Is it just me, or are people becoming more prudish?
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?
It's the major social platforms pushing people to self-censor, mostly. It's a well-known phenomenon called "algospeak", where modifications to the language intended to bypass social network censorship end up seeping into in-person interactions, such as the verb "to unalive"
Jokes aside, while I don’t have any reliable data on this topic , so only my own perception , it is quite opposite from yours . On tv shows swearing are almost everywhere, due to some aggressive marketing watching porn and being only fans model is destigmatized , only fans models and female streamers have thousands of followers in social media almost the new rock stars .
Pornhub most popular search stats by countries etc is discussing routinely over internet each year .
Idk is it prudishness to you?
adult art being restricted from most Lemmy instances
That one is probably a liability issue. Especially a problem with real-life porn, but even with drawn material, you’ll often get characters which don’t look like adults. So then the mods would have to review each post, which is too much work, and they’d also likely see shit they’d rather not.
Considering this platform is mostly volunteers, if not fully, it’s just not worth it.
As an admin, spot on. People don’t realize that as an admin I and liable for what goes on on my instance. Both financially and criminally. They can kick down my door for things posted, so of course I ban any NSFW, and I have still seen things I wish I could unsee that people have posted.
I always welcome others to spin up their own instance though. They are more than welcome to host it themselves, under their name.
They can kick down my door for things posted, so of course I ban any NSFW
It’s all part of the authoritarian backsliding the world is suffering right now. Big centralized services can shield themselves with laws like Section 230, while wielding the threat of prosecution like a cudgel against small operators that aren’t “legitimate” in the way that big companies get treated and can’t afford the effort it takes to guarantee compliance.
So instead, most would-be operators cave to the chilling effects and users are driven back into the thrall of the big tech propaganda and control platforms.
We don’t need every instance to be a porn site tbh. Lemmy nsfw exists doesn’t it? You are welcome to make another one but its also fairly reasonable to understand some don’t really want to bother moderating a porn site.
To be clear, OP didn’t say “porn” on Lemmy, they said “adult art”. There are contexts in which nudity is not pornographic, but I assume it’s easier to just ban it all and not take any risks, than to judge the artistic merit of each upload before deciding whether it’s too over the top.
The inverse problem exists for creators on yt who make animations that are not kid friendly. Google’s bots love to tag them as for children, and thus demonitize them.
Plenty of instances do allow nsfw content as well though. The important thing is its up to the person running it what they want to bother with moderating and the kind of communities to encourage.
I doubt you would see GasGuzzlersRollingCoal to be particularly welcome in slrpnk.net for example.
I wonder if it isn’t a reaction to the number of people blocking all NSFW content? Like if most of your users don’t want to see porn in literally every other post and just block all NSFW as a quick workaround, then the headaches inherent in moderating adult content become much less worthwhile.
And without either blocking specific instances or blocking all NSFW, sometimes over half of “all” is porn.
I’m not anti porn but I find it hard to wrap my head around a user who is equally enjoying half their feed being hardcore videos, 1/4 memes and 1/4 news, all equally and simultaneously. Like “I’m on the bus reading a news article about the economy then I’ll check out 30 seconds of FP blowjobs and then oh, someone posted about a labor strike”? Who is that?
The way lemmy works it makes more sense to just swap to a seperate instance and user and keep your nsfw seperated. Better than depending on apps/frontends having an easy way to filter it.
If that “fake artistic character” is a minor, that’s CSAM in some jurisdictions, and that leaves the instance admin legally on the hook for a whole range of offenses which are punishable by incarceration, huge fines, and/or life on a sex offenders register, and in some places, chemical castration.
So yeah, not near as fucking innocent as you make it out to be.
I didn’t make it out to be anything, I asked a question.
And what idiot country would not just give a warning and say remove the drawing if someone was offended?
I doubt they would use all these draconian punishments as if they didn’t see any difference with someone raping a baby and putting it online.
