks in a frilly apron — the numbers are blunt: one in two women (52% of those aged 18 to 49, according to fresh data) are running on sexual empty. By fifty, statistically, you may as well not exist.
The sexologist who never holds her tongue also sends all the hormone theorists (testosterone!) and the “blue balls” believers packing. That persistent myth deserved retirement years ago. A recent Instagram story by French author Ovidie — who’s turned chosen celibacy into her personal brand — put it best: skipping the effort of getting dolled up just to arouse the patriarchy is simply less work. The flood of little heart emojis she received made me feel compelled to relay this collective female exasperation — possibly feminist exasperation. I’ve said it before, but since we call all this “love,” we can circle back.
“In their twisted imagination, sexology clinics must look like training centres for consented rape.”
—Maylis Castet, «Corvée de sexe»
How many women in their fifties and sixties — “still beautiful,” they confide — tell me they no longer want to bother with dating, seduction, cohabitation, or even sex? And honestly, I get it. When studies show that sexual desire fades for a third of women after one year (yes, one year), you start wondering why so much logistical investment ends in sex without desire. “The more they show up at the table with no appetite, the less hungry they get,” observes Maylis Castet, who prescribes her patients a two-month no-nookie diet. A complete hormonal reset. The Korean 4B movement goes further: don’t date men, don’t sleep with them, don’t marry them, and don’t have their children. The nun’s vocation may be making a comeback.
A little cuddle for the road?
If Maylis Castet is so compelling, it’s because she pushes the argument beyond mere desire. She talks about self-renunciation, about a form of alienation “at the heart of the matter,” and also about money — since marriage has developed, in some circles, the reputation of being legalized prostitution, an implicit transaction between power and sexuality.
Self-coercion comes with a ton of guilt; we’ve somehow convinced women that they’re responsible for “relieving” their guy. Yes, I also kept a mental calendar, thinking I was the only one doing that, and I too fantasized about starring in “Deux femmes en Or”. “Leave it, I’ll handle the cable company. I’ll take the day off.”
“They had ended up, like any long-term couple, keeping a sexual ledger: how many times had they slept together in the past two years?”
—Karine Tuil, War by Other Means
Women “have sex in order to be kept,” notes Maylis, “and the more they do it for that reason, the more they convince themselves that this is, fundamentally, what they’re there for.”
And as if millennia of lopsided education weren’t enough (or “lack of education,” depending how you look at it), we now have porn to shape us into pliable little playthings with silent consent and wide-open eyes.
The sexologist argues for another look at cuddling and sensual kissing with no conclusion (climax) in mind. [Is she boldly suggesting Synergy?] Like that urologist who once told me about an elderly patient begging for another Viagra prescription: “Sir… perhaps your wife isn’t asking for that much?”
“Because nothing is worse in our society than becoming undesirable. We’re willing to remain objectified as long as we’re a valuable object — not a cheap slut.”
—Ovidie, The Flesh Is Sad, Alas
Sometimes all one really wants is a little affection
— to curl up together and listen to the rain outside.
“It’s the male claim to eternal erections,” the French sexologist notes, “that has, in a way, produced the proliferation of professionals like me. If I meet guilt-ridden, lonely, ashamed women every day, it’s partly because, twenty years ago, aging pharmacologists chasing virility stumbled upon the near-realization of an unconscious, quasi-transhumanist dream: to be embalmed with a coat rack in their pants.”
Is geriatric priapism in the DSM-5 too?
The other sexual revolution: Not tonight, darling — Aphrodite has a headache
By Josée Blanchette (translated from French)
The poor migraine has been carrying the blame for years. After decades of being told that sex is the glue holding relationships together, the mattress springs seem to be squeaking out a different tune. It’s becoming almost less embarrassing to admit you’d rather do Pilates than the Kama Sutra. As in: “Uh… move over, will you? I’m watching an episode of ‘Double Occupancy’, but solo, while I finish my knitting.” Or: “Go ahead, but make it quick — I’ve got an almond cake in the oven.” That’s what used to pass for “conjugal duty,” as you know. It comes bundled with any routine that involves sharing a double bed—and losing appetite in more ways than one.
But here’s the twist: even after countless special issues in Chatelaine about female desire and the art of blowing on the dying embers, young people are having less and less sex. A pumpkin-spice latte seems to be doing a surprisingly decent job as a substitute.
Voices are now pointing to the last great taboo:
sexual load (on top of the contraceptive load, the mental load, the emotional load…). Women’s libido running on empty sometimes leads them to a sexologist for a little seasonal tune-up.
“Setting boundaries means risking the revelation of the unequal bargain that heterosexuality represents—and the couple, its prophet. It means making visible what no one wants to see: that sex is a story of power long before it’s a matter of sensuality.”
