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Are Virginity and Purity Cultures Making a Comeback? · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Welcome to stuff I never told you production of My
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Heart Radio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, I feel like I always have to take a
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: deep breath in some of our episodes, Annie, just knowing
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: that we're coming into something not necessarily heavy, heavy, but
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: at least thought provoking. Is that the way I.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Say that there's a lot to consider with this topic. Okay,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: it is a very huge topic.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Very huge topic it is. Indeed, so we're gonna go
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: ahead and put a content warning here because we are
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: going to talk about purity culture. We're mentioning rape culture,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: but essentially we're talking about virginity and how it's looking today.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that was very big.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Of course, we dedicated a whole episode on this subject
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of purity culture previously, and if you haven't listened to that,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: go and do so. It's a part of our religious
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: trauma series. I believe it was episode three out of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Like Infinity because we couldn't stop. I couldn't stop because
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you know, it's too fitting for our trauma origination. I
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: feel like that was my og story, so might as
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: well keep going talking about trauma, and we have plenty
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: of it, and we're adding plenty more to it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one way to put it.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, But again, we do want to start off
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: with some reminders of what we're talking about specifically, and
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: we're talking about with purity culture, which is a reference
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to the idea of sexual purity and sanctity of virginity.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: And I'm saying this as an idea, not my beliefs,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: so you know. So from very well minded dot com
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: they say, in context of certain forms of Christianity, purity
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: culture refers to sexual purity and chastity. Purity culture connects
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: back to Biblical connotations of purity and its value, saying
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: extra marital sex and other un who forms of sex
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: are sinful, like that term unapproved. I guess that's noted.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, there you go. But yeah, things like true
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: love waits and promise rings. We saw an overly romanticized
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: and honestly infantilizing campaign to tell young people, specifically young girls,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: to remain quote pure. One of the things I just
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: recently saw was I Believe in documentary. I forgot the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: title of it, but essentially it's Joshua Harris who was
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: kind of the catalyst in this conversation of the purity
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: culture with I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which, by the way,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I was during this research Annie, I came upon a
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: podcast which I think they reworded. Unless there's a book
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that is actually this title, I don't think so, but
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I think they actually accidentally said I kissed Satan Goodbye,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and for some reason I liked that version better.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I could see this frame.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think that's what she means,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and we're not talking much about her, But I did
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: think that interview was kind of funny in that she
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: was trying to revamp uh purity culture in a way
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that she admitted as a person who was religious that
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: it was really traumatizing, intriggering, and really went after girls
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: a lot. So, you know, like a good and bad portion.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But the fact that she she miss took the title
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: or or the transcript was bad because I didn't listen
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: to it and they just put in Satan instead of dating,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: which quite funny. But if you don't know who Joshua
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Harrows is, he's that author, and he's done several more
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: books and really made this thing his whole like fortune. Actually,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: but as of like the last five years, I believe
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: he's came back with like, eh, I was wrong, this
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: is bad. I'm sorry.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Hmmm.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And he did a documentary talking about like I
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: think it was him. Y'all may come back and be like, no,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: that wasn't him. But he's related to somehow in which
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: he talks about like youth camps and how that really
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: brainwashed a lot of young kids, and a part of
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: that brainwashing was purity culture.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and definitely go see because we've also done episodes
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: on virginity, like we did two part around that.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: But I know, like.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: In there we talked about there is a pretty widely
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: held connection between virginity and youth and that kind of
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: purity and innocence and all of that, and that is
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: problematic just on the face of it, but when you
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: expanded out, it does become very infantilizing for people who've
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: never had sex, or don't want to have sex when
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: they get older, or just ever.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: So it is a.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Big So many of these things are a lot to untangle,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: and we're discussing them.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and we'll probably forever be entangling them because honestly,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: we don't talk much about it here. But when they
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: talk about the deconstruction of theology and deconstruction of Christianity,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: which we've seen it as a movement, and I think
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: it's such a fascinating conversation. One of the things that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: attribute to this movement was the fact that the purity
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: culture was so traumatizing that our generation, my generation specifically,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: really were like, Hey, yeah, I know this is so wrong,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: this is me up. How do I backtrack from this?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So that kind of was a pivotal moment for that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: movement in itself. So we actually talked about talking to
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: people about spiritual trauma. Anyway, Yeah, and we'll probably come
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: back to it because it is a fascinating conversation and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with what the government
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: is doing to us today. But anyway, moving on and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: just a bit more again from a paper written by
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Katerina As you knowed, I really hope I said that right,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I apologize, But she wrote for Berkeley
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Center dot Georgetown dot edu entitled American Purity Culture in
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Generation Z. Purity culture is a subculture in Christianity that
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: generally emphasizes the importance of chastity. These are general emphasis
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: of purity culture and then she lists these bullet points.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Virginity is prized and everyone should wait until marriage to
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: have sex. Men should avoid women as they often cannot
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: control their sexual desires around women. Sexual abuse is often
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: caused by women's inability to follow the rules, especially if
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: she is not dressed modestly. Once losing one's virginity, that
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: individual is damaged goods, which, by the way, can I
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I've told these stories because I feel like I have
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: to confess my sins for the lack of terms, because
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I've really perpetuated these thought processes. I really thought I
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: was onto something and I was like, yes, I understand this, Yes,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: this is what this is. Because you know, I have
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: seen evil men who would probably claim themselves as Christian,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: doing evil things and traumatizing young girls. Me uh, because
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they could not handle themselves. And then this conversation about
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: damage goods was so ridiculous. And I remember the example
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: one was of an example of getting a candy bar
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: and everybody taking a bite. Did you have that example?
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. Mine was we had a
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: jug of water and everybody spit into it. Oh, would
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: you like to drink this water?
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well no, I'll spit into it, though like, what
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: that doesn't even make sense.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: A lot of it doesn't make sense.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: But then I think the newest form and I'm going
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: to talk about this later with the social media, but
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: apparently one of the newest forms of metaphors, because I'm
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: telling you what, when it comes to Christian theology and sermons,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: they love their metaphors, their stories, their tail tales. I
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: guess the Bible does the same thing sort of, except
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the part of the problem is most people hate it
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: literally and that's why we have this back and forth.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: But anyway, going back to they have a piece of
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: tape and how when you keep taking it off of
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: things it loses its stickiness, which I'm like, that's gross
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: in itself.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, also kind of a boring, like, you know, spitting
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: in the water, and we had to go around. I
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: feel like the tape betaphor could be done with that
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's the point.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: That's the point, all right. So now that we've kind
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of established that we noted in our earlier episode and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: stayed before, purity culture's toxicity is linked to some of
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the prevailing ideas and failings within rape culture today. That's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: some of the things that we had to highlight in
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: conversations and about why men get away with raping and
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: how women are blamed instead. And then again also forgiven,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: men are forgiven. That's where women are not in their toss.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: To be fair, that it's also biblical because you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: if a woman gets raped and that raper doesn't marry her,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: then she can be cast aside and never seen in society. Again, yeah,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that was the thing because they were like, Joseph is
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: a good man because he took this poor little twelve
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: year old vision.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, with child.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Anyway, moving on now, maybe you're asking yourself, why are
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: we talking about this again? Like I said before, we
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: have lots to talk about him this and I think
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it's ever changing. And then again, like I said, you
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: might not be because this is a huge subject. It
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: is a huge conversation, and one episode really doesn't do
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: it justice. It can't. But either way, we're coming back
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and we're talking about it because it has come to
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: my attention, Annie that a new form of purity culture
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: has come background or so people are saying, or people
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: are saying for the younger generations. And yes, I sound
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: very old. I am old. I feel that I feel
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: that in my knees if you need to know. And
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: though for us this is traumatizing as hell, coming back
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: to this is really scaring me. I don't like it.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So we wanted to take a look and see if
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: this trend is actually coming background and what is happening.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I guess any when we were talking about this, I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: asked you if you had seen this trend coming out,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: because it's been on my for you page. There's conversations
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I told you about the reality show, which we're going
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about it. And now that
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: we've researched a bit, I want to ask you, have
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you noticed if this mindset has come back? What have
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you found?
