Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Do Gen Z Hate Sex Scenes?

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Hello EICrumpets! Welcome to Wednesday. For this week's Everything In Conversation we're talking about sex in films after actor and director Olivia Wilde responded to the statistic that almost half (48.4%) of Gen Z don't want to see as much sex in film and on TV. She said "I think the way that sex has been portrayed in film for a long time hasn’t been particularly realistic. There’s been this movement now towards authenticity, which is really good. So I choose to interpret that statistic maybe as Gen Z saying, ‘We don’t want to see inauthenticity anymore. We want to see real relationships, and we want to have something that feels more genuine.” Is she right that Gen Z are only rejecting poor representations of sex OR are they in fact a truly prudish generation who won't be happy until all love scenes are abolished and everyone involved put in jail? Let's find out!Links:Spotify - Diabolical Lies Variety - Olivia Wilde Says Sex in Movies Hasn't Been 'Realistic' for a 'Long Time' LinkedIn - Heated Rivalry and the Rejection of Romanticised HarmThe Guardian - Almost half of gen Z viewers want less sex on screen study finds Ladbible - Gen Z Intimacy Statistics RevealedThe Guardian - Passages film reviewEverything Is Content Porn Deep Dive Part OneEverything Is Content Porn Deep Dive Party TwoThe Times - Gen Z want more realistic sex scenes. Here's whyThe Guardian - Pornhub to stop new UK users accessing site from next week Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. And this is Everything in Conversation. This is our midweek episode, deciding to lift your spirits and propel you to the Friday episode. Remember, if you want to take part in these extra episodes, just follow us on Instagram at Everything is Content Pod. That's where we decide on topics and ask for your opinions. Today, this conversation is minus one an only, who is away on a little holiday, but don't worry, she will be back with us as normal for the Friday episode. And she did actually say one thing before going away. She had one holiday. wish, which was for you to leave us a nice five-star rating and a review wherever you're listening.

So don't shoot the messenger. I'm just passing that along. Just do what you will with that. Ruchera, let's talk about sex. More specifically, sex in film and generational attitudes to those kind of scenes. So last week, Olivia Wilde was in the headlines for saying that sex in movies hasn't been realistic for a long time and that Gen Z, quote, doesn't want to see in authenticity anymore. In an interview with Variety, Wild was presented with a statistic that almost half, 48.4% of Gen Z don't want to see as much sex on TV and in films.

And was asked, what do you think Gen Z doesn't understand about sex? And her response was, quote, I think Gen Z is pretty smart and I'd never dare to say they don't understand anything. I think they understand a lot more than the rest of us. I think the way that sex has been portrayed in film for a long time hasn't been particularly realistic. There's been this movement now towards authenticity, which is really good. So I choose to interpret that statistic maybe as Gen Z saying, we don't want to see inauthenticity anymore, we want to see real relationships,

and we want to have something that feels more genuine. And this has been received really well by many Gen Z commentators online. Someone called At Sicko wrote, this is one of the few times I've seen someone actually understand part of why Gen Z doesn't like sex scenes, apart from saying the usual and dare I say a bit lazy, it's conservatism, purity culture or being approved. Another user called Cookiehead Jenkins wrote,

Really appreciate Olivia Wilde for saying this. Not just for resisting the Gen Z hate-baiting question, but for speaking the truth of how terrible sex scenes have been due to the disgusting male gaze that has shaped the majority of them throughout history. Other people saw it a little differently, arguing that since Gen Z are having less sex than any other generation, the statistic likely speaks to much more than simply a dislike of inauthenticity. Many of them, in fact, don't want any sex scenes in films well-made or otherwise.

Before we get into the listener messages, which I think were really, really good this week, Richard, what do you make of the reaction to this? And why are we so fascinated by the sex that Gen Z is or isn't having? Well, I mean, we've said this before, but I definitely think there is this inbuilt, well-loved path, which is to absolutely shit on the youngest generation. We had it so badly. Millennials have obviously been absolutely toasted and skewered for the last few years. So I think it is this natural moving along with the process, this kind of irritation with the world changing, a new generation who seem different, who have different foy bulls. or ways of doing things. And something that is obviously really stuck is the amount of socialising

and the amount of sex that Gen Z have. And I think it is just such an easy way to be like, oh, like what a weird generation, what a weird bunch of young people who are not young peopleing enough, in our opinion. And the more I listen, read, consume really researched pieces on these kind of sticky claims.

