Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) criticized a columnist for The Economist over the weekend for apparently linking decreased sexual activity among millennial adults to “female empowerment.”
“If you think your ‘celibacy’ is due to ‘female empowerment,’ maybe it’s because far too many people relied on the disempowerment + silence of women to not be ‘celibate’ in the first place,” she wrote on Sunday.
The tweet racked up almost 60,000 likes and more than 11,000 retweets by Monday afternoon.
The column Ocasio-Cortez referred to in her tweet is titled “No sex please, we’re millennials” and details a widely reported study on the decline in sex among young U.S. adults. According to the study, 23 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 said they had not had sex in the previous 12 months.
{mosads}The study found that young men saw the sharpest decline in sex, while young women in the same age range reported higher rates of sexual activity.
The columnist partially attributed the decline to the “Me Too” movement, which gained prominence when Hollywood actresses began calling out their superiors and colleagues for alleged assault and harassment. Their accusations led to a nationally recognized platform that empowered women to speak out about inappropriate workplace behavior.
The Economist said in a video posted to Twitter that the movement has “empowered women while deepening male fears of harassment allegations.”
In Ocasio-Cortez’s Sunday tweet, she retweeted the video and bashed the British magazine for linking the movement to the decline in sex.
Experts attributed a number of reasons to the overall decline in sexual activity cited in the study, including technology, more people marrying or finding partners later in life, and an increase in young men living at home.