The New Puritanism: Living in the Shadows of Sexual Liberation

This is an article  <a href="https://medium.com/u/ce79b4764eef?source=post_page-----43922470790c--------------------------------" rel="noopener" target="_blank">May More  Tales</a>  suggested a while back, and I’m very much indebted to her for the discussion that led to it. The political backdrop has only grown worse since then, and made this topic all the more important. I don’t have a Reddit account — I don’t have anywhere near the stomach for diving headlong into that sort of frenzied battleground — but I do lurk there rather often to try and get a better sense of how the younger generation sees the world. Reddit, of course, isn’t the official voice of Gen Z: there are prolific users twice my age, and, regardless, it’s a very particular audience. But it’s as good an online place as any to put one’s finger to the pulse. A fairly recent thread on an advice subreddit offered just such a peek at the world we Gen Xers have created. I won’t link to it, but the gist was that a teenage girl talked about how terrified she was of venturing outside her home because she hated the idea of men looking at her, seeing her in a sexual way. She insisted she’d never been sexually abused (and had never had any intimate experiences at all) and didn’t come from a particularly repressive or religious home, but she’d seen how men talk and think online and hated the thought of being subjected to their attention. That’s a horrible way to feel about yourself and the world. What’s worse was the advice given — and that’s what truly left me heartbroken for her. <a href="https://medium.com/exceptional-erotica/the-new-puritanism-living-in-the-shadows-of-sexual-liberation-43922470790c">Website</a>