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I found a lot.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Because people are freaking out about it in the media,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: I have to say, I'll say it's really complicated. It's
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: a bit more complicated than what they're reducing it to. So, yes,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: gen Z is being called the generation of virgins in
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: the media, or that they're in what is called a
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: sex recession. Numbers do show they are having less sex.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: At twenty twenty two, Kenzie Institute found that twenty five
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: percent of surveyed Gen Z adults said that they never
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: had partnered sex. They are also having fewer one night stands.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: But there are a.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Lot of reasons for why this is happening. Some of
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: them are purity purity culture related, which we're going to
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: get into. But one of the ways that people reporting
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: on this are breaking it down are political or societal
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: reasons versus the puritanical ones. For example, many gen z
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Ers cite the overturning of Roe v. Wade and other
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: fears around being unable to get birth control as a
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: reason for anxiety around sex and not wanting to have it,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: and that has been shown in numbers as well. Over
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: like around thirteen percent of gen Z and eleven percent
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: of millennials have said that that whole thing has made
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: them not want to have sex. I have friends who
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: have this very viewpoints right.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I know recent reports that the US is at
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a record low birth rates at one point six percent,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: people with unses are celebrating because they're like, Yeah, this
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: is what we wanted, this is what we're doing, this
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: is exactly what we wanted. We're trying to follow along
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: with a lot of the Asian countries which have also
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: very low birth rates, and the many things I've been
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: doing and I don't know because TikTok is changing if
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: because they have allowed for a lot of bad players,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: but a lot of the comments for men being like, well,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you're you're ignorant if you think that this is gonna help,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: because now you're not gonna have this. This is this,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna like follow society. You go live in
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: an island so you can be by yourself, in which I'm.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Like, do you not know how reproduction works?
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Bruh?
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Probably not. Probably that's another episode about the sex ahead
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: part of this.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Again, Yes, but it is interesting because it has gone
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: down and it's purposeful, and it is purposeful, and because
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: of things like the Estra project and Project twenty twenty five,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: people who are really scared.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: People are scared, and rightfully so I'm not even involved
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: in this whole scene and I'm scared.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I should get first control. I don't know.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Another piece of this is the last effects of COVID,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: So for gen Z, maybe missing these milestones or at
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: least experiencing them differently as you're kind of you know,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: maturing sexually. Our good friend anxiety. Some people think that
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: anxiety has to do with what's going on here and
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: just the anxiety of growing up in COVID and then
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: the world we have now. I personally think that this
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: is generally something you can control, like your I hate
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: to use virginity, but like your bodily autonomy or sexuality,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: other than of course objectification of your body or sexual assault.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: So it might give some people one variable that they
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: largely hopefully can control in a time where it feels
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: like we control so little. There of course pros to
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: cons to that, because pros and cons to that, because
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: ideally that wouldn't be the thing that would make us
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: feel like we have more control, or at least the
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: only thing.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Some people also theorize that the impact of me too
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: is a part of this whole thing and what happens
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: in the courts wherein men don't really get punished after
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: all this. It's so it created this anxiety around sexual
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: situations that could lead to sexual assault, but offered no
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: real tools people could see and protect themselves, and clearly
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: through these court cases it's like, yeah, you're kind of
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: on your.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Own, right.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, this conversation also leads to in which we're
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about in a minute with like cringe and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: being creepy, and which is kind of a gen Z
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: like Yeller being creepy, why you're doing too much type
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of conversation because they do see the me too move,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, that's gross, And so they have been
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: very aware that sexual assault is likely. I guess hearing
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: those numbers is really freaky.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's a good reminder.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: If you see these headlines that are like, gen Z,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: what's wrong with them, it's not. It's actually that they
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: in a lot of cases at least they know the numbers.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: And we're like, yeah, no thanks.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Another thing that happened both during COVID but just in
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: the technological age we live in is that you know,
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of outlets on the internet for them
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: that they can go to. They don't really need to
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: go out with somebody or.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Sex and the City episode
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I Believe You and I watched, in which he had
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: grown up all the time hearing about sex because of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: his parents being so open about it, that he really
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: really was repressed because he was like so over it.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah. And that being said, like research does
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: indicate that gen Z is not less horny, but more
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: aware of potential consequences. So it's not like some people
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: report it as like they don't want sex. It's not
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: necessarily that or that they don't have those feelings, but
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: it's more than they.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they know what's going on, and they have the Internet.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, I also rad there's been a rise in fem cells,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: which would be women who were voluntary are involuntarily celibate,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: which we're going to have to revisit. That's a whole
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: separate thing. That being said, we did see an alarming
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: uptick in gen z men voting very conservative in the
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: recent US presidential election, in part influenced by the manisphere
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: and in cell ideology, including the ideology around virginity and
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: how it's women's fault.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: So right. And then this also goes into that conversation
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: of this men loneliness epidemic, which again we were like,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that's not really a thing that's everyone, but yet they
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: use that as a way of being like, oh, no,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: this is women's fault that were lonely.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Yep, because their loneliness matters. But waitman's loneliness does not.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: As we work harder at it because we actually make friends.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, okay, all of that being said, religion is
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: still a huge part of this conversation here in the
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: US and around the world, and I know we're going
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: to get into that in a minute. This is really
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: interesting to me because this is where I see these
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: huge divides in reporting on gen Z. So there has
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: been a rise of Catholicism in gen Z. There was
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: recently a whole article about pop Leo and how popular he.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Was and all of this with gen Z.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: However, gen Z is also more likely to be secular,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: like no religion, So we've got both of those things
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: going on. I wonder, since a lot of the religious
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: part of saving yourself for a marriage and now we
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: have people getting married later in life, if they're getting
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: married at all, if that's a piece of this, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: perhaps on the flip side of that, rejecting the idea
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: of genity being you know, possession in a very heteronormative sense,
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: which is what it's been historically. And this led me
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: to a forum where people were basically saying virginity is
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: a construct of the patriarchy.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't even be a thing, like scientifically, it's not
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: a thing. And then one dude popped in he was.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Like, you feminists blame patriarchy for everything.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: It is not patriarchy. It is a thing.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: So let me a man tell you you are completely wrong.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Yes you're talking about science, but I'm telling you this
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: is hard of my feelings.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: You're wrong, Yes, yes, but I wonder if that's like
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: also a piece of it because people are more like
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: aware of this.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: It's just even a thing. I don't know right.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Interestingly, there has been both a rise in desire for
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: monogamy and a desire for ethical nonminogamy, which illustrates again
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: those pretty big divisions in gen Z because yeah, we're
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: still talking about gen zh no community or generation as
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: a monolith obviously, but it's really interesting how stark these
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: differences are, and a lot of what we're going to
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: talk about, and that is always a lot of this
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: depends on self reporting, so keep that in mind, and
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: also keep in mind being in an ethically non monogamous
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: relationship does not equate to more or any sex. A
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: lot of people think it does because they don't understand it,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: but right, yeah, it doesn't.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Again, that's kind of that conversation again when we're talking
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: about gen z's like you being creepy. This is not
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: about sex, this is about relationships or something along those lines.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's also that say level of like new
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: types of relationships have become open lavender marriages of the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: best friend, like platonic marriages being in existence and being
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: like this is actually okay because we take care of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: each other, we are a relationship and we communicate, which
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: again I feel it maybe gen Z is learning to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: communicate better. But then we do again have that other
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: side where they here the minisphere being like, oh we
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: had to go about the alpha thinking and men aren't
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: supposed to be with one woman to have a conversation,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: which I've been hearing more and more about.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's like I've been saying, I'm seeing these
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: really different viewpoints that are pretty big like every like
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: I said, every generation, every community has these different viewpoints.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: But it's kind of interesting how opposite a lot of
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: these bigger ones are. All that being said gen Z is, yeah,
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: they're far less strict definitions of gender and what constitutes
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: sex and more likely to identify as queer and be
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: exposed to all these identities and relationships that might not
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: center sex. So here's a quote from a Guardian article
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: titled A Generation of virgins is leading America's next sexual revolution.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Sexually progressive young people tend to take a more inclusive
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: view of sex. Take, for example, losing your virginity, which
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: is traditionally defined as having penis and vagina sex for
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: the first time. Although gen Z interviewees usually said they
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: had once believed in that definition, many also said their
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: views evolved as they got older. Frequently their realization of
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: their own queerness or their interactions with LGBTQ plus peers
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: had led them to reassess how they saw sex. And
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: we're going to talk about this more, but that's what
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: I thought too, living your virginity. Virginity is also a
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: term they are less likely to use at all and
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: unless prompted. So, yes, there's a lot, a lot going
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: on here, a lot to unpack.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: There is what were you taught when it came to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: sex and purity growing up, Annie, Because I know I
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: think you and I have different different.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: Perspectives, Yes, yes, and you will have to share yours
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: to showcase that. But it wasn't something that was taught
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: in my house. Really, it wasn't that big a deal.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: When I my dad tried to sit me down to
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: have the like sex talk. I was in eighth grade,
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: and I said, you're far too late, which unfortunately fortunately
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: was true because I'm probably learning from like my friends
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: and encyclopedia. I looked it up, and uh, TV shows
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: and fan fiction was not a good place to get here.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it sounded awful because when you scientifically explain it,
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: it sounds terrible.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Fanizing about this, you're like, what is happening?
