On July 16, Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot were caught in flagrante semi-delicto on the Jumbotron cam at a Coldplay concert. Clips of their pre-coital snugglefest went viral and, according to new smut analytics, Pornhub searches for "CEO" and "office affair" surged 4.8x and 3x respectively. Stripped of context, that might seem like a sexual overreaction. Within context… not so much. Over the last fifteen-or-so years, Oat Milk Elites have been subjected to the expanding power of what Harvard law professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk call The Sex Bureaucracy, a regime of HR policies, Title IX procedures, and rhetorical prohibitions that now govern sexual life. In a world in which office sex has ceased to be part of the professional managerial class project — dating apps reduced the percentage of American couples who met at work by something on the order of 75% — power-imbalanced peri-menopausal dryhumping constituted not just sexual rebellion but something closer to kink.
The thing about the Sex Bureaucracy is that it doesn't just prohibit; it prescribes. American universities instruct undergraduates that consent must be "enthusiastic” and HR delivers similar lessons via mandatory modules. These sexual scripts exist for good reason, but they also, and inevitably, get people excited about the possibility of going off script. That sort of improvisation is called kink and it emerges fastest in proceduralized erotic environments where people feel compelled seek out "edgework," activities that involve a clear threat and require negotiating the line between control and chaos. Andy and Kristin, who ran HR, didn't just work together. They edgeworked together. White-collar masturbators instantly and instinctively understood that distinction.