The more I think it's not actually as simple as Gen Z are fucking lame, they don't have sex. Gen Z hate leaving the house. I don't think it is as simple as that. I think that maybe the statistics definitely reflect trends that are very interesting, but I think the reasons why are not as simple as this one blanket thing. And, for example, just to use another similarity, Diabolical Lies, which is a podcast that I recommended last week, I love.

I've spoken a lot about the masculinity crisis, and that has obviously become such a sticky concept and conversation for us, but it's not as simple as there is a masculinity crisis. There are lots of people profiting and grifting off that claim and then selling you things like pro-masculinity books and things like that. There is a big cottage industry centered around this problem that has been created, made and now sold back to us. So I just, I want to say it's making me feel a lot more critical about these claims that often

fit conservative modes of thinking that is young people suck, women suck, LGBT people suck, and people of colour suck. That tends to be bizarrely where we always land when we have these conversations. So sorry for this really rambly roundabout way of saying. I really respect Olivia Wilde for just presenting. a different answer for maybe trying to unpick it in a different way. I wanted to engage with this, I think, as fairly as possible, same as you, because it's so reductive. And you're right, it happened to us when we were eating avocado toast and doing whatever else we unforgivably did instead of being

proper people. It is that same thing applied. And the last thing I have wanted to do is fit that mindset of, we got it right, you got it wrong. You're all a bunch of deviance for not doing it, how we did it. And I was really interested in, I am really interested, to be honest, in different generations attitudes to sex and kind of this data that we're getting and what it actually means in a real world sense because it's so, you know, we're all human beings. It's ridiculous to say, okay, these people born here are just hardwired, do not want to shag. It's like, okay, what are the external factors? What is the climate they were born into? What are they consuming? What are they not consuming? What might be going on here? And actually, I looked at this. So the study that the interviewer was talking about

this UCLA study that pointed 50% of Gen C saying they wanted fewer sex scenes. And this was a survey in In 2023, it was 1,500 people aged from 10 to 24, which I think immediately knowing that corrects a little bit of this narrative. 10! Precisely, these are children. Most of the participants in this study, if you kind of assume that it's been taken spread among that age group 10 to 24. Okay, these are prepubescent consumers of culture.

These are people who either are children and so have not had sex or teenagers and so I have not had sex or had very little sex. It makes sense why they would say, yeah, I'm not really seeing the appeal of sex scenes or actually I don't just want sex scenes. And the other findings were that 51.5% wanted to see more content around friendships and non-romantic relationships. 47.5% said that sex was not needed for most TV shows and 39% wanted to see more aromantic and as sexual characters.

And I think maybe that is still a shift from millennial attitudes that we were to be questioned that even in that age group. But I don't think it is as damning as it sounds like 10. I think your reaction is correct. Like that is prepubescent kids and really young teens. So even though they are having less sex, I think that is really worth keeping in mind. It seemed quite sensationalistic to call them anti-sex.

And you go, well, you would hope so at 11. But that I thought was really interesting. And I was looking at other statistics around whether Genzi are having sex. And they are having less sex, even if you just look at adult Gen Z. So 18 to 26-year-olds, apparently having 0.7 shags a week. This is according to statistics from the sexual... I don't know how you say it's love honey, but are they a sexual... No, they're a sex shop, erotic emporium.

I think erotic emporium sounds perfect. The adult retailer love honey. So they found that 80 to 26 year olds were having 0.7 shags a week, millennials of 27 to 43, about 1.4 times. How do you have 0.7 shags a week? Is that oral? They get it most of the way in. Thank God I'm not a statistician, because I was also asking the same question.