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: No, no, but yeah I didn't.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: I did absorb, but like because I was religious for
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: a short time, but a very intense short time. Uh,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: I don't think I ever put together though, Like Eve
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: was bad because she maybe metaphorically had sex.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: I just put to bet she was a woman and
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: that was bad. But I absorbed a lot of it
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: from my friends, and my friends had these ideas, and
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: I definitely had the idea that, you know, like, the
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: first time you have sex is going to be wonderful
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: and perfect and it has to be or else.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Which is it's not true and very damaging. Also on
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: the other hand, though, I had the idea that would
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: hurt a lot, and the whole virgin's blood thing, like
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: if you didn't believe you weren't a virgin. But then my.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Older brother was the cause of a lot of tension.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: He and my dad didn't get along, and he was
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: four years older than me, and so he was he
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: was with girls a lot, and I saw I did
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: not want to be like him, so I sort of
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: veered hard away from that and.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Was probably really judgmental. Oh, I was definitely really judgmental.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: But I also will say I did think that this
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: penis and vagina thing was how you lost your virginity,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: and that's very damaging when you're sexually assaulted when you're young,
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: which I was. And I would tell myself like, well,
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: if he's my boyfriend, that's not bad, right, which is
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: kind of the same thing, like if you get married
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: to hurt, rape like those things, and that. I had
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: a lot of friends that believed in that damaged goods things,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: and I would hear them talking about that and be like,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: I can never tell them. I'll never tell them what's
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: going on here. And then you know, in my adult life,
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: my therapist was like, you know, you can differentiate between
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: sex and rape, and it's not the same thing. Interestingly,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: there is a huge historical back and forth about if
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: a woman has been raped, is she still a virgin?
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: And usually the case has been yes, because it's taking
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: a this theft of the father's property in a lot
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: of old religious texts. But now it seems to be
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: fearing away from.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: That in a lot of ways. Right now.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: There's so much to that because yeah, like if we
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: took it like biblically and we took about like property
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and we talk about promised because like in consummating a marriage,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it was the marriage, which is why annulling the kind
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: of still exists, I guess it, which is like such
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: an outdated practice in so many ways. There are so
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: many things that we can.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Talk about with that.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like my I was a judgmental one. I
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: was such an hel Like I have nothing but shame
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: on that, because I also was pretty traumatized as a kid,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: coming from a very bad background of you know, like
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: what is this how how I was early sexualized and
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: like there's so many things that I needed to stay
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: up with you four for a young age, and instead
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of being able to get therapy, I just got hushed
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and ashamed. I'm like that was drall response. You probably
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: should have addressed that now, as like when I became
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: a social worker, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, these
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: are signs. And then when no one looked at this.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: But all of that to say, with that, I came
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: in full circle of being like, I'm forgiven it wasn't
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: my fault, so therefore I can judge others. And again,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about this previously when I talked
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: about the fact that you know, a friend and I
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: fell apart because she was in high school. I was
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: in middle school, and she was trying to tell me
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: how wonderful sex was, which I feel like, as great
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: as it may have been, it was more of a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: conversation trying to convince herself. But that did not lead
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: to the point of like, instead of just being like, okay, cool,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: moving on, I had to shame her a little bit,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: which I'm like, no, wonder, we're not friends. I didn't
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: like you, you didn't like me, and we were bad friends.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I was a bad friend. But it really did come
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: into that trap. And because I had some way with words,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and because I was looking at like seminary books and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: talking about things like I Kiss stading, Goodbye, passionate parody,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: which I'm gonna mention it a little bit later, books
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: like that really taught me flowery words about this romantic
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: version of virginity, which is both that I really thought
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I had a handle on it. This teen preteen girl
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: who had too much trauma in her life was like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: this is what this is, and this is why it's holy,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and this is why it needs to be waited to marriage,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and when I'm married, it's gonna be amazing. And then
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: like watching things fall apart because not to tell other
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: people's stories, but other people who were in the same
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: background as myself who believed this got married very young
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: because they were scared of sitting and then they were
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: in awful, awful relationships and gone through a lot of
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: trauma on that end. So for me, like what I
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: had learned, And I don't think it was necessarily my
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: parents that taught me this. It was more shame factor
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: would like, learn from my mistakes, have a conversation, and
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't necessarily like shame me, shame me, but it
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: was still like taboo. So I as much as that
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: culture that I did grow up and we were told
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: this is sin and looking at women as sin. So
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I was told that my parents didn't like force that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: odd to me, Like there was no shaming, Like if
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I had had sex at a young age, if I
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: had gotten pregnant at a young age, I absolutely believe
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: my mother would have been like, oh, I will help you,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: we got this, You're fine, You're loved. All these things.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: They may have been disappointed, there may have been fights,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: but I would have not been kicked out or any
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of those situations. So it was an odd like level
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of superiority for me.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's interesting because we've talked about this before
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: because you and I are coming at it from very
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: different ways. But there was a point where we were
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: all my friend group was all like boys or gross
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: were never going to get into that. And then I
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: felt like everybody in my friend group who were they
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: were almost all very religious, and so there was this
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: kind of moral religious aspect to it became really interested
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: in boys, and then I didn't, and so I was
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: like lying and pretending and.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Like, oh god, yeah, I went to sex the whole time.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: You know, And I know in your experience, like it
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: was very different, but for me, I feel like it was,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: at least in my friend group, it was more of.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: A shameful thing.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: If you weren't into it if you weren't having sex,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: And so it became where I was like the odd
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: person out and just trying to pretend. But that sort
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: of like it's a shift in adolescence where it went
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: from never and my religion tells me so too, Well, what.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: About that you haven't been with anybody? What's wrong with you?
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I don't, I think, and I will say this could
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: have been just me. Again, I was an oddball because
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: as people would tell me they were doing things, I
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: tried not to be judgmental, but they knew I was judging.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I'm such a jerk, Like I was not a good
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: friend because like even through college I was that exact
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: same way. Oh, it was really puritanical in every bit
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of the way if my friends, because my high school
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: friends and I kind of like shifted away from each
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: other that way, and it was an obvious shift. I
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: kind of talked about the story in a little bit
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: my judgments, but like for me, it was a point
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: of pride. Also later on as an adult, I could
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: admit it was my trauma. It was like something that
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I had to cling to because I was so petrified
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of relationships in general because of my attachment problems. But
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: there's it's an odd like interaction to the point that
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: I think my parents were annoyed with me once again.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: They were annoyed with me by like being like overly
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: judge teenage self in this level and being like, no,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: this is the way, this is what Jesus would want
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: from me, blah blah blah. But I still absolutely felt
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: like I needed to be married and have children and
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: all these things. But yet I was so prudish, as
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: I guess it could be in that level and judgmental
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: about these relationships if not, if it wasn't done perfectly.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And by the way, when I tell you, I know
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: we talked about this before, about the courting thing. Legitimately
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: believe this bullshit. Legitimately the first day you had to
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: be with people you had asked permission for dating. The
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: shame factor is high in that level of like what
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: was I thinking? Why couldn't I just be a normal kid?