Because CSAM isn’t something you should be giving ‘warnings’ about.
If you’re drawing something that could be construed as CSAM then you need to have a word with yourself but we’re all adult enough to know that some people just like testing where the line is, or knitting where it is and remaining just shy of it then feign ignorance.
Because CSAM isn’t something you should be giving ‘warnings’ about.
Obviously.
But I think the problem lies in “could be construed as CSAM”.
That is subjective.
I think because it’s such a heavy thing people are extremely paranoid and overreacting/self-censoring their art.
Not into manga/anime of which I know some is definitely over the line but for the rest I have never encountered drawn art (w possibly minors) of which I saw the intention as getting sexual pleasure from it.
Anyway, this extreme subject aside people are definitely becoming more prudish IMO.
I’d say it’s the exact opposite. Porn has never been as mainstream as it is now, movies and video games have never been as violent. I remember that in the mid 2000s, GTA and Call of Duty were literally demonized because of the depiction of violence.
Now onlyfans modells openly collaborate with mainstream musicians and Call of Duty has stayed just as violent while appealing directly and openly to children. I am on lemmy.world, if I sort my feed by “Hot” and include all instances, I count about 2 or 3 NSFW post per page on average. And I’m not talking some cosplays, I’m talking hardcore BDSM stuff.
This goes into the realm of conspiracy theories, but it certainly feels like advertisers have some sort of agreement to stay away from controversial topics, keep the viewers minds clean and neutral. So that when it becomes necessary or more important profitable, they’re easier to sway one way or the other. Don’t think, just enjoy and consume please, and don’t forget to hate who we tell you to hate.
less about advertising and more about being cut off from payment processing networks. And that is being driven by anti-porn lobbying group Collective Shout
Google AI gave me a summary that other people across the Internet are noticing the same pattern. It said that, because of the massive amount of open availability, people are feeling desensitized and disconnected. As if adult content has lost all meaning. Mostly, because consumerism has placed it everywhere, without any connection or romantic context. That people are actively avoiding it, because it feels empty.
Nothing forces you to use Google or even read the AI summary. You could have skipped past and read the links to form an opinion yourself, but instead you consciously chose to regurgitate what it said.
Idk if yall have seen tiktok, bonnie blue is weirdly popular with some woman, they treat her like a normal influencer, wouldve never happened back in the day, “I’ve never watched her corn videos but idk I just like her” type videos are not uncommon lol
Since you used the word define. . . We’re in modern times (as we always are) and Anthropology says that 20-somethings set current cultural standards. You can do the math from that.
Saying that this generation is lazy is far different than asking why this generation prefers certain things over others.
Research is showing that young people are having less sex, doing fewer drugs, and drinking less alcohol. Soda consumption is down. Restaurants are receiving fewer visitors.
Young people set modern culture shifts. With all due respect, they are to blame. The question I’m asking is, why? Not about all issues. Not negging them about their choices. Just curious why the aversion to swear words and nudity.
It’s funny, because I self censored and it triggered someone a few months ago on Lemmy.
It’s even more wild people are getting offended by stupid things like this imho. Almost like they need to be acknowledged to be reminded they’re normal.
The funny thing is, I probably swear more than anyone I know in real life most the time but I don’t feel like I need to make it part of my personality lol
I didn’t really question it until all the posts on one of my favorite Tarot subs started blurring out all the nude cards on their readings. Then I remembered seeing adult fan art on Mastodon, and wondered why I wasn’t seeing it on Lemmy. Amazon censoring curse words in subtitles was the final straw.
I hear the word fuck 40 times per day from kids (under 18) and adults. And I can’t read it in my subtitles?
Seems like you’re making a big deal about nothing…
I’ve probably come more people whining about this and pretending like it’s about government control or whatever, as people getting offended by swear words
It’s just as bad, if not worse because you’re trying to control freedom of speech. People can choose to censor if they wish.
