circleWhen I see a car with an unusual color, I stare at it. Especially if it’s pink. Specific Vehicle What struck me wasn’t just the bright paint job, but the slogan taped to the door: “Unleash the energy of my big vagina.”
That someone would choose to decorate their most public possession with nonsense I’m embarrassed to even type reveals much about how our culture’s boundaries are on life support, including one of its new, perhaps fleeting, heroes. So-called “Hawk-to-a girl.” Hallie Welch, a 22-year-old American woman, was given the nickname after she uttered a catchphrase of the same name to a YouTube blogger, an onomatopoeia for the phlegm that men expel during oral sex. The video then went viral on TikTok.
To Welch’s credit, she seems much more resourceful than many internet stars of her time, repeatedly refusing vulgar requests to set up an “Only Fans” account. Trying to put aside her rise to popularity due to her kinky antics, Welch has now hired a manager and team and is planning both a podcast and music career. While she should not be forever or completely damned for an off-the-cuff, semi-cool remark, I find it interesting that such vulgar remarks are so quickly rewarded with money, fame and media requests.
As sexual expression becomes vulgar and public, our society seems to become more barren in the private sense. percentage The percentage of young people who are not having sex was growing even before COVID-19. Thousands of young women have been persuaded to forego natural puberty and have their breasts removed. Young men Erectile dysfunction Porn addiction has desensitized people to the real world, and our dependence on it is at an unprecedented level. At least in the Western world, we no longer have devout believers waiting to get married, nor the former celibate class of priests and nuns that was so important in building Europe’s intellectual empire. Mostly, we have people who have taken refuge in the Internet rather than pursue real-life relationships. But like the “Hawk-to-Girl,” many are simply responding to the cues around them.
First, we have lost the “third place,” as Ray Oldenberg defines it: a place that is neither home nor work, where people can socialize with people other than their colleagues and family: a place of worship or a pub. The reasons for this are complex: atheism, deindustrialization, the car, urban planning, television, etc. But it has happened, and we are living with the consequences: fewer young people socialize intentionally or accidentally, fewer young people form lasting connections, romantic or otherwise, with people outside their blood relatives.
And the spread of obscenity is not just being fuelled by new media: several mainstream British publications have recently given prominence to sexualised language by prominent columnists. Fantasy About our new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, which should give even the most liberal among us a new respect for old obscenity laws (PS: many of which are still in place in case anyone wants to enforce them). A highly centralized music industry is contributing to society’s desensitization to sex with a constant stream of pornographic lyrics and music videos. Whereas Stevie Nicks once attracted legions of adoring fans by wrapping herself in shawls and gauze, many of today’s stars are more product than artist, recording strip videos and releasing sex tapes and nudes at the behest of money-hungry management.
There is some truth to the claim that civilisations are cyclical in their approach to sex. The repressive Victorian sexual mores can be seen in part as a reaction to the Georgian aristocratic licentiousness so sharply criticised by Hannah More. But this does not mean that all scenarios are equally desirable, nor does it negate the greater break with the past brought about by post-war technology. At least the latter option limited access to pornography to seedy semi-detached houses in Soho or dusty hidden annexes of video shops. In the internet age, people can watch virtually any sexual act, from any angle, with any type of person, anywhere, anytime, often instantly and for free. The world in which “Hawk-to-a-Girl” was created is artificially sexual rather than hypersexual.
In his damning 2018 post-mortem report: Lady Chatterley The trial that ultimately gave way to the tolerant social journalist Peter Hitchens lamented:
Nowhere in this sad history [the aforementioned novel] Do I see nothing but long, boring, gray, monotonous days, occasionally brightened by a sexual impulse? No music, no poetry, no voices of friends or children. No wine, no food, no sleep, no refreshment, no laughter, no rest, no silence, no love? I then remember that this is the fever dream of a dying man sitting under the umbrella of a pine tree in Italy, indulging in sexual fantasies.
This “sad history” long ago became the motif for our sad present and no doubt our sad future: our media’s inclusion of gratuitous, forensic sexual imagery is now the rule rather than the exception.
In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis, the atheist philosopher turned Christian apologist who also had a thing for writing fiction, discussed the dangers of sexual obsession and our cultural tendency to overemphasize it to the detriment of deeper and more enduring forms of love.
Although it is the current trend to treat individuals as if they were independent islands, we all know that Lewis was right that the sudden decline in etiquette affects those around them and therefore society. The author of Narnia often emphasized the difference between pure love and mere lust. He believed that true sexual love involves devotion, self-sacrifice and respect for the other person. This is a “gift” love, not a “self” love, aiming at the selfless love that the biblical God has for his creations. Sadly, this form of affection does not seem to be popular among those behind the “gray monotony chain” of our media, politics and social media algorithms.