Gen X, which is 45 to 6 year olds, 1.2, and boomers, so people born from 1946 to 1964 are about 0.9 shags a week. So that small percentage of a percentage higher than 1826 childs, which I think if I was 1826, I would be a bit embarrassed that perhaps my grandparents were doing it more than me. But I think it's a really, I think that's really interesting. I also read a CDC report that said that 30% of teens said they'd had sex at least once, which is a drop from 38% in 2019 and over 50% in decades prior. And this study that has been going on since 1990.

And I do think those trends are really interesting and how we read them. because I think, I know this conversation, we sort of entered this thinking, we would talk about sex scenes and films, but I do think it's really a really vital part of it to understand attitudes to sex born of how little or how much sex people are having. And I wonder what you think, because people think like the pandemic, the current socioeconomic climate, the fact that people are living with their parents longer, greater anxiety, AI. Like there are so many reasons why young people aren't having sex that have nothing to do with any inherent disinterest in it. I think it's a bit of everything. I am definitely going to do more reading about. it because now I feel like I just definitely don't want to consume the really easy answers for this. I actually want to look more deeply into it. But I think it is a bit of everything. I think the argument that appeals to me most, which I feel like is definitely something that I've seen, is more young people living at home and this kind of disparate living situations of no longer uni being the necessary route to building a career. Also the financial ability to do that is obviously diminishing for a lot

of people, living in flat shares, the rise of house prices, all of that kind of thing. I think financially that feels like very fitting. And I mean, you can just see it all around. So many people I know in their 20s are no longer able to move out of their family homes. So I think that one definitely appeals. And I think it seems to be a very fair argument. I also think pandemic for the generation where those were vital years of their life, that is really formative time, you know, for people I've seen who were just heading off to uni when

you're on your own, you explore in that regard for people in six form as well. It's obviously vital time where you start going on dates, you start talking to people that you like exploring and just like seeing what kind of people you like. And that is a really big deal. That is not anything small. I think we kind of shrug off the pandemic a bit because it's just easier to not think about it. But the amount of, I mean, the impact it will have had on people is unimaginable. It's hard to imagine because we don't talk about it.

We don't think about it. We don't really want to think about it. And also it's also hard to measure what impact that's had on people's sex lives when there's been nothing in comparable history in recent times to compare it to. Even the fact that you said in 2019, the stat was slightly higher. I think it's really significant and I think that says something. Yeah, and it's all of those things, absolutely. And it's also, as we've discussed in an episode, probably about a year ago,

there's such a widening ideological gap between young people in a way that we didn't see. So there are a lot of young right-wing boys and young women and girls tend to lean more left-wing. And I think attempting to shag over that great ideological gulf, like it just wouldn't happen. I remember being a teenager and everyone was sort of, sort of a bit liberal. Politics were loading, basically, but nobody was as online. nobody was being red-pilled and I do think that's a really key thing as well as I think about Gen Z and everyone was talking about my sex life and scrutinizing it I'd be like fuck off I'm not doing it's just not sod off it's not it's just not an aphrodisiac is it so you had a message from molly who

said since he toured rivalry which is 50% sex scenes is already the show of the year I call BS on all of this and I think that is a really interesting point and a really good point it seems to be the romanticie has skyrocketed as a genre but does that actually mean that people are wanting less sex scenes and also want to engage with sex less. They're obviously finding outlets for it. It kind of seems like the culture around sex is thriving at the moment. Yeah, I really liked Molly's message. And actually, I went back to her in the DMs because I was like,

okay, tell me more. And she followed that up with, I guess there's a risk of conflating desire for sex in media to feel more real, which includes titulation, horniness and Ilya's bare-ass cheeks, as much as it does, consent and clumsiness. With the representation you get in the media of Gen Z as sort of an ascetic, priestly generation, afraid of bodies porn, etc. Gen Z are as horny as the rest of us, I think, is my point. Perhaps Gen Z eroticism versus millennial male gaze, Cameron Diaz and the holiday declaring

she hates foreplay. But really, that's comparing what Gen Z wants with what millennials were given, which I think is such a good point. Because actually, millennials didn't really decide our own media landscape. We just consumed the, I'm thinking of American pie. And again, Cameron Diaz with fluid in her hair and I forget the film, but you know, the one that I mean, like it was very over, it was very over-sexed. Is it all about Mary or something?