No, you’re telling people how they should communicate, because you’re (ironically) getting offended that some people are self-censoring… Hence the “Can people knock it off, please?”. That sure sounds like an attack…
Just because a lot of us swear, doesn’t mean we feel we have to write swear words everywhere where kids might be reading it.
And, what annoys me, is that, if you weren’t the one who told me off long ago about this, then there is more than 1 person here who are basically trying belittle people who don’t communicate in a way that they approve…
In another one of your posts, you’re also attacking younger people who follow rules…
it’s not a generational issue, but a marketing issue. It’s not “ad-friendly”. It’s also a fascism thing. Performative moralizing and pearl clutching that rightoids use to smokescreen their pedophilia and their other favorite forms of rape. If they can construct an image of being hallowed crusaders of family values, it makes predation easier. because, you know, camouflage. It doesn’t even have to work or be convincing for everyone; all they have to do is hijack the ideologically-possessed simps who line up to suck the same fuhrer’s cock and the flock will immediately surround the wolf to defend them from any scary accusations, and even shield them from accountability when they ARE caught.
Even the fascists who aren’t pedophiles or into other forms of rape are strongly against the idea of women having the autonomy to choose sex work of their own volition.
And also,
Even the fascists that allegedly aren’t pedophiles or other forms of rapist are all, every single one of them, enablers of rape in general and pedophilia specifically.
One is advertisements. If you run a social media platform or website or anything similar, and hope to display ads, you better not show anything they don’t want associated with their brand.
The second is the rise of political movements (you know which ones) that have nothing better to offer than “modesty” and “traditional values” (whatever that means) as ways to fix the issues society faces.
Beware of complaining about “this generation” - it definitely means you might be over the hill.
Different cohorts are exposed to and brought up with different experiences and media. People brought up in a media landscape that’s personally produced for social media, and subject to scrutiny globally… Are more concerned with what’s socially acceptable. Is that really surprising?
This concept has been called “profilicty”, but was foreshadowed in the 70s/80s by the philosopher Guy Debord when he said:
“We’ve gone from a society of being, to knowing, to appearing to be”.
If you’re raised on videos of people who have hired luxury cars, and mansions to appear like they’ve made it, whilst others are torn down with a barrage of comments for saying the wrong thing… You too might worry about appearances (and your status).
But most young people are fine, they’re good in fact. They’re still new. Don’t worry about them. They’re just young people… And don’t believe the media.
Beware of complaining about “this generation” - it definitely means you might be over the hill.
Oh no! What can I do about that?
But most young people are fine, they’re good in fact. They’re still new. Don’t worry about them. They’re just young people… And don’t believe the media.
The censoring captions is so idiotic. The spoken words aren’t censored, so that’s ok, but you can’t read a swear word? Censorship is there to placate the dumbest among us.
Maybe this is you generalizing people judging only from controlled social networks, like Instagram that censors out absolutely everything except hate speech.
As far as I see where I live kids nowadays are very much the opposite of prudish, maybe too much at that. 13 year olds barely knowing anything about life and trying their best to brag about how many people they’re fucking while swearing like they’re characters from a GTA script.
Honestly, censoring the closed captioning is an accessibility nightmare, and you start wondering if they’re doing algospeak, or if they’re the kind of person who takes the same tone of voice with disabled people and toddlers.
I see a lot of (also valid) reasons.
But I’m going to say: “They drink. They fuck.” not so much anymore.
The generations are becoming more sterile and cold.
And what bothers me the most is how boring (in general) the youth is.
Mainstream obedient consumers and worker drones.
i don’t think i’m particularly prudish. i’ll routinely go out to clubs and do demos with like nothing on, but that’s in a setting where it’s expected. i also appreciate not having sex shoehorned into everything i watch or read.
like yeah it’s a facet of existence, but it’s not everything. i’d rather have it be meaningful and intentional instead of everywhere.
If by “this generation” you mean the generation of people owning companies (that don’t want their advertising associated with this stuff), the generation owning social media companies (that fold to the real or imagined pressures of advertisers), and the generation who writes the law… then I still have no idea.