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: But so yeah, that definitely like a different experience in general.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And so for me, who was on such a deep
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: end to hear that this might be coming back is
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: petrified any petrifying, I will say, I have not heard
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: of this term because you were talking about the generation
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of versions. The online term that I have that has
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: popped into my scope is pure teens. So p U
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: R I T E E N S. So this would
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: have been a few years ago, because we know we're
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: there in twenties.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not calling new teens y'all. I know you're adults.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Chunk of you are adults gen z or so don't
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: don't get that at me. I also have seeing them
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: referred to as zoomers.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you zoom no.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Because they are a combination of gen Z but with
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: boomer ideals.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense, say you zoom. I don't know.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I guess that makes sense.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: That makes sense.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong. My assumpsuit was because it was a
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: combination I think. I mean, I did read it being
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: a boomer but edgen Z level.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Okay. They also did use a lot of zoom during
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: the pandemic, so it's true.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: So did we so do we all? So many other
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: things Marco Polo all those things anyway, So this is
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: a term that sprouted in twenty twenty as I pushback
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: against millennials and the kind of like hookup cultures that
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: we were like, hey, let's do this, you know again
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: for the Sex and the City fans, or like, yeah,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: this is lifestyle. This is the goal to be a
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Samantha right right, which still means Joey our resident gen
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Zer was like, I love this show. So maybe not again,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: not all not all gens no, but no.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: So this is from a twenty twenty one Rolling Stone
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: an article in which they're talking about the Puritans and
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: whether or not they're coming back, and they said, this
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: is essentially what is going on in the conversations around purreteens,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: a phrase used to describe a theoretical type of extremely
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: online youth that is incensed by any display of sexuality
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: on the Internet. So it is specific to the Internet,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: which we have talked many a times with Bridget about
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: how when we see these, even though they sound like
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: it's all the population, it is oftentimes not. It is
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: a niche group that just happens to be very, very loud,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and then it's big enough that my articles from like
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: GQ also had to talk about it and they said
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the prudish label has been stuck to gen Z many
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: times in recent years. Now there's this pe Georgia of
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: new Twitter term Puritan meaning an online child who proactively
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: demands people curtail behavior they interpret as sexually suggestive, which
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: is what they got from the Urban Dictionary. So this
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: was like a thing like they had a whole movement.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: They went after everyone and anyone being like, a aa,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: calm down. You're being a little over the top with
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: this conversation. So it kind of opened up a lot
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: of rhetoric like who are these teenagers? Why are they
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: so upset about this. It's interesting because as you were
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: talking about the LGBTQ, like the fact that the gen
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Zers are more accepting of the non binary of this,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: they are also like but yet calmed down. I say
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: this in the Puritans rhetoric, so it's not necessarily everyone.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: We're not saying that about like again our gen z
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: or they are wonderful and they're like, nah, you or
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: yout's let's enjoy these things type of conversation. But it
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: kind of, like I guess, opened up into interpretation of
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: you're doing too much, you're being creepy, I need you
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: to calm down. I don't know why I keep saying creepy,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: but it's true. But all of that is say so
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: going back to that rolling Stone article they literally write.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: It's unclear where exactly the term originated, but its first
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: use again on Twitter or reply to a March viral
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: tweet that is a screen grab of a DM. In
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the DM, an anonymous fifteen year old chies the recipient
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: for quote liking some really questionable stuff, including quote horny
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Hannibal tweets, due to their issues with a fandom surrounding
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the show Hannibal. If we're going to come back to
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: this because I know, I know you got thoughts. I
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: know you got thoughts, so we're going to come back
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: to that. But this is kind of where it starts.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: It jumps into like, oh, calm down, you're doing too
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: much thirsting. And if nothing else, TikTok is all about thirsting.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: And there's a couple of things that I pop up
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: when you say this. One is I didn't grow up
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: with all of this online content, So I'm not sure
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: how I would have reacted when I was fifteen if
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: I had seen I got. I read a lot of
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: fan fiction. I had read some stuff, but if it
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: was like everywhere you know, and you, as a person
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: on the internet, couldn't escape it necessarily, I'm not sure
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: how I would react. The other thing is I've talked
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: about this as being an intersectional feminist as person is
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: this is fascinating to me of the because we've talked
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: about how we fought so hard for it to get
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: away from slut shaming and like sexual liberation and sex positivity.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: But also at the same time kind of the thing
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: that got hurt was, well, what about women who don't
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: want to have sex or people who don't want to
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: have sex? Right, that doesn't mean that or like conservative
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: proods or whatever, something's wrong with them.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: I did read that a lot of gen z.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: It's not sex negativity for a lot of them, it's
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: just like it's sex positivity, but they just don't want it.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: In this case, this sounds like sex negativity. But you know,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: in general, as we're gonna keep making the point, it's
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: not everybody that thinks.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Is it's not. So I think also we have to
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: come back to the point about there could be a
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: link in how a lot of millennials who were the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: first to be on social media to understand going viral,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: to understand making money and started using their kids who
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: are the gen z ers. A lot of the gen
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: xers who are jumping in realizing this could be a thing,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and then having a lot of our gen Z kids,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: maybe younger younger gen Z youth, with our younger younger
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: millennials being always in front of the camera, and we
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: know what happens or in front of social media being
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: posted all the time. We know what happens in those
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and it's not great spaces, to the point that laws
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: are trying to be coming into place and be like,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: we need to protect the kids a little better from
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: their own parents sometimes. And so that could be a
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: part of this as well, like when we talk about
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that's creepy because they understand that they've had that since
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: maybe infancy, who knows. But there was another point to this,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: and I think it has to be addressed. It has
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a little to do with kink shaming, which is kind
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: of like, to me, came out of left field, but
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: I guess if you're a part of the queer community,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: this makes more sense. And I apologize I'm not necessarily
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: in that space. I read a lot of those spaces,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: but I'm not necessarily in that space, so I'm not
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: always aware, but now I am. But back to that
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: GQ article, they have this they say, young Queritans have
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: recently been seen on social media moralizing about large age
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: gaps in adult relationships and partaking in the perennial no
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: kink at Pride debate, So this was a specific one.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Here I wrote hearing gen Z talking about not wanting
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to see kink at Pride is giving care and vibes
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: tweeted thirty five year old RuPaul drag race winner Bob
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: the Drag Queen last month. So this is a while
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: ago though twenty twenty one, y'all an aging internet twink
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: at not in one CEO. You just made all the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: face and he just made it me for saying that.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: It's that I don't know what's happening. But the b
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: only fanfing is not a good thing anyway. Birth a
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: meme about gen Z being such hysterical kill joys they'd
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: call the cops upon seeing a jockstrap. Uh, So this
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: was a thing and was a big debate online once
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: again online in which they were like, they're king shaming,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: no King get Pride. They really felt like this was
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: overreaching and being a part of a problem. Again, it
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: says uh from a Junkie dot com article, they write,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: when this term first became popularized in the early twenty twenties.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: It was a controversial one. It arose when queerteens called
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: for a no kink at Pride because this would make
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it unsafe for them as miners. And then this was
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: met with criticism from again older members of the LGBTQI
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: plus community, who pointed out the irony of stifling queer
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: sexual expression at Pride just because some people were uncomfortable.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a whole big thing.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: It seems to be a big debate in the queer
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: community specifically.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: It is, and unfortunately, as with so many things, it
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: got politicized. We talked about this briefly in our Pride
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Month update of twenty twenty five. Where conservatives there's a
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: group of conservatives gay people who from what I understand
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: are largely white men, but even conservatives in Donald Trump's
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: conservative gay men in Donald Trump's administration have really pushed
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: forward this.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Idea of the normal gay.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: And they were during the election and they were saying,
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: you know, we can win this election with the normal gay.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: And their definition of the normal gay is quite comical
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: that it's like they don't dye their hair and they
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: don't pierce their ears, but a part of it was
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: the kink shaming, and they, I think, unfortunately, again, conservatives
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: are really good at this. I think they knew this
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: was a conversation that was happening online and they jumped
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: in and instead of having like a good faith argument,
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: they were just like, yeah, no, can't get pride.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: But they were just.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: Really trying to get some kind of political clout in
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: a space that they haven't had before.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Right, and you're not wrong. In fact, there's a conversation
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: about is this just a bunch of misinformation or disinformation
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: being used to cause division or repackaging? And I kind
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: of liked that term repackaging in this conversation because I
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: think that's what the Conservative riot has done really well,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: is taking conservative ideas that people were like, oh, this
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is bad, like we don't want to kill women, we
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: don't want these things, so we're going to repackage these things.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: We're not saying transmit or all these things, but we're
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: going to repackage it saying they're not being fair, like
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: all these things trans women are not allowed for women.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And I'd say this very sarcastically to being their own
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: safe circle, because you know, we're really about being safe
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: and giving space. They're great at repackaging this conversation, and
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I think it was interesting because going back to that
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Rolling Stones article they said they're bad actors again about
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: this divide. They say, this discourse is not entirely organic.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Much of it is pushed by far right bad actors
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: attempting to promote homophobic talking points. It's also not new
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: like at all. There's always been discussions of how family
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: friendly the Pride parade should be, or when I was
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: a little baby gay this is the writer, whether drag
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: queens should be on floats, and if we were flaunting
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: our sexuality. One mail author and activist Leo Herrera told
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: me it tends to come from the more corporate conservative side,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: who's really concerned we are presenting stereotypes or that we
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: won't be accepted or it'll cost us funding or press.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: It's the same conversation repackaged. So this this is a
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: bigger conversation, whether it's for political gain or where there's
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: for corporate greed. So I think that's something that we
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: have to cling to and look at. And again, this
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: whole kink shaming, I'm sure there are those are like
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: I am really uncomfortable. I don't need to see this.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. There are a few moments that
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I'm really uncomfortable. I'm more uncomfortable as a mid forties
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: woman watching teenagers kids because I'm like, I shouldn't be
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: watching this, not because I find it attractive. I'm just like,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: this does feel creepy. I'm gonna turn the channel. Good
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: on you, you do you, but I should not be
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the one watching this. Also the same as like a
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: mid forty year old if I like a new group
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, how young are you?
