Gen Z is Reinventing Puritanism Out of an Abundance of Concern

The phenomenon is real and needs to be discussed seriously, away from the reactionary games of political identity.

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As we’ve spent the last many months scrolling through this here pixelated waste land, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Many of the positions advocated for by my fellow Gen Zers are becoming increasingly extreme and strangely conservative. A combination of misinformation, moral superiority, and aggressive apathy towards history is forcing old dangerous ideas to return under the guise of social justice. This is distinctly different from the graveling concerns of conservative New York Times columnists or the hyperbolic nightmares that many older folks have around Gen Z social justice culture. What I’m talking about is something more novel, more strange, a phenomenon that is largely contained to Gen Z and unique to our own online culture. 

This is broadly referred to as Gen Z Puritanism by commentators online. While the invocation of the Puritans may not be historically accurate, “Puritanism” here refers to a strain of ideas in online Gen Z culture that is rigidly identitarian, anti-sex and anti-pleasure. My intention here is to approach these positions with curiosity as to understand their workings. I hope that once I unpack them thoroughly enough, I can help us see the way that these positions are actually deeply out of alignment with the topline values they are supposedly speaking to. This essay will likely turn into many, many more, but to ground us, I will take a look into one example that recently garnered some attention.

Our case study derives from a popular and controversial Tik Tok posted on February 14th by @iamalskandoll (the account owner’s legal name is Shakirah). Set to disco music and illuminated by strobe lights, Shakirah mouths “What’s wrong with me?” under text that reads “When I realized gay male porn turns me on more than straight porn.” It has, as of March 1st, 1.4 million views, 183 K likes and 36 K comments.

The majority of comments are responding to a small, vocal group that has deemed her actions as dangerous “fetishization.” These comments are authored by who I’d call the Gen Z Puritans. One reads, “She’s reducing gay men to sexual objects, doesn’t matter if they are ‘paid actors.’” There is also this gem of comment, adorned with over 2 k likes, that reads, “IF YOUR NOT MLM [men loving men] UR OPINION ON THIS IS INVALID.” The inevitable outcome of that statement led to many absurd and predictable moments of young gay men sparring. It was “I’m a gay man and think this is fine” vrs. “I’m a gay man and this is not fine!!!!!” ad infinitum until we all fall into a pit of oblivion. While it’s easy to write these comments off as silly internet oddities, I must say, as someone who's spent much of his life within “progressive” institutions amongst fellow Gen Zers, the opinions expressed here are not insanely out of left field. 

It is not that this question (can people other than gay men ethically enjoy gay porn?) is a touch-stone debate; rather it’s the fact that the impulse behind it is indicative of a larger tension within our generational culture. Protecting specific groups is contingent on defining who is what. This is at odds with the idea that identity, at least gender and sexuality, is fluid and able to be self-defined. The concern that individuals exploring their identity can be harmful to others, forces some to be so concerned with harm that they actively limit individual exploration.¹ Additionally, out of this same preoccupation with harm comes the impulse to survey and respond to innocuous behaviour. This comes in the form of paying hyper specific attention to individual actions, ignoring systemic contexts and putting the onus on individuals for society-wide crises.

All of these dynamics play out under Shakirah’s Tik Tok. Here is a young self-identified queer woman (she noted that she is bisexual in a followup video) who is exploring her sexuality in private. Yes, she shared it on Tik Tok, but that’s besides the point. The content of the actual video was about her exploration. Now comes the imposition of limits for fear of harm. The accusation of “fetishization” and “reducing people to sexual objects” has its roots in broad feminist arguments that have been popularized over the last two decades. An article in Ms. Magazine from August 2020 defines objectification as “involv[ing] treating another person as a commodity or as an instrumental object.” Obviously, porn has powerful sway over people’s conceptions of sex and desire, and dangerous ideas of submission and violence can be hypernormalized in this context. But porn is ultimately an outlet that is perfect for an individual coming to terms with their own definition of pleasure and attraction. You can call this “objectification,” but the whole point of porn is to view others sexually in pursuit of pleasure. If a young woman views gay male porn because she is curious and it attracts her, that is what it’s there for. And it is a private act that hurts no one. In fact, it actually benefits the adult entertainers who want more views and support. To be totally clear, the harm that gay men face, as story after story confirms, is not from women exploring their own desires, but straight men who have been socialized in a rigid society that shames deviance from the heterosexual norm. So, who are those that call this fetishization protecting? I would go as far as to posit that creating anxiety around this private activity only re-emphasises the stigma of looking at gay male sexual content, an act that we as a society were thankfully becoming more comfortable with. 

It’s all so crazy-making. In a bid to protect gay men, an arbitrary border around an activity related to us was erected, marking our status as odd, foreign, and off-limits to engage with. A desire to protect us from the harms of objectification actually re-inspires the stigma around looking and being attracted to us. The fact that this was framed as being a worthwhile position merely because some gay men found this Tik Tok offensive, speaks to another element of Gen Z politics that is infinitely crazy-making. No one person speaks for a whole group of people, but when testimony rooted in experience or identity is asserted as a universal truth claim and accepted as such, well, we’re spiraling down forever aren’t we? In this context, my disagreement is just as valid as another gay man’s. And nothing can resolve this but whoever lasts longer in the verbal duel. If you’re a young gay boy who has spent more than 15 minutes arguing about this and its harm online, you’re gonna win; your opponent will never care as much as you . . . unless you’re a weirdo like me with me a Substack!  And to return to my note about surveying innocuous behavior in lieu of interrogating systems: sexual objectification is a real social concern with material consequences. But who is ultimately at fault for it? A lone viewer of pornography (forgetting for a moment that Shakirah did nothing wrong) or the gatekeepers of our culture who decide what gets made and how? And what about the tech companies that know that violent content that objectifies bodies gets clicks, leading them to prioritize this content in their algorithms? Are they not more to blame for this societal dilemma? Or is it all Shakirah’s fault?

At the end of the day, the argument proposed by this angry minority is dangerously, rigidly identitarian. And it is ultimately conservative. It views sexual identity as a rigid category and not a spectrum with a wide expanse to explore within. And the desire to define the group in need of protecting has ended up constructing a rigid border between this queer woman and gay men. The world I am personally interested in working towards is one where the boundaries between man and woman, gay and staright, are not harsh and rigid, but joyfully maleable. I thought that was what many of us desired too. But maybe, I’m wrong.

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1. To be clear here, the harm I’m referring to is not anything near sexual violence. I am discussing the steps that are intertwined with exploring identity (viewing sexual content, dating, exploring new terms and labels, etc.) that in their messiest state, can lead to unintended emotional hurt.