Is Sex Passe?

July 11, 2011 8:19 AM

"Just as the watchword of my generation was freedom, that of my daughter’s generation seems to be control." Erica Jong finds a lack of passion in the longings of 20- and 30-somethings. Her claim is that internet porn and motherhood have replaced the quest for free love initiated by Boomer feminists. Sex educator Violet Blue (both links potentially NSFW) disagrees. Rosie Grey concurs in the Village Voice.
posted by Kitty Stardust (136 comments total)

Lust for control fuels our current obsession with the deficit, our rejection of passion, our undoing of women’s rights.

What!?
posted by chavenet at 8:22 AM on July 11, 2011 [6 favorites]

It's all about AIDs. When your first day of sex ed at age 11 starts with how you will die if you don't use a condom, free love loses its appeal.
posted by jb at 8:27 AM on July 11, 2011 [63 favorites]

Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him.

Because I want to breastfeed my child, I'm rejecting sex and my partner?

(And, frankly, most breastfeeding women I know still have sex.)

This kind of "sexual freedom" (meaning freedom to be available for sex all the time) is something we don't need, and if women my age are rejecting this kind of bullshit, good for us.
posted by the young rope-rider at 8:27 AM on July 11, 2011 [28 favorites]

Well at least there'll always be something inane for us to fret about.
posted by no_moniker at 8:33 AM on July 11, 2011 [12 favorites]

This might be an interesting topic, but I don't like the 'generalization from a handful of writers I personally know' mode of argument. There's such a thing as evidence, y'know.
posted by grobstein at 8:34 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Theyoung rope rider: I was just about tocite that as themost bizarre and offensive part of that article. Couldn't agree more with Violet Blue. The idea that ones breasts belong to ones ( even putting aside the glaring heteronormativity of that statement- VBalready addressed that) is a strong implicit statement against women's sexual agency, heck, it's antifeminist and undermines the personhood of mothers.
posted by Lisitasan at 8:36 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Sex itself may not be dead, but it seems sexual passion is on life support . . . as a theme for discursive essays among academic feminists of my acquaintance.

FTFH. Or was she actually trying to imply that people don't fuck lustily anymore? Kids these days.
posted by gompa at 8:36 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

As we have hashed out before the ny times seems to print a style of articles that implies the authors experience is that of a social trend.
posted by wcfields at 8:40 AM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

Not only did we fail to corrupt our daughters, but we gave them a sterile way to have sex, electronically. Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement.

Idunno. I wasn't getting any before the internet came along, either.

In summary, what jb said.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:40 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Different though we are, men and women were designed to be allies, to fill out each other’s limitations, to raise children together and give them different models of adulthood.

It seems like this line, or something like it, always ends up in these why-aren't-the-kids-having-sex-anymore pieces that old boomers write, and it always betrays how conservative they actually are.
posted by jackflaps at 8:40 AM on July 11, 2011 [17 favorites]

This might be an interesting topic, but I don't like the 'generalization from a handful of writers I personally know' mode of argument. There's such a thing as evidence, y'know.

That never bothered Erica Jong -- not even the first time around. She assumes her personal 'aha' is an explosive revelation for all. Big meh.
posted by Surfurrus at 8:41 AM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

I suppose you have to give Jong credit for still being able to get paid for pretending she knows more about sex than anyone else.
posted by Trurl at 8:42 AM on July 11, 2011 [6 favorites]

Here's what my dad had to say:

"I lost count of her bloated pronunciamentos, offered without a shred of proof. Pay no attention to this woman. She has nothing to say in this smug, overwrought piece of crap."
posted by Brocktoon at 8:42 AM on July 11, 2011 [16 favorites]

Nothing is free. All actions have consequences.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:43 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy.

Maybe it's because we had so much fun with our parent's divorces and then their subsequent girlfriends and boyfriends?


Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him.

So what does it mean when I see all these men in Brooklyn wearing baby slings? Are they trying to tell their wives that their breasts don't belong to her? That's as dumb as saying a stroller is "pushing a child away from you" a la satirized in away we go.
posted by melissam at 8:44 AM on July 11, 2011 [18 favorites]

This sort of article is terrible.

1. It treats a large, disparate group of women as a monolith. There are certainly norms and trends about sex, but they're very different among classes, religious denominations (conservative Lutherans versus Unitarians, etc), immigrant groups from different places, etc etc etc etc. It would be interesting to say something confined like "college-educated women of color tend to think [THING] now while they thought [OTHER THING] in 1980". Why?"

