The Sex Myth

Why do you sometimes feel like your sex life reveals something about who you are—even when it shouldn’t? That unsettling sense that your sexual choices define your worth lies at the center of Rachel Hills’s The Sex Myth. Hills argues that we live in a culture that treats sex as the ultimate mirror of the self—an act unlike any other, freighted with meaning, morality, and identity. Sex is not just about pleasure or reproduction; it has become a measuring stick for confidence, desirability, adulthood, and even freedom itself.

In modern Western society, Hills contends, sex has been transformed into a story we tell to prove who we are. We’re expected to be sexually experienced but not promiscuous, liberated but emotionally guarded, passionate yet in control. This paradox keeps almost everyone feeling like they’re either doing sex wrong or not doing it often enough. Hills calls this cultural phenomenon the Sex Myth: the collective belief that sex matters more than it really does, and that our sexual histories reflect our moral and emotional value.

Sex as Identity and Ideal

According to Hills, the Sex Myth is a product of historical, religious, and economic forces that have elevated sexuality to a near-sacred place in our understanding of humanity. From medieval Christian confessions to glossy magazine headlines promising “explosive intimacy,” we’ve conflated sexual activity with authenticity. Sex sells products, conveys status, and shapes entire political debates. The result is what sociologist Ken Plummer has called the “Big Story”—sex as the grand narrative of modern life. Hills argues that this narrative has seeped into our personal psychology, making people judge their self-worth based on how much sex they’re having and whether it looks like the kind of sex they think everyone else is having.

Biology Meets Culture

Hills dismantles the idea that sex is purely biological. Yes, sex triggers dopamine and oxytocin, but it’s also deeply shaped by culture—by what counts as “sex,” by who gets to feel desire, and by what desires are sanctioned. Through stories of people like Sofia, a young executive who measures her self-esteem by how desirable she seems to others, and Greta, a confident woman who feels ‘less radical’ because she only sleeps with one partner, Hills shows that biology is just one thread in a larger web. What we feel and how we act are molded by social expectations about normality and freedom.

Freedom, Normality, and Performance

At the heart of Hills’s exploration lies the tension between sexual freedom and social regulation. While our culture claims to have thrown off old taboos, it’s still governed by new ones—particularly the expectation to be sexually active, desirable, and confident. Hills documents how people internalize these standards, turning sex into a kind of self-management project. Whether it’s college students tracking ‘hookup stats,’ couples using apps like Spreadsheets to measure performance, or individuals worrying they aren’t “normal,” people constantly adjust their behavior to align with a mythologized ideal of pleasure and passion.

From Liberation to Pressure

Hills situates the Sex Myth within the legacy of the sexual revolution. The freedoms won in the 1960s—contraception, visibility, experimentation—were meant to unchain desire from repression. But by turning sex into a symbol of personal liberation, we made it another form of performance. “To fuck was itself a form of freedom,” Hills quotes historian Linda Grant; yet under the Sex Myth, freedom became compulsory. You’re supposed to be liberated, and that means proving it—with an active, adventurous sex life. As philosopher Michel Foucault observed, we don’t stop regulating sex simply by talking about it more; instead, we regulate ourselves in subtler ways, internalizing expectations until they feel natural.

The Stakes: Shame, Desire, and Self-Worth

Through intimate interviews across four continents, Hills reveals how this myth plays out in everyday life. For some, like Henry, a shy twenty-something virgin from Bristol, it manifests as despair—you believe you’re defective if nobody wants you. For others, like Annie, who treats sex as a kind of personal shopping spree, it shows up as anxious validation-seeking. Even people with fulfilling relationships aren’t immune: Greta feels uneasy that her monogamy doesn’t fit her ‘progressive feminist’ identity. The Sex Myth, Hills argues, binds everyone to the same false equation: sexual success equals personal worth.

Beyond the Sex Myth

By the book’s end, Hills calls for a new kind of sexual freedom—one that includes the right not to do as much as the right to do. She urges readers to see sex as just one ordinary part of life, neither sacred nor shameful. Dismantling the Sex Myth, she insists, doesn’t mean rejecting sex; it means stripping it of exaggerated importance so we can feel secure in our choices, whether we are celibate, passionate, queer, vanilla, or anything in between. Sex doesn’t define you, Hills concludes—you do. And that insight may be the real liberation our culture needs.