That's exactly it. It was very like sort of gruesome. It wasn't realistic. It was just fluids and things. So I do think that we are in danger of going, oh, you don't want to watch these really crude depictions of sex. Prude. And I don't think that's what it is. Yeah, I love that message. It's so well put. And it goes back to what Olivia Wilde said, which is completely there is a difference between what we were given, i.e., sex scenes that were really kind of male gazey, very intense, not at all close to the live reality. And it's kind of off-putting. looking back at some of those films. And especially, you know when you watch films and you're like, why have those two people just hooked up and had sex? Oh, it's because she was the only woman in the film of an action film with like 10 men. So obviously she had to have sex with the male lead,

even though they had maybe one line of dialogue together with them. We are conflating everything as if it's all the same and it's not at all. There are different kinds of films and different kind of sex scenes. Got a message actually from an anonymous commentator who basically pointed out what is authentic, what is normal.

And the message said, it really depends on what movies you're watching. To her point, E. E. If all you watch are American films specifically major Hollywood films or solely films made by straight men, then it'd understand bristling a type of depiction. If you watch films from around the world, from the whole of film history and not solely ones made by straight men, then you will see different depictions of sex.

2023's French drama passages sowed passionate and messy sex between a man and a woman and between two men. Other people's children and drive my car showed sex between average adults in a stirring way, partially due to the lack of glamour and theatrics. I also question the use of the word realistic. People have different sensibilities, interest, desires. The sex in the Duke of Burgundy or the hand may perplex some deeming it weird for the sake of weird, whereas others may see themselves in it. And I think that's a really good point as well. I think we are talking about mainstream. There are so much out there that is doing interesting stuff with sex and to say, okay, well, sex is needless in films when all you've watched is perhaps romance or blockbuster is to ignore a lot of what exists in this space.

And then I think it is, I think it's a little bit presumptuous to say, well, it can serve no narrative purpose or all of it's inauthentic. actually there is some really good stuff out there. And also from that message, I'm like, okay, I've got some films I need to go and watch. Oh, you have to watch passages. It's so good. We had another anonymous message related to that, which said, I think Gen Z often understands sex and depictions of sex in media as needed versus not needed. I've seen a lot of discussion of gratuitous sex in the media,

which makes me think they only see depictions of sex as something that needs to specifically serve the narrative. There's no joy or whimsy in how they view the media they consume. It really appears to come down to whether it's necessary or not. And that's an interesting counter to what you're saying, which is maybe this idea that sex is gratuitous unless it forms the narrative and pushes characters forward is also a puritanical way of looking at it. Maybe sex doesn't need to serve a storyline. Maybe it serves characters. Maybe it serves audiences in different ways because it reflects life. It reflects messiness. It reflects the seeking of pleasure, connection, all the reasons that people do have sex. So I think also that that's an interesting

encounter to it that maybe we're also framing it in this way that limits it to sex can only serve a purpose, it has to serve a purpose. Something that I actually have been mulling over, and I think it's something that we mentioned in our excellent two-part porn deep dive from last year. As many people have noted, we live in very, very sexualized times, but very unerotic times. So the quote unquote sex that we're being fed is AI slot porn and it's crude adverts for simulated sexual content on OnlyFans. It is kind of gratuity and virality in an environment where people are also increasingly conservative in their views of sexuality and pleasure. And I think it's an era of probation that we are living in. And so many of us just have no desire.

Anyone who looks at history and how this normally goes has no desire to return to those like cultural and social dark ages. And I'll really worry that that is what we're seeing. And so I think for anyone who is critical of sex scenes or thinks, okay, we just don't need them, we can have beautiful art without them. I would just say to look at the history of censorship, I think censorship is not just an idea of the past. This kind of is a bit of a canary in the coal mine. When this attitude gains popularity, something else is usually behind it. And attitudes to sex and pleasure, like who gets to have sex, how do they have sex? Who is punished for wanting it or seeking it? Who controls kind of the image of it, the supply and demand of it, are so tightly bound with state control.