I am a big movie fan and watch a lot of movies from all different periods and the amount of nudity in mainstream R rated movies has fallen to almost 0. In the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s nudity in mainstream movies was pretty common. I can’t even think of the last big movie that had nudity in it. Something clearly shifted but I am not sure what.
yeah definitely not the people. its the loudest complaints that set the rules. i think its more like insufferable people are ruining it for everyone else.
It's not even that. People get reported for posting porn if it's The Birth of Venus or David, whether YT, Mta, R**it, and the far right parent groups' members that are having books pulled off library shelves.
Heads up: Your self-censoring instead did some unintended formatting (everything between two asterisks/stars formats to italics, between two double-asteriks it formats to bold)
The problems you’re talking about in the OP are purely monetary. Advertisers don’t want it so media/content can’t do it and survive.
The upcoming generation are behaving less unruly these days I think for 2 reasons :
Everything is being recorded and shared all the time. You fart in an elevator and you might go viral. God only knows the fear you’d experience waking up hungover after a party in this world.
-Regular rebellion against the previous generation. We had eminem, limp bizkit, rage against the machine, Bart Simpson, an entire barrage of “fuck authority” as a culture. Only real way to rebel against that is “fuck yeah, authority”.
The lemmy instance thing is because people don’t like being spammed by onlyfans ads, torrents of AI generated porn spam, deluges of random penises men are happy to post assuming lots of people want to see it, and in some cases operators have ethical objections to porn production itself, or don’t want to deal with the possibility of rehosting and being responsible for content containing minors being hosted on their services and the legal headaches that entails.
The last one about legal problems has arisen due to increased awareness yes but also increased pressure. The amount of hosting companies out there who look the other way for violations are fewer and fewer by year out of their own fears from payment companies, technical partners, etc. Even accidentally hosting that stuff besides the risk of getting you raided by cops at 2am and having your whole life gone through could lead to your hosting being terminated and having to pay more and more each time that happens as you move up from the cheapest hosts to the ones left. It’s also a hassle to move.
Censoring tarot cards, swear words in memes and on TV that’s an example of corporate prudishness. That’s an example of fear of upsetting advertisers, of people self-censoring to go viral, to avoid Zuckerbook removing their post and actioning their account because Zuckerbook has this weird notion of being family friendly and appealing to advertisers. So much of that lays at the feet of advertisers and Christian pressure groups who exist to beat the drums of fear of losing advertisers and pressuring those same advertisers to pressure the tech companies.
It’s about risk compliance for those tech companies as well. Your bank would rather close all your accounts and refuse to do business with you ever again if you have less than several million dollars with them if you bring too many automated red flags. They won’t care you have half a million with them, they won’t care you protest your innocence, even the chance the system is right in flagging you a risk and getting hit by authorities leads them to a behavior similar to self-censoring where they self-police overly aggressively out of fear because you’re just not worth the trouble and risk.
In the same way these companies don’t care about artistic expression, they don’t care about freedom of speech, they care about maximizing profits and that means minimizing compliance risks, minimizing risks of being legally actioned because there’s even a chance what you shared could turn out to lead to legal liability, and minimizing risks of upsetting overly sensitive prudish customers and advertisers.
So at it’s core its driven by a capitalist drive to avoid government scrutiny, fines, interventions, and by that same desire to offend the least amount of people and not upset advertisers by placing their ad for a new burger next to erotica art or bared human body parts or naughty words.
I’ve been thinking it’s a combination of the opinion solidifying nature of social media, going through the “me too” movement, and exposure to a US administration completely bereft of morality, ethics, or intelligence that highlights the worst of our society. At least for younger people. Gen Z is the worst about things like requiring permission just to touch someone or getting bent out of shape if someone says the wrong thing. It’s got to be this environment that created this reaction.
