Personally, I like it being there. I don't dislike it any more than I dislike romance in media. When it makes sense, it's great! It can add a lot to a story. When it doesn't make sense? It can completely take me out.

Some of the best stories I've interacted with have been heavy on the sex, but they're also heavy on a lot of other things, including using the sex as part of the symbolism for the rest of the narrative. Hell I played a game where the overall theme (at least, that I got from it) was "Consent makes things better," shown via repeated mutual noncon.

I've also read some stories where it was all porn, no plot, and got bored about 7 pages in. If I just want porn, video is what I end up going to, I'm reading because I want a story with it. I'm not about to sit down to watch a 1:30 porno either; I'd need a little more justification than "I'm stuck in a dryer, help!" to stay invested for 90 minutes.

I tend to feel like there are wider forces at play with how sex in media happens, though. Especially when you look at some of the stuff coming out of other countries, and how differently they treat sex? A lot of US movies treat the sex as disposable. You can remove the sex, and get the same story, and I think that's my actual problem with it. I remember accidentally playing the censored version of one game, and then I replayed it uncensored, and it was a vastly different experience. Censored, one of the characters was just an absolute monster with 0 motivation beyond being a horrible person. Uncensored, though? I felt kinda bad for her. The sex scenes humanized her a lot in ways that the rest of the game just... Didn't.

All to say, it's a tool in a box. You can do a lot with it, but a lot of people don't do much with it, and it bums me out.