Rachel Hills opens her argument with a powerful claim: we’ve made sex special—too special. Ever since the days of Christian moralists and Victorian restraint, Western culture has treated sex as a sacred key to truth. According to Hills, this mystical importance binds desire to self-worth and imposes invisible rules about how we should feel and behave.

From Sin to Self

In medieval Europe, priests catalogued sexual sins and demanded public penance. By the nineteenth century, moralists were less concerned with salvation than with controlling reproduction and social order. Even today, Hills notes, the echoes of those anxieties remain—in fears about pornography, same-sex marriage, or “deviant” desires. What changed was not the attention paid to sex, but the language. Instead of calling sex sinful, we now call it authentic. Sex no longer reveals moral virtue—it reveals who you really are.

Media’s Worship of Desire

Hills draws on cultural examples to illustrate this obsession. From magazine covers shouting “#BestNightEver” to advertisements that sell burgers through seduction, modern media frames sexuality as both magical and essential. Even abstinence or asexuality is coded visually as ‘lifeless’ or ‘gray.’ The contrast teaches us to associate happiness and color with being sexually active—and emptiness with not. Sociologists John Gagnon and William Simon, whom Hills cites, argue that sexuality is actually a ‘docile beast,’ taking up little space in most people’s lives. Yet our culture magnifies it into a grand performance that defines us.

Internalizing the Myth

You don’t need external rules when you’ve absorbed them into your conscience. Hills’s interview with Sofia, the glamorous executive who feels “worthless” because her boyfriend isn’t passionate, demonstrates how the Sex Myth operates as self-surveillance. She equates desirability with human value—a theme Foucault explored in The History of Sexuality, noting that people discipline themselves through their own thoughts. When sex becomes the metric of selfhood, everyone becomes their own enforcer: measuring, comparing, worrying they fall short.

A Cultural Inheritance

Why has this belief persisted? Hills traces it to modernity itself—the rise of the individual. In small agrarian societies, identity was fixed by birth. But industrialization created a new need to perform identity—to appear civilized, desirable, and modern. Sex became one of the most potent ways to prove it. Even today, the assumption that “how you love = who you are” dominates both moral and secular thinking. Hills shows that dismantling the Sex Myth requires seeing sex not as a mirror, but as one activity among many that express who we are—not define it.

In a supposedly liberated age, Hills asks—what does it mean to be normal? We pride ourselves on open-mindedness, yet secretly police every deviation from sexual norms. This chapter reveals how ‘normality’ continues to govern sexuality through invisible hierarchies and contradictions.

The Paradox of Normal

People often claim “everything’s normal” now—gay, straight, kinky, vanilla. Yet Hills’s interviews show how fragile that tolerance is. Faith feels “out at sea” exploring her orientation because there’s little room for uncertainty. Cara, who suspects she might be asexual, feels “isolated, unwanted, and dysfunctional” after reading online comments declaring asexual people “the ultimate freakiness.” Hills demonstrates that acceptance exists mostly in theory; in practice, hidden hierarchies still rank some expressions as healthy and others as defective.

From Heteronormativity to Lifestyle Policing

Borrowing from anthropologist Gayle Rubin, Hills maps today’s moral landscape: the old charmed circle of married heterosexuality has expanded, but new distinctions remain. Same-sex marriage might be normalized, but polyamory and celibacy are still suspect. Society embraces gay couples who mimic straight norms—monogamous, middle-class, “just like us.” The message: difference is tolerated only when it looks familiar. Even progressive spaces create new ideals to conform to—the kink-friendly, openhearted, endlessly sexually active young adult who’s expected to love experimentation.

Punishing the Deviant

Through anecdotes, Hills shows how nonconformity invites isolation. When Cara confesses her asexuality, her date vanishes. When Ben tells friends he enjoys BDSM, he’s suddenly seen as ‘normal’—because adventurous sex signals health. The irony, Hills notes, is that normality’s borders shift constantly, keeping people anxious. To maintain inclusion, many alter their stories, downplay certain experiences, or feign “fun” in sexless times. Normality, Hills concludes, matters less for moral reasons than for emotional ones—it reassures us we belong.

The Cost of Conformity

What’s the price of chasing normality? Shame and silence. “I keep quiet when people talk about sex,” Hills admits of her younger self. Like Cara or Pamela Haag in her sexless marriage, many believe not having sex makes them broken. Under the Sex Myth, even the supposedly liberated must perform conformity. Hills’s challenge is to replace the obsession with ‘normal’ sex with an ethic of authenticity—“whatever makes you comfortable or happy.” Freedom, she insists, starts when you stop measuring yourself against imaginary norms.

