Modern Love : Tired of AIDS lectures and irritated by all the talk about the free-and-easy ‘60s, Gen Xers have cultivated their own brand of casual sex. And that has the experts worried.
Casual sex. Ever had it?
Someone older than 35 answers either yes or no.
The response from younger people? Puzzled faces. Pause. “No. Yes. Uh, no. Kinda-sorta-maybe-I-don’t-know.”
Makes perfect sense, sex experts say. Boomers easily define casual sex: one-night stand. Passion. A no-strings-attached lover. But it’s trickier for the younger generation, who explored their sexuality during what one psychologist called the “sex contradicting” ’80s.
Pop culture praised sex purely for pleasure while doctors injected fear of a new disease called AIDS. A just-do-me attitude struggled against scary safe-sex warnings, such as “Forget a Condom and DIE.”
Boomers, outgrowing their wild days that defined the sexual revolution, married and made monogamy hip. Younger adults embraced monogamy--but in their own way.
For some, it mirrors the boomer definition. Others say monogamy includes having sex with a person you’re “going” with, even if only for a week. It can also be a romp with a good friend who wants pleasure, not a commitment. Or a one-night stand that allows everything but penetration.
However young people define casual sex, health officials, psychologists and sex therapists say they’re worried. Each year, 12 million people catch a sexually transmitted disease, with people younger than 30 accounting for about three-fourths of them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is the leading cause of death among people 25 to 44; since the disease has an incubation period of up to 10 years, this indicates that they contracted the disease in their teens and 20s.
Like many people in her age group, 26-year-old Marchella defines casual sex as “the opposite of monogamy.” Specifically, “It’s when you meet someone, say at a bar, and have sex later. I would never do that. I can’t think of any friend who would either. It’s like begging for some disease.”
Yet when she’s not in a relationship and the mood strikes, she’ll have sex with one of her best friends, a man she met at college. “We both like [the arrangement],” says the graduate student from Los Angeles. “But I wouldn’t say it’s casual, because we know each other.
“I mean, someone else might think so--someone who’s old-fashioned,” she says. “But, I guess, I’d say that I’m not having casual sex because it’s not like I’m easy or anything.”
That opinion provokes a groan from Peggy Clarke, president of the American Social Health Assn., a nonprofit STD-prevention group in North Carolina. “Young people think they’re not prone to STDs because most don’t have sex with someone they just met,” she says. “But, often, what they’re doing is still [casual] sex even if they don’t call it that.”
Experts call it “serial monogamy.” And, they say, it’s increasing, particularly because people in their 20s are tired of the safe-sex messages they’ve heard for more than a decade. They feel invincible. They’ve been cautious and now feel entitled to as much sexual fun as their parents had in the ‘60s and ‘70s. A handful of young people, with end-of-world jitters, say it’s best to live it up now in case everyone dies come the millennium.
These reasons lead to confused sexual attitudes, says Toni Bernay, a clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills. “Young people feel anxious,” she says. “There have been incredible changes in the last five years. For example, look at the fall of communism. Those of us who live in L.A. have also lived through the riot, earthquakes, floods and fires. They want their youth. But they don’t know what to expect.”
Tess never thought she’d catch an STD from a man who enjoyed--and cried during--a rented video of “Fried Green Tomatoes.” “I thought, ‘Gosh, he must be very sensitive and sweet. He’d never hurt anyone,’ ” recalls Tess, a 29-year-old manicurist in the San Fernando Valley.
And then tiny red bumps sprouted around her genital area. “I thought . . . ‘What a jerk,’ ” Tess remembers. “I knew I got it from him because, before that, I was [celibate] for a long time.” Later, an acquaintance casually mentioned this man’s quest for partners--men and women--to temporarily satisfy his insatiable sex drive.
A lot of young people are like that, says Phillip Lin, 22. “In college, people seem to be looking for immediate pleasure,” he says. “People are scared to do it with total strangers, but they’ll have casual sex with friends. Catching a disease is not the first thing on their minds.”
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Curiosity and concern compelled Constance J. Pilkington, assistant psychology professor at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Va., to research the sexual attitudes of college students. Her job gives her opportunities to listen to students’ sexual escapades.
This is how Pilkington learned about “hooking up.”
“It’s an agreement between two people not involved in relationships to repeatedly have sex without any commitments,” she says, explaining that this usually lasts until one of them enters a relationship. “This is happening all over, and they feel OK with it because they’re not having sex with strangers.”
Many members of this generation began worrying about the consequences of sex before they entered their double digits, Pilkington says. “Sexuality was around them at early ages. They were raised with heightened awareness. But after thinking so much about sexual responsibility, many young people are irritated” because they feel deprived of the sexual freedom their parents had.
Jason Greene, 27, is a little more than irritated. “I’m mad,” says the plumber from the Northeast. “It’s not fair. I’m fed up with hearing about all the great free sex in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Now, I hear people [from that era] tell people my age about abstinence. That seems a little hypocritical. What happened to our fun?”
