Does this Crisis echo the Glorious Revolutuon?

[Eric the Green]

(11-11-2021, 11:44 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-11-2021, 02:47 AM)galaxy Wrote:

(02-19-2019, 11:35 AM)David Horn Wrote:

Bill the Piper Wrote:

Eric the Green Wrote:I don't think you advocate culture-war religious-right efforts, but I agree with the Left of course on such issues as gay rights and government-sponsored religion in public places. Abortion is an issue that can be compromised, but that doesn't seem to be possible just now.

I could just say that I'd like to see the effects of sexual revolution reversed to some degree. The entertainment industry in particular needs to be purged. To some extent, reversing the sexual revolution requires the dominant ethos of individualism (which regards selfish pursuit of happiness as the goal of life) to die off, and new ethos of communitarianism to replace it. Parents staying together for their child's sake, even if they no longer get the thrills in bed. Like it was with the GIs and previous generations.

I have to agree with much of this.  The sexual revolution had far too many excesses to remain dominant in a less hyper-individualist society.  Communalism is returning and some degree of puritanical ethos will return with it.

I'm not sure what it looks like from your "age location in history" (or whatever S+H's exact term was), but I can tell you that to me (born 2001) it certainly looks like there is a "new sexual conservatism" emerging in recent years, especially since 2017. It is coming from younger people and from the political left, with the most enthusiastic supporters of it being the same age group as the "enforcers" of the new Millennial values consensus (those born 1988-1996). It is generally perceived, even by those who oppose it, as a further sexual liberalization, despite actually being the opposite.
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It is conceivable that the federal government could, if there was a base of support for it, take a similar action with the age of consent, and use some kind of withheld funding to pressure states to raise their age to 18.

Keep in mind that the drinking age and age of sexual consent are lower nearly everywhere outside of the US. And a couple of years ago the minimum age for tobacco purchase was also raised to 21.  For a time I worked occasionally at an innovation center for McDoanald’s and observed that in some European countries beer is served in their restaurants. That is because they don’t have the fetish for having to check IDs as the US does.  Many things formerly reserved for the states to decide on have been usurped by the federal government, daylight saving time among them.

Fourth turnings according to the authors are times of greater sexual and puritannical repression and greater distance between the sexes, and the crisis mentality in general means pleasure and social adventure takes a back seat to necessity. Even in the late 2T this time around, the religious right revival began that established a repressive trend that has solidified in mostly rural and small-town "red" voting districts and counties.

One historian I read asserted that cultural and social freedoms, once attained, are not reversed, even if they are temporarily. Prohibition of alcohol did not last, for example.

Even in our 4T there is increasing tolerance of drugs that loosen our inhibitions or awaken our consciousness, and greater acceptance of gay rights and transgender rights, even though there are murders by prejudiced people of transgender people of color that is an outrageous and evil trend.

So sexual liberation will be back early in the next 2T. It will not entirely fade away now even in the more communal-oriented society we are entering. This communal trend has been retarded this time around by the neoliberal ideology that keeps hanging around. So I imagine that sexual repression will not go all the way back to 1940 levels this time around either. But right now the pandemic is a necessary thing to deal with, and the results are repressive.

I disagree with the great repression of sex going on; the extreme penalties for sexual indiscretions that don't fit the crime, and the excesses of the me-too movement. On the other hand, I think that male privilege and male abuse of women including for sexual favors is being resisted, and that's a good thing. Less family break-ups and greater commitment to ethical treatment of children seems good as well, although the nuclear family of the 1950s is and always was an unhealthy aberration and not historical at all. So the right balance still evades us, and will develop in time, I think. Porn is boring and is always a bad substitute for real sex and real love. Our lonely society deprives people of this, and so people use the substitutes instead, which do not satisfy. I suppose it helps some of us keep our sexual imagination and potency alive for when it might come in handy, or might lead to decadent and destructive behavior, depending on the person and your views on this subject. The racist, sexist abusive porn that brower mentions is of course destructive.