2. It generates one of two godawful internet approaches - the "yes, whew, women sure do hate sex, thank god we can finally say it!" routine and the "no, I'm out there being all sexy all the time and I'm 25 and so are all my friends, we're going to the strip club tonight!" routine.

3. It ignores that fact that women (in particular) are always being pressured to figure out what the sexual norm is and conform to it, and that this is the problem. It doesn't matter if the sexual norm in your social formation is abstinence or porn-star sex on the first date; it's the fact that we're always desperately sussing out the trends, either to follow or to denounce. Or - even worse - to assert that we are such special snowflakes that we are totally uninfluenced by society around us; we alone in human history have truly authentic sexuality.

And I think, honestly, that these articles are in part about fear and dismay about aging.
posted by Frowner at 8:45 AM on July 11, 2011 [57 favorites]

She doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. U.S. teens have the highest birth and abortion rates in the (Western, industrialized) world, and make up something like 50% of new STI diagnoses. Maybe she should stop gazing into the navels of the twelve people she knows and familiarize herself with some actual public health statistics.
posted by rtha at 8:46 AM on July 11, 2011 [30 favorites]

Sex isn't so free these days.

I came of age primarily in the 90s and the early 2000s. Sex was taught as a responsibility and sex was taught as requiring certain safety precautions --- like riding a bike or going on a roller coaster ride, etc. Wear your helment, fasten your seat belts. Get tested for STDs (STIs these days), ask your partner how many people they've been with since they were last tested.

Don't have sex with someone if you don't know their sexual history.

Protect yourself.

There was also a lot of talk about mutual respect and intimacy. If you don't respect someone, don't have sex with them. If you don't respect yourself, don't have sex with someone. To that extent, monogamy was emphasized, as were longer term trusting relationships.

It wasn't so much anti-free love as one big public service announcement that sex has some serous consequences that other generations either didn't discuss openly or didn't have to handle.
posted by zizzle at 8:46 AM on July 11, 2011 [14 favorites]

The other watchwords of Jong's generation are "self" and "obsession", although the Violet Blue links are a useful reminder that it's not just Baby Boomers who can be annoying.

I kind of like the name Molly Jong-Fast, though.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:47 AM on July 11, 2011

BTW, as a boomer to the 'aids generation', you aren't in any way more sex-stymied than we were. The past is always glorious in retrospect; our own awkward, painful, disease-fraught years are misty in the fog of nostalgia. (... and, btw, it gets better.)
posted by Surfurrus at 8:47 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wait, I thought 20- and 30-somethings were "hooking up" multiple times a week to get their jollies. I'm so confused.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:49 AM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

Soo.. young men don't want to grow up, which is a problem, and young women want to grow up, which is also a problem. Got it.
posted by bleep at 8:50 AM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

The abstract noun and the other abstract noun have replaced the emotive verbing of the poorly defined group of people.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:50 AM on July 11, 2011 [24 favorites]

Shhh, everyone. Shhh. The boomers thought they invented sex in the 1960s, and they still think no one else has heard about it. They're old now. Is it too much to ask to let them just quietly pass away with their lifelong delusions intact? They're like innocent children. Let's not spoil that.
posted by rusty at 8:51 AM on July 11, 2011 [56 favorites]

A Violet Blue reference, heh. I'd rather listen to No Name Jane's opinion on this subject.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:53 AM on July 11, 2011

Wait, I thought 20- and 30-somethings were "hooking up" multiple times a week to get their jollies. I'm so confused.

Yes, but then women get tired of having sex.

Instead of just not having sex, we get married and get pregnant as a long-term strategy to cheat our male partners out of sex and 24/7 access to our bodies. The decision to marry and reproduce is solely driven by women, and men just blindly stumble into it with no preferences at all.

