Are GenX Women Really Having the Best Sex?

Staring down sex positivity in the so-called “last sexual generation.”

I couldn’t pick just one so I made a contact sheet. Do you have a favorite photo? Let me know which in the comments…

I haven’t had sex in over a year.

My extended abstinence hasn’t been intentional. I’ve tried the dating apps. I’ve swiped countless profiles. I even had an alarming conversation with a Dating AI bot that was possibly trying to kill me.

I’ve met some men. One I wanted to sleep with, but he disappeared after a few dates. Others tried to put me down. I met men who were too solo poly or boring or aloof to date.

The rest? I’ve met good guys, so-called “needles” in the parlance of the Burned Haystack Dating Method. Just not my needle.

I’ve never been particularly adventurous when it comes to dating and sex. Don’t get me wrong — sex is awesome. I wish I were having lots of it. I’m just hard-wired for heterosexuality, monogamy, and connection. One might call me demisexual, but I don’t. I just like to know and trust a guy before I get naked with him.

And that hasn’t happened for a long time.

So imagine my surprise when friends sent me a link the New York Times story, “Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex.”

This GenX woman can’t roll her eyes hard enough.

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To be fair: it’s a well-written story.

I found myself nodding along as author Mireille Silcoff details her sexual reawakening following divorce in her mid-40s. Her GenX hot takes are on-point, as she explains what women of our age have shed — creepy college professors, pregnancy fears, and of course, the ardent quest for a partner with whom to make those babies— as well as what we’ve taken on: dependent children, elder parents, and sexual health issues related to our aging bodies.

She goes on to highlight the heyday GenX women are having in the lusty zeitgeist. Miranda July’s All Fours and Gillian Anderson’s Want found their way to countless nightstands and social media posts, as well as the New York Times bestseller list, for their raw portrayal of perimenopausal desire. In film, both Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl and Laura Dern in Lonely Planet have life-altering affairs with far younger men. It’s been glorious to witness. Our culture is so ageist; the myth of women over a certain age growing invisible weighs heavily on our desirability.

Stories like these have been a welcome and sexy antidote.

But they’re also escapism. The women in these stories have lots of sex, but it’s mostly sex without commitment. Sex that tears relationships or worlds apart. Fucking as fantasy.

It makes sense for GenX. We’re the first generation where many women have the financial and cultural stability to leave marriages and live independently, and therefore have a sexual resurgence in our 40s and 50s. It makes sense that many of our racier stories get tied into this narrative.

But it represents only a sliver of our erotic collective stories. In real life, it doesn’t ring true for many of us.

It doesn’t for me.

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Even the subhead of the article makes me bristle.

“In an era plagued by sex negativity, only one generation seems immune: mine,” it asserts. By Silcoff’s definitions, the GenX so-called immunity is numerical. She asserts younger generations are having less sex than GenX did, and possibly even less than GenX is having even now.

And maybe it’s true. The article leaves the data points ambiguous. But it doesn’t matter — because “best” isn’t numeric.

Sex positivity shouldn’t be either.

Instead, the NYT story gags us with both a spoon and a familiar trope: it conflates sex positivity with sexual abundance. It’s the notion of sex positive as more sex and sex negative as less sex, and it’s simplistic at best.

It’s downright toxic at worst. And GenX women should know better.

We came of age in an era that told us sex without commitment was empowerment. I’ve seen this message mutate but endure my entire adult life. It’s never been true for me. I used to hold it as a secret source of shame. Now, decades later— well, I recognize when the media throws us a parade for being sexually empowered, as long as we’re doing it in a way that still looks cool, nonchalant, and a little bit performative. I hate it.

The aesthetics have changed, but the emotional math feels eerily familiar.

And it doesn’t add up.

What’s missing is the perspective of women like me — those who never felt liberated by detachment, who aren’t interested in casual sex without commitment, and who now, in midlife and thanks to the New York Times, feel more unseen than ever.

I may not be able to speak on behalf of all GenX women. But I don’t want the “Best Sex” trophy if emotional indifference is paraded as the only path to victory.

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I was a late bloomer.

I recall my student orientation at the University of Florida, touring the campus with my mom. As we walked past the Century Tower, a beautiful bell-tower in the center of campus, the tour guide boasted, “every time a virgin graduates, a brick falls off the tower.”

As the crowd laughed, he continued. “You’ll notice no bricks are missing.”

I heard that announcement as an uncomfortable 17-year-old virgin. But nothing seemed off about it. I already knew my relative innocence was undesirable and out-of-sync with cultural norms. So I laughed along with everyone else, lacking the perspective to recognize this was a strange flex to make to incoming students, especially in front of their parents.

Equally strange once I got to college was the language we used for sexual conquest. What today we’d call a hookup or one-night stand, back then was called a scam. As in, my girl friends would go out “scamming” on weekend nights. “Did you scam him?” we’d ask the next day in our dorm common room. “Oh yea, we totally scammed,” was a typical retort.

I never quite understood the usage. Did scam mean sex? Heavy make outs? I’m still unsure and it doesn’t matter.

The intent was clear — casual relations with a guy was a scam, a fraud.

We all knew it. But still, we pursued it, and inquired after it as if it were a prize, a lofty weekend goal to accomplish.

The word choice seems so strange to me now, so obvious as to be comical. But back then it was normal.

We normalized so many things that clearly were not normal.

Silcoff’s own story makes that clear.

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Silcoff and I have a lot in common.

We’re both GenX, obviously. We were both raised Jewish. We’re both former music writers turned personal essayists. But our sexual origin stories are quite different.

