Where Did All the Sex Go? Modern Literature's Great Evasion

When Philip Roth published Portnoy's Complaint in 1969, it sparked outrage. Readers accused him of anti-Semitism, misogyny, and sexual excess. By 1981, he felt compelled to write what critics saw as an apology novel, Zuckerman Unbound, where his protagonist regrets having written about sex at all.

Today, 57 years later, American literature faces the opposite problem: writers are so busy avoiding sex that they've nearly erased it from the page entirely.

This isn't about prudishness returning to literature. It's about something more complex—a cultural reckoning with heterosexuality itself, playing out in the pages of contemporary novels where desire once lived.

The Fade-to-Black Generation

Consider Lily King'sWriters & Lovers, where the protagonist Casey navigates relationships with exquisite physical awareness. King writes: "When I get out of the car I'm so horny I can barely walk up the driveway." Yet despite this frank acknowledgment of desire, the novel contains zero detailed sex scenes.

The pattern repeats across contemporary fiction. Erin Somers builds erotic tension for 200 pages in The Ten Year Affair, only to reduce the climactic encounter to: "They lay down and he was soft with her, then he was less soft, then he was not soft at all." It reads like a medical report.

Nicole Cuffy'sDances follows a Black ballerina whose story hinges on an unexpected pregnancy, yet when intimate moments arrive, the novel's sensory intensity vanishes. We get precise descriptions of sweat, cellulite, and lost toenails—but not how sex actually feels to the protagonist.

This evasion sends a troubling message: a woman's physical experience matters everywhere except in bed.

The Rise of "Heterofatalism"

Scholar Asa Seresin has coined a term for what's happening: "heterofatalism"—women making a performance of their exhaustion with men. If you've heard a straight woman say she wishes she were a lesbian, you've witnessed this phenomenon.

The #MeToo movement accelerated this cultural shift, but it began earlier with what Lora Kelley calls "the era of the swipe." Dating apps created such a maelstrom of options that giving up on romance can seem appealing even to people who want it.

Novelist evasion of sex only reinforces this impulse. If literature can't imagine realistic, satisfying encounters between men and women, it suggests such experiences are impossible in real life.

The Romance Novel Paradox

Here's the contradiction: while literary fiction abandons sex, romance novels are booming. "Romantasy" didn't exist as a bookstore category eight years ago. Now Billings, Montana has an entire store devoted to it.

This split reveals something crucial. Readers still crave stories about desire and connection—but only within the safe boundaries of fantasy. Romance novels end "Happily Ever After" by genre convention. Literary fiction has no such obligation to optimism.

The question is whether this division serves readers well. Miranda July'sAll Fours suggests it doesn't. July's unnamed narrator rediscovers her sexuality through an unconventional encounter that's intentionally unsettling but ultimately liberating. The novel embraces the messiness of real desire rather than retreating into fairy-tale safety.

The Cost of Literary Prudishness

When novelists avoid depicting sex, they limit character development and cultural possibility. In the 1960s and '70s, consciousness-raising groups helped women discuss sexuality openly. Shere Hite's groundbreaking research gave thousands of women relief: "I am so glad to know it is not just me."

Contemporary literature could serve a similar function, but only if writers engage honestly with physical intimacy. Alan Hollinghurst'sThe Line of Beauty shows how it's done, exploring both excellent gay sex and how pornography addiction destroys one character's ability to connect.

Elaine Castillo'sModeration tackles similar territory, following a content moderator whose exposure to brutal online imagery nearly destroys her capacity for physical intimacy—until virtual reality offers unexpected redemption.

What We're Really Avoiding

The retreat from sex in literature isn't just about bodies. It's about refusing to imagine better versions of heterosexual relationships. As Seresin argues, to be "permanently, preemptively disappointed in heterosexuality is to refuse the possibility of changing straight culture for the better."

This matters beyond literature. If novels can't envision satisfying relationships between men and women, how can readers imagine them in real life? The absence becomes self-perpetuating.