You�ve probably seen it. American movies, TV shows, etc. get rated more harshly (as in, R, PG-13, etc.) for sex than for violence. I think that that is backwards.
Think about it. Sex is part of the natural life cycle. People have to make love in order to make babies, in order for the human race to continue. There�s nothing wrong with it. And yet we Americans find ourselves trapped in a mindset which says that sex is wrong and shameful, that you can�t talk about it in public.
I�m not saying that all we should think about is sex. I�m not saying that it�s okay to take little kids to movies with a lot of sexual content. I�m saying that it shouldn�t be shocking to talk about sex openly. I�m saying that we should re-evaluate our priorities.
Is violence a necessary part of the life cycle? Does it have to be a fact of life? The answer is no. It is, in my opinion, wrong to censor sex more than violence. It sends the message that violence is more socially acceptable than sex, which is a skewed set of values. A lot of people don�t agree with me here. I realize that. If you find it necessary to include warnings of the possible dangers of sex, or something, with a movie that includes sexual content, that�s fine, and might be a good idea, even. Hammer it in, I suppose.
Still, there should also be a warning of sexual content, just as there is now, so that people can exercise their own judgment on the matter.
Since writing this piece, I have taken a course in women's self-defense in which the instructor told us that the United States is a "rape culture". Now that I understand what this means, it makes sense to me. A rape culture is created through the glorification of violence, the stigmatization of sex, and a binary gender system which normalizes, even necessitates, the dominance of females by males, while degrading the sexualized female. This is the system which creates insecure males (usually) who attempt to claim the power they feel they lack by asserting dominance over others, usually females. Rape is not about sex. It is about power.