She lost her virginity early, at 15, and had a far more risk-diverse sexual coming-of-age than I did. She describes her early sexual experiences in outdoor fields and nightclubs with her fake ID, encounters that came with non-consensual entries and furtive visits to clinics for morning-after pills and STD checks as a terrifying yet expected price of admission to the world of the sexually active. Scams, indeed.

She describes an ethos where cool-girl cred outweighed personal comfort, where “whatever” was both a promise and a vow. “Cool women didn’t whine; we rolled our eyes at everything,” she writes, even still indifferent to the cost of her faux insouciance.

I ache for that girl now.

How I longed to be more like her, at least outwardly, back then.

But sexually — not sexuality, which was a public presentation I could fake, but when it came down to actually having sex — I could never be like her. I was risk-averse. I feared AIDS and other STIs far too much to enter a clinic on the regular as the cool girl. I craved relationship, connection, and attention far more than any desire for physical intimacy.

By Silcoff’s own admission, she didn’t enjoy the actual sex either. Her desire to be the ironic cool girl outweighed any physical pleasure she experienced. And nothing clashes with irony like caring, or having needs. That was just cringe.

But it was the 90s, so it was forgivable.

Except now in 2025, she’s touting casual sex as the prize for who wins the “Best Sex” generational competition — and proclaiming GenX women the winners, based on the body counts from her own experiences and those of her five friends during their post-divorce exploits?

Now that’s truly cringey.

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One key flaw in the NYT article is its hackneyed premise: it’s recycling a tired narrative under the guise of liberation. The idea of a woman boasting “I’m having lots of sex!” as radical or newsworthy in 2025 reveals how little the cultural conversation around GenX women has evolved.

And also: the bar of simply having sex? That bar is too low to fail.

Dick is abundant and low value.

GenX women know this.

You can get it on a t-shirt. You can get it cross-stitched on a plaque. We women can always get it. Yes, even women over age 50. We can get it pretty much whenever we want, as often as we want to, so long as we’re not overly discerning about the human the dick is attached to. This is not new. This is not novel to GenX or any other generation.

This is not newsworthy, nor reason to celebrate.

Do we mock Millennials for participation trophies? Perhaps the New York Times should look in the mirror for this “best” award and acknowledge they didn’t do their best in defining it.

Because dick is abundant and low value — and in no way promises good sex, let alone the best sex.

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I fear I’m not painting the hottest portrait of myself. A late-bloomer, sort-of-demisexual, now sexless for nearly two years 50-something woman isn’t anyone’s sexual ideal, right?

I’d like to hope, wrong.

I think I’m sexy.

I’ve known wonderful lovers.

I’ve come into my own desires, on my own terms — as I know many other GenX women have.

GenX women have connected to their sexual pleasure with an inhibition and freedom women in generations before us couldn’t. This is part of the narrative Silcoff really nails in her article, and yes, that pun is absolutely intended.

We may be late-bloomers to our own sense of desire, and no wonder. We had to sort out from under our #MeToo moments, and the stupefying sexism that enforced the unaffected cool girl role we’d cast ourselves into, in order to uncover the power of who we really are — sexually and otherwise. GenX women have been sexual shape-shifters, keeping up with dating and identity neologisms while simultaneously challenging our own assumptions on identity, relationship models, sexual preferences, and sexual proclivities.

We were the first on the dating apps.

We were the first generation to marry later in life, to have multiple lovers before marrying. And now that we’re older, we’re the first to navigate dating and sexual landscapes well into late middle age.

We’ve trail-blazed, so generations after us can likely do it bigger and better and take credit from us, who did it first. And you know, that’s fine. We expect it. We’re GenX; that’s the way things have always gone for us.

What we didn’t expect was to be crowned winner of a best sex award we never knew existed, for perpetuating the same sad sexual stereotypes many of us outgrew. I’d hope with a big proclamation from the New York Times, we might have seen proof of our sexual victory rooted in feminist theory, personal growth trials, or hard-won intimacy. Alas, no.

What if, like me, you came of age steeped in the gospel of sex positivity, but found the scripture didn’t include emotional safety, mutual care, or even basic regard? What if you’ve already realized — no, you’ve celebrated the realization — that you’re not chill about sex, that sex is important to you— only to be told that real sexual victory is finally here, and it’s just casual sex, again.

This is not my GenX win.

I know I’m not the only one who sees our victory is something far greater.

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GenX women very well may be having the best sex. If we are, it’s because we’re having it the way we want it — whatever dating model, orientation, and sexual act does it for us. It’s not because of the tired one-size-fits-all rallying cry of more is better, that promiscuity is power.

The best sex is the sex that’s right for you. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum — even if the flavor isn’t my favorite.

Just as I was raised Jewish and chose agnosticism in a world teeming with outspoken Christians, I feel like a hopeful romantic monogamist oddball, tip-toeing through a battlefield of solo poly ethically non-monogamous nesting-partners kink-friendly suitors in search of just the right kind, brainy, sexy fella who wants to get naked and do outrageous things to and with me.

And that bar is ridiculously high.

I remain optimistic I’ll find someone to clear it.

One might even say I’m sexually positive he’s out there.

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So yeah, it’s been over a year since I had sex.

I miss it, a lot.

But, whatever.

I know myself well enough to know I’d regret the destabilization of casual sex more than I’d enjoy its transient pleasure. That’s what sex positivity means to me — having the wisdom and agency to have sex on my own terms.

And hey, New York Times? That’s the kind of hard-won wisdom that makes GenX women the best, whether we’re having loads of sex, or none for a year or longer. It’s because we’re wise enough to know our sense of peace —  and our physical, sexual, and mental health — come first.

And yes, that pun is 100% fully intended, too.

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I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee?
(Make mine an iced oat milk decaf mocha, please and thank you.)

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