February 9, 2025 - 8:00am
A model who poses in fetish gear has been appointed as a visiting research fellow at King’s College London’s Public Policy Institute. Yasmin Benoit is an aromantic-asexual influencer whose work aims to address what she describes as “the blatant gap in black asexual representation”. The 29-year-old is best known for posing in PVC and heading-up London’s Pride Parade while loudly proclaiming that people who don’t want sex are an oppressed minority.
It seems that academics at KCL agree that this is a worthy area of study, and to this end they teamed up with Benoit to publish a report titled “Asexuality in the UK: Public attitudes towards people who experience little to no sexual attraction”.
Now, it is of course important to ask why young people are having far less sex than the generations that came before. But this report does not answer that question at all. It might be charitably described as “vibes based”, positioning asexuality on the “LGBTQIA+ axis” and recommending that legal protections be brought in for those who argue not wanting sex is an identity. Details on how the persecution of asexuals manifests, or why this is comparable with what gay men and lesbians have historically endured, are notably lacking.
Researching why increasing numbers of people are turning off sex is undoubtedly worthwhile, particularly in light of fears over demographic collapse. But by framing a lack of sexual desire as an innate identity, KCL have dribbled from scholarship to activism.
Michael Sanders, Professor of Public Policy at the KCL Policy Institute, seems unconcerned by this drift into campaigning. He called the report’s findings “troubling, both in that many people hold misconceptions about asexuality, and that they are happy voicing discriminatory views — at a greater rate than for other groups.”
Meanwhile, Benoit herself opined that “Acephobia — that is, discrimination, prejudice and negative attitudes towards those who identify as asexual — is not something that most people recognise or take seriously”.
Disinterest in sex is neither rare nor a new phenomenon. Ask any middle-aged married couple and you’ll find, as a rule, the sight of their beloved stacking the dishwasher gives more pleasure than a night of passion. But today it is younger people who are increasingly sexless.
The traumatising impact of pornography and the shift to online socialising have undoubtedly had an impact. But the fact that around 15% of the population in England are taking antidepressants must not be discounted. The most commonly prescribed are SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are known to quash the libido. And a disproportionate number of the recipients of these drugs are young women, the very same group who are most likely to identify as asexual.
Prof Sanders states that previous studies at the university have “revealed those who identify as asexual have the worst wellbeing of any group in the LGBQA grouping.” Yet rather than exploring whether there is a connection between identifying as asexual and being prescribed SSRIs, the academic took the activists’ approach, intimating that any dip in wellbeing must be due to discrimination.
It would be easy to dismiss this as part of the perpetual academic search for niche funding were the potential consequences not so unsettling. The apparent youth mental health crisis is growing with increasing numbers turning to medication. This includes, of course, those who have been prescribed puberty blockers to treat feelings of so-called gender dysphoria who will also have lowered or non-existent libido. The effect of these medications is a legitimate area of study.
Instead, by positioning a depressed sex drive as an identity any further enquiry risks being shut down as “acephobic”. Should Benoit’s demands gain traction, clinicians who seek to treat low libido could be convicted of practising asexual “conversion therapy”. Academics who might want to investigate the rise of asexuality could be hounded out of their jobs just as philosopher Kathleen Stock was for daring to question transgenderism.
At an individual level, no one cares that some people aren’t having sex and don’t want to have sex. Quite simply, “acephobia” is the luxury complaint of overindulged campaigners. But as has been demonstrated with transgenderism, when weighty institutions begin to give credence to nonsensical ideas, the unintended consequences can threaten us all.
Josephine Bartosch is assistant editor at The Critic and co-author of the forthcoming book Pornocracy.
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SubscribePretty obviously, ‘having sex’ isn’t the same as procreation.
Having a child suppresses libido. That’s out of the necessity. The parents must expend all efforts to nurture the child. Furthermore, when societies were nomadic, a woman could only carry one child at a time before it was old enough to walk and keep up with the tribe on the march.