HTH
posted by the young rope-rider at 8:53 AM on July 11, 2011 [9 favorites]

(And of course, boomers who also think this is ridiculous, I don't mean you. Just the people who mysteriously get paid to be the Voice of Your Generation.)
posted by rusty at 8:53 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I got about twenty words into this on Sunday and started thinking seriously again about canceling the NYT subscription.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:57 AM on July 11, 2011

I think one of the reasons that you don't see many romance plots between old people in the movies is that actual old people can enjoy love stories between younger characters -- they can still relate to them, because they were once young. Meanwhile, young people can't relate to romances between old people, because they can't imagine themselves at that age.
posted by hermitosis at 8:57 AM on July 11, 2011 [7 favorites]

guys i didn't decide for tea rather then coffee this morning cause i wanted something different its because i am rejecting the social narrative that enforces conformity of consumption and the fast paced go-go modern society signaling a new trend that is totally real
posted by The Whelk at 8:59 AM on July 11, 2011 [20 favorites]

Just the people who mysteriously get paid to be the Voice of Your Generation.

Jong's credentials are... what? That she wrote a popular stroke book 40 years ago?
posted by Trurl at 9:01 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

"let's not waste too much time on this."
posted by mrgrimm at 9:01 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

So this seems to be the core of Jong's essay:

While editing an anthology of women’s sexual writing called “Sugar in My Bowl” last year, I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers.

From this, she appears to draw the conclusion that younger (people? women? writers? women writers? women writers who just happened to be in that anthology) don't care about sex as much as Boomers, that the internet has somehow left them passionless, lustless.

How and why she makes this assumption is utterly baffling. It seems so much more likely that the "younger" writers (presumably in the 25 - 40 range?) don't bother to write explicitly about sex simply because they've realized there's not much point. It's been done to death. In the sixties and seventies there was still some novelty to writing explicitly about sex in "mainstream" literature, some sense of rebellion, of pushing boundaries. That's no longer the case in a world in which almost every best-selling novel has its obligatory 1 - 3 sex scenes and a TV show like True Blood is more explicit than an X-rated film from 1972.

People aren't over sex. But many of our better writers are over writing about it just for the sake of doing so.There's no shock value, there's no squares to freak out, so why be "raunchy" for raunchy's sake?
posted by dersins at 9:03 AM on July 11, 2011 [10 favorites]

Turns out that just because a zipless fuck is an option, it doesn't mean it's appealing for years and years and years. Sometimes a gal just wants to put on some sweats, do some yardwork or the crossword, have a lively discussion about local politics with her partner, play with the baby, watch Deadliest Catch, and go to bed.

I laughed out loud at this line:

Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement.

Clearly?! HA. The lure of Internet sex is the lack of RISK; nobody's getting pregant or raped or AIDS from cybersex. Plus you don't have to put on heels or buy overpriced drinks.

also, what, does craigslist not have a casual encounters section any more?
posted by KathrynT at 9:05 AM on July 11, 2011 [7 favorites]

"let's not waste too much time on this."

But, but, where else can we circlejerk around how much boomers suck, how they fucked us all up as kids and how they always feel like destroying everything that's nice in the world for their benefit and entertainment?

I really do enjoy boomer hatefests, though, but i agree we shouldn't spend more time than absolutely necessary discussing stupid articles.
posted by palbo at 9:13 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's increasingly interesting to see how the geriatric boomers are still having trouble handling the generation gap.
posted by crunchland at 9:14 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

True Blood is really more raunchy than Last Tango In Paris? What did they replace the butter with blood or something?
posted by TheTingTangTong at 9:15 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Things I learned from Erica Jong's column:

1. Erica Jong is still alive.
2. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
posted by Rangeboy at 9:15 AM on July 11, 2011 [12 favorites]

I love it when people attack an editorial for lacking the explanations, citations and analysis expected in a proper essay.
posted by oddman at 9:15 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

You know who else had a man-distancing sling?

That's right. The young King David.
posted by Greg Nog at 9:18 AM on July 11, 2011 [47 favorites]

True Blood is really more raunchy than Last Tango In Paris? What did they replace the butter with blood or something?

Well last night's episode had a dark and un-titling female-on-male rape scene that was comparatively tame next to say ...neck-break sex So ..yeah.

I love it when people attack an editorial for lacking the explanations, citations and analysis expected in a proper essay.

Okay this editorial is uninteresting, lazy, and dull and opinions are not a rare commodity.
posted by The Whelk at 9:21 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I love it when people attack an editorial for lacking the explanations, citations and analysis expected in a proper essay.

I don't expect scholarly apparatus or rigor - I do expect the author to have a point worth making or an intelligent observation to relate, however.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:23 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Erica Jong was talking about the Whiplash Generation 15 years ago ("doomed to raise our daughters in the age of Nancy Reagan and Princess Di"), she's been talking about how "sex is no longer in" for twice as long, and now she's on to her next regurgitated meme. It's a good way to keep her cottage industry alive.