And authoritarian governments and regimes benefit massively. from puritanical and limiting ideas about sex and from sexual shame. Like it's all linked to abortion, bodily autonomy, your right to choose, your right to have birth control, your right to pleasure, your right to, you know, your role in a marriage is dictated by these bigger themes. And so I think the conversation obviously can go to sillier and shallower places about sex scenes and about how they look and how they feel and what purpose they serve in a narrative. But I think we can't forget there is more at stake than just horniness and just, you know, millennials being out of control, horny lunatics who want to put sex scenes in cartoons. It's more than that.

And we got a message that read, quote, as someone who grew up conservative myself and then had to unpack a lot of stuff over the years, there was a good long while when sex in movies or any sexualized depictions of women at all would make me deeply uncomfortable. I'm really glad I learned to push through these feelings and address the source of my discomfort, internalized, massage, emotionally mostly, instead of being avoidant about it. I don't think there's any wrong way to feel necessarily. This conditioning is something that many people have to break through in order to have a healthy

and happy adulthood. And I agree with that. I think the sexual attitudes and trends, they're kind of guided by the sexual market as a whole. And I guess the youngest demographic, the youngest adult demographic, Gen Zs, have so much scope to both change their own minds, but also to shape culture in ways that could be a really net benefit, e.g. imagine no more sex scenes which do further attitudes about, or, you know, ignorant attitudes about female sexuality or how female bodies actually work in a sexual context. So I think it's kind of encouraging everyone to be like, examine your relationship with sex rather than going your Genzi, you're ruining sex. Like, that is reductive, but there is a historical context here that can't be ignored. I mean, in the UK, we obviously

have age verification when it comes to porn sites right now. So sex is really fucking political. I mean, it's always been political. It's especially political right now at the times we're living in, whether that's a woman's right to her own bodily autonomy, like you said, or literally the access of porn now. I read a piece today in The Guardian about Porn Hub, essentially shattering down its site to UK users if they haven't already age verified themselves and signed up as users because they've had such a dramatic drop in people using their sites. And one of the kind of spokespeople for Pornhub said, the issue is this isn't going to stop people watching porn. It's just going to filter them to worse sites with more aggressive content. I, this isn't the right place to talk about my feelings

about Pornhub. I obviously think it's very checkered, terrible company. But some of that I do believe, I do believe that people don't stop watching porn. They'll find other ways to access it. And I don't know whether shaming people, adding a censorship issue, adding a privacy issue into this realm is the right way to deal with it. And I think in the same way with sex scenes, I don't think condemning them completely. Also, upholding them as these perfect things completely is the answer. I think it's just having a mature discussion about all of this stuff. But unfortunately, we don't do that. We don't do that in the space of politics. We don't do that quite often culturally as well. I mean, I haven't had a conversation with somebody who works in TV about sex scenes and the way that

they're trying to challenge them, change them, all that kind of stuff. Because I don't work in that industry, but I hope that is a space that they're doing it because it's full of interesting, creative people who are interested in putting provocative, compelling stories out there. So I think policing that as a space is probably the wrong place to police it because that is the space where we could be encouraged to promote, project, challenge the narratives that we're struggling against in our real lives. Yeah, it's so, I think you make some excellent points there.

