“People’s libido seemed to drop and that’s
quite consistent with mass horrendous
events,” she says. “But what we’ve also seen
is that following these kinds of events —
the Spanish flu, the First World War and the
Black Death in the Middle Ages — they do
seem to be marked by a renewed enthusiasm
for ‘life is short, let’s have some fun’.”
Death and sex are closely entwined in the
human psyche. Threats of death “tend to
push people towards celebrating life — and
one of the ways you do that is to shag and
to do lots of it”, Lister says. “Not only on a
biological level of ‘we must keep the human
race going’, but also it’s a stress relief,
a distraction, the antithesis of what we’re
fearing happening.”
Such carnal carpe diem behaviour has
occurred throughout human history. “In
the First World War more soldiers were
treated for venereal disease than any other
ailment, with the exception of the Spanish
flu. They were just, like, ‘Oh sod it, let’s go
and have a good time,’ ” says Lister, an
academic who runs Whores of Yore, an
online archive of historical sexuality. There
are records of religious leaders denouncing
shaggers sinning in the open and having
mass orgies during the plague-hit Middle
Ages, she adds.
There’s always a difference between what
people claim they get up to and what they
actually get up to, though. How much of
it is just talk? On a bitingly cold Saturday
last month, ever the diligent researcher,
I attended a Killing Kittens “mansion party”.
Arriving at 8.45pm in my sexiest Zara dress,
after a stiffener to calm my jitters, I joined
hundreds of horny, masked partygoers in
a sprawling Knightsbridge townhouse. The
next few hours were a whirl of erotic
performers, espresso martinis, small talk
with polycurious strangers (“Come here
often?”) and watching women strapped to
what looked like a torture device having
their lingerie-clad bottoms whipped by a
smartly suited male dominatrix.
I danced, was fed caviar, had prosecco
poured straight from the bottle into my
mouth by a long-haired man-mountain of
a chap and avoided a fiftysomething couple,
both first-timers, who seemed keen to get
me starkers. As the clock struck 10pm the
masks were ditched en masse and the
“playrooms” opened. Cue an immediate
surge of bodies racing upstairs to the maze
of bedrooms, shedding clothes and grabbing
condoms. This was carefree bacchanalian
bonking as if the end of days were nigh.
In the taxi home I felt stunned by the
ten-in-a-bedism, but also strangely
impressed by these libidinous hedonists
confidently leaning into their desires and
not giving a fig about society’s norms.
Emma Sayle has seen close up how British
attitudes to sex and relationships have
changed since she started the Killing Kittens
parties in 2005. “Back then you had straight
and gay and bisexual in the middle,” shesays sipping sauvignon blanc at a Mayfair
members’ club. “If you were bi-curious or
bisexual that was the bit that was shocking,
whereas that’s kind of just dull in the entire
spectrum of what sexuality is now.”
In 2005 polyamory wasn’t spoken about
in the KK world; now poly guests are par for
the course. “We’re getting more and more
messages from throuples,” says Sayle, a
happily married mum of three who is an old
acquaintance of the Duchess of Cambridge.
The events happen in cities around the
world, drawing a smart crowd and the
occasional celebrity (Rhys Ifans was turned
away for looking too scruffy). “We’ve seen a
massive jump in membership, over 40,000
single girls joined in the past year and a
half,” she says, adding that she has been
searching for bigger venues since lockdown.Y
ou don’t have to go to expensive parties
to discover the wilder side of sex. There
is of course technology on hand to
help. Some friends, spurred on by
a sense of lost time, have
determinedly turned to the internet
for shagging assistance.
“I downloaded literally every
dating app. Hinge, Raya, Bumble,
Tinder, Feeld, Pure, Happn,
The League ... On Ashley
Madison the strapline is ‘Have
an affair’ but there are loads of
single people on there,” says
Felix, a handsome entrepreneur.
He tells me how the women he
has met over the past year, both
online and through friends, have
been far kinkier than any he has
known before.
“Girls are feeling more empowered
at the moment, more willing to
explore their less orthodox desires
and make themselves vulnerable.
Every sexual encounter seems toinvolve some level of submission and
dominance. It’s much more acceptable,”
he says authoritatively. “Every usual sexual
boundary is just stripped away immediately.”
More puzzled than delighted by this shift,
Felix recently ended a fling with one woman
(late twenties, met at a party) because she
was pushing for him to act out her rape
fantasies. He is adamant that it is not only
men bringing sex inspired by pornography
into real life. “In the past two years it seems
like everyone is talking about kink and has
been quite far down the rabbit hole. I don’t
know why it has become so popular.”
Easily accessible and increasingly
mainstream, there’s no doubt that hardcore
pornography, which endlessly depicts men
being aggressive and violent to women and
humiliating them, continues to influence
expectations for both sexes. Felix is not the
only person I meet to worry about the
impact that such viewing habits have on
scenes in real-life bedrooms, or to wonder
if some women feel an unspoken pressure
to be seen to be wanting to engage in more
extreme behaviours.
Meanwhile, open relationships and
polyamory (meaning “many loves”) are also
becoming more mainstream. As well as
shagathon television shows such as Industry,
Bridgerton, Normal People and Sex/Life,
there was Trigonometry, an eight-part drama
on the BBC last year about a straight couple
embarking on a “triad” relationship with
their female lodger. More recently The Love
Triangle, a (dire) dating show on Channel 4,
helped couples become “throuples”.
How does this cultural landscape
influence behaviour? “I don’t think people
watch [those shows] and go, ‘I’m going to
become polyamorous now because I’m
just that suggestible.’ But it does make
people realise that it’s an option,” says
Lister, 40, who became polyamorous in
her mid-thirties following a bad break-up.
“We’re on this script that you meet
somebody, settle down and then this is the
person for the rest of your life who’s going
to meet all of your needs — financially,
socially, sexually, emotionally,
intellectually. And programmes like
that shift the dialogue. People wake
up and realise it doesn’t have to
look like that.”
In September the actor
Will Smith became a
poster boy for alternative
relationship structures
after talking about how he
and his wife, Jada Pinkett
Smith, experimented with an
open marriage. “We have given
each other trust and freedom,
with the belief that everybody
has to find their own way. And
marriage for us can’t be a prison,”
he told GQ magazine. “I don’t
suggest this road for anybody.
But the experiences that“We’re getting more and
more messages from
throuples,” says Emma
Sayle, the founder of
Killing Kittens
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