I agree with jb that it's more than a bit odd that she doesn't once mention HIV/AIDS, which has done more to stifle sex, forbidden or otherwise, in the past 30 years than almost anything else.
posted by blucevalo at 9:26 AM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

Risky behavior can be devoid of risk — unless of course you use your real name and are an elected official.

it must be cool to be a novelist instead of a person with a day job subject to a full hegemony ready to smack you back down into poverty for personal indiscretions
posted by Greg Nog at 9:27 AM on July 11, 2011 [7 favorites]

Better to give up men and sleep with one’s children. Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him. Our current orgy of multiple maternity does indeed leave little room for sexuality. With children in your bed, is there any space for sexual passion? The question lingers in the air, unanswered.

What kind of boring people does she associate with?

Also:
1) My breasts "belong" to me. Same for any woman with her own body, really.
2) She's a mother and yet so ignorant of mothers, it seems.
posted by cmgonzalez at 9:35 AM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

When somebody has offered up an argument that is reductive and limited in perspective, I'm not convinced the best way to counter it is to minimize her complete life down to writing a "stroke book."

Hey! Scott Addams has offered a strange web argument!
Yeah, well, what did he ever do but draw a mall caricature.

Hey! Turn's out George Takei is gay!
Well, what did he ever do but dress in a Halloween costume and make "zooming" noises as he pretended to fly around.

Hey! I'm reading a book by Socrates!
Well, what did he ever do but eat some bad food?
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:35 AM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

Generalizing about cultural trends is tricky, but ...

... this is a trend piece, so I'm allowed to make up some shit, comprised entirely of anecdotes, weasel words, and my own biases.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:38 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'd rather listen to No Name Jane's opinion on this subject.

Well, she's not a no-name but you may not have heard about her. Amanda Hess, who for years did quality work on sexuality issues in the DC area (at City Paper and then TBD) had a very cogent comment on the matter here in Erik Wemple's post on the matter.

Jong, says Hess, has powerful motives for saying what she says. Among them is making “sex writing relevant again (and declaring that it had somehow disappeared, and in the process, imbuing “Fear of Flying” with renewed relevance)” not to mention “creating a narrative around her book that situates older, raunchy ladies against younger, prudish ones (perhaps she could have searched further afield if she wanted a truly representative sample of each generation).”

posted by phearlez at 9:39 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'm almost 52. My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger. Which if I was a parent, I'd be happy about. Great to see my kids not doing the stupid fun dangerous things I did. But I also wonder about what's getting lost as life becomes more of a careful ordeal than an enthusiastic adventure. We do need our kicks when young, less all the life energy gets turned inward and manifests in all manner of chaotic neuroses, insomnia, depression etc

All of this does remind of a quote that I originally stumbled upon in the slavery-themed movie BURN: "You can't grant a man his freedom. He must TAKE his freedom."

I wonder if we secular, western types have just been granting too much so-called "freedom" to the young of late.
posted by philip-random at 9:42 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

You know, not being in my 20s anymore was making me feel really decrepit. So thanks Ms. Jong for coming along and making me feel young and hip as hell because I don't have your Only My Kind of Sex is The Right Kind hangups.

Turns out the real downside of the sexual revolution is that now old people have something brand-new to fault the young people for. At least my mom only got flack for not cooking homemade or wearing a girdle, not for failing to get it on in a free-enough manner.
posted by emjaybee at 9:46 AM on July 11, 2011 [9 favorites]

When somebody has offered up an argument that is reductive and limited in perspective, I'm not convinced the best way to counter it is to minimize her complete life down to writing a "stroke book."

If she'd done much of anything since then other than repeat herself and invent harangues against women younger than herself, I'd agree with you. Socrates she ain't.
posted by blucevalo at 9:47 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh, Erica, your lamentation about the attitude divide between women of different generations is so ironic, given that one of many, many things my mother and I agree on and have bonded over is how shitty, self-absorbed and totally alien to our life experiences "Fear of Flying" is, and that in most of your essays that show up every so often--like this one--you seem to be so far up your own ass it's a wonder you can find the typewriter/keyboard.

Every time you write something sheltered and pretentious and out of touch or empathy with experiences that are not your own, my mother and I are reminded that we do understand each other.