Researching why increasing numbers of people are turning off sex is undoubtedly worthwhile, particularly in light of fears over demographic collapse.
If anyone was academically concerned over demographic collapse they might be researching a country in which there is a quarter of a million abortions a year, and postulate that such a phenomenon indicated that there was no evidence of a turning off of sex and, moreover, that possibly the unborn were an oppressed minority, one that needed protections in law.
Microplastics now exist in the sex organs of all sexually reproducing animals, including humans, courtesy of our drinking water, almost certainly as a consequence of plastics recycling.
Our drinking water also now contains both SSRIs (which were recently shown by studies in Denmark to be not much more than placebos, for many depressives) and hormonal birth control substances.
Soy, as a food additive, contains plant esters that mimic estrogen. If you know anyone with a soy allergy – the reaction causes violent nausea, and worsens with exposure – then you’ll know it’s in widespread use throughout the North American food supply. And estrogen isn’t something one should be taking with every meal, clearly.
Testosterone levels are also dropping, worldwide, contributing to the fertility crisis. The average 30 year old today has the same testosterone level as a 60 year old in 1980.
Today’s consumerist, high tech, post-industrial lifestyle is still of course far preferable to the brutality of the prehistorical savannah, and to the violence and poverty that existed even in modern, mid twentieth cities in the Anglosphere.
But there isn’t much room for sex, in a chemically and socially castrated world. Ironically, a world where sex is digitally commodified, and unusual sex practices are turned into oppressed identities, and where abortions in some major cities far outnumber life births, is somehow a world where young people are declining one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Perhaps sex is now seen as a hazard? Young women now often appear to regard sex with horror, delay marriage until they’re decades into adulthood, if ever, and have forced their corporate workplaces to become neo-Victorian, with speech and conduct codes that would stultify a eunuch.
Young men respond by either pumping themselves into thuggishly muscular caricatures in the mode of Andrew Tate, or much more often by simply giving up.
The problem here is not asexuality; the problem is Kings College London (and other similarly corrupted former seats of learning). The problem is that this Yasmin character has been let anywhere near it and this Sanders character has been elevated to the status of ‘professor’.
King’s, actually, not UCL – but they’re probably all just as bad.
Amended….and Thank you
King’s College London.
Could this be from the new spirituality of the youth
in their fascination with the Occult
Mary was a Virgin Creed !
I’ve a nagging feeling that with the closure of USAID this kind “research” will dwindle.
On a more fundamental level, if someone had cancer, our main concern wouldn’t be to accept them as they’re – being sick is not primarily a matter of acceptance and tolerance. We would do whatever is possible to remove that situation and cure the person.
Therefore not everything is about kindness, acceptance and compassion. There’s at least a certain amount of intelligence needed to make the correct decision if a situation is desirable or not. Woke world-view, by indiscriminately elevating kindness and keeping intelligence in contempt, has been doing self-harm and remained too stupid to understand it.
Semmelweis certainly hurt the feelings of surgeons when he suggested that they were killing mothers and children in their hospitals by coming from the pathology table without thoroughly cleansing their hands and he was indeed successfully cancelled for his unkindness. He was not being kind but his scientific approach was in fact the correct one. Sadly real science is now being sidelined by the sort of pre-scientific dogmatic approach that prevailed before true experimental science became established. Science is hard inventing dogmatic explanations is easy.
Like radical transgender extremism, no doubt this new ‘phenomenon’ is a USA ID ( international destabilisation ) operation.
It does strike me, judging by the pictures of her, that Yasmin Benoit is not the best advocate of asexuality. She appears somewhat confused with regard to her ‘inner’ self and her exterior messaging.
Those young women a few years back who filmed themselves working out in very skimpy outfits, then bitterly complaining about men at the gym ogling them, come to mind.
I’ll ignore the predictably tedious identity politics nonsense associated with this issue, and deal directly with the main point: are younger people really having less sex, and is this due to a rising trend of asexuality?
