For days, the news of the ranking of the most sexual cities in the world, just publicized by the alcoholic beverage distributor The Bottle Club, has been on my mind. The prototypical narcissism of Barcelona residents has led most digital media and newspapers in the city to highlight the fact that we occupy the twelfth position on the list (a good score; London wins, followed by Las Vegas and New York) and the inferiority complex typical of the tribe has emphasized that we are still far from the fourth position occupied by Madrid. Beyond the anecdote (in fact, it should be clarified that the ranking does not speak of sexual cities but of seductive cities), the interesting thing about the matter is to see how the championship is elaborated from very old paradigms of the presence of sex in a city, such as its number of strip clubs, the quantity of "perverts" per square meter, resident porn stars, or restaurants where diners can treat themselves to oysters and champagne.
This list should be compared with a book precisely published in the United States (Rethinking Sex: a provocation), a text in which Washington Post journalist Christine Emba has questioned the gains in freedom of the sexual revolution, advocating for a return to a certain intimate and spiritual transcendence of sex that goes beyond the casual paradigm. Apart from the book's underlying thesis, Emba shares notable data on the lack of sexual activity among young people in her country: citing an article from the Archives of Sexual Behavior, she writes that between 2009 and 2018 the proportion of adolescents who claim to have no sexual relations grew from 28.8% to 44.2% among men and from 49.5% to 74% among women. The data is relevant, as it shows how the most liberated generation in history (also the one that has accepted queer life with the most joy) is rapidly entering the desert path of celibacy.
In light of these data, and setting aside the idea of returning to a more thoughtful and even purely romantic sexual activity, the absurdity of analyzing a city's sexual (or seductive) behavior using metrics such as the number of hourly hotels available or the tons of champagne one can guzzle becomes evident. To all this is added the confinement of recent years which, contrary to the cliché that the end of COVID would imply a surge of orgies and limitless parties, we note how distrust towards others and the fear of externality has led to the mere thought of the sexual act being problematic. One can accept or reject Emba's underlying thesis that the world of dating and internet applications have ended up turning sex into a reified, parsimonious activity (which, she says, should lead us to think that consensual sex is not always enjoyed); but I would say that to this we must add the more banal fact of laziness.
Let's admit it, dear Barcelonians: screwing is not what it used to be and it's a hell of a lot of effort. In parallel, the hyper-technological and post-pandemic world (excuse me, I deeply hate hyphens) has caused the time spent on seduction and everything that accompanied it, from serving a glass of sparkling wine to talking about childhood in Proustian terms, to seem like a supreme waste of time much less stimulating than the onanism of ice cream and Netflix. Is there sex in Barcelona? Of course there is. And our dear friends at La Paloma or La França will never have to worry about their subsistence, because there will always be furtive lovers who take advantage of the children's extracurricular break to treat themselves to a very pleasant exchange of fluids. And champagne, of course, will continue to be drunk in cascades. But a question that becomes even more interesting persists. Is there a lack of sex in Barcelona? Will we continue to pretend that the statistics of many countries in the world do not apply to us? Or will we finally assume the tedium?