In this episode of Follow Your Different, let’s have a very different dialogue about Sex.
It seems like we might be living at a time where the very category of sex is changing, and there are a few megatrends going on.
First, we seem to be in what The Atlantic calls a “sexual recession”. The Atlantic reports: “In the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high school students have experienced to something most haven’t.”
It turns out that people in their early 20s are two and a half times as likely to be abstinent. Though it’s not only limited to the younger generation. Even Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are having less traditional sex over the years.
The second one is about increased loneliness. According to the HBR, rates of loneliness in the US have doubled over the past 50 years. Nowadays, around 40% of Americans say that they are lonely.
The third is about Digital Sex. It has been reported that the porn industry is now worth nearly $100 billion, and uses more bandwidth than Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix.
It seems that porn continues to reach new heights with the advent of new technologies and categories:

* In 2018, a Japanese man spent 2 million Yen on his wedding to an AI hologram.
* Toronto has opened a new category in the form of Sex Doll Brothels.
* OnlyFans has seen a spike of creators and registered users since Covid, who are mostly there for adult content.
* AR and VR sex is on the rise

We talk about all this and more with our guests, Amy Baldwin and April Lampert of the Shameless Sex Podcast. They are here for a fascinating, no-holds-barred dialogue about Sex. This is a very frank, descriptive, and dare I say deep conversation.
 
Sex Education
Amy and April talk about the current state of sex education in the US. To most families, sex is not a topic that they are comfortable talking with their children. Though there are schools that have sex education classes, it mostly consists of anatomy and topics about abstinence. Most young adults tend to learn on their own, either through their friends, from experience, or from porn.
While they do not shun consumption of porn, both think that porn should not be used as an educational tool.   

“I think it really depends on where you're growing up. Luckily, we have the internet now. But like April said, there's porn, and we are not anti porn. We are anti porn as a sex educator, unless it's educational pornography.” – Amy Baldwin

They believe this is where they come in, to correct misconceptions brought about by bad information or unrealistic expectations people get from hearing stories or watching porn.
 
Shameless Sex Podcast
When asked about how open they were when talking on their podcast, Amy shares that they didn’t begin like that. While they do talk boldly and bravely about sexuality in their podcast, it wasn’t the case when they were younger.
They also believe that we can all talk boldly about sex if we want to.

“I believe we all can speak really openly and boldly about sexuality. Just like with anything, if we practice enough and we want to, (but) not everyone needs to speak the way we do.” – Amy Baldwin