Comment by cal_dent 3 days ago
i've always wondered how much the increasing prevalence of smut & not so niche romance novels, that have proliferated since e-readers became mainstream, have had on Gen Z and younger's sometimes unrealistic view/expectations of relationship. A lot of time is spent on porn sites etc. but not so much on how mainstream some of these novels have become
Yes, human nature hasn't changed but there is a reason why only recently obesity epidemic has developed.
Cheap unlimited access to stuff that was always scarce during human evolution creates an 'evolutionary mismatch' where unlimited access to stuff bypasses our lack of natural satiety mechanisms.
That is completely discounting the effects of PFAS and plasticizers on the human endocrine system and the downstream effects on obesity.
They were right. We have largely had 200 years of socially and legally enforced morality being eroded with the conservatives saying "If you remove X then Y and Z will happen!". The liberals saying "Why do you care anyways? That's a slippery slope it won't happen!". The the conservatives immediately being proven right, but no one is willing to walk back on liberalization of moral issues since too many like hedonism.
That only assumes that nothing else changed in society at the same time. Is all this happening because men saw some ankles? Or is it a symptom of other changes in society (like more individual freedoms and rights, more education, etc)
...sorry, I'm dense apparently, what did they predict vs what happened?
The Victorians were accidentally right about ankles, which is funny in hindsight. Once one arbitrary rule breaks, people start noticing the rest are kind of fake too, and it turns out "modesty" was load-bearing for a whole governance model.
Ankles -> knees -> jazz -> voting -> rock -> no-fault divorce -> Tinder -> polyamory discourse on airplanes. it's a joke, but also sort of how cultural change actually propagates. The collapse did happen, just not of morals. Of enforcement. After that, everything is just people discovering the rules were optional all along. Including money.
On the other hand (based on memory of research I did many years ago), in societies where nudity is common (e.g. African tribes where at least breasts are usually visible), there is a much lower rate of sex-related problems (sexual assault, etc)
Well, I wasn't speaking of a formal prediction by leading Victorian moral researchers... I was referring to our collective common knowledge of Victorian hangups.
Nevertheless, here is an example of Victorian anxiety regarding showing ankles: https://archive.org/details/amanualpolitene00pubgoog/page/n2...
It's easy to say "oh they were silly to worry about such things." But that's only because we see it from our own point of view.
Alternatively, imagine describing roads, highways, traffic congestion and endless poles strung with electrical wire all over the place to someone from the 11th century. This would sound like utter ruination of the land to them. But you and I are used to it, so it just seems normal.
They might well have been right - I'm no anthropologist.
Certainly they had neither the quantity nor ease of access that we do.
Is your take that the way we view sexuality today is not meaningfully different from the Victorian era?
They had similar wonderings in the Victorian era, and probably in the Roman empire and ancient Greece too.