Hills devotes a vivid section to how modern culture has tied sexuality to status. To be desirable, you must be ‘hot, horny, and in control’—a trifecta that promises autonomy but often produces anxiety. Through interviews with young people, Hills dissects how attraction becomes a form of social currency.

Hot: Desirability as Power

From teenage popularity contests to Victoria’s Secret fantasies, physical hotness signals not just beauty but worth. Research cited by Hills on the ‘halo effect’ shows attractive people are presumed smarter and more capable. Sam, whose good looks earn early validation, enjoys confidence that less conventionally attractive Natalie never does. Natalie feels “dirty” wanting sex because she isn’t “pretty enough to deserve it.” Hills reveals that desirability grants permission to feel desire—a privilege unequally distributed by gender, class, and appearance.

Horny: Performing Passion

Desire, Hills argues, has become performative. Stephanie competes with friends to lose her virginity, treating sex as proof of maturity. “You can’t be an adult without sexual experience,” she says. This pressure mirrors media tropes of youth as perpetual lust. But actual desire rarely matches expectation. Andrew, for example, pursues hookups for sport only to realize he often “couldn’t get it up”—not from fear, but from emptiness. In a world where being “fun” and sexually free defines identity, pretending to want sex becomes mandatory.

Control: The Mask of Independence

In what Hills calls “compulsory carelessness,” emotional detachment becomes the ultimate proof of power. Ashley dates multiple people, feigning indifference to avoid being seen as needy. Alcohol softens vulnerability—“A sober hookup indicates you’re serious,” one student tells researchers. Yet striving for control often hides insecurity. Hills writes, “The people I know with the most playboy-ish attitude are actually the most emotionally needy.” Behind the mask of liberation lies fear—the dread that caring will expose weakness or rejection.

The Irony of Desire

In this tangled web, hotness and horniness are not expressions of freedom but symptoms of cultural pressure. They dictate how to look and act without teaching how to feel. For Hills, true desire arises not from proving worth but from genuine connection—like Meghan’s breakthrough when she stops treating relationships as a game and finally feels seen for her mind. The Sex Myth, she concludes, turns sex into performance. Real intimacy begins only when we drop the act.

Hills explores how the Sex Myth plays out differently for men and women, translating cultural ideals of freedom into rigid gender scripts. Chapters on masculinity and femininity expose two parallel prisons: the boys’ club of dominance and the Madonna/Gaga complex of female empowerment.

Men: Insatiable, Invulnerable, and Competitive

Male sexuality is stereotyped as an unstoppable biological drive. Hills cites Robin Williams’s joke that a man’s penis has “no memory and no conscience,” illustrating cultural permission for men’s lack of control. But interviews reveal the pressure behind that myth: boys like Christopher feel coerced into going “further” than they want; athletes like Caleb endure locker-room contests ranking sexual conquests. Research shows 78% of young men feel “too much pressure to have sex.” Yet refusal risks being branded weak or gay. The result is confusion—men must want constantly but never feel deeply.

Women: Pure or Empowered, Never Just Normal

Women, Hills observes, face the mirror image of this trap. Historically cast as passive or “pure,” they now shoulder a new ideal of fearless sexual agency. Feminist pop icons and magazines celebrate the “Fun, Fearless Female,” whose confidence supposedly liberates her from shame. Yet as Hills’s interviewees reveal, empowerment easily morphs into obligation. Priya feels pressured to prove her feminism through casual sex; Katie, a former abstinence pledger, sobs after deciding she’s “fucked up.” The choice between Madonna and Gaga—virgin or liberated—still leaves no space for complexity or ambivalence.

Class, Race, and Respectability

Hills’s nuanced eye catches how social class and race shape these gendered expectations. Priya’s Indian background makes her casual sex seem rebellious; media portray affluent white women’s erotic confidence as chic, while working-class women are branded “sluts.” In one British ad, poor women walking home after parties are mocked while a wealthy woman doing the same becomes aspirational. Hills concludes that even “liberation” is stratified privilege—sexual freedom belongs easiest to those society already deems respectable.

Rethinking Feminine Freedom

Hills argues that true agency means reclaiming choice—not just the right to say yes, but the right to say no. As feminist writer Julie Decker notes (whom Hills cites approvingly), liberation must include “those who abstain.” Hills’s vision rejects both repression and compulsive liberation: real freedom lets every woman define sexuality on her own terms—not as purity or performance but personal truth.

