Sarah Harte: The way we talk and write about sex in Ireland has truly changed

David Tennant, Alex Hassell, Aidan Turner, Emily Atack, and Nafessa Williams in the screen adaptation of Jilly Coopers’ ‘Rivals’.

Sex is in the ether. You can’t read a paper without a review for the screen-adapted version of Jilly Cooper’s racy novel Rivals; cue nostalgia from an older generation about the good old days when men were men and women were women. 

Jilly Cooper described her books as “low morals and high fences”.

With two weeks to go to the American election, the Democrats are hoping that sex and reproductive rights cause Republican women to cross party lines and lure swing voters to keep the Orange one out of the Oval Office.

The right to contraception is under threat in America, something Justice Clarence Thomas indicated in his concurring opinion in the Roe v Wade case on abortion. 

This is why, on Monday, President Biden announced new measures to expand the availability of contraception to American women.

What feels like in some parallel universe, American women are fighting for their right to make intensely private reproductive decisions, while Irish women finally have that choice. 

We’ve come a long way in this country, from where pretty much all sex that didn’t take place with heterosexual marriage was considered transgressive.

The way we talk and write about sex in this country has truly changed. 

Women are better at writing about sex

Martin Amis, whose novels were peopled with committed lechers, once remarked that women are better at writing about sex, commenting that few modern writers can write about sex “without embarrassing us slightly”. 

Irish novelist Sally Rooney has staked out her territory in a refreshing, sexually frank and unembarrassed way. And it’s not just Sally Rooney writing about sex.

Last weekend, I was moderating at the International Cork Short Story Festival when a Northern Irish writer, Rosemary Jenkinson, read a story featuring graphic sex. 

Jenkinson does not spare the horses. In her fifties, it was likely not what the audience was expecting. 

Her female characters like gnarly sex, often with strangers and have an unsentimental slant on the male form. 

Cue gales of laughter from the audience, although what was interesting from my vantage point on the stage was that the reaction varied according to age. Younger people laughed their heads off while the boomers looked nonplussed.

It’s not my intention to stereotype older people as out of step with recent social changes. 

The many referenda passed in this country would not have done so without the grey vote. 

Irish novelist Sally Rooney has staked out her territory in a refreshing, sexually frank and unembarrassed way. File picture: Getty Images

However, boomers born between 1946 and 1964 grew up in a country where sex was not talked about, and the Catholic church regulated their intimate lives, often with horrible and most unchristian penalties.

Irish sexuality is a complicated beast. Gen X, my gang born between 1965 and 1980, grew up with a schizophrenic attitude to sex. 

While we were not as psychologically maimed by the three ‘S’s of shame, stigma, and secrecy, we were undoubtedly shaped by them. 

This probably accounts for why when asking Jenkinson a question, I baulked at reading out the following line from one of her stories: ‘I found it cute how his flaccid penis was sitting on top of his bulbous balls like a stuffed vine leaf or the stub of a wet-tipped cigar.’ 

The fact I had older relatives in the audience was probably also a factor.

On the one hand, television channels were changed for young gen X’ers, assuming something erotic came on television, which it rarely did. 

Some girls still changed on the beach in those towelling robes (they looked like tents) with elastic around the neck made for them by their mothers, presumably to preserve their modesty. 

Now and then, a girl would disappear suddenly from school without an explanation; it was only much later that you did the math.

At school, I remember when the lights went out, one 12-year-old girl used to read out sections of racy Judith Krantz novels purloined from her mother’s bookshelves with ardent female sexual protagonists and lesbian sex, which produced a particular hush in the dormitory. 

One girl used to bless herself and performatively block her ears, although she was in the minority. 

Like Rooney, Krantz, whose books were less high-brow, believed that when writing a sex scene, you have to go into the details.

On the other hand, later in college, gen X’ers had sex out of ‘wedlock’. 

But they ran the gauntlet of extracting prescriptions for contraceptives from reluctant moralising GPs, of which there were many, including on college campuses. 

Unprotected sex and accidental pregnancies were common, and there was a nexus between the culture of drinking and sex, with many Irish men unable to talk to you without being drunk.

Enduring the Walk of Shame

The Walk of Shame was a thing. This meant being seen in night time clothes the following morning and returning home after spending the night with someone else, implying that sexual activity had taken place. 

This shame was only directed at women because, in a massive double standard, men were patted on the back for their sexual conquests.

Where sex-positive gen Z women born between 1997 and 2012 are concerned, the Walk of Shame is probably dead because shame is dead and buried in the grave, along with de Valera’s comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, and they are more likely to do a stride of pride. 

If the younger members of the audience were laughing their heads off the other night at the festival, it’s because it’s normal for them to be frank about sex. 

They can afford to be more casual; the stakes are lower when you can get emergency contraception from most pharmacies without a prescription, and sin is not a thing.

The wheel may have come around in more than one way, though. 

While dating apps are a feature on many people’s smartphones, these companies are experiencing financial slowdowns due to a generational shift in attitudes. 

Dating app companies are experiencing financial slowdowns due to a generational shift in attitudes. File picture: Alamy/P

Where the millennials born between 1980 and 1996 loved them, gen Z is thought to be baulking. 

Bumble’s share price hit an all-time low in August; Tinder is under pressure, and monthly downloads are falling across the dating app industry.

As investors are turned off, analysts are scrambling to figure out what is going on; gen Z is believed to be forming connections on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. 

A new report by the Kinsey Institute suggests that gen Z are fantasising about monogamy and more traditional intimacy. 

And old-fashioned in-person dating, with flesh and blood humans you eye up on a night out and talk to, is back.

Zoomers reportedly meet people through friends or on nights out at pubs or bars, asking for people’s numbers. 

As one financial analyst put it, “fast-paced swipe-based mechanics find less resonance” with gen Z possibly post multiple lockdowns.

Here’s a thought: maybe if sex is too available, it becomes a transactional turn-off. 

Maybe gen Z is saying no to the commercialisation of not only sex but romance and emotion and seeking connection before sex. 

There’s a certain irony in this. Perhaps gen Z will end up having more in common with their conservative boomer grandparents when it comes to sex than we ever thought possible.