#generation gap

[cadillacjohnf1]

[prokopetz]

I just don't think the generation that made the Spongmonkeys an overnight viral sensation has any room to speak critically about how incomprehensibly weird the stuff kids these days are into is.

[lawfulgoodness]

Shoutout to the Elder Millennial at the table next to me at the gaming bar, whose barbarian just charged into battle shouting "LEEEEROYYYY JENKINS!!!!"

and then had to stop and sheepishly explain a World of Warcraft meme to his genZ GM.

[wubomei]

Have you ever seen a rotary dial phone irl?

yes

no

wtf is 'rotary dial'?

Voting ended onOct 23, 2024

I would really appreciate if my small number of followers reposts this, please.

[victusinveritas]

[hyperlexichypatia]

"Puriteen" is an ageist slur I hate, and blaming teenagers for the rise in censorship around the world is ageist and absurd (teenagers don't control governments or tech companies). But I was thinking there is something interesting going on with how we talk about teenagers who are uncomfortable with sexuality.

First of all, it's perfectly fine for teenagers, or anyone, to be uncomfortable with sexuality, or with anything. Discomfort needs no justification. But specifically, it's very common for teenagers to be uncomfortable with sexuality, because their own sexuality is relatively new to them, and that can be uncomfortable and confusing and overwhelming. So it's understandable that a lot of teenagers are uncomfortable with sexuality, even if some of them will become more comfortable with it over time. (It's also common for teenagers to be horny. Teenagers contain multitudes.)

But the way it's framed is...

So, when I was a teenager, specifically around ages 12-17, I was very uncomfortable with sex and sexuality. I was very modest and conservative, and would be called a "puriteen" today.

But specifically, I asserted my sexual discomfort in the context of asserting my burgeoning adulthood.

See, this sounds strange from today's perspective, a perspective where "pedophilia" is presumed to be so ubiquitous that "interacting with minors" is just assumed to mean "with sexual intent."

But when I was a kid -- and I need to clarify that I had older parents, older baby boomers, so they were already a little out of step with the cultural norm of my peers' parents when I was growing up -- my parents assumed that "pedophiles" were stranger kidnappers in white vans. Adults they knew weren't pedophiles. Adults in general weren't pedophiles -- a weird, fringe, strange, deviant subgroup of adults attracted to children -- so obviously, adults they knew weren't sexually attracted to children. Therefore, any interaction between an adult and a child was definitionally non-sexual.

It was perfectly fine for children to be naked in public, to have pictures taken naked, to be around naked adults, because they were children, and their bodies were definitionally non-sexual. It was perfectly fine for adults to hug and kiss children, and talk about what heartbreakers they are, because they are children, and they are definitionally non-sexual, and any comments sexualizing them are obviously jokes, because children are inherently non-sexual.

And of course this was understood to change around puberty, the process by which children Become Sexual. But like most parents, my parents, especially my dad, was reluctant to recognize that I was Growing Up, so he continued to see me as an Inherently Non-Sexual Child into my teens. So when I objected to his friend looking down my shirt and brushing up against me, I was being ridiculous. I was a little girl, definitionally non-sexual, therefore it was impossible for someone to have sexual intent towards me.

So when I became very modest and sex-negative and conservative as a teen, I conceptualized it as an assertion not only of my boundaries and agency, but of my own burgeoning adulthood. I was saying "I am no longer a sexless child, and I deserve to be treated accordingly. My body is no longer a sexless child body, and I'm going to cover it modestly and set boundaries around it. I don't want to watch sexual content, because I'm no longer a sexless child who doesn't get the parental bonus; I know what sex is now and I'm setting a boundary around it."

And I feel like a lot of sexually conservative youth culture of the '00s was kind of centered around this idea of modestly-as-maturity, this message of "We are old enough now that we could be having sex if we chose to, but we are intentionally choosing not to. We are choosing to wait until we are married, which we are now old enough to realistically look forward to."

So it's interesting to me that so much of more recent sex-negative youth culture seems centered on clinging to childhood.

Like, I don't think Purity Culture Teen Hypatia was... correct, generally, about sex. I was very judgmental and gender essentialist and heteronormative and slut-shaming and embodied all the flaws of purity culture.

But, I still want to say... you can be uncomfortable with sex without infantilizing yourself, you know? You can conceptualize yourself as old enough to set your own sexual boundaries rather than too young to be exposed to sexuality.

[taee]

a happy accident

[savagechickens]

Grandpa Turtle.