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Your babies? Like those are the thoughts that I have
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: to think through when they're trying to do thirst traps.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not watching this. This feels creepy. That
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: type of conversation more so than anything else other than
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: like not that you can't be that way or you
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: can't do it as an adult free will. I should
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: not be here going oh baby, call me no, you
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: know what I mean saying so like those those are
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the conversations that we have now, and we'll say with
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: terms like puritans floating around. I feel like, as we
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: talked about earlier, as you mentioned earlier, this is less
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: religious reasoning with this like backtracking of sexuality and trying
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: to not I guess, but I guess this is hard
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: to differentiate when we talk about giving your virginity and
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I'm putting this in quotes or like having sex for
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: the first time and making it magical type of conversation
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: that it's not necessarily about religious and more the idea
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: of being sexually awakened than all these things that we
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: have really really we as a millennial, an older millennial,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh yeay, finally we can be a little
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: more open. We can actually talk about knees and women
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: can actually have good sex that they want it or
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: they don't have to. Like this. This is the autonomy
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: that we've been seeking for so long, and that in
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: itself has become cringe or creepy. That might be the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: conversation everything we do, Saventa, That's what I'm told. I
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: like my cringe. I finally accepted it. Okay again, that
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: could be my take. And the lifestyle seems to be
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: a reverse to a wanting more quote unquote wholesome lifestyle.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And I say this as in, like again on social
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: media instead of seeing like thirst traps and all of
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: those things and having all of the sexy reasons such
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: having a dog video that you just want to watch
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: or having like miniature green chef who can't speak. You
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: know what, I little show. I'm gonna send you this.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: The show got canceled on Nickelodeon and everybody was in
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: an uproar. I've never seen this show in my life,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: but this tugged at my heartstrings. It was very wholesome.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, all the.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Same, but that's what they're looking for and less thirst strap,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: more wholesome, and it could be again all this again,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: we're talking more about social media. So when we're talking
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: about what are these ideas, what are these thoughts process?
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: This is coming straight from the idea of what social
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: media is offering and what we're seeing as a majority,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: when in actuality it's not the majority. Uh. And I
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: know it seems like that's the opposite of what we
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: knew as in like we are we grew up in
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the age of Internet porn, like being wholly accessible, from
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: hiding like having fun funny I guess stories of young
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: boys hiding Playboy magazines under their beds or if you're
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Robert from behind the bassards, he told me he had
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: hidden away in the woods, which I'm like, what, why,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: my gosh, how does it keep safe there?
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: But you know what you do? You boo, you do you?
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: But like from that age to having so much access
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: on the internet that they're falling away from that that
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: maybe again, like as you were talking about having too
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: much access and with that, one of the movements in
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: this timeframe, in this morality is the hashtag canceled porn
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: uh due to the correlation of porn culture to rape culture. Interesting, right,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So here's a little bit from a Medium article which
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: is titled a Prudish Generation Z and what it means,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: and it's by Fuad Jihari. I really hope I said
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: it's right. They write pure teens were strongly correlated with
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: the hashtag canceled poor movement as well, which believed that
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: pornography was inherently evil because it normalized unsavory things such
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: as rape and misogyny and should thus be canceled. Almost
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: half of Generation Z viewers also want less sex on screen.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: As founded by the University of California, Los Angeles Annual
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Teens and Screens Report done in twenty twenty three. Wholesome,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: which had connotations to evangelical morality in the nineties has
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: also become a Generation Z complement videos carrying the wholesome
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: tag receiving more than one hundred and twenty five million
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: views on TikTok, while wholesome memes on x had three
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: million followers. So this level of correlation between internet porn
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: and they're not wrong. There's so much in this conversation.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: We've talked about porn Hub, We've talked about revenge porn,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: all of those things that have been accessible and used
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: and not at all.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Moderated, moderated or punished.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, any of those things. Nothing has been like,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: nothing is really being censored in any point to this
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: level of like free speech. Of course, there's an opposite
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: form to this, and we're going to talk about that
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: in a minute, but this level of accessibility has really
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: getten to a reaching point that the gen Z community
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: is like, we're done, we would rather have nothing to
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: do with this, which.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: Makes sense, it does, and I'm very curious. I'm very curious.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: We'll have to come back and look into this about
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: the if there are any numbers about the gender breakdown
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: of that, because I wonder if, for like men and boys.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: This is like another reason women are ruining everything.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: Maybe Samantha those I keep bringing this up.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: I really loved the show Adolescence, which if you haven't
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: seen it, I'm not going to really go into it,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: but basically there's a lot of stuff about the hemisphere
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: and in cells, and at the end, the parents have
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: this conversation where they're talking about, like, we didn't realize
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: how dangerous that just the internet was or the computer was,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: Like the kid in question will go into his room
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: and be online all the time, and they didn't realize
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: it was dangerous and they wished that they had done more,
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: but they thought, you know, he's in his room, what
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: could be the harm? And so I think that that's
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: something also generationally, there's kind of a disconnect between what
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: older generations understand about being online versus what is actually
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: happening of being online right now right.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Oh mm hmm.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: I'm the disconnected one.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: I mean I am too.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: I think we were were more familiar than what was
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: happening in this case and that team show, but it does.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I did not grow up with this experience.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: I just didn't know. I, Like I said, I've talked
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: about the fact that I've seen my nieces and nephew
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: who we get online and one of them would get
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: bullied or I was afraid they were gonna get bullied,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: or they were getting too big, and I got scared
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: coming from like the Department Family Children's Services, and I'm
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: knowing and working in this film, I don't do this,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: don't let them be on there. But it was new
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: to us as well, and just seeing like, oh no,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: this is bad some of the ramifications. So they've already
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of the youth, I guess in the gen
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Z community, I've already had to deal with their fair
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: share of predators.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so to me, like it makes sense that
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: these movements are happening. I kind of hate that it
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: has to be hand opening right are, because it's just
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: so there's.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: A lot to talk about with so much of this right.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Right there is there is there's so much and understanding
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: like why they're trying to push back, and this includes
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: like dating. So it's interesting because maybe the horrors of
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: dating and giving up on that or hearing the stories,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: all the bad stories, like you and I've talked about
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know, hearing other people having dating
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: horror stories and we're like, yeah, we're good, we are good.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Or as one article of that actually, that medium article
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: that I was referring talks about it as in like
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: renegotiating boundaries and connections, so therefore opting out of relationships
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: in general. So this is what they write, the easy
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: access to not just pornography but other sexual content through
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: dating applications and social media. Meanwhile, post three consequences, Generation
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Z may feel a sense of sexual inadequacy when comparing
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: themselves to unrealistic standards. They have a surfeit of choice
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that leads to a higher mental load and perhaps decision paralysis.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: And the growth of the digital world means that there
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: are less and less opportunities to meet organically in the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: real world, as our interactions have to be mediated through
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: platforms that channel and isolate in many different ways. All
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: this means that the ways that the old generations have
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: connected with each other are no longer tenable by generations
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the to follow. While most are actively renegotiating boundaries and connections,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: some have chosen to forego relationships altogether, given all the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: potential pitfalls they have to negotiate and the consequent mental
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: load they have to carry. So that's for real. That's
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: that's honest in every way, and like trying to renegotiate
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the boundaries and trying to do so while at the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: same time not meeting because the amount of catfishing I've
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: seen in this conversation, what amount of stalking that has
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: happened through these types of apps, Like there are so
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: many things that are like, okays, this makes a lot
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: more sense. This makes the sense of like, I'd just
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: rather not And because they again they've already heard the horse,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: and maybe it's the high rate of divorce that have
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: happened in our generation and our grandparents' generation whatever whatnot
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: that they're like, now we good.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Interestingly I read they're cooler with divorce. They're like, if
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: we get divorced, so be it, whereas like our generation
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: was like, oh the failure.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. So that's that's an interesting point of it too.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Like they would just rather not be a part of it,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: because the fallout of divorce can be so long and
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: drawn out. There's children involved. In the likelihood of them
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: wanting children, it's been less and less or waiting, and
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of them are like under financially unable to
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: even be there, so they go and move back with parents,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: which is happening more and more understandably, like the gen
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Zers as well as younger millennials have moved back in
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: because they cannot afford to live on the basis of
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: their pay. And it may be a full time job,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: but making forty thousand dollars a year on your own
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: in an economy like this is not tangible.