I think it could be explained simply via cultural neoteny. Younger people are simply maturing later and consequently starting to have sex later. I think there are many people nowadays in their mid-20s who are not yet adults, mentally-speaking. It is a good thing that they’re having sex later if this is the case.
I agree that younger ppl are maturing mentally/emotionally later than, say, 100 years ago, but all the evidence for physical maturation points the opposite direction. And that – puberty – is certainly where sex drive blooms, not in a mature desire to nurture young life or begin a family that stretches into the future.
The two overwhelming culprits for the phenomenon are cited in the article, but the first (probably leading) one – the curse of pornography (and society’s relaxed attitude towards it) – isn’t explored deeply here, which is understandable; the second cause is what the author wants to draw attention to: medication.
There are reasons to believe that it’s not just prescriptions that are warping our sex drives; the chemicals we ingest in our food and atmosphere may be damping the fires, too.
Of course, if we were living through an age of rampant sexual promiscuity, pornography would get blamed for that too. Indeed, it did!
We are indeed probably living thru an age of sexual promiscuity – IF we include masturbation as “sex”. But I don’t see any stats on that particular substitute for relational, life-sustaining, bilateral sex.
“Gluttons as well as the starving are obsessed with food” – CSL.
I’m curious how you would characterize “simply maturing later” and what evidence exists to support this point. “later” than when? the 1980’s? the 1880’s?
Also, where is the data to support “not yet adults, mentally-speaking” ? When exactly were younger people more “adults, mentally speaking”
Explanations regarding the changing behavior of millions of people are rarely “simple”, they’re usually multivariate. The author isn’t claiming asexuality is the sole cause of reduced sexual activity, but that it is probably one of factors. And this factor is likely connected to anti-depressant drugs.
To answer your first question, the data does indicate pretty clearly that less sexual activity among younger people is “a thing”. Of course, it’s important to define “younger people” – for the study I’m linking below, they are using men aged 18-24 and men + women aged 18-34. Surely we can consider these cohorts “adults” ?
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/26924-nearly-1-in-3-young-men-in-the-us-report-having-no
There’s research by Jean Twenge on slower maturing.
I’ve also been surprised by the number of young people who do not think they should have freedoms that they have at the ages they have them! They feel they should be more looked after and protected.
Many cite the “brain not fully developed til 25” idea in support of their views.
I think there are two points to this. The research and what really may be going on.
On the research it appears that results were found to meat a pre-decided outcome. In my view this is becoming quite common in too many institutions. A friend of mine doing a masters was clearly told her “outcome” in advance. She was banned from quoting original sources and the University online library would not give her access to these. She had to use “authorised sources”. Her results went against the common orthodoxy, although in her thesis this had to be hidden to allow her award to be given.
Such contrast to my experience 45 years ago when I found something opposite to the common orthodoxy. My supervisor was very interested and asked for a repeat, I did and then the departmental head was excited and asked me to repeat and when I did the head of the establishment got very excited. OK, this was neurophysiology but it did get quite a bit of notice in the field. From this primary research 45 years later there appears to be a direct link to new ways of trying to help with type one diabetes in humans (my stuff was rats!).
As an (old) scientist poor research such as this does no one any favours.
(going to do a separate post on some ideas to answer the question posed).
On the actual topic of “are young people turning asexual” I think there is a reduction in sexual activity potentially.
The drive to procreate is innate and strong in males and females. But with the advent of effective contraception sex and procreation have become separated. In increasingly over time intercourse has become more recreational. In my youth the majority of relationships leading to intercourse seemed to be along the lines of “long term” (my experience at University anyway). Expectations of intimacy leading to something long term.
This appears to have radically changed, maybe to an expectation of intercourse on any (or most) dates for many, many youngsters. I wonder if some drive to label oneself as “asexual” is a way to put the brakes on? To see if there is any hope of something long term? Particularly for girls waiting makes sense. Commitment first as a strategy.
