A hundred years ago, it might have been considered inconceivable that adult humans would struggle and fail at reproduction, an action that is one of the primary drivers of natural selection. However, in our modern day, it is growing increasingly more common for a person to live well into their adult years without participating in sexual activities with another adult. This phenomenon coincides with the fall, and in some places outright crashing, of Total Fertility Rates (TFRs) across most of the developed world, with some nations having TFRs below replacement levels. Concurrently, there has been a rise on social media and online forums of “incels”, people who wish to have sex, but are unfortunately unable to do so due to factors they see as beyond their control. The world has a sex problem, and just like any other problem, a good place to begin solving it is identifying what exactly causes the problem.
Happy Couple
Physical and emotional correlates
Table of Contents
A group of researchers from the University of Amsterdam, University of Queensland, and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt among others reviewed data from over 400,00 UK residents and about 13,500 Australian residents. They found that people who were sexless were more likely to be depressed, unhappy, and lonely. There was also an increased feeling of worthlessness with sexless people often expressing the sentiment that the world would be a better place without them. On the physical side, they noticed that males on the lower end of the distribution for upper body strength were more likely to be sexless. This correlation, however, did not hold true for females. For both sexes, wearing glasses from an early age was associated with sexlessness, however, this effect disappeared for adults who wear glasses.
Socioeconomic correlates
By tracking and localizing Twitter posts with incel themes, the researchers found out that such posts were more common in regions where the male-to-female ratio was higher than average. They were also commoner in regions with greater income inequality. Then, in a shocking turn of events, the researchers found out that both IQ and greater earning power were positively correlated with sexlessness. The correlation with IQ can be explained by smarter people spending more time in school and delaying sex until they find that special one. On the other hand, the income correlation could be explained by the fact that childhood glass-wearing (a marker for nerds and geeks who are viewed as less sexually attractive) correlates positively with both higher IQ and higher income levels.
Genetic correlates
Sexlessness was also found to be increased among people on the autism spectrum of diseases. This may be because the genes for autism and the yet undiscovered genes for sexlessness are found on adjacent loci and share the same promoters. But more realistically, this finding can be explained by the fact that autistic individuals find it more difficult to create and maintain friendships.
Clinical significance
The classic wet-streets-cause-rain scenario exists where a researcher finds an association between rainfall and wet streets and erroneously goes ahead to assume that wet streets cause rain. Correlation however does not equal causation. It is not yet clear whether individuals are sexless because they are depressed, or depressed because they are sexless. More research will be needed to tease out the root causes of what might end up being the most pressing problem humans will face in the 21st century.
References
Abdellaoui, A., Wesseldijk, L. W., Gordon, S. D., Pasman, J. A., Smit, D. J. A., Androvičová, R., Martin, N. G., Ullén, F., Mosing, M. A., Zietsch, B. P., & Verweij, K. J. H. (2024). Life without sex: Large-scale study links sexlessness to physical, cognitive, and personality traits, socioecological factors, and DNA [Preprint]. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.24.24310943
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