Gen Z is Choosing Celibacy Over Shitty Sex but Is That the Right Choice?

Note: This episode is coming your way a little late, so I appreciate your patience. If you missed the companion last week, please check your Spam folder. I couldn’t help myself from naming the episode NUDES!, even though I knew that was a recipe for Gmail and others to filter that email as far away from your inbox as possible. Enjoy this week’s journey through a much different topic…

Welcome to the Yes, Misstrix audio companion! This week’s episode is titled: Gen Z is Choosing Celibacy Over Shitty Sex but Is That the Right Choice? And I definitely have some feelings about this topic, so let’s dive right in.

If you’re curious about what prompted me to cover celibacy in a Substack generally devoted to discussing how to have more and better sex, not give it up entirely, let me tell you. I was perusing Substack in my free time, when I saw a post from a woman who was reposting another author who wrote a piece about how Tinder was killing itself.

I did not read the original article, but if the comment from the woman who reposted it is any indication, Tinder and other dating apps have been flooded with people who just want to hook up, date around, cheat on their spouse and whatnot. It’s no longer just for people looking for serious relationships. If my time on the apps eight or so years ago was any indication, it was a mixed bag even then, but I’m sure the cesspool has gotten even grimier since then.

The woman who reposted this look at how Tinder was imploding made a comment about it, which is what really caught my eye. “No wonder more women are choosing celibacy.” To which I literally heard a record scratch in my mind. “Wait what?! Is that true?” I had to know. So, I did what you do when you want to get to the bottom of things. I Googled. And then I looked for reputable sources.

It turns out some women ARE choosing celibacy at higher rates. Some media outlets are reporting that more people in general are going the route of voluntary celibacy than ever before. But I’m also seeing that this is a phenomenon that Gen Z women specifically are embracing. For those who can never remember which generation is which, Gen Z is the one for people born between 1997-2012 and includes girls aged 11 up to women aged 26. According to Insider.com, this voluntary celibacy phenomenon is mostly a response to shitty dating experiences and the contemporary boogeyman that is “hookup culture.”

If you were thinking that this is probably a one-off trend for a certain sect of religiously inclined women in the dating world, know that this is really becoming a thing outside of the usual fundamentalist circles. And how do we know that? Social media, of course!

Both the terms “celibacy journey” and “celibacy era” are taking off on the TikTok where the hashtagged version of the former term had almost 40 million views at the time the Insider article was published in April of this year. Videos where women are talking about choosing celibacy sometimes have hundreds of comments and hundreds of thousands of views. So, this kind of non-sexual awakening is clearly resonating with people.