The last time Sofie Hagen had sex was November 19, 2015. Sofie had no idea that encounter would be followed by at least eight years of voluntary celibacy. It’s not that the 35-year-old – who identifies as non-binary – doesn’t want sex.
They enjoy it and experience a desire for it but, after over a decade of “toxic sex”, the prospect of acting on those desires with another person was beginning to make them panic. “When I think about having sex with someone, my abdomen feels tight, I start to sweat, my eyelids are heavy,” they explain. And comedian Sofie, who lives in London, is by no means alone.
Indeed, research reveals as a nation we’re having less sex than ever, with Gen Z in particular getting less intimate than ever before. For Sofie, obstacles to sex included some bruising previous encounters – from the man who told a friend that Sofie would sleep with anyone, to tearful intimacy with a man who had told them he loved someone else. There was also an encounter that Sofie now recognises as rape.
“I did say no but then I just stopped saying no. I didn’t fight him, I didn’t punch him, I didn’t call it rape,” they explain. “Even today, I feel a bit weird about calling it a rape, though it technically was.
But the point is how it affects us and what we are carrying with us.” When a curious Sofie posted on social media asking if their followers had experienced similar struggles with sex, they were overwhelmed by 1800 replies in 48 hours. The res.
