It’s no secret that Silicon Valley opposed the election of Donald Trump. For many, the general distaste for the reality TV star could be chalked up to the candidate’s virulent xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny – all ideas that are at odds with the Bay Area’s prevailing social liberalism.
But for Trump’s most high-profile tech supporter, PayPal founder and Facebook investor Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s discomfort with Donald “grab-them-by-the-pussy” Trump stems from its denizens’ difficulty getting laid.
“On the one hand, the tape was clearly offensive and inappropriate. At the same time, I worry there’s a part of Silicon Valley that is hyper-politically correct about sex,” Thiel told the New York Times in an interview published last week, referencing the leaked Access Hollywood video of Trump boasting about sexual assault.
“One of my friends has a theory that the rest of the country tolerates Silicon Valley because people there just don’t have that much sex. They’re not having that much fun.”
Is Thiel right? Is Silicon Valley sexless? Has the city that hosted the summer of love entered a winter of celibacy?
The Bay Area certainly has a reputation as being a bad place to date. With more men than women, the odds would seem to be in a straight, single gal’s favor – but the goods, as they say, are odd.
“There are men everywhere, but they’re all awful,” said Amanda*, a twentysomething professional whose recent dates have included a web developer who didn’t know the alphabet and a software developer who started talking about marriage on the second date.
The awkward, undateable tech guy was typified by a viral 2015 Medium post by a male startup worker who used an economic model to examine whether the city’s gender imbalance was producing “49ers – girls that are 4’s but think they’re 9’s in terms of attractiveness”. The author’s conclusion (that 49ers are more like “44.837ers at best”) was a prime example of the libido-killing tech mindset that is more interested in standard deviations than some good, fun sexual deviance.
Then there’s the housing crisis, which can make finding a place to do it even harder than finding someone to do it with.
Daniel*, a twentysomething who moved to San Francisco to attend a coding bootcamp, ended up living in a “hacker hostel” with 13 people: two bedrooms, six bunk beds, and one guy who slept in the closet.
“No one got laid there as far as I could tell,” he said.
Sasha*, a 26-year-old chef who moved to the Bay Area from New York, went on a blind date last year with a man who, it turned out, was planning to move into a wooden box in his friend’s living room to save money on rent.
Living in a box was “not a deal-breaker” to Sasha, but the man’s attitude toward his box was less appealing.
“What was pretty weird about his description of his box is that he wanted it to be a protoype for a startup,” she said. “He was pretty proud of it. I was like, ‘Oh, my old roommate was living in a similar situation,’ but he wasn’t very into getting advice.”
The pair did not go on a second date.
Elizabeth McGrath, a somatic sex therapist in San Francisco who says that the “vast majority” of her clients work in tech, told the Guardian that she generally agrees with Thiel that people in Silicon Valley are not having much sex.
“There is not a lot of sexuality in the tech industry, in terms of it being fun, free, open, sensual,” McGrath said. “It all feels very stilted and neutered.”
Many of McGrath’s clients are men who “want to check the boxes of life” – which include romance and family – but are much more interested in their careers than exploring their sexuality. She described a common refrain from her clients as: “I’m in my late 20s, I feel like I should have a girlfriend, but I don’t necessarily know what’s in sex for me, what’s in relationships for me.”
The emphasis on work and career is also apparent to Amanda Bradford, the founder of The League, a members-only dating app that launched in San Francisco in 2014.
People in the Bay Area are definitely having sex, Bradford said, but probably less than their counterparts in New York or Los Angeles. According to the site’s data, League members in New York and LA are more likely to meet up with their matches in person.
“In San Francisco, it’s a much more intellectual city where people are focused on their career and what they’re aspiring for,” Bradford said.
But Siouxsie Q James, a sex worker and columnist for SF Weekly, argued that the home of the Folsom Street Fair and Good Vibrations is just as sexy as ever.
“San Francisco has been a gold rush town for a very long time. At one point, at the turn of the century, 90% of the women were sex workers … I think something not so different is happening today.”
“People are definitely having sex. I’m not sure why [Thiel] said that, but I’m not sure why he said women shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” she added, referencing a notorious 2009 essay by Thiel. “That’s a much more terrifying soundbite.”
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