Some nerds were doing that thing where 40k fans are like “OH NO SEXZ IS HERESY!” when it’s pretty definitively not and is basically one of the only things in 40k that isn’t heretical (as long as you’re not doing evil slannesh shit) and it got me thinking about repression of sex under “in bad country regimes”.

And a whoooooooooooooooooooooooooole fucking thing in 1984 was how liberating and humanizing it was that the author’s grungy middle aged self-insert was boning a 19 year old member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and, like… America has several thousand different Junior Anti-Sex League and I’m not sure if the USSR ever had any? Like, yeah, maybe they did, but under capitalism Americans have literally convinced themselves they’ll go to hell if they see a tiddy and the English famously just hate joy. So what the fuck was Orwell trying to critique with his “Junior Anti-Sex League” in spoooooky Stalinist England?

  • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    1 month ago

    this isn’t by orwell himself but here’s an interesting essay i found on the subject

    https://www.maramarietta.com/the-arts/fiction/george-orwell/

    This is the full text of Cass Sunstein’s chapter, ‘Sexual Freedom and Political Freedom’ in A. Gleason et al., editors, On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and our Future (Princeton University Press, 2005) pp. 233-241.

    …

    My claim here, however, is that Orwell’s claim is wrong—that there is no ‘direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.’ The links between ‘sexual privation’ and ‘orthodoxy’ are much less direct and intimate, and sometimes the two are antagonists, not allies. Orwell’s treatment of the issue is diminished by the fact that Julia, most of all on this count, emerges as less a person than an adolescent male fantasy, a point that may also shed light on the weakness of the link that Orwell draws between sexual freedom and totalitarianism. Orwell has at most identified a mechanism, not a lawlike generalization.

    edit: liberalism warning lol

    On this view, it is no accident that authoritarian nations—Afghanistan under the Taliban, for example, or communist China—are concerned both to crush dissent and to suppress sexual liberty.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      161·
      1 month ago

      “When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happyand don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. Theywant you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up anddown and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happyinside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?”This was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connectionbetween chastity and political orthodoxy. (110–11)

      This is so perfectly British.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      15·
      1 month ago

      What no training in anthropology does to a MF smdh. Tell people that relaxing old cultural restrictons on dating, public affection, and sexuality was one of the demands of the Maoists in Tienamen Square during the June 4th incident and their eyes just glaze over. Casually throwing Afghanistan and China together in the same sentence about sexuality is just… like… liberalism

      Sexual Freedom and Political Freedom

      Islam is actually a really good case for the complexities of sexual repression, and how you can’t make blanket statements about it at all. In most mainstream Islamic trends you’re not supposed to have sex outside of marriage ever, people are expected to dress and behave modestly within the norms of the culture, etc. But within marriage you’re supposed to have sex and it’s supposed to be good for both partners. The Gulf states are semi-famously one of hte world’s largest consumers of lingerie. Islamic history is filled with erotic art and sex manuals. And attitudes about what is or is not acceptable can vary wildly across the Islamic world, across different cultures, and at different times in history. “Islam is sexually repressive” just isn’t sufficient to have any understanding of what’s happening across the Islamic world.