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: No, no, like just by yourself, not even imagining children.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Again when I the only way I could have done
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: that was having three jobs at once. Yeah, it was odd,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: but again, so there's a lot. And so if you're
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: living with your parents, of course your sex life is
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: probably gonna also bill us.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: I would assume in most cases.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Is that a stereotype?
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Again, so is this a good or bad thing? All
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: of these things having boundaries? Great, Realizing that the old
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: standards of having it all doesn't make sense. Great, Understanding
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: that just because you don't buy into true love or
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: so made theory doesn't mean you have to be a
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: part of the hookup culture. Also not a bad thing.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Like all of these things are like okay, yeah, this
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: is getting making sense, making sense, But what if this
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: is a new pipeline into conservatism. So we talked about
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the whole trad wife movement and even the soft life movement,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: which is also the pipeline yoga, crunchy life, all these
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: things being a pipeline into Christian nationalism. Could this newfound
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: look at virginity whatever celibacy in better terms and the
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: concept of waiting be a part of that again, So
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: we talked about the fact that in the queer community
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: it is it is this conversation and trying to be
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: anti queer, anti trans all this rhetoric because it is
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: easy to do so in a way, you're thinking, this
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Oh, yeah, this is just this is just
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: common sense type of conversation. Yeah, with the promise of
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: soft living and true romance. Again, if you're trying to
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: stay away from that, you know, hookup culture where it's
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: tiring and overdone. There's also this kind of level things
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: to book talk. I've been reading and we've talked about
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: talking about this. I think Maya, our super executive producer,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: wanted to have this conversation. But this book talk lore
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: kind of is partially perpetuating.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: Into this.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: It's a fine line. It's a fine line, because if
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: you think about things like Twilight, all those things, it
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: definitely did. It definitely did. Of course, book toop. People
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: would be mad at me for bringing in Twilight, Stephanie
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Meyer any of that, but I apologize. Please don't be
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: mad at me. I'm just saying this like, which is
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: healthy if you have a healthy level of understanding of
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: the non reality. But could be anyway. So moving on, So,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: the purity culture really birth the idea of the perfect marriage,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: and with the help of social media and influences like
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Ballerina Farm which we have talked about previously, they make
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: this lifestyle seem romantic, seem perfect, and ideal. So I
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: kind of talked about it before, about the ideas of
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Elliott and passionate impurity, the woman that was blessed
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: with multiple marriages thanks to death. Congrats. Okay, anyway, but
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: here's an article from Salon dot com which talks about
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: childwives and the purity culture, and they say, deconstructors call
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: this purity culture, and it runs much deeper than the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: well documented fundamentalists obsession with controlling people's sex life. Purity
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: culture is also a promise that conservative Christians make to
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: young people, if you follow the strict life path, we're
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: showing you you'll be rewarded with true love, a beautiful family,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and lots of scorching hot sex within the bounds of marriage,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: of course. And then they kind of explain and talk
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Elliott's Again, Passion and Purity book. One of
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: the people they interviewed, named Chastain, says this a romantic
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: account of her brief marriage to Christian missionary who was
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: killed in Ecuador in nineteen fifty six by the members
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: of an indigenous group he tried to convert. As Liz
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Charlotte Grant at The Reveller recently wrote the book appeals
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: to those quote hungry for romance, turning that longing into
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: an argument of self denial as a young woman, Grant wrote,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I loved her example and courtship of saving yourself for
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: ecstatic marital sex, of the hand of God directing a
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: humble woman's love.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Your face.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Perfect, I mean, but this is also the same woman
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: who said that, you know, if you don't keep your
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: weight down for your husband, you're failing your marriage if
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you don't provide sex for him all the time. I
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: want to say, essentially that she if she did not
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: outright say, but insinuated that you a wife could not
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: say no, oh type of thing like you are there
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to pleasure him because he's had a hard day and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: you don't want him to stray, So send him to
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: the woods to evangelize, so he can get killed, so
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: you can find a new partner that makes you happy.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, I know, And can I talk about
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: the fact that, man, I really ate this up. I
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: had that book, I had copies of that book. I
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: think I bought a new copy because someone took that
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: copy from me and realizing we are really vocated for colonialism.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I'm on the side of the indigenous people. You go ahead,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: defend your territory, bibro. Anyway, moving on, but yes, So
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: this is a whole level of conversation that's coming back
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: into play with the trad Wife series, with that whole
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: like being there for your man, doing all these things,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: having a giant family, this is all God's will and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: this beautiful type of conversation.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, just.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm thinking about my own past and I'm having moments.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: So with the help of TikTok, there are influencers who
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: are both using the idea of virginity as a virtue,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: such as Emily Elizabeth. And this is a new I
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: think this is a current influencer who has the bio
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: quote wildly in love with Jesus. And this is why
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing because I hate to tell the story which
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: brings me back horrific memories when I used to say
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't need a boyfriend, y'all. I did have a
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: boyfriend till twenties. I didn't date till in the twenties
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: because I was told Jesus not like that, because Jesus
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: was enough. Insert mortifying memory of when I told my
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: friends who told me I was obsessed with Jesus and religion,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: that just like they wanted to talk about their boyfriends
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: they were in love with, I wanted to talk about
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: mine Jesus. I said that. I said those words.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Well, if it makes you feel a lonny better, I said,
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: I was gonna berry Ryan Costly. It doesn't, it does, well,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: I tried.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: It doesn't. Oh yeah, So that was a very familiar talk.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: And then, according to one article by revealer dot com,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: her videos Elizabeth Emily Elizabeth are reminiscent of so many
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: youth group sermons that used to scare us all about
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: the sex, the way sex can creep out of anywhere,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: being like you know, your clothes, the way you talk,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: if you look them in a way, if you're just
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: near a man, if you smell nice, if you touch them,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: if you hug them, Christian side hugs, you know what
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I mean. There was a reason for that. Don't get
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: me wrong. Christian side hugs are great. I'm not gonna
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: hug anyone. I don't want to, but you know, but
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: that was a real thing. Here's a here's the direct
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: quote from that article. It says quote. Her content focuses
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: on what describes as a newfound freedom after her earlier
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: life as sexual promiscurity, which is fine and well, if
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: you want to change that, you don't want to be that,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: that's that's great. In the TikTok clips, Emily nods as
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: texts describing her former life of drinking, taking Plan B
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: and living with her boyfriend flash across the screen. She
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: looks morose but confident. She believes redemption is coming. After
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: five years quote sex free, she met an inspiring actor
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles who shares her sexual values. Her videos
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: look like clips from romantic comedies and serve as advice
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: for other evangelicals, including why she and her boyfriend avoid
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: napping in the same bed to keep temptation at bay,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and how she resists sexual temptation with other people. So
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: I'm doing my best because I am very simi and sarcastic,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: and I understand this. That's that's all followed. Well, this
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: is all a part of bodily autonomy that we talk about.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: If you are doing these things for your same like
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: sanctity of mind, you do you. This is a beautiful
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: thing about choice. However, to perpetuate this as the solution
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: for your unhappiness very misleading and also again does lend
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: a hand to rape culture.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, And before we recorded started recording this, I was
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: reading an article that we're just going to have to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: come back into a second part about virginity and ideas
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: around the world. But I was I was reading it
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: and it was interviewing people who hadn't had their period yet,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: young young people, and they all thought that once they
