To some, it is what drove Adam out of heaven; whispered quietly by conservatives, normalized loudly by seculars, and shouted by queer communities: sex.
At times, it is the central subject of profanity and humiliation; at other times, the most sacred stage of a romantic relationship. It forms many families yet breaks many others—sometimes through its absence, sometimes through its excess. Its commerce was once secret and silent, yet today it has become a visible artery of the global economy: from health products to toys, from digital platforms to lingerie, from body marketing to the porn industry. Sometimes restricted, sometimes made public; sometimes legitimized, sometimes forbidden; a trouble both in its presence and absence; capable of bringing two people closer or pushing them further apart at the same time. It is both the most spoken of and the most silenced topic.
With all these aspects, sex stands as a complex, controversial, and paradoxical phenomenon across cultural, social, biological, and many other perspectives.
The Culture of the Bedroom
No cultural space has ever been pulled from such a universal realm into something so national and local. Once, certain things were spoken, worn, done, and even discovered only there—because it was private. This privacy was so strong that even within the same household, children who had reached a certain maturity knew that their parents’ bedroom was not to be entered as casually as the living room or kitchen.
Yet today, sexuality and desire are everywhere—more than ever. This “everywhere-ness” is not merely about the explosion of explicitly sexual content such as pornography or platforms like OnlyFans, nor the indirect sexual emphasis of dating apps. It is the infiltration of sexual desire—overtly or as subtext—into sales and marketing strategies across sectors: from construction to automotive, from fashion-driven textiles to social media and real-life conversations.
So, why has this happened?
The Publicization of the Bedroom: The Collapse of Privacy
To understand the narrative formed today, we must return to the beginning and question it there. Is sex truly one of the basic needs like eating, breathing, or sleeping? Perhaps, through a constructed and directed perception, it has been intentionally placed ahead of feelings like loving, being loved, and belonging. Perhaps what should have won silver has been awarded gold through a cultural illusion.
A basic need is defined as something required for the organism to survive—its absence leads to harm or death. Maslow was the first to propose a systematic, hierarchical model of human needs and to include sexuality within it. Before him, Darwin discussed the concepts of reproductive instinct and sexual selection in his writings between 1859 and 1871. Importantly, neither of them referred to sex alone but to sexuality—a broader, more complex concept of which sex is only one component.
However, their ideas—and later studies—have often been misunderstood or distorted. What they meant was that sexuality is a fundamental need not for the individual, but for the human species. A person does not die without sex; the species simply does not reproduce. Yet modern culture has gradually transformed sex into something perceived as equivalent to breathing, drinking water, eating, or sleeping. Many individuals and institutions justify this shift by incorrectly invoking these scholars, normalizing sex far beyond its natural threshold.
This was perhaps the first stage of a long-term cultural transformation. Just as raw ore cannot be used without being refined, reshaping society’s perception of sex required first making it seem excessively “normal”—and this, to a great extent, succeeded. With modernity, sex changed and today has reached an entirely new dimension. It is no longer only a bodily experience; it acts as a status symbol, a representation of power, a performance score, even a certificate of achievement. On social media, in dating apps, and between the lines of daily conversations, being sexually active or sexually desirable has become proof of worth.
The sexually active are charismatic; the inactive are pathetic. The ones who desire are confident; the ones who do not are problematic. Those who have more sex are strong; those who have less are weak. These dual codes drag even the most private aspects of human experience onto the scoreboard of the performance age, quietly reshaping identity, desire, and belonging.
What is Marketed is Not Desire But Loneliness
The market value of sex has always been high. A striking example can be found in the ancient city of Ephesus, in İzmir, where what is considered one of the world’s first advertising signs—a footprint, a woman figure, and a heart—literally pointed the way to a brothel. What keeps sex valuable is obvious: the strong biological and psychological drive toward it, and the intense pleasure and satisfaction it provides. Thus, sex will remain valuable in the past, present, and future.
But in the modern era, the phenomenon whose stocks have soared is actually loneliness.
Today’s human is more connected than ever—yet equally lonelier than ever. The marketing industry saw this vulnerability and developed a formula:
“If we cannot sell real intimacy, we will sell the feeling of intimacy.”
Sexually suggestive bodies, products, clothes, gym advertisements, perfumes, cars, phones—all target the same emotional void: the human need to feel seen and valued, even for a moment. Advertisements whisper, “Buy this, and you will be desirable.”
But this desirability is not the result of genuine intimacy—only the numbing effect of short-lived pleasures.
Thus, what is marketed is not sex but the illusion of closeness.
We purchase these illusions with pieces of our psyche and feed them to egos swollen with artificial confidence. And these cultural forces do not merely shape marketing—they deeply shape our lives.
Modern culture presents short-term encounters as freedom and empowerment. In a world where situationships and hook-ups rapidly become the norm, sex increasingly becomes the protagonist not of intimacy, but of fear of attachment. Approaching someone is easy; staying is difficult. Deepening is difficult. Showing yourself and existing there is difficult. Becoming one and becoming we is difficult.
So many people, instead of carrying the weight of emotional hunger and the search for meaning, choose to rest in the fleeting comfort of physical closeness. From the outside, sexuality may appear liberated, yet in truth, it is a shiny package masking a profound loneliness. Blonde, brunette, redhead, older, younger, cosplay, public, group—the possibilities seem endless; the pleasures to discover are abundant. In the dominant narrative, sex culture resembles the White Rabbit—promising to take us, like Alice, into Wonderland.
But why is it that, seeking a fantastical world, we step into the hole only to find ourselves—like Joseph—cast into a well?