What? No SEX???

A strange thought cropped up on my mind today. What if humans didn’t need sex? I know the whole purpose of sex is reproduction, but what if human beings didn’t need sex to reproduce. What if they just grew people in labs? Or what if people lost the urge to have sex one day? How would that change the world? What started as a random weird thought took the form of an anthropological debate inside my head.

Would romance even exist if sex didn’t? There’s parental love, there’s love between siblings and friends, but would there ever be the romantic love between couples if sex wasn’t in the equation at the first place? For that matter, would couples exist if not for sex? People woo each other and court each other because there’s that sexual tension, that chemistry which comes from the potential of sexual congress. Wonder what would be the base of relationships if the sexual tension was eliminated completely. Would relationships even exist or would people just live alone in single person units considered as the new family.

And if there’s no sex, there would be no sexual offence. But let’s be real for a while, sexual crimes aren’t really driven by lust, they are driven by aggression and dominance. So what would substitute rape if sex didn’t exist? Would women be safer if sex didn’t exist or would the crimes of dominance take an uglier turn? Children would definitely be safer if paedophiles stopped existing. And what kind of cuss words would exist if “fuck” had no meaning? What natural deed would people modify into cuss-words?

What would youngsters obsess about? With no sex or attraction between men and women, would every youngster be completely focussed on their passion/career and everyone would be successful? There’d surely be no dates, no proms, no dances. Would Latin dances like salsa and rhumba cease to exist? What would waltz look like if sex didn’t exist and humans didn’t feel the need to pair up? What songs would exist if there was no attraction, no sex?

Would people bother to coat strawberries in chocolate if not for sex and dates? If attraction is removed from the picture, what would women’s clothes look like? Would thongs exist? For that matter, what would happen to the plastic surgery market? If there’s no attraction, would anyone feel the need to enhance their breasts, butts, thighs or lips? It gets more and more fascinating as I keep thinking on the matter.

And how would evolution affect people in the absence of sex? Would two genders cease to exist eventually? What would people look like if the two genders fused together? Would people start looking different? If people started reproducing differently, maybe there’d be no need for breasts and vaginas, or penises for that matter. Eventually, would the human form evolve differently? Would the vital organs like the lungs and heart grow in size and take up the place freed up from unnecessary reproductive organs? Would the human body get bigger stomachs and intestines to process energy from food to sustain?

I start thinking about the effect this would have on movies, stories and media. What would be the theme of movies? Action? Horror? Torture? Would taking sex out of the equation lead to more gruesome horror movies? Or maybe, grittier action movies? The mind boggles, doesn’t it?

How would interpersonal interactions be different from how they are now? Would there be no “honey” and “baby” and “sweetheart” in the dictionary? Would there be any terms of endearment if not for attraction and affection? There won’t be those “Sexiest Man/Woman Alive” polls either. Sofia Vergara won’t seem foxy to any of you perverts out there. And neither would Chris Hemsworth be considered edible. Kind of a loss for humankind, right?

Then my mind wandered to a more personal front? How different would my life be if sex didn’t exist? I took sex out of my life story and revisited the different phases, and believe me, the result was a darker, more ominous life. So many interesting anecdotes in my life have sex or attraction or love as the central theme in them? They won’t exist. On the up side, I wouldn’t even have faced sexual abuse as a child. That’d probably make me a happier person. A happier person who wrote happier stories? Probably.