Porn Harb, it would be a cold day in hell when I listen to them, their kind of ethical argument for themselves, like in 2023, and we talked about this in our porn episode, which you should all go and listen to if you're registered. In 2023, their parent company, Ilo Holdings, admitted to receiving proceeds of sex trafficking. They've hosted child sexual abuse materials. I just, I think you make some excellent points there, but you're right. It's so cloudy. It is difficult and we should just be, we need to be adults and we need to be kind of having this conversation together. Another part of this conversation, which I found quite interesting, is people taking issue with the fact that it's Olivia Wilde, who is making this comment.

and kind of positioning herself as this balanced commentator on sex and films because during the promotion of her film, Don't worry darling, a few years ago, she was selling that as a story of female pleasure. And she said something like, you know, men don't come in this film, only women. We kind of got this messaging that this was going to be a really pleasure-focused film. And we got a message from friend of podcast Libby Petter, who said that Wild had, quote, made a film reporting to be about female pleasure that was actually about men having sex with women in environments they hadn't consented to being in. And she actually has a great piece coming out. oh no, it will actually be out now for the times about her comments and sex scenes in media.

And she argues basically it's time for sex scenes to celebrate the sex that people are actually having, like the imperfect, wobbly bodied sex that involves like fluids and awkwardness versus what we're seeing already. And she says she's kind of hoping that we are heading in the right direction. And I agree. I think there's some stickiness about Olivia Wilde being the one to say this. But I don't think she's wrong. I think it's difficult because it's also like, I don't know if discrediting her. her for saying something now means that we're just kind of shutting down the conversation. I think

that is what's happening and I think it probably is helpful to think, well, she should probably have a more nuanced discussion around the film that she put out and she missold. I think that is also true. I think both things can be true that we have to allow people to start these conversations, especially if they're on stage and they're getting presented with the statistic, which is often used in disparaging ways and not to further a conversation in an interesting way. I am pleasantly surprised that she's the one who said this because I don't really know much about her. I did watch that film and I was a bit like, oh, it's a pretty shit film. So yeah, my take on it is two things can be true. We can want her to talk about her film in a better way and also have a bit of a reflective

moment about don't worry, darling, and how it maybe didn't live up to what she said it would, whilst also commending her for being one of a few people who is having a conversation that is a bit more nuanced. To read a message from sort of unofficial fourth host of the podcast and He says, I blame Marvel. For over a decade, the hottest people on the planet got personal trainers and then look ridiculously hot on screen in the most sexist films ever. Zero passion, zero love, just saving the world from sky beams and generic aliens. So we have a generation that is both hypersexualized while also being prudish and infantilised in their opinions of sex. As for its portrayal, considering one of the hottest shows right now is about gay hockey players, I don't think sex is the

issue, it's the viewers and what they want. And having read that, I think that's cemented my view that actually the kids are all right. There is great hope for this. And I actually found a really good piece on heated rivalry and why it is such a breath of fresh air in the sex and romance space. And I found it on LinkedIn of all places, which is somewhere that I usually would not go with a gun, as you well know. I'm glad that I did for this. And it's a piece by someone called Catherine B called Heated Rivalry and the Rejection of Romanticized Harm. And she writes, For decades, heterosexual romance has taught us to misread risk as chemistry. Jealousy is framed as protection. Persistence is framed as devotion. Power and balances are sold as security.

Emotional volatility is recoded as depth. These tropes are so familiar, they barely register as narrative choice at all. They form the background noise of popular culture. And she goes on to say, you know, heated rivalry basically removes these tropes like desirous dominance and their relationship is symmetrical. And if this whole piece, which I will link turns out to be AI, I will eat a pair of juggings. I'll be so annoyed. I think it's such a good point. And it's really, it's, it's, it's really salient. I think it's, maybe it's just a matter of, the more you know, the more you know, and the less you're able to watch unhealthy sexual dynamics or fake sexual dynamics play out. And I think often I will go back and watch a film that I thought was so

much fun when I was a teenager. And I'm like, oh no, that's so problematic. It may just be that Gen Z are arriving a bit earlier at that point where you're like, I can't stomach seeing sex that is basically nonsense, you know, like penetration woman has 19 orgasms. It could just be that they can't enjoy it because they know too much. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. I really love this conversation and the messages were fantastic this week. And just making sure that you're all caught up with last week's conversation, which was about the depressing reality of student loans and inflation. We'd also love for you to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Everything is Content Pod. It's just so you can take part

in these episodes and get even more EIC content. We'll see you as always on Friday and don't worry and NONI will be back in your ears as well. Bye. See.