The profligacy of porn has probably removed any slow growth along the “first base, second base” exploring and continuum. For both sexes.
So; a label of asexual could be one way to simply say “no” and with all the pressures on the young to conform may seem a great way of declining intimacy without suffering from social stigma.
That is a very interesting theory. Certainly young women are harangued and shamed for wanting to act traditional way. I am not a woman – but the expectation that they are all expected to engage in repeated recreational casual sex with no emotional connection always struck me as going against most women’s nature.
Quite possibly, and since for young women these days apparently with sex comes the expectation of being choked and sodomised the whole thing’s just not as attractive an idea as it used to be.
Good point, I think that is highly likely.
”the sight of their beloved stacking the dishwasher gives more pleasure than a night of passion” , yeah, that’s me, so true :)))
We all like a well stacked dish washer. But so many women these days prefer to let a machine do the work.
Wiki will tell you asexuality is a sexual orientation.
Unherd stop publishing writers who endorse and repeat Far Left ideas.
Thats scarcely new though. Indeed some academics went into the game precisely for the activism, and many produce “research” whose job is simply to back up and justify the ideology they support.
And yet oddly I can’t think of a single derogatory term for such people. Certainly not one in common use.
Loser,wanker,no-mates, where do you usually go to be insulted, loads of em.
Frigid? No longer common parlance though. Can’t think of the equivalent male term.
Yeah, “frigid” is up there with “spinster”.
After the trans craze I was really expecting the next big thing to be something truly terrible that we could all unite in opposing. But “people who don’t like sex very much” is honestly a bit of a damp squib.
Fear of “the damp patch” perhaps
In the US we call it “the wet spot”. There was a wonderful early 90s all-female Los Angeles punk band called The Red Aunts who had a song that still pops into my head regularly: “Sleeping in the wet spot!”
We don’t know if this is true or not. There was a big who ha a few decades ago about the Pill and free love and while I am not sure that reality matched the expectations it perhaps set the high water mark for a generation or two. Perhaps the expectations are falling back?
Another generational expectation that has faded is the ‘school/job/couple/marriage/children/retirement/grandchildren’ pattern of life in the developed world. Many people still follow this pattern but it is no longer ubiquitous.
So, are young people turning asexual? Maybe yes, maybe no – but it may be no more than a passing fashion.
I think there is something to this. There seems to have been a period, once the risk of pregnancy was reduced, during which people felt having lots of (promiscuous, uncommitted) sex was the right thing to do. Because you could, and because it had been repressed for so long. This coincided with an obsession with youth, in which the young were even emulated by the old.
You still see older people, post divorce, trying to return to that lifestyle. Perhaps that is even why they divorced.
But for the young that novelty is perhaps wearing off. And perhaps seeing their parents behaving like parodies of teenagers is helping it to wear off. Perhaps they think that having sex with someone you don’t know, don’t like especially, and don’t care about is not that great. And that the people who do behave like that are not great role models.
Christ, how can you possibly be oppressed due to an absence of interest in something…. That’s like me claiming oppression because I’m the only bloke in the office who doesn’t follow football
Excluded then 🙂
I genuinely don’t understand anything of less interest to anyone else than someone not wanting it and not getting it. To put it bluntly.
What am I missing?
It goes against decades of Red Top Agenda. Remember Ma Larkin in Darling Buds (on a spinster,),she’s a Nun,don’t want none,ain’t got none,Hearty laugh. (Her sweetheart got killed in WW1,that’s why shes been a teacher, librarian,PA all her life,not from choice but neccesity. I can remember that slightly hostile attitude of working class married women to spinsters. Often the wives were ill dressed,had no money,endless chores ,never read a book but THEY HAD A MAN. The ultimate status symbol. And don’t be surprised if I tell you in chav level culture it still is.
Isn’t someone not wanting and not getting it, in fact, getting what they want?
