Thread by @Aella_Girl

i grew up in an actually-really-trad culture; I thought women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, the expectation for my future was to definitely become a housewife, women weren’t allowed to hold religious authority over men, wives were explicitly expected to submit to husbands 1/

I was told women were emotional, worse at leading, couldn’t make hard decisions. I was expected to go to college to find a husband (better than our friends, whose 22yo daughter was still at home cause she wasn’t allowed to be outside the physical headship of a man) 2/

I had to be told I had a vagina, and only was told because I was going to start bleeding soon. I wasn’t told what sex was. I was forbidden from holding hands with a crush at age 16 (which I obeyed). I was expected to have my first kiss at the wedding altar. 3/

Sex with your husband was considered to be your duty. If a husband cheated this was bad, but also a side eye was given to the wife - did she uphold her side of the sex bargain? My mom told me she had sex *every day* for *decades* because of duty, not pleasure. 4/

I internalized this so much that it took me years to start processing that I could have actual sexual desire that contradicted the man i was with; once I banged a guy where the penetration really hurt, and I hid that anything was wrong at all because sex wasn’t ‘for me.’ 5/

I started secretly masturbating at age 14 and felt real guilty. I tried to research how much of a sin it was, to figure out how to handle my urges without committing lust. Every single resource I found was for boys; I couldn’t find a single thing about female masturbation. 6/

I’m going into a lot of detail here (and skipping a lot too), but I’m trying to drive a point home that there does exist a type of traditional sex/gender culture that is pretty hard to exist inside of, that hurts people, shrinks their world, injects shame. 7/

I carry it in my bones, it’s a heavy part of my history, and it’s strange and wonderful to have escaped, to be outside in a world that lets me have a wide variety of expression. My past feels like some dark, hidden dream that those around me have never dreamed themselves. 8/

And I know a lot of current trad sexuality discourse is getting at a real thing, is trying to point out problems that exist in this weird progressive sex freedom, trying to protect ways people are hurt by this new approach.
But... do they know how dark the dream can get? 9/

To be clear, a lot of neo-trad-discourse ppl wouldn’t condone most of my upbringing. My old trad life was an extreme version, the values mandatory and heavy and cruel. But my old trad life had a lot of justifications, and it makes me nervous to see similar justifications now. 10/

One of the hard lessons of life is that there’s almost never a perfect option - in complex systems we get to pick between hurt and more hurt. Every suggestion will have downsides for someone, and if you claim your option will never hurt anyone then you’re delusional. 11/

And I’m not claiming that progressive sexuality doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s new and clumsy and I absolutely agree and sympathize with trying to point out and mitigate it and fight to protect those who would be much better suited for a trad life. I am claiming, however, 12/

That the worst version of progressive sexuality pales in comparison to the worst version of trad sexuality. History has had a lot of time to efficiently slam down human life and expression in traditional ways; the “but sexual freedom man” is a mild blip by comparison. 13/

I also think that trad sex/gender norms were probably there for a reason in older times; it’s not like everybody got together and was like “yeah, lets oppress everyone for fun”. Old brutal culture existed in a more brutal world, and trad stuff makes more sense w/ babies thrown in

But also extreme-trad stuff just... it really hurts to be in. It’s really bad. It hurt people I loved, it hurt me, and it’s a deep scar I’ll carry till I die. And I’m scared to see people roleplaying at some light version of what I went through without understanding this. 15/

I am absolutely down for discussions about the downsides of progressive sex culture. I’d love to figure out how to mitigate it, to make people not feel pressured, to support and protect the role of wives and mothers. I think this is important and good. 16

But as soon as it carries a hint of that old oppression, I’m out. I know exactly how they used to justify the bad, that sense of moral superiority. Your ability to enjoy finger-shaking from this trad shit is born out of privilege of never having to go through what I did. 17/

So let’s explore the downsides of freedom while still valuing the freedom itself; let’s compassionately try to solve the mental issues people are developing from progressive sex culture with solutions that aren’t worse than the problem we’re trying to solve. I think we can do it!