Homosexuality as a fad; the sex-drenched society

The Netflix film Cuties - sexualised depiction of women starts young

Nothing is more passé than being straight these days: Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, the 23-year-old daughter of the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, said as much in an Instagram interview in which she spoke about what it meant to her to announce that she is queer.

In the interview she said her main concern when coming out was not with negativity from the wider society but that her own circle might think she was just trying to be trendy.

She said this fear arose because it’s “hip or cool to be not hetero in my liberal bubble”.

What! That young people make decisions on their sexual orientation for life on the basis of what is the latest fad! How sick is that? But it fits the pattern of the "transgender craze" that has erupted and the cluster phenomenon of a group of girls suddenly declaring they want to be male, going on to explain themselves with an outpouring of the "internet-speak" they have absorbed.

New York-based Guardian columnist and lesbian Arwa Mahdawi, whose partner recently gave birth to a daughter they will raise together, reacted with amazement at the nature of Kennedy-Cuomo's fear for her reputation.

Mahdawi said that when she came out 20 years ago she was afraid of being assaulted for being gay. Now, instead of inciting "widespread slurs", being gay is "something that the privileged offspring of politicians reckon is a badge of honour".

Homosexuality as purely a status symbol!

Not taking away respect for homosexuals, if this is how young people make their decisions under the macabre influence of social media and the mainstream media's delight in highlighting weird self-invention,  then they are bound to suffer the death of their psyche, given how they have adopted the lie fed them by the elite who often create, certainly cultivate, the latest fashions in lifestyle as much as in entertainment or clothing. There's no fun in such fashions, however, as by their warped nature they eventually kill their followers' spirit - we all pity the ill-fated follower of fashion!

Kennedy-Cuomo also revealed that she had experimented with several flavours of sexuality (such as bi- and pan-) before deciding that hers is of the demi- variety.

That was another element that jarred with Mahdawi:

Last time I checked, demisexuals weren’t exactly an oppressed minority fighting for equal rights. They are just people who aren’t sexually attracted to others unless they form a strong emotional bond with them first.

Furthermore:

Acting as if needing to get to know someone before jumping into bed with them constitutes a marginalised sexual orientation that needs a flag seems to play into the hands of rightwingers who are desperate to argue that liberals are narcissists with a victimhood complex.

That said, I don’t think demisexuality should be written off as attention-seeking. Indeed, I think it’s instructive to look at what the rise of demisexuality says about sexuality more generally; Kennedy-Cuomo, after all, is just one of a growing number of (mostly) young people [my emphasis - BS] who have latched on to the label in recent years.

Note "latched on to"! Hardly, language to confirm that the state discussed relates to a innate personal attribute.

Then Mahdawi gets to a second point of importance when discussing sexuality today:

The fact that there was a need to come up with a term like “demisexual” (which was coined in 2006) shows how sex-drenched society has become. The portrayal of women in the popular media has become increasingly sexualised. Porn has never been so accessible. Dating apps such as Tinder mean it has never been so easy to hook up.

It all starts young, especially for girls, as was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook announced Instagram for Kids. In a letter to the company, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group that often leads campaigns against big tech and its targeting of children, wrote of Instagram: 

The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing. Younger children are even less developmentally equipped to deal with these challenges, as they are learning to navigate social interactions, friendships, and their inner sense of strengths and challenges during this crucial window of development.

A coalition of 35 consumer advocacy groups along with 64 experts in child development co-signed the letter, which also stated: "Adolescent girls report feeling pressured to post sexualized selfies for attention from their peers". As well:

Citing public health research and other studies, the letter notes that excessive screen time and social media use can contribute to a variety of risks for kids including obesity, lower psychological well-being, decreased quality of sleep, increased risk of depression and suicide ideation, and other issues.

By their fruit you will know them! Another impact on young people's lives from corporate profit-seeking and the slavery of consumerism is stressed by Mahdawi:

Here’s the funny thing, though: while pop culture has become more and more sexualised, statistics show that young people are actually having far less sex than previous generations. There has been a lot of hand-wringing about hook-up culture, but it may be more of a media invention than a reality.

Indeed kids these days seem to spend more time describing the exact specifications of their sexuality and where it sits on various spectrums than they do actually having sex. Sex is supposed to sell, and it’s being sold to us willy-nilly – but as the rise of demisexuality shows, fewer people seem desperate to buy into what we’ve been told sexuality is supposed to look like.

The harm here comes in the form of young people turning to temporary sexual relationships - plural - and putting off a healthy search for one partner in life, in marriage, with a willingness to commit to the fruitful outcome that is children.

Especially, Mahdawi, as a new mother and obviously endowed with moral seriousness, is disturbed by the mental and emotional massaging of a sexual nature that goes on in the West, and increasingly in other societies, through all media and their accomplice, the entertainment world. Her terms, "sex-drenched society" and "increasingly sexualised" and "[sex is] sold to us willy-nilly" convey to me that this New York resident is very worried at the direction of society.

Rightly so! How can young people see the video of Cardi B's WAP, and note the awards given the song, and not have a shamed (girls) and scornful (boys) view of women? No wonder girls want to shed that female persona!

A second case of a woman letting down the side comes with the predicament that Billie Eilish found herself in after posing in a set of corsets. She had to withstand some disappointment from fans, even ridicule, but retorted with cussing repeating, "It's all about what makes you feel good".

Eilish is only 19 and so we can give her some leeway in sorting out what's important. Reportedly she told British Vogue:

My thing is that I can do whatever I want. It’s all about what makes you feel good. If you want to get surgery, go get surgery. If you want to wear a dress that somebody thinks that you look too big wearing, f**k it – if you feel like you look good, you look good.

New York Post also quotes a sympathetic fan:

“Guys, can we please realize that Billie is finding herself and that she is happy with the way she is and that is all that should matter. Billie is only 19 years old. She’s been [in] the public eye since she was 15 and she is finding herself. She don’t [owe] us anything.”

But the ET outlet identifies the contradiction of a young woman showing off her assets in a sexualised manner while campaigning for a positive view of women in society:

Eilish's new music also tackles the idea of men taking advantage of underage girls. She knows that this message combined with her more mature look will raise eyebrows.

Obviously, Eilish did not learn from the earlier instance of misuse of a photo - she has reported how her "boobs were trending on Twitter!" - or from the mockery that Emma Watson encountered after baring her breasts in - again - a women's fashion magazine in 2017. The mockery arose because Watson's interview had dwelt on serious topics like women's empowerment whereas she was seen to have let herself be milked by the magazine for greater sales.

A wag put these words into Watson's mouth: "Women's rights! Feminism! Social justice! Hey, look at my tits!" For both Watson and Eilish, certainly be proud of one's body, but don't let yourself be part of the abuse of women by the corporate elite in their profiteering by broadcasting sexualised images of girls and women. Learn the difference between liberation and objectification. It can come down to the question: "Who makes the money?"

This post has given attention to the diverse sources of concern about how the soft oppression of young people bolsters the malaise that is building in Western society, and rapidly elsewhere. The manipulation of the young and innocent by promoters of a set of false principles relating to sexual orientation, and feminism, is causing harm on a personal level and it is destroying the health of society as a whole.

The solution is to take stock, to start from the fact that young people are trapped in a toxic culture that prevents them from knowing the joy that flows when a person has learnt to be self-disciplined enough to be in control of their own intellectual and emotional life.

For that, they need goals and the support along the way that Western society no longer provides. Western society needs to return to the basics of our civilisation and learn again that God made us, and in opening up a relationship with us, makes it possible for us to know ourselves, how to be the best person we can be. That's the kind of self-invention we need.

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