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: got their period, they had a concern that their bodies
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: would cause them to be raped, and that was just it,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: like they had a fear of it, these young people,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: and it was they were talking about their body, and
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: you know, we've discussed previously.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: This idea of.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: Like you get your period and you become a woman.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: They obviously had internalized that, but to them, becoming a
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: woman meant they were in danger of this of like
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: they had to take all these precautions to make sure
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: not to attract men to hurt them. And so it
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: is one of those things where it's if you're in
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: a healthy space and that's what you want, that's perfectly fine.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: I would also say, you know, your period of youth
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: where you're figuring that out, not that she is, but
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: like her, you know, having sex and drinking too much whatever.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you just kind of go through those.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: Things, right, and you you learn and move on become healthier.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's great, but a lot of times
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: when you go to college, you're like, oh, I've grew
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: up in a conservative.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let me do this. Not everybody, but a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: lot of people right right.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: And so it's sort of one of those things where
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, if it's healthy, and it's coming from
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: a place of this is what I want, but also
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: cognizant of how that could influence other younger people. Who
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: are consuming your content.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: She's making money off that content, making money.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: Because we've also talked before about how sometimes we don't
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's been proven people making that content don't believe
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: that they're just making that content because it does make
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: the money.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: I have no idea about her, but that is the.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Case, right, And here's something to this to her level too.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: It also gets to that level of book talk fandom
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: talk because she actually is dating an actor. So if
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: you clean your lifestyle up, maybe you'll get the man
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: of your dream if you become pure right, which is
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: a whole different level. So she's able to like explore
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: this into a whole other fantasy level instead of just
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: being like, find the perfect man. It's fine, the dream man.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know who this actor is. I don't know
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: anything about her outside of that article we just read,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: because obviously that's not on my FIP. Oh my god,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: if it becomes on MYFOP, I'm gonna be really upset.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: But all of that to say, yes, So there's a
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: lot to that that we have to keep in mind. Again,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: we're tapping on so many things, but this is some
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: of the things that we are concerned about, and of
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: course many would say that we are being gross at me,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: specifically being an older millennial even caring about young adult's
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: sex life. It's creepy again, that's the term that I've
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: seen being thrown around. It's cringe, except it's not about
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: the sexualization. Again, I love the autonomy of you being
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: able to choose and having that rational decision as where
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I was so extreme on one and so extreme on
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: other because I didn't know, I didn't understand, I wasn't
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: educated enough to see these levels that I'm like you
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: do you as in fact, we fell for that once,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: that that to be pure innocent means to be the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: opposite of sexy, like that they're telling us this is
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: what it means. But according to the many predators, especially
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: within the churches. Again go back to our purity uh
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: episode in the religious Religious Trauma, because then we also
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: talk about sexual assaults in another episode about it. But
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: all that to say, uh, the perpetrators within the church,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: this is the actual only standard of sexual appeal. That
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: is the reason that you are appealing, which is alarming
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: in itself. But that said, those who are seeen as
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: pure teens have made it seem that sexual content in
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: general in general is just creepy and any. This is
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the part that I was like, are you ready for this?
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Because it's it's a lot and I feel like this
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: could be a whole episode that I would.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Let you do. Yeah, I know a lot about this, but.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Like specifically when it comes to fandoms, they like the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: purit teens have been going after fandoms. Again, as I
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: originally told you, it kind of started with the whole Hannibal.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, they are which and slash together.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of slash. There's a lot of
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: shipping those terms. I know there's more that I don't obviously. Yeah,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: anything that depicts sexuality seems to be named predatory shipping,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: dark romance, kink, as we mentioned above. So here is
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit from vox dot com. Fans devoted to
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: this quote problematic ship. They're talking about any gradually get
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: shorthanded as being pro ship. The pro here has historically
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: meant in favor of, but some in the world now
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: claim it short for problematic, frustrating to the point of dispute.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: That shows how slippery these conversations can be. It's, of
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: course hard to defend or debate being in favor of
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: something inherently problematic. In other words, if you ship characters
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: and fandom, which is arguably the dominant reason many people
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: are in fandom, then you are suddenly unnotice as being harmful.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: That's really interesting because well too, I always have to
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: specify in this conversation. I am a very specific niche
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: and I don't encounter a lot of the stuff I
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: read is very like aware of either it's problematic and
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you and we all know it's problematic,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: but hey, if you want to read this, you can.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: If you don't want to read it, don't read it.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: Which if they don't put that in there, and it's
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: and by problematic, I mean pretty bad, like I don't know,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: massive age to friends or something like that. If they
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: don't put that in there, it actually kes me out
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: even more. And I hate that I just use XS
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: because they actually hate that term. But if they don't
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: put that in there, then it makes me more uncomfortable.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: If they acknowledge that they know it is, that makes
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: me feel better.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: I usually don't read a lot.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: Of sexual content, but I just feel like in my
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: time of since seventh grade to now reading fan fiction,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: it has become a much This could just be the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: area I'm in, but a much more aware space of
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: like very I will put in the mornings, there might
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: be something like non content rape, or there might be
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: something like even alcohol.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: They'll put in there, like very.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: Very aware of how what their writing could impact the reader.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: So this is interesting to me. I have seen it
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: and Joey Conjuctor. Joey and I did talk about it
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: in something we're about to talk about in a second,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: when it came to people really possibly demonizing fan fiction
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: or making it go away right, that all of these
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: ways it was being interpreted as harmful sexual content. When
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: I feel like that, while that does exist, I feel
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: like it's become a lot better than when I was
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: reading it when I was younger, But I have to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: caveyat I feel my space is maybe it's different.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Brother, you curated your space.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: I did. Yeah.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: I mean we've talked about the fighting of the shipping
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: and the depots and the hardcore, about canon events and
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: what's not canon events, and it has been now a
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: bit rebranded as over sexualizing of beloved characters. So there's
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of ownership and therefore, if you're doing this,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: you're problematic because you've over sexualized something that they don't
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: want sexualized, which is fine, yeah, but not to like
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: actually try to ban it. Now. In that Vox article
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: they talk do talk about bills like Foster SESSTA, which
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: I think we did a whole episode with bridget a
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: while ago about a crackdown on online adult content which
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: heralded child's safety. But of course this hurts sex workers
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: and educators more than the actual predators. Although I think
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: there's been a recent change, but a lot of the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: states have now outlawed, like or I put specific rules
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: to porn sites. Completely different side note anyway, going back
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: to and they continue on in that article, and it
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: played out pretty hard on Tumblr. So here's what the
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: article says. Overnight, via its infamous ban on porn, Tumblr
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: went from being a notably horny platform to a site
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: full of regressive, paranoid, wary fans who were obsessed with
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: spotting pedophilia and illicit sexual materials everywhere and anywhere, even
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: if the things they deemed immoral and ilicit were nowhere
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: close to illegal. So like that people are hyper aware,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: which we've talked about before about who is actually being hunted?
