Sex and the American way

| Senior Forum Editor

Sex has always been an interesting topic in the U.S. specifically because of its taboo nature—the U.S.’s roots in Puritan traditions of physical modesty continue to form the foundations of American thought. While we are far behind the rest of the industrialized world in terms of sexual progressivism (if such a term doesn’t exist, it does now), the opposite side of the coin must be considered: Does repressing sex make it more valuable?

There are certainly some instances in which this theory sounds plausible: Not so long ago, it was considered very exciting for a woman to reveal only her ankle, something that roughly serves the same function that a low-cut T-shirt might serve today. The less that is left for imagination, the less scintillating sex becomes in general, and from this point of view, the argument becomes more compelling.

The issue is not so simple, however. At what point could any culture, in the name of preserving all that is sexual and exciting, justifiably repress others from expressing however much sexual content they choose? That kind of a rationale seems silly on its face, but it raises the question: Why are we so quick to repress others’ sexuality? It seems intuitive that people should not be walking down the street naked constantly, if not solely for the sake of the children (as if any kid hasn’t already been introduced to the wonderful world of the Internet). Yet this strong intuitive nature could very well merely be the product of culture, and at the point where that’s true, it becomes hard to objectively defend sexual prudency. Consequently, the “American way” seems more and more indefensible.

Perhaps that is missing the forest for the trees: I think that the more reasonable position to take is that everyone is different when it comes to sex. What turns one person off turns another person on, and 2girls1cup is simultaneously shock show and fap fodder for people across the globe. Some people like feet, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand that—nor should I. We can perhaps look at the U.S. instead as a constantly moving flux, the people within it undergoing sexual revolution and evolution simultaneously. Under this view, we could end up finding some altogether fantastic fetish sometime down the road—and with new technology inventing weird, perverted devices such as the Fleshlight, well…who knows what we will think of next.

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