In one of Hills’s sharpest cultural analyses, she explores how “good sex” became a competitive sport. Apps like Spreadsheets now measure thrusts per minute; magazines issue “sex plans” similar to fitness challenges. Hills shows how pleasure has turned into performance—how we treat eroticism as self-improvement.

Sexual Labor and Lifestyle

Hills compares modern sex advice to workplace productivity. Cosmopolitan’s “Summer Sex Plan” lists weekly tasks—send a dirty text, try outdoor kissing—as if ticking boxes ensures intimacy. Men’s Health reframes sex as a workout, prescribing leg routines for better thrusts. These instructions, Hills notes, make desire mechanical and moral: good people have great sex. It’s emotional capitalism—our bodies become projects for worthiness.

The Cult of Novelty

To avoid being ‘boring,’ couples and singles alike chase lifestyle kink—soft BDSM, threesomes, role-play. Hills distinguishes this from genuine fetish: lifestyle kink is mass-produced, interchangeable, a fashionable gesture of daring. “Tender sex still requires variation to stay fresh,” reads a Glamour column she dissects. Yet anything beyond mild adventure risks being labeled perverse. We are invited to play revolutionary, but only safely. The moral, Hills quips: being kinky enough keeps you normal.

Passion as Obligation

Hills notes that many equate sexual frequency with relational health. Mariam fears that sex “less than three times a week” would doom her marriage. Ashley dreads “lesbian bed death,” counting encounters like gym reps. The result: spontaneous affection becomes scheduled maintenance. Sex isn’t enjoyment—it’s proof your life works. This compulsion stems from the Sex Myth’s central promise that sexual vitality equals emotional success.

Performing Pleasure

Perhaps the starkest illustration comes with Hills’s exploration of orgasm anxiety. Women fake pleasure to appear “normal”; men medicate erections as proof of virility. Documentaries like Orgasm Inc. reveal how pharmaceutical companies pathologized desire itself. Hills calls this transformation a medicalized perfectionism: turning minor variations into dysfunction to be fixed. Her conclusion is radical in its humility—good sex isn’t about frequency, kink, or climax. It’s about connection. “The truly radical act,” she writes, “may be to turn your focus to sex you actually want to have.”

After hundreds of interviews and years of research, Hills ends with clarity: sex does not define you. In the book’s final section, she moves from critique to vision, inviting readers to imagine a life beyond the Sex Myth—a freedom grounded in authenticity rather than activity.

Seeing Sex as Ordinary

Freedom begins by normalizing sex as routine, not revelation. Sociologist Stevi Jackson’s idea of “ordinary sex,” which Hills embraces, reframes intercourse as just one social act among many—like eating, sleeping, or laughing. Sex isn’t proof of vitality or moral worth; it’s one possible expression of connection. Relieving sex of its exaggerated significance allows pleasure to flourish without comparison or confession.

Challenging the Liberation Narrative

Hills dismantles the notion that sexual activity equals freedom. The liberal tradition treats repression as the enemy and indulgence as emancipation. But, as Foucault warned, liberation can become another form of control—since we begin policing ourselves to fit the image of the liberated self. True freedom demands questioning the importance we assign to sex itself: if your self-worth hinges on how liberated you seem, you’re still bound by the same cultural script.

A New Kind of Inclusion

Hills’s alternative sexual ethic welcomes diversity not as spectacle but as coexistence. She envisions a culture where the celibate and the sexually adventurous coexist without hierarchy—where asexual, gay, straight, transgender, vanilla, and kinky people are simply people. Freedom, in her words, includes “the right not to do as much as the right to do.” This reframing shifts the question from quantity or quality to honesty: does your sex life fit your desires, not society’s expectations?

Creating Cultural Change

Hills points to emerging movements—feminist blogs like Jezebel and the candid, awkward realism of HBO’s Girls—as signs of evolution. Online voices diversify what “normal” looks like, replacing glossy perfection with messy reality. Dismantling the Sex Myth won’t happen overnight, she admits; but it begins in conversation, whenever we resist using sex as a barometer of worth. “Cast off the stories and the symbolism,” Hills urges. “Let yourself be.” In the end, the book’s message is simple and profound: sex isn’t salvation or stigma—it’s just part of being human.