Sex Is Out. “Cracked” Is In.

Every generation invents new ways to say “sex”, and it is every generation prior’s duty to be appalled and confused by it. It’s a challenge, then, to dissect these words and what they might mean for the broader culture without making it sound like I’m writing from a retirement home. But there’s something about the term “cracked,” which Gen Z is now using to refer to having sex, that deserves a little more scrutiny.

Before it referred to fucking, Gen Z also used “cracked” as slang for being talented or skilled at something, particularly in gaming. Fortnite, for example, was something people were commonly “cracked” at. Somewhere along the way (and really, no one seems to know exactly where), it transformed into a word for sex, particularly among adult Gen Zers. There is, of course, some overlap: generally, to have cracked or to be cracked is to have been fucked well. And in an era where everything has become so gamified, it’s fair to assume there’s some thread remaining with its video game origins. In this world, sex is a digital competitive sport.

But even in just explaining this, one thing becomes obvious: cracked, like so many other sexual colloquialisms, enforces a subject/object binary that falls along gendered lines. Two people can have sex, but it’s almost always a woman who gets cracked. To quote feminist legal scholor Catherine MacKinnon, “Man fucks woman; subject verb object.” A shared experience is reduced to an event, something that happens to a woman rather than with her. 

“The metaphor itself is worth examining,” says Inka Winter, sex educator and director at ForPlay Films. “To crack something is to break through it, overcome it, penetrate it, or gain access to it. The focus is on achievement rather than connection. What strikes me is that the phrase leaves very little room for the other person’s experience. We do not hear anything about mutual desire, pleasure, curiosity, or consent as an ongoing interaction between two people. Instead, the encounter is framed as a goal that was accomplished.”

There’s an obvious violence to the term, in that context. It sounds like you’re literally breaking or damaging a woman by having sex with her! Still, there are some more charitable interpretations. Perhaps you’re cracking her like a glowstick, bringing her light to life, or maybe delivering the satisfying release of having your back cracked. Even if we do want to impose a sense of violence upon it, it’s not as though this is all that new, either. Railed, nailed, pounded, smashed — these all imply the same thing. 

What does seem new here, though, is that so many people are talking openly about being cracked on social media. For women, it’s often discussed as a badge of honor, a sign that they are far more happy and relaxed than they were prior.

To be fair, a lot of the women talking about being cracked online are doing so to promote their OnlyFans accounts. Others are just celebrating their pleasure and sexuality. There’s nothing wrong with either. We likely have the algorithm to thank for all this, too. As a trendy word, people are incentivized to use it in TikToks, for example, in order to generate more views. Meanwhile, as an otherwise innocuous word, it’s difficult for content moderation to hide these videos that would potentially have been removed due to their mention of sex. For the people who want to talk about intercourse online, it’s a win-win. 

And yet, it still feels as though there is something sinister about it to unpack before we start claiming it as some type of feminist accomplishment. Even if it’s not inherently misogynistic, it may be a clue that many of us are pushing away from the intimacy of sex. 

“Look at the words themselves— ‘cracked,’ ‘smashed,’ ‘railed,’ ‘destroyed’— every one of them describes impact landing on a body,”  says Rod Mitchell, a registered psychologist at Emotions Therapy Calgary. “That matches a pattern I’ve noticed with my clients: people will talk about the act of sex all day, then stall the second they have to name the wanting under it. So yes, the slang creates distance, but not from sex. It distances people from desire. You can say you got ‘cracked,’ or that you ‘destroyed’ someone, and never once admit that you wanted it.” 

But while there is indeed a violence to the language being used, Mitchell highlights that this does not readily correlate to actual violence. “Intimate partner violence is about control and the erasure of another person, and ‘cracked’ borrows that costume without the cruelty,” he explains. “But there’s still something dehumanizing there. Reaching for the language of damage to describe sex still does something specific: it lets the act be something that happened to a body, not something a person wanted out loud.”

With its video game origins, too, there’s an implication that good sex is dictated by a set of rules and maneuvers created by someone else. Press this button, do this move, hit this combo and you’ll be good at sex. It’s as though the person being cracked—again, usually a woman—is a level to be defeated. Individual desires and pleasure aren’t really being emphasized for either party.

And look, it is entirely possible to use words like “cracked,” “nailed” or “pounded” without it needing to take on some abstract deeper meaning. It’s just the word of the moment. Plenty of people of all genders enjoy the sensation of being pushed to their sexual limit, as though they’ll leave the encounter transformed into something different. Not damaged per se, but different. It is entirely possible, though, for us as adults to enjoy that variety of these experiences while using language that gets to the true heart of it. So you want intense, passionate, life-altering sex. You’re allowed to say that, in your own words.