No, they have to be respected, too. Speaking for myself, not gonna happen. Do it or don’t do it, but don’t tell me about it.
This article suffers (as can be seen in the comments” from a lack of data. The one reference given that talks about the not having sex trend is an article from the LA Times – not the best source.
For those readers who are skeptical of the “the kids aren’t having sex” claim, I recommend the following:
young adults
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/26924-nearly-1-in-3-young-men-in-the-us-report-having-no
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767066
https://ifstudies.org/blog/sexless-america-young-adults-are-having-less-sex
youth (minors)
https://www.ashasexualhealth.org/yrbs-shows-increased-mental-health-issues-and-decreased-sexual-activity-among-young-people/?
Maybe a lot of young women are aware that a great deal of male attention is predatory, we’ve heard enough about taxi drivers after all. Maybe young women .havent been taught to swoon and feel validated at male attention. Or maybe theyve learned from Grandma how horrible being freed up by The Pill to be ‘available’ for sex was and it all doesnt sound that alluring. Not having any sexual desire is a great reason to say No. There shouldnt need to be a reason of course. A lot of young men claim this too. I follow a YouTuber who chose not to enter upon a ‘relationship’ just to ‘fit in’, now aged 30 he is in a stable long term relationship with his sensible well educated girlfriend/partner and hes glad he waited. It’s absolutely not true that male and female persons who I gather are all now in legal terms CHILDREN until their 18th birthday are tortured by raging hormones that force them to seek out inappropriate sex in order to assuage the burning torment.
Some truth in this I’m sure, but:
Young women seem to be seeking male validation more than ever. It’s all over Instagram, and it’s driving Botox, plastic surgery, female self sexualisation and narcissism.
Young women’s perception of risk will be determined more by the way the world (and men) are portrayed as dangerous, rather than how dangerous they actually are. It’s not so much that men are generally predatory, or generally a bad lot, rather that they are portrayed as such.
I’m not saying it doesn’t pay to be careful (and picky) – but ours is a society that denigrates men generally in a way that is unfair and inaccurate. No surprise if women become fearful.
In order for the human race to reproduce itself it is a biological necessity for the majority of females to seek male validation, it is literally built into our DNA. The feminist idea that girls get “taught” this is laughable.
If a woman wants sex she is going to have to please a man. ‘Come hither’ is the expression. If she wants children then the smarter girls and women get picky, not only do they seek to please in their own individual way (that could be by being bossy and domineering – some men like that) but they want a competent male who will commit and support them, one way or the other.
It seems as if many of the relationship problems of today are as a result of confusion, ie, giving way to lust (because we can have sex without the risk of conception now), enjoying it so much with someone, without considering how useful a mate they will make in the long term.
In light of that, Andrew Buckley’s point above, that women claiming to be ‘asexual’ might be a modern acceptable excuse to avoid the pressure to jump into bed all the time, makes good sense.
Here in the United States there are a host of reasons why our youngest generation appears less enthused about sex than previous generations. Keep in mind that almost a quarter of children in the United States are raised in single parent households. Without the sound foundation of two loving parents in the form of a mother and a father is it any wonder we’ve created insecurities in many of today’s young people that earlier generations did not face?
There are also several other factors. These include, but are not limited to:
First, our primary and secondary education systems are hell bent on diagnosing every child with some form of mental health issue. Unqualified teachers and guidance counselors create an atmosphere in the classroom that ensures every child who doesn’t already have some sort of gender dysphoria, attention deficit disorder, anorexia/bulimia, depression, anxiety, or other mental health malady will be diagnosed with one by the time they finish elementary school. If the child, somehow, evades such a diagnosis, the onset of puberty–including all its confusion and self-image challenges– guarantees simple adolescent challenges will be magnified into major life issues that will never, ever, be resolved. Our medical and pharmacological industries, not ones to miss opportunities for profits, support this ghastly effort to enfeeble children, and ensure they fail to achieve adulthood.