—Maylis Castet, «Corvée de sexe» [Sex Chore]
There also seems to be a small revolution brewing among the ranks of this relatively new profession, where the dogma of desire—and its revival—helps many of its card-carrying members pay their mortgages. As the guest on Everybody’s Talking About It last Sunday pointed out, Kanica had to basically ‘defrock’ herself from her professional order just to be allowed to speak freely to the public. The author of Survival Guide to the Dating Jungle also mentioned the decidedly unsexy subject of sexless couples, or what French sexologist Maylis Castet sums up with the acronym SSE (sex without desire) in her sharp-edged essay Sex Chore: Why Women Still Force Themselves. And believe me, she doesn’t sugarcoat it. The sexpert doesn’t hesitate to call out her own profession and the overuse of the DSM-5—the holy manual of mental and behavioral disorders—for classifying low female libido as FSIAD, Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder.
“A whole fifth of the alphabet hijacked to manufacture a specifically ‘fanny-related’ disorder.” And gendered since 2013. Here, the feminine wins by default.
Appetite doesn’t always come with eating
To all the trad wives devoted to missionary position (because God apparently signed off on that one) and salvation-by-motherhood, Maylis recommends a few weeks of flirting with the Amish. Guaranteed detox.
For the other members of Club SSE — the ones who don’t film viral TikToks in a frilly apron — the numbers are blunt: one in two women (52% of those aged 18 to 49, according to fresh data) are running on sexual empty. By fifty, statistically, you may as well not exist.
The sexologist who never holds her tongue also sends all the hormone theorists (testosterone!) and the “blue balls” believers packing. That persistent myth deserved retirement years ago. A recent Instagram story by French author Ovidie — who’s turned chosen celibacy into her personal brand — put it best: skipping the effort of getting dolled up just to arouse the patriarchy is simply less work. The flood of little heart emojis she received made me feel compelled to relay this collective female exasperation — possibly feminist exasperation. I’ve said it before, but since we call all this “love,” we can circle back.
“In their twisted imagination, sexology clinics must look like training centres for consented rape.”
—Maylis Castet, «Corvée de sexe»
How many women in their fifties and sixties — “still beautiful,” they confide — tell me they no longer want to bother with dating, seduction, cohabitation, or even sex? And honestly, I get it. When studies show that sexual desire fades for a third of women after one year (yes, one year), you start wondering why so much logistical investment ends in sex without desire. “The more they show up at the table with no appetite, the less hungry they get,” observes Maylis Castet, who prescribes her patients a two-month no-nookie diet. A complete hormonal reset. The Korean 4B movement goes further: don’t date men, don’t sleep with them, don’t marry them, and don’t have their children. The nun’s vocation may be making a comeback.
A little cuddle for the road?
If Maylis Castet is so compelling, it’s because she pushes the argument beyond mere desire. She talks about self-renunciation, about a form of alienation “at the heart of the matter,” and also about money — since marriage has developed, in some circles, the reputation of being legalized prostitution, an implicit transaction between power and sexuality.
Self-coercion comes with a ton of guilt; we’ve somehow convinced women that they’re responsible for “relieving” their guy. Yes, I also kept a mental calendar, thinking I was the only one doing that, and I too fantasized about starring in “Deux femmes en Or”. “Leave it, I’ll handle the cable company. I’ll take the day off.”
“They had ended up, like any long-term couple, keeping a sexual ledger: how many times had they slept together in the past two years?”
—Karine Tuil, War by Other Means
Women “have sex in order to be kept,” notes Maylis, “and the more they do it for that reason, the more they convince themselves that this is, fundamentally, what they’re there for.”
And as if millennia of lopsided education weren’t enough (or “lack of education,” depending how you look at it), we now have porn to shape us into pliable little playthings with silent consent and wide-open eyes.
The sexologist argues for another look at cuddling and sensual kissing with no conclusion (climax) in mind. [Is she boldly suggesting Synergy?] Like that urologist who once told me about an elderly patient begging for another Viagra prescription: “Sir… perhaps your wife isn’t asking for that much?”
“Because nothing is worse in our society than becoming undesirable. We’re willing to remain objectified as long as we’re a valuable object — not a cheap slut.”
—Ovidie, The Flesh Is Sad, Alas
Sometimes all one really wants is a little affection
— to curl up together and listen to the rain outside.
“It’s the male claim to eternal erections,” the French sexologist notes, “that has, in a way, produced the proliferation of professionals like me. If I meet guilt-ridden, lonely, ashamed women every day, it’s partly because, twenty years ago, aging pharmacologists chasing virility stumbled upon the near-realization of an unconscious, quasi-transhumanist dream: to be embalmed with a coat rack in their pants.”
Is geriatric priapism in the DSM-5 too?