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Is this the witch hunt is this actually helping children
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: or is this giving like more ammo to like right
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: wing conservatives and their agenda. So in that same article
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: they talk about it being cut somewhat like anti trans,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: anti queer, like this is going after anti trans people
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: and anti queer people and like calling them groomers, going
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: really like into about what doing like this is being
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: the evidence of like see they're pedophiles. So here's what
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: they write in that it's almost like a game, slipping
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: some ideology secretly into a fantish experience. It's misinformation under
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: the guise of activism. Like the US's larger current moral
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: panic over drag shows, LGBTQ people and quote groomors, fandom's
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: culture has regressed towards sexual repression, attacks on sexual minority
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: and censorship of art made by marginalized people. The shift
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: happening in fandom and across the internet helped exacerbate the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: larger cultural shift. And this is a quote from one
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: of one of the contributors. There's no meaningful difference to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: me between a right winger who calls me a pedo
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: because I'm trans and an anti shipper that calls me
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: a pedo because I read Homestuck, said Farah, a thirty
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: three year old fan from North Carolina whose full name
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: had been with help at their request, referring to the
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: famously weird webcomic. They're both putting me and people like
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: me in a dangerous position. So again, this is where
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: we kind of have that really thin line of what
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: is this new level of morality, purity culture, who is
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: it actually going after instead of just blaming women and
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: like allowing for rape culture to exist, meaning like allowing
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: for that the rape just rape isn't a big deal
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: or isn't as is happening as much as people say
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: whatever whatnot, but that this is now an anti queer,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: anti transagenda usage and it's come in a small rhetoric
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: and that being of like no, but you know they're saying,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: be sexual free. What they're trying to do is make
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: become a predator and you're trying to make you a victim.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Which is that conversation. There's a lot in that alone.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: And fan fiction famously is very queer.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: It's a very very very queer space. There's plenty of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: what's called head in there, but almost everything else.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have to explain what head is I don't
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: know what.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: You just said. It's sexual. Oh okay, yeah, but it's
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: called like heat. Okay.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of there's so much of that,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: but there's so much. I don't think I have any
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: fan fiction story I'm reading right now if it has
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: like a relationship in it, because sometimes I just read like, oh,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: Darth Vader's the father to Luke. Oh god, but it
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: has a relationship in it. There's a gay relationship in there.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: Usually all of them are, but not always. So it
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: is a very gay, a queer space. And I I know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: I recently was looking at AO three just their FAQ
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: because I was curious if now that Donald Trump has
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: been elected again, this was a whole thing about like
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: Foster Sessa is going to get rid of fan fiction.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: AO three is like a nonprofit, and so I was like,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I just could go away, and I
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: was just curious if said anything about it. And they
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: had a whole section about how to report and what
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: they would take seriously as being an offense, and they
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: had really like but it was recent and so I
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: could tell like some things had gone down, and I
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: can completely see people are really serious about their ships
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: are the shifts that they don't like, and I can
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: completely see weaponizing that into being like you're over sexualizing
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: something you or gross, Whereas usually, like I said, I've
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: said this before, there's plenty of sexual content on there,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: but a lot of it is like they're domestic together
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: and it's a queer couple because we don't get to
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: see representation a lot. There is a lot of in
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: my space. There's a lot of trans trans representation. There's
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: ace representation, don't get me wrong, plenty of that has
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: a lot of sexual stuff in it, but usually it's
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: like adults consenting, it's are it's just domestic stuff byin cartons, yeah,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: curtain thick.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but people will if they don't like They will
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: attack you if they don't like your ship, for sure.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: And that's an interesting base to go after.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, because I have friends who are like, I
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: just don't want sex and Star Wars, for example, I
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: get it, you don't have to read it.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: That's fine.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: I also usually skip the sex scene, so I get it.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: But I've had friends who get mad that, as she says, like,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: why do we always have to put people together and
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: make them gay? Which I get because I think we
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: should have more spaces for platonic male relationships usually.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: Is the issue. But also if you're queer and you
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: never see it, I get it too, So I'm aditing. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: you just want to see it. You go to fan
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: fiction for it. That's never going to happen. You don't
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: have to worry about it because they're never going to
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: give it to.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: Us, not in the correct way. Yeah gosh, So that
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: to me, I thought that was an interesting side note. Again,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: this is kind of that level of like we have
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: to balance, we have to take a look and where
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: this can see and how it can be kind of regimental.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: But with all of that, capitalism is going to do
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: his thing as well, like that. They want a piece
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: of this in the form of reality shows, am I right?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Oh my god?
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: So a reality show produced by the same people of
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Love Island, which I've previously talked about how I've never
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: watched this, but it keeps coming on my for a
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: you page and I'm like why. This one stars Culton Underwood,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: who was noted as the first virgin bachelor who later
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: came out as gay. So very interesting and according to
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: the announcement of Disney project. They state the contestants will
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: be navigating quote love, lust and losing it, which again
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: makes me want to throw things. So the title of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: the show or the name of the show is are
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: You My First? It's a Hulu show that's coming out
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: this month.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: Not sponsored. It will never be sponsored. I don't want it.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: Don't bring that to my sponsor ad anyway, it says.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: So this is how they describe it. From the Hollywood Reporter,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: here's the official synopsis of Are You My First. In
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: this groundbreaking new dating experiment, the largest hottest group of
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: virgins ever assembled search for intimacy, love, and maybe they're
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: first in a tropical paradise designed just for them. For
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: the first time, they're free to explore the connections without judgment,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: allowing these sexy young singles to embark on a heated
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: yet heartfelt journey packed with the romantic dates, revealing challenges,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: and new love interests, eager to find the one who
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: will find that special someone and who will go home hot,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: bothered and heartbroken.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: No thanks.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I you know what, even in my era of like
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: purity culture, in our nineteen nineties true love Ways era,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: they would never do such a thing.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: This is such an interesting juxtaposition because you both have
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: the idea that you're losing quote, something of va value you.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: But it's also a reality TV show, which feels like.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: Like that special moment is not gonna happen with the
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: cameras are like they're people are talking about you, and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: they are judging you by the way you are going
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: to be judged.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, and Love Island is infamous for all its trusts,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Like they want you to have sex, they want you
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: to kiss, they want you to do the cheating. So
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: this is like, what, how is this going to be successful?
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: And how much trauma if they truly are doing this
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: as a way of being or are they eighteen and
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what their conversation or definition of
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: virginity is? And also how what what is the test? Okay,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: there's I'm confused. I'm disturbed. There's so many things that
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: just feel like this is going to go awry and
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: this is gonna cause a lot more trauma than anything else.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and that's I don't think this is news
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: to anyone listening, but as someone.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: Who has been on a reality.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: Show, Uh, they're mostly actors everybody.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Right, that's the other part of this is like.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: They're mostly people who are at least trying to become actors,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: not always.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to free lunch.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: She's just hungry. Okay, there is so much again. So
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: we went down this rabbit hole trying to figure out
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: what is happening, and I think we came out with
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: a better understanding of what is being said and how
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: it's being framed. I am interested in hearing from any
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: of our agen z years. What are your thoughts on
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: this are? What are you thinking that we said? That
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: is wrong? Some of my older crew, have you experienced
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: my experiences. I'm sorry for any of the old friends
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: who are like you did this to me, and I apologize.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: Let us know, don't tell, don't don't don't email me
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: if you know me, because I think I can't handle
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: that trauma, but just to know I'm sorry. But before
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: the other people who may have experienced similar things, let
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: us know what your thoughts are.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, and we will be back to talk about this.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: We would love to hear from listeners from around the world,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: because I was always telling Samantha when I had the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: first time I was in Europe, all my European friends
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: were like it is just not that big of a
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: deal your first sexual encounter in Europe as it compared
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: to what it is in the United States. But then
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: when I was researching it beforehand, it kind of seems
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: like it exists. Some version of this does exist everywhere.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: So listeners from around the world please write in. We
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: are going to have to do another episode on things
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: like virginity checks. That's going to be a whole thing.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: But in the meantime, listeners, if you would like to
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: try to as you can, you can email us a hello.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: It's stuff Onever Told You dot com. You can find
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: us on Blue Cat Mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: and TikTok at Stuff I Never Told You for us
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: on YouTube, and we have a book you can get
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: wherever you get earbooks. Thanks as always to our super
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: just Gristine or executive prusu My and your contributor Joey.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: Ever Told You is production by Heart Radio. More podcasts
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: from my Heart Radio.
• 1:20:57
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• 1:20:59
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