What's killing intimacy in new-age sex?

IllustrationUday MohiteIt had at any rate been hurried One minute we were kissing and the next we were on bed and with very little foreplay he had begun penetrating And then in the middle of it all he asks Yeah baby do you like my f I could only mutter a yes says a young Mumbai resident of a hookup she had last year Both she and her partner are in their late 20s Much later while paying attention to what people were saying in the porn she watched did she realise where the dialogues for that encounter had been writtenWhile much research and time has been spent delving into the sex life of milennials across the globe mdash they are having more sex than previous generations say some reports while others insist thats not true mdash the quality of this is becoming a cause of concernFed on a diet of porn thats far more easily accessible than it was even a decade ago and for sure with far less taboo ideas of how sex should look like and sound are far more pervading today So when Indian website Agents of Ishq AOI published an article earlier this month titled Weird Ideas Porn Gave Me About Sex there were more points listed in it than the usual complaints of partners looking for the perfect anatomySquirting mdash when a woman ejaculates during an orgasm mdash for instance is a big myth And equally high in demand The writer of the piece quotes a woman named Tanvi as saying Once I did squirt by mistake but it wasnt sexy at all It was like my vagina was farting I started laughing really hard My boyfriend said Dont laugh this is supposed to be hot and tried to make me do it again because hed seen it on porn and found it sexy But I couldntThe argument that milennials who have more access to online sex education and so should have a better grip on the subject is flawed says writer filmmaker and founder of AOI Paromita Vora While we may have moved on from keeping sex a taboo to creating a peer pressure where everyone is talking about it theres not much conversation about the experience of sex Theres a peer pressure to have sex and experiment mdash whether or not you like it Its like having to tick off from a catalogue Human intimacy says Vora has fallen sharply Casual sex has become necessary and love in fact a tabooAnd what falls in the gap that this creates is any real connection that two partners may feelA 26yearold from Delhi who recently hooked up with an exboyfriend mdash someone she enjoyed connected sex with mdash says I dont know what he watched or read in the gap but when we got together he tried all sorts of antics in bed which was just not like him And it wasnt any fun for me either While she wont get into the details she adds that its not the antics per se that posed the problem It was that it was completely untrue to the man And sometimes the problem manifests itself the other way around as wellSuprateek Chatterjee freelance journalist reacted with a hilarious tweet to the AOI copy Also can we address how because of so much porn being American many of our sex noises have an accentHe gives context Imagine someone who has grown up in Mumbai who in the middle of the act goes oh yeah baby and in an American accent Its something guy friends and I have spoken about It happens with everyone The unwritten rule is soldier on Dont point it out and definitely dont laughBut these might be some of the less complicated aspects facing this generationVora fears that younger girls may be agreeing to things in bed simply to please the man She isnt alone in her fears A national survey in Australia the findings of which were reported in 2016 found that Threequarters of young women believe sex education in schools left them unprepared for sex and dealing with relationships It quoted a 19yearold from Narrabundah College Lyndsay Bassett I think a lot of young girls just assume the guy definitely wants sex and its about his pleasure and even if a girl doesnt want it for herself shell say yesAnd so there are young women who have indulged in oral sex when they didnt want to Not really being able to show their displeasureKissing has fallen off the radar too The problem is not that there isnt much kissing its that its no longer considered part of real sex says Dr Lauri Betito director of the sex education portal of porn site pornhub Thats part of the problem and its happening everywhere In a country where theres little sex education mdash I have to say many of the questions I get are from India mdash the only access to sex education is pornography which is not a real representation