My guess is people are tired of it. When you go through life and pretty much everything is sexualized, it starts to get boring and annoying. I hate how most movies used to have a romance or sex scene. Just imply it, is it really necessary to completely ruin the mood of a movie for it? We know people have sex and it doesn’t really contribute to the story.
I can’t be bothered to watch marvel movies in general anymore, any super hero movies really. I would say I like the parodies more. I liked the first John Wick movie mainly on the premises that Reeves actually learned how to operate firearms but what is it now on a fifth one? But still, realistically, the movie would be over in a few minutes.
I mean you could just go watch porn? I’m by no means prude. If I’d like to watch an action movie, why does there need to be a sex/romance scene in it? Granted at this point I only watch foreign movies; especially when it comes to horror movies. I would say the classic tropes of horror movies got boring after watching hundreds of them; then I watched a Turkish horror movie called Baskin, and I’ll be honest, I covered my eyes a few times, had to rewatch it actually completely watch the movie. That went from zero to I feel like I’m watching a horror movie for the first time and it’s time for bed.
I noticed this too. Looking back on how things were in the’80s and '90s. Seems like a lot of those things are not OK today. Seems weird in a society that so routinely treats people like trash. You can kill them but you damn well better say on YouTube that you “unalived them.” Stupid.
It’s a trend I’ve seen on Reddit and laterly here. I wondered if it was a north American thing? A slightly preachy, straight laced approach to life that feels kinda of smug and insular.
It all just feels incredibly forced. Reddit posts are still 30% women in skimpy outfits just for the coomers. You’re not entitled to see a womens tits all day. Subs like “oldschoolcool” are actually “woman in bikini” Stop objectifying women already.
And swearing in every sentence makes swear words lose value. Swearing is supposed to be a very fucking impactful use of language instead of a generic fucking filler word which is inserted into every fucking sentence at a random fucking places and could just as well be left out.
In short: both things add nothing to discourse or ideas. It’s just filler stuff. If you want porn there’s porn websites.
There’s a push to the right going on, led by a conglomerate of Russia, China and USA. Russia and china, because it aligns with their foreign interests. USA (and EU) its mostly Russia sock puppets and doomerism scions.
At least it looks like that to me, from the past years headlines.
Because they’re not wrong. A lot of the push against anything remotely adult is powered by an Australian group called Collective Shout that cloaks their conservative Christian prudishness in a feminist guise.
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.
IANAL, but in my opinion this violates the “functionally equivalent services” test of the Americans with Disabilities Act Title IV, and in a just world they would get hit with a massive lawsuit.
Both someone hard of hearing and a fan of that show (which incidentally was some of the best deaf rep I’ve seen) it’s such an offensive thing to do. We deserve word for word captions at a minimum (and none of that “speaking Spanish” bs), we should also have access to captions that include speakers, non verbal sounds, tone indicators, etc.
But also that show uses sexual content and profanity as crucial artistic elements. The long term trauma of rape is a major theme of early seasons. Multiple characters use sex as a means of distracting themselves from their life and thoughts, some use it as the only vulnerable connection they can have.
Yet the violence we see on our screens (real and fictional) is non stop. I grew up watching 70’s and 80’s broadcast television. Rarely did anyone swear or say God damn. Nude images were rare. Things change then change again
The oligarchs are using porn, and specifically child abuse, to get total control of everything said and done, to create secret social scores to be used against us.
I remember that used to be a big thing on the wannabe reality TV shows in the early to mid-2010s. I recall the Discovery channel and History channel did it a lot in the past. Even some of their more niche shows followed it too.
I am Danish. A lot of our culture and humor used to revolve around the naked body and sex. This has totally changed within the last 20 years.
My personal theory is that social media censorship of anything sexual is the reason. America exported their prudish culture and it is erasing our culture.
It’s really all our faults. The first time someone used the phrase “horny jail” unironically and wasn’t slapped into the following week, we invited this. The first time someone complained about a sex scene in a movie and wasn’t shunned from their entire social circle and relegated to hanging out with the Boomer ladies at the local church, we began building the world we’re trapped in.
