Are we really having less sex?

We are more open about sex than ever before––living in a present of sexual plenty. Yet statistics say we’re not having any. Kate Demolder debates the paradox of sexual liberation.

In March 2020, when then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced, from a pulpit, the closure of schools, places of work and the St Patrick’s Day Festival because of an unknown virus that would soon come to be known as Covid-19, many predicted great surges in sexual activity. Natural disasters have yielded such results before; the 2007 Gloucestershire floods lead to a baby boom; nine months after New York suffered a 10-hour power cut in 1965, there was...