Pornography restrictions being codified into law, adult art being restricted from most Lemmy instances, Tarot readers blotting out the nudity on their cards on Reddit.
I’m watching the Magicians, on Amazon, and I use subtitles. All the curse words are purposefully filled in with random letters, so as not to offend the reader.
What’s up with all the prudishness? Can people knock it off, please?
People have vaginas. And titties. And dicks. And asses. They swear. They drink. They fuck. Why is this generation afraid of that? Acknowledging these things isn’t going to increase your chances of being sexually violated. So, what’s the deal?
I think at least part of it is a backlash against the proliferation of pornography (its shocking just how prolific and how degrading porn actually is compared to the ‘good ‘ol days’). A lot of youngsters were first confronted with porn as children through their smartphones.
But a lot of it also has to do with changing attitudes towards woman and sexuality. We’ve had corporations marketing woman and teen girls as sex objects for decades now, but we now also have an increase of violence against woman and we have the manosphere and far-right extremists campaigning against basic woman’s rights like abortion, equal pay and whatnot.
So I guess the real question is, are more people taking offense of nudity because of their conservative beliefs? Or are more people viewing nudity in popular media as a means of sexualizing (and thus degrading) women?
That core attitude is a big part why I can’t respect this new secular Mormonism. There’s nothing degrading about sexualization. The very idea of it is tied to the idea that a woman’s worth is tied up in her virginity, which is a concept born from the patriarchal ownership of women. Sexualization is only degrading to property because it reduces the value of the property. Anyone who claims they don’t see women as property but that sexualization does degrade women is incredibly confused.
The point I’m trying to make isn’t about sexualization of women in and off itself. Woman have the right to celebrate their sexuality and there’s plenty of nutjobs that still haven’t come to terms with the sexual revolution.
But what I’m referring to is the hypersexualization of women present in things like adverts, music or film. Prior to the MeToo movement you couldn’t walk a block without spotting an highly revealing or highly suggestive advert of a woman.
Back in the sixtees, the sexualization of women served to promote ideas about the sexual revolution, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. But decades of commercialization have reduced these ideas simply to “sex sells”.
The thing that makes the hypersexualization of women degrading imo is that it reduces women to a subject of lust, while deflecting any criticism under the pretends that women should be free to express their sexuality.