And the people in here defending this new secular Puritan paradigm all sound fucking insufferable. It doesn’t matter if you’re an upright prude because your gullible enough to think sex makes God angry or if you’re an upright prude because you think it’s a feminist position. Either way you’re still a jackass who’s clinging to a sexual morality invented by bronze age goat herders to maximize the prices they could get for selling their teenage daughters to their middle aged friends.
The first time someone used the phrase “horny jail” unironically and wasn’t slapped into the following week
Maybe I’m incorrect but I always thought this came about because people went so ridiculously in the other direction where their dopamine-receptors were completely captured by pornhub, that it was a polite way to bop them on the nose for being a gross gooner in completely non-sexual contexts.
Like anything amusing on the Internet though, it simultaneously started to mean everything and nothing at all, I guess. Lol
their dopamine-receptors were completely captured by pornhub, that it was a polite way to bop them on the nose for being a gross gooner in completely non-sexual contexts.
Even if true, I stand by what I said.
Anyone not radically sex-positive has the same effect on society as a whole as the most vehement anti-porn crusader, because puritanism is the cultural default anywhere the spiritual descendants of those bronze age goat fucking child sellers have been able to rule (almost everywhere now).
I agree. The places on the internet where the phrase “horny jail” or similar phrases are used tend to skew towards having more men than women. And turns out women (and plenty of men!) are not comfortable with a post about how AOC is opposing data center construction and there’s a bunch of comments about how hot she is. The idea is to create a space where people may not feel comfortable can be comfortable that is appropriate to the purpose of the thing. Most of the “prudishness” and censoring OOP and others are citing relates to sexualization in places where there are specific reasons not to sexualize. In a fraction of a second I can pull up an unlimited amount of sexual content tailored to my desires. Just because you can’t be weirdly sexual when talking about like, news of the day doesn’t mean someone else is being prudish, come on.
Gonna sell your daughter to your neighbor for three goats next?
Your entire argument hinges on the purity culture bullshit idea that someone being horny over a woman is somehow degrading to that woman. It’s one step removed from comparing women who aren’t virgins to used kleenax.
So I’ve been having to remove pictures of people posting anime style upskirt images of people in child expressing bodies with the text effectively “I will not be responding to comments because everyone is mean”. Most of the time, I only find out because other people reported it as CP or CP adjacent.
With my own choices of art that I used to post, I tried pieces which can generally be viewed in public given I’m on an instance where people can expect to view the content anywhere. I don’t care enough to go through the discussions to get buy in to show legitimate art, let alone what looks like AI CP.
Am I drawing a line further than what an art museum would show? Yeah. But an art museum is going to be more enclosed with walls, a greeter, and an expectation that most children won’t enter it unaccompanied to make it a point of discussion in the community. I’m also not willing to go through the effort for others who do not wish to be a part of the community other than posting.
If someone wants to create something more, all the tools to create their own instance are available.
Some people are prudish. Some people are not. Media could have two different versions: the sanitized version made for the first group of people, and mature version for the second group. Sometimes this is not possible in which case it’s better to just have the first version so that it’s suitable to the largest audience.
There’s also been (I think justifiable) backlash against adult stuff because kids now are big users of the internet thanks to the addictiveness of social media and the tiny supercomputer they carry with them everywhere that is now necessary to participate in society. Sanitizing everything for everyone is one solution to this problem. The other is keep the mature stuff but require age verification to view it.
Also, people often browse social media in public and are aware someone might look over their shoulder and see something that might be misinterpreted as porn. Nobody wants that.
There’s a great article in The Atlantic about the disappearance of communal showers without curtains or dividers in the US. Nude beaches and nudist colonies are apparently disappearing as well.
Progressive era reformers had communal baths built before municipal plumbing systems existed so that the poor who could not afford their own private bath could keep clean. Bathing suits at the time would fall apart and clog filters, so boys and men were required to bathe naked (apparently women had to be clothed). People naturally also showered naked without dividers or curtains. By cultural momentum, this practice stuck around long after bathing suits had advanced.
