I hope that title grabbed your attention, and if it did grab your attention you’re probably not sexually liberated. You read that correctly. If you read that title, and immediately decided this article would be worth your time you are enslaved by sex, even if you won’t admit it.

I would like to contend that true sexual liberation isn’t freedom from heterosexual and monogamous norms that began to collapse in the 1960s and 70s, but true sexual liberation is instead freedom from the taboo that surrounds sex in our everyday life. A taboo that makes sex something everyone is thinking about, but hardly anyone is talking about.

To start off, I’m not saying that the collapse of traditional sexual norms that has taken place in much of the western world the past 60 years is awful. I’m also not saying sexual liberation is the abolishment of sex from all thought and interaction. That would be ludicrous. We are sexual beings after all. We are as much animals as any cat or cow. What I propose is that the domination of sex is a large component of the current zeitgeist that needs addressing.

This can be hard to see as a member from within society, but consider a few of the statistics. In 2014, Pornhub racked up a total 78.9 Billion views worldwide. Taking into consideration that almost 3 Billion people had access to the internet in 2014, according to Internet Live Stats, that’s still quite an impressive viewership. What’s even more telling is that almost half of Pornhubs traffic came in through cellular devices.

The reason this is telling is because it points to the fact that people aren’t just sitting down on their personal computers in the privacy of their home to watch porn. They are likely watching it on the go as well. Besides the consumption of porn, one only need look at popular media in large to see sexual themes and allusions looming around every corner.

So what? Perhaps the pervasiveness of sexualized media in society is just a sign that we’re finally overcoming sex as a taboo topic. To a certain extent this may be the case. Education around sex, safe sex, and consensual sex, is increasing much for the better of society.

Yet, outside of these educational events and some groups, sex is hardly ever talked about and many people are uncomfortable talking about sex. Understandably, it can be super awkward to talk about your personal sex life, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is how very few people bring up topics that center around sex and how it affects our everyday lives. When is the last conversation you had with someone about how women and men are depicted in advertising and other forms of media? When’s the last time you talked about the sexual nature of language in online video game culture and other sub-sets of society?
When’s the last time you had a talk with someone about the possessive nature of the phrase ‘have sex’, when sex is an activity, a verb, but we talk about it as a noun or object? (That last one might just be a curiosity of mine admittedly).

I don’t want you to not think about sex at all. What I want is for you to recognize the influence of sex in media and our culture on your thoughts and interactions with others. Perhaps, if we can start to address some of the questions I’ve asked, and have conversations about the role of sex in our thoughts and society we can begin to liberate ourselves from the oppressive taboo that surrounds sex. We can become truly sexually liberated beings, and talk about more interesting things like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.