Keep Your Codes Off My Nipples
American puritanism ruins things for us all.
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If you’ve read any of my work, you’ll probably know I’m a chronically online person. I have to hang out on Twitter for my day job, so I’m unfortunately always aware of the newest, strangest cultural conversations and viral tweets.
It’s a pain when the conversation becomes about the elitism of drinking coffee in the garden with your partner — seriously, this was a thing that happened last year — but sometimes it gets me thinking.
This week, I stumbled into a conversation about morality in movies. It seems that in the revival of American puritanism, led by religious leaders and politicians alike and spread online, some people now find sex scenes in movies to be uncomfortable.
Not as wholesome as the movies of old. Immoral. Icky. Needing a trigger warning.
Needing the return of the Hays Code.
Oh lord, protect us from two people touching.
Surprisingly, a lot of people seemed to agree that sex scenes, or even kissing scenes, were somehow disgusting, for different reasons.
Isn’t it telling of your intimacy issues if you find people showing each other affection to be disgusting?
Others argued that putting a sex scene in a movie is non-consensual for the viewers. I didn’t agree to this, so why is it on my screen?
It’s really hard to answer such ridiculous comments, but I’d start with pointing out that deciding to watch a movie is consenting to its content. There are also ratings to protect viewers if you’re not interested in seeing nudity.
But the thing I hate the most is that this strange and very US-originated puritanism, which only seems to be growing with the rest of the ultra-conservatism, affects everyone around the world.
From movies and TV to social media, the United States is pushing its outdated and regressive moral limitations to the rest of us.