Fast forward to today and people are realizing that separating showers by gender isn’t enough to prevent any discomfort or sexualization of naked bodies because there’s awareness of different sexual orientations. Additionally, the internet exists and cell phones with cameras are ubiquitous. Nobody wants to have an image of their nude form spread to half the world over social media where it previously would only be seen by a few people for a few minutes. Add to this the fact that easy access to a vast amount of internet pornography has massively sexualized nudity. Communal showers are disappearing because a large number of people (including me) hate them.
There’s also been (I think justifiable) backlash against adult stuff because kids now are big users of the internet
Anyone seeking to ban a vice for adults under the guise of protecting children is a fascist. They have no interest whatsoever in protecting kids, they want to control adults. Fuck that “think of the children” bullshit. The backlash isn’t justifiable, it’s a justification.
I find the wanton sexualization of the 80s and 90s almost wholesome compared to whatever the fuck is going on these days. Sex is too important to be relegated to porn - but that seems to be the mission now.
We’re allowed to have heaps of gratuitous violence, action, and misery in our art - but for some reason sex/nudity has this unique obligation to directly progress the plot (if it can’t be removed altogether). Sex apparently can’t just be part of character development, themes, world building, or just gratuitous fun, anymore without giving these fucking prudes the ick.
I remember going to the UK as a teenager back in the early 2000s and was culture shocked by the lack of violence. It was just so different, it was more shocking then the extra sex.
No. These things come in waves. We’re certainly on the prudish side of the cycle right now, but the modern prudes are a far cry from the prudes of yesteryear.
The world propensity for prudeness is trending down on a macro scale, but we are also at a point where the existing prudes have consolidated and are the strongest they’ve been in the short term.
Porn has also become a lot harder and the exploitative nature of the business has become more apparent. It’s not just people’s opinions that have become more prudish (though sure, they have) it’s also that porn is now, broadly, much much harder.
People were shocked about deep throating in the 70s, for goodness sake. Today that’s light fayre.
Small group of real prudes: either actually feel this way, or hold various levels of opinions, or are generally ambivalent to sexual content but have decided to construe sexualization with sexual misconduct. It works; no sex, no sexual misconduct.
Then the advertisers cater to those people because they don’t want to get bad press and want the broadest appeal: non sexual things appeal to prudes and non prudes alike: so make everything non sexual. Avoid offense and maximize eye balls.
Then platforms want to attract advertisers, so they make rules and filters that over reach. Afterall if nothing is remotely close to sexual then we don’t chance there being an Ad next to something sexually offensive.
Then the content creators, whos livelihood depends on the unequal relationship with the platforms self censor to attempt to avoid the broad stroke of platform censorship.
The middle ground then becomes vacant. The sexual but not sexually offensive content gets thinned out. So there is less and less of a reason for platforms, or advertisers, or creators to allow, endorse, or create that content.
This is why vocal opinions of small groups hold so much sway today. The cycle feeds into itself as people whos only interaction with sexual content is hardcore porn generally fall into that second “ambivolent but lets avoid it just to be safe”. This pipline then has a complicated but similar relationship on the political side of things.
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.
The sexualization is not a problem on its own the objectification that often comes along with it is as well as the “unspoken” rule that only allows conventionally attractive people to be viewed in a sexual context.
People don’t lose their personhood by being, acting or shown in a sexual context but many do absolutely not view it that way.
The problem i see is that since this mostly happens in visual media without context all meaning it could have is more often than not lost. If sexual content was created with a positive attitude we would see much more diversity. It is very obvious that it caters to people objectifying the protagonists and therefore its not that easy to blatantly approve of it.
This should off course not translate to shaming people in general but it should trigger nuanced debate and action.
People don’t lose their personhood by being, acting or shown in a sexual context but many do absolutely not view it that way.
