Pornography restrictions being codified into law, adult art being restricted from most Lemmy instances, Tarot readers blotting out the nudity on their cards on Reddit.

I’m watching the Magicians, on Amazon, and I use subtitles. All the curse words are purposefully filled in with random letters, so as not to offend the reader.

What’s up with all the prudishness? Can people knock it off, please?

People have vaginas. And titties. And dicks. And asses. They swear. They drink. They fuck. Why is this generation afraid of that? Acknowledging these things isn’t going to increase your chances of being sexually violated. So, what’s the deal?

  • ∃∀λ@programming.dev
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    1 hour ago

    Much could be said about this.

    Some people are prudish. Some people are not. Media could have two different versions: the sanitized version made for the first group of people, and mature version for the second group. Sometimes this is not possible in which case it’s better to just have the first version so that it’s suitable to the largest audience.

    There’s also been (I think justifiable) backlash against adult stuff because kids now are big users of the internet thanks to the addictiveness of social media and the tiny supercomputer they carry with them everywhere that is now necessary to participate in society. Sanitizing everything for everyone is one solution to this problem. The other is keep the mature stuff but require age verification to view it.

    Also, people often browse social media in public and are aware someone might look over their shoulder and see something that might be misinterpreted as porn. Nobody wants that.

    There’s a great article in The Atlantic about the disappearance of communal showers without curtains or dividers in the US. Nude beaches and nudist colonies are apparently disappearing as well.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/11/naked-locker-room-end/684907/

    Summarizing in my own words,

    Progressive era reformers had communal baths built before municipal plumbing systems existed so that the poor who could not afford their own private bath could keep clean. Bathing suits at the time would fall apart and clog filters, so boys and men were required to bathe naked (apparently women had to be clothed). People naturally also showered naked without dividers or curtains. By cultural momentum, this practice stuck around long after bathing suits had advanced.

    Fast forward to today and people are realizing that separating showers by gender isn’t enough to prevent any discomfort or sexualization of naked bodies because there’s awareness of different sexual orientations. Additionally, the internet exists and cell phones with cameras are ubiquitous. Nobody wants to have an image of their nude form spread to half the world over social media where it previously would only be seen by a few people for a few minutes. Add to this the fact that easy access to a vast amount of internet pornography has massively sexualized nudity. Communal showers are disappearing because a large number of people (including me) hate them.

  • Muffi@programming.dev
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    5 hours ago

    Very much so.

    I am Danish. A lot of our culture and humor used to revolve around the naked body and sex. This has totally changed within the last 20 years.

    My personal theory is that social media censorship of anything sexual is the reason. America exported their prudish culture and it is erasing our culture.

  • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    It’s really all our faults. The first time someone used the phrase “horny jail” unironically and wasn’t slapped into the following week, we invited this. The first time someone complained about a sex scene in a movie and wasn’t shunned from their entire social circle and relegated to hanging out with the Boomer ladies at the local church, we began building the world we’re trapped in.

    And the people in here defending this new secular Puritan paradigm all sound fucking insufferable. It doesn’t matter if you’re an upright prude because your gullible enough to think sex makes God angry or if you’re an upright prude because you think it’s a feminist position. Either way you’re still a jackass who’s clinging to a sexual morality invented by bronze age goat herders to maximize the prices they could get for selling their teenage daughters to their middle aged friends.

  • dektep@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    I have fucking seen mouths blurred to stop lip readers understanding even slightly impolite words!

  • RichardNixos@lemmy.ml
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    7 hours ago

    I’m watching the Magicians, on Amazon, and I use subtitles. All the curse words are purposefully filled in with random letters, so as not to offend the reader.

    IANAL, but in my opinion this violates the “functionally equivalent services” test of the Americans with Disabilities Act Title IV, and in a just world they would get hit with a massive lawsuit.

    • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I feel like half the captions are AI now and are pretty shit. In a few more years it’ll be illegal to have a disability.

  • bedwyr@piefed.ca
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    6 hours ago

    The oligarchs are using porn, and specifically child abuse, to get total control of everything said and done, to create secret social scores to be used against us.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    3 hours ago

    So I’ve been having to remove pictures of people posting anime style upskirt images of people in child expressing bodies with the text effectively “I will not be responding to comments because everyone is mean”. Most of the time, I only find out because other people reported it as CP or CP adjacent.

    With my own choices of art that I used to post, I tried pieces which can generally be viewed in public given I’m on an instance where people can expect to view the content anywhere. I don’t care enough to go through the discussions to get buy in to show legitimate art, let alone what looks like AI CP.

    Am I drawing a line further than what an art museum would show? Yeah. But an art museum is going to be more enclosed with walls, a greeter, and an expectation that most children won’t enter it unaccompanied to make it a point of discussion in the community. I’m also not willing to go through the effort for others who do not wish to be a part of the community other than posting.

    If someone wants to create something more, all the tools to create their own instance are available.

  • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    It’s not people, it’s corporations. And it’s more US specifically rather than global

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      6 hours ago

      That’s not true. The big group responsible for this is Australian and that’s where they started. Why do you people blame America for everything?

  • Hikermick@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Yet the violence we see on our screens (real and fictional) is non stop. I grew up watching 70’s and 80’s broadcast television. Rarely did anyone swear or say God damn. Nude images were rare. Things change the change again

  • Yeahigotskills2@lemmy.ml
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    10 hours ago

    It’s a trend I’ve seen on Reddit and laterly here. I wondered if it was a north American thing? A slightly preachy, straight laced approach to life that feels kinda of smug, judgmental and insular.