The Harvard student is forged under the pressure to perform. The admission process requires that students thrive off their ability to succeed—academically, socially, and athletically. Yet while students can excel in performance contexts, they might falter in more freeform environments. The act of sex falls somewhere in between premeditated performance and spontaneous expression. Amid a student culture created by the critique and evaluation of an individual’s abilities, the treatment of sex as a performance is an epidemic.
Students often worry about getting bad sexual reviews. “I feel like Harvard has more of a hookup culture, and if you’re not performing well, you can get branded pretty easily as someone who is not good at sex,” one male first-year student says. “I do get worried that I’m connotated as this or that at sex. And I think that usually ends up with me just trying very hard.”
Grace Allen ’24 feels a significant difference in the level of performance between sex with men and sex with women. “Of course I’ve felt pressure to perform with sex in the past. Especially with men… I think there is sort of like a script that tends to be followed,” she says, explaining that the man’s pleasure often takes priority. “In sex with women, the script isn’t as clearly defined. While you are still performing for your partner, a lot of it is kind of for yourself.”
Constantly worrying about sexual performance negatively affects student wellbeing. The performance anxiety stemming from hookup culture “depersonalizes the experience of sex,” Allen says. “I do think that there is a part of sex that can and should be kept private, so those reviews that are given really open it up to the public.” The aforementioned first-year student echoes this idea of depersonalization. He has felt socially pressured to find hookups during nights out, even with people with whom he would not normally desire sexual intimacy. “I actually do think it’s stressful,” he says. “It feels like a rat race sometimes.”
Media also plays a significant role in creating a performative sex culture, with the porn industry acting as an authority on what to do and what not to do. Students agree that the consumption of porn, while not inherently bad, tends to increase performance anxiety during sex.
One female first-year student describes her experience using the internet to teach herself how to perform in the bedroom. She cites mainstream porn and the podcast Call Her Daddy, which provides instructions on how to give oral sex. As a result of this media consumption, “for a while, a lot of my sexual experiences felt like memorized routines,” she says. “I think sex definitely can feel like I’m trying to emulate what I’ve seen correct sex being… I feel like [in porn] women are almost presented as sexual caricatures, which for me set really unrealistic expectations for how I’m supposed to act during sex.” According to a sophomore student, sex is “being framed in such a way where it’s supposed to look perfect, not feel perfect. Porn is the very extreme end of performative sex.” The use of porn as an instructional guide only perpetuates the idea that sexual intercourse can and should be studied, rehearsed, and performed.
Allen draws parallels between her experiences performing on a theatre stage to performing in the bedroom. “I definitely get performance anxiety in both,” she says. “I would say they mirror each other in the ‘first time’ sense of it. The first performance you have for a show and the first time you hookup with somebody—very similar feelings of excitement and fear and anxiety.”
Another female first-year student has been involved in theater since she was young and shares that “when I feel nervous about a performance in theater it’s usually a worry of, ‘Can I fully channel my own experiences and thoughts and feelings into this performance so that it can be the most authentic?’ Whereas in sex, that’s when it feels the least authentic. Channeling something into a character makes it a really detached experience.”
However, a level of performance during sex has the potential to improve pleasure for both partners. “I don’t think it is inherently a bad thing,” Allen says. “I don’t think it’s 100% necessary” to stop thinking of sex as a performance, she says. Indeed, “it’s better to work towards having the performativity of sex be something that enhances the experience.”
Harvard students tend to relish the thrill of success. They can survive, and even thrive, under the weight of performance. At the same time, sex can be a meaningful opportunity to escape from this pressure. As a male first-year student puts it, “sex should be one of the only things at Harvard that’s not scheduled, regimented, and marked by performance results.” Sex has a chance to fit perfectly into the ‘play’ half of the “work hard, play hard” motto that many Harvard students cling to. But play in what sense of the word?
Kayla Reifel ’25 (kaylareifel@college.harvard.edu) had trouble finding students to interview for this article that are both involved in theater and have sex.