Secondly, once in university young men are targeted for their toxic masculinity. Fabricated microaggressions, imagined sexual assaults, consensual one-night stands mutated into rapes, and all sorts of innocent teasing are grounds to have male students accused without the defendant’s ability to ask for proof, or question the accusers, and subsequently convicted without trial of sexual offenses that result in expulsion, and consequent destruction of the person’s educational and working career. In cases where it’s proved the entire accusation was a lie, no action is taken against the accuser. Why on Earth would a young man take the risk considering the potential awful consequences?
Thirdly, throughout the education of a child, being hetero normative, especially if one is male, guarantees being accused of all manner of sociological crimes. On the other hand, boys and men who declare themselves asexual, bi-sexual, trans-sexual, homosexual, or some other form of identity will be embraced for their courage in announcing this new identity, and celebrated for their courage–which seems odd considering they automatically elevate themselves unto the level of perfection without moral stain.
With young girls this sort of insanity has ensured that 40% of Gen Z women identify as belonging to one of the LGBTQ+ identities. This is an increase of more than 1000% in less than 30 years. Once again, from the challenges of adolescence on through university, the girl who declares herself something other than simply heterosexual is embraced, celebrated, and otherwise feted.
Is it any wonder young men and women reject their parents’ choices in lifestyle?
Fourthly, young people from an early age are encouraged to dive into social media, with all its pitfalls of unrealistic aspirations, and find their lives consumed by the mass of data that takes up so much of their time they have little, if any, to devote to in person relationships. Without any way to learn the skills to engage in conversation, and manage relationships based on actual physical presence in the same place and same time, they never develop their patience, judgment, maturity, and perspective that are essential to achieving maturity. Their parents infantilize them (20% of Gen Z job applicants take their parents to job interviews), keeping their children on their health plans until they’re age 26, and otherwise ensuring they postpone responsibility for their own lives as long as possible.
Moreover, in the past several years the ascendancy of DEI ensured that men, especially Caucasian men, would be accused of all manner of historical and present day offenses. Their mere existence, and coincident inability to recognize their supposed privilege and indifference to others’ suffering creates a miasma of self-persecution, guilt and shame. Is it surprising that children who are physically adult, but without all the emotional skills earlier adults developed, find themselves scorned, or otherwise defamed for simply existing? Couple that with the #METOO accusations they see on social media is it any wonder they have little interest in placing themselves at risk of irretrievably catastrophic accusations wherein they will always be assumed guilty?
Finally, online applications such a Tinder masquerade as ways for young people to connect with others. In fact, these programs simply avoid all the social constructs society has established to help promote healthy, enduring relationships. Instead, desperate, lonely, young women seeking some form of external validation to make up for the emptiness in their lives, and believing all the social media telling them they’re liberated, embark on pointless sexual escapades in lieu of relationships. Young men, already stunted in their social development, decide on whether to meet young women, or not, based solely upon a few words on a screen and a picture of their prospective candidate.
Is there anything that could be more soulless?
It is the older generations who must bear the responsibility for the laissez-faire catastrophe. Too busy with their careers to spend time with their children, and understand the world in which those children grew up, parents have created a dystopian nightmare filled with adults whose emotional development remains stunted in childhood, and who simply lack the moral fiber to understand what they’ve permitted to be done to them.
I have no idea how we’re going to get out of this. But, I do know we need to stop this process before we ruin another generation.
They researched nuns?
Sorry, I mis-spelled ‘nones’
Lol excellent!
If you want to see ‘the truth’ about how many experience sex, watch the sex scene in ’45 years’ starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. The best line is from Charlotte Rampling who asks her labouring husband, “How are you getting on down there?”
That, right there, is the perfect buzzkill.
As they say in the Classics, ‘If you don’t want to f**k, f**k off.’
Acephobia — that is, discrimination, prejudice and negative attitudes towards those who identify as asexual
Not to be confused with acephalophobia, the fear of not having a head.