Nothing seems as intimate and yet impersonal as a university room – except maybe the sexuality of college students. Endowed with small spaces, bustling crowds, and endless possibilities, the prospect of sexual activity almost seems inevitable. “Sex has seemingly never been less stigmatized or easier to procure” points out Jia Tolentino, a staff writer for The New Yorker. And this has never been more apparent for the current generation of McGill students.
Terms such as ‘prude’ or ‘pious’ are now thrown around for those less interested in sex; those who embrace multiple partners face accusations of being a ‘fuckboy’ or ‘fuckgirl’; the ones who leap from relationship to relationship are labeled a ‘serial monogamist.’ Every set of sexual judgment collides across boundaries as our former stigmas lose their grip, encountering students from 152 different countries who each arrive carrying their own.
More strikingly, gendered archetypes arise. Chief among them is hybrid masculinity, defined by sociologists Tristan Bridges and C.J Pascoe as the incorporation of marginalized identities or progressive characteristics, such as queerness, feminism, or sensitivity, into performances of masculinity, while retaining social privilege and dominance. These gendered dynamics often mask compulsory heterosexuality behind the façade of wokism and feminism. It is mostly cosmetic: the ‘performative male’ fantasy doesn’t dismantle patriarchy’s grip on sexuality.
Compulsory sexuality – the social expectation that everyone should be sexually active, interested in sex, or pursuing relationships– is further reinforced by the social, loud, party-centered environment of residence life. Sex is always just around the corner, talked about, overheard through thin walls, and constantly fantasized. With little else to do outside of classes, students fill their time by socializing before, between, and after lectures, and partying through the weekends. Our bodies suddenly become the center of social life. In residences, bowls of condoms appear during Frosh or Halloween, insinuating that sex will happen. The result is an edgy cocktail of hormones, peer pressure, substances, and newfound freedom, pushing boundaries, and lowering inhibitions.
College sexuality today is less about why you want to have sex and more about how you want it, on top of conditions that keep getting worse. COVID-19 introduced fears of proximity itself, producing tighter social boundaries and reducing sexual encounters. In the background, national politics – such as US abortion restrictions – loom heavily over American students, reminding them that sexual freedom is never guaranteed and always conditional.
And yet, paradoxically, while campus life is saturated with sexual talk and expectations, researchers and journalists have been warning of a ‘sex recession’. To explain it, some point to the rise of modern hookup culture. Bargained over on dating apps such as Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, sex increasingly functions as a kind of online currency, reducing intimacy to a quick, one-off encounter that many find unappealing. Others accuse the impact of the #MeToo movement, which has exposed how deeply patriarchal structures shape sexual encounters, often leaving women feeling dispossessed of their own sexuality– here, what is framed as “sex” may in fact be experienced as a form of dispossession, closer to violation than to intimacy. At the same time, safety concerns have led to a redefinition of what “safe sex” means, not just protection from disease or pregnancy, but the pursuit of sexual experiences that are emotionally secure and consensual.
Beyond this, broader cultural anxieties weigh heavily: climate change, the rise of authoritarian politics, and mental health struggles all contribute to stress and disengagement from partnered sex. Instead, many young people turn inward, exploring sexuality alone through pornography or other sexual media. Indeed, sex has never felt more politicized, more fraught, and more carefully negotiated.
Ultimately, college sex teaches us that sexuality is not merely what happens to the body, but an experience of the self in the midst of the world.