Then you shame the prudes for their prudery and exclude them from society. You don’t cave to them and stop showing sex as being a part of normal life.
It is very obvious that it caters to people objectifying the protagonists and therefore its not that easy to blatantly approve of it.
That’s only a problem for you if you’re still clinging to those Bronze Age goat herders and their fucked up view of sex created to make it easier to justify treating women as property. Literally every idea about sex that treats it as some special area of human activity that is magical and different from everything else is descended from that one line of bullshit.
I don’t like prudes either, and I do think it comes in part from certain kinds of morally compartmentalized people who are wound so tight from societal/religious/cultural pressures and envy of those who don’t feel as bound to such things that they need it to keep being some taboo thing for their own weird peace of mind.
Not sure if anyone said this yet but I do wonder sometimes if (widely available/freely accessible porn) is also about control/atomization. Having a socially disconnected populace that can only satisfy their innate sexual urges by some sort of supernormal stimuli viewed on a screen that the system can control is just another data point that can be exploited/behavior controlled.
The less real connections someone can make with real people who don’t conform to their supernormal standards, the less they might be able to form communities that can be self-sufficient (to a degree) or fight to change things in the real world. Being physically intimate with someone isnt just a way of sharing pleasure or expressing affection, it’s also one of several highly motivating factors for people to touch grass, which is where 99% of everything that matters actually happens.
Beyond the scope of the topic here, I suppose. Porn is just one avenue. I’m not against it, but there are plenty of reasons to revile the abusive industries that churn it out, and the proliferation of hollow AI porn bots that give people psychosis.
I also blame marketing research and of course, capitalism, for degrading everything they touch to soulless data points to be collated and directed by the whims of those with the power to do it.
It’s calledbeing civilized and polite. You know, basic grownup courtesy. Mature people don’t feel the need to go around and scream titties and vagina no…
yes they are, US religiosity and prudishness is coming for us all.
It’s been a slippery slope, Bush had aid pinned to family first values, Obama had Hillary tie aid to stopping sex trafficking, (not on Epstein’s island though apparently) reads well in the news… alas it played out in the streets of Cambodia that women with condoms were jailed because why else you need condom unless you’re a hooker ? also gave them a reason to stop and frisk women. My partner and I were living there back then, what a fucking mess.
Yep, and it’s a real problem imo. People are becoming afraid of sexual content. As someone who’s been involved in free the nipple (a feminist movement aiming for the acceptance of bared breasts outside of sexual contexts), who’s done nonsexual full nudity in various forms, and also has engaged in orgies, this prudishness really concerns me. Sexual and body liberation are part of women’s liberation and general freedom, including in thoughts, expression, and action.
Sexual frustration, fear, resentment, and immaturity is also a part of fascistic thinking and I believe it’s a contributor to the modern far right. Love and pleasure are becoming more stigmatized than hate and pain. Accepting that it’s ok if art or someone’s actions are more sexual than you’d like so long as it’s not targeting you is vital.
Like obviously I appreciate NSFW tags, just because I acknowledge breasts can be nonsexual doesn’t mean I want to accidentally have them pop up in my feed at work.
Also lol at censoring the magicians, one of my favorite shows and a prime example of a show that loses a ton of characterization and theming by censoring it
I would not say people are coming more prudish, but rather policies are. Why? I assume because cash is king, and the best way to get cash is in advertising. Advertising has always been prudish since it needs to appeal to the masses.
Policy eventually influences/dictates culture. This is most obvious with the world ‘unalive’.
Another idea, is that we are becoming significantly more moral and have increase civil rights. How does this relate? Well, if you grew up in the 90s or 00s you know that being told you were gay was not a joking matter, but a serious claim that could make you a social pariah. Now calling someone ‘gay’ as an insult is not as socially acceptable, is that because we are more prude or more moral?
I think what a lot of people identify as ‘prude’ culture is just another perspective of an attempt at being more moral and inclusive.
