Obsession and the Paradox of Sex Scene Discourse

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If you’ve been on social media in the past ten years, you’ll have seen sex scene discourse pop up now and then, a played-out song with stale lyrics and no rhythm that nonetheless keeps getting new covers.

If someone dislikes sex scenes or is sex-repulsed, that’s completely valid. Some people I love are that way. I’m in favor of sex scenes both as an artist and as a member of the audience, and I feel if you like them, watch them, and if you don’t, then don’t. There’s a whole ratings system for television and film that notes if sexual content is present, and encountering sex in a book is easily remedied by skipping ahead or DNFing.

Where I draw the line is when people demand that those scenes shouldn’t exist. You get to decide what you watch or read; you don’t get to decide what other people watch and read. And while there are fewer TV shows and movies with sex scenes than in the past, many pieces of media that do include them tend to have high ratings and viewer count (Euphoria, Bridgerton, Interview with the Vampire for a few examples, not to mention that the ever-booming literary fields of romance and erotica), which suggests the people complaining aren’t exactly drowning in sex scenes any more than the rest of us. More likely, there are people who watch media that is already popular because they don’t want to feel left out, which is understandable for a social species like ours. However, when that media includes situations these viewers dislike, rather than not watching it (since, again, they equate that to being left out), they would prefer the media, and perhaps the world itself, be contorted and customized to their preferences.

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s talk hypocrisy!

As far as I can tell, the puritanical elements of this discourse are mainly an online phenomenon (except for those occasions when a conservative news outlet shoves a microphone into a 19-year-old’s face and asks them to tell the world how they feel about seeing actors portray characters having sex. Because that’s definitely the way to get an honest statement about a sensitive subject from anyone that age).

But if you’re like me, you’re online too much (“I promise, doctor, next time I escape Arkham, I’ll do something more productive than social media, like my plant girlfriend”) and since this op-ed, too, is online, we’re going to talk about something I’ve noticed relating to sex scene discourse.