Thank you, Erica Jong. Seriously.
posted by Uniformitarianism Now! at 9:52 AM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

If George Takei began issuing pronouncements on the state of manned space travel with the sole credential of having become famous for pretending to be a space traveler, I'd jeer at him too.

Which is a good comparison, by the way, since Fear of Flying was Erica Jong pretending to be a sexually fearless woman. As she has acknowledged, Isadora Wing's exploits were sexual fantasies - not autobiography or reportage.

Sorry if you feel I'm insufficiently respectful of her chef d'oeuvre. When FoF gets a Library of America edition, we'll talk.
posted by Trurl at 9:53 AM on July 11, 2011

I like this better when the Onion does it.

OUR DAUGHTERS: ARE THEY DOING IT AS SEXY AS WE DID IT?
posted by straight at 9:54 AM on July 11, 2011 [14 favorites]

>> Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement.

Clearly?! HA. The lure of Internet sex is the lack of RISK; nobody's getting pregant or raped or AIDS from cybersex. Plus you don't have to put on heels or buy overpriced drinks.

Whenever someone starts a sentence with "Clearly," what follows is terribly unlikely to be "clear." It's a subtle but often effective way of shifting attention from "Is your point valid?" to "Is your point as obvious as you claim?"
posted by verb at 10:00 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Shhh, everyone. Shhh. The boomers thought they invented sex in the 1960s, and they still think no one else has heard about it. They're old now. Is it too much to ask to let them just quietly pass away with their lifelong delusions intact? They're like innocent children. Let's not spoil that.
posted by rusty at 11:51 AM on July 11 [14 favorites +] [!]

Shush, yourself, rusty. I don't think anything of the sort, I am by no means old, and no, I will not quietly pass away, thanks. This is hugely offensive -- talk about a broad brush? When o when will I see on Metafilter the same intensity about not treating groups as monolithic when it comes to those of us over 50 who ain't dead yet. Kee-rist.
posted by thinkpiece at 10:02 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

And yes, I saw your qualifier. Didn't impress me.
posted by thinkpiece at 10:03 AM on July 11, 2011

My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

Is this a joke? "Young people today"? Who are you talking about?
posted by straight at 10:04 AM on July 11, 2011

As a young woman who remembers Jong singing the praises of the zipless fuck in "Fear of Flying", I can't help but see the irony in her equating "internet sex" with the swan song of intimacy.

As Volet Blue points out, Jong never takes the time to define what is meant by "internet sex," but I'm picturing anonymous hookups in chat rooms, which are pretty much synonymous with that zipless fuck she once envisioned, or internet dating, which is arguably more intimate than either.

Jong also says women want in her daughter's generation are tired of sex. But it really seems that they are just tired of hearing their Moms talking all about the sex they had. Which is pretty understandable, really. Here's an excerpt, written by Jong's daughter, from the anthology she edited and hypes in this piece:

"Maybe I would have been more slutty, if I hadn’t grown up watching my mother saunter around our town house au natural, past the pictures of naked lesbians fooling around. Or maybe it was all the book readings I went to growing up. Or possibly it was the trauma of sitting through my mother’s fourth wedding and listening to my mother call my stepfather a "horny Boy Scout." It was a phrase I did not soon forget. In fact it still haunts me to this day."

Jong quotes Min Jin Lee, who contributed to the anthology, as saying, “for cosmopolitan singles, sex with intimacy appears to be neither the norm nor the objective," to suggest that young women are not interested in sex, which doesn't at all follow to me. I see it as cosmopolitan singles (way to generalize) wanting to have sex without intimacy--again, that zipless fuck ideal.

Jong also laments that young women are embracing monogamy rather than open marriage, something her generation couldn't do because they were, "unable to extinguish the lust for propriety." That seems less than empathetic to her own daughter's choice to marry and mother three children by the same man. Why assume that her daughter doesn't lust after him? And it also makes me wonder why Jong condemned open marriage in 2006 if she feels so strongly about it? Oh, yeah, she was hyping a different book then.

But the real problem with this op-ed is that it's all over the place, using the terms intimacy, sex, passion, and lust interchangeably in an attempt to bolster a weak argument. Jong is just floundering to make her case, and she's clearly out of her depth. She claims that physical pleasure is what keeps people together but then says sex without

An example of this was already mentioned up thread, "Lust for control fuels our current obsession with the deficit, our rejection of passion, our undoing of women’s rights."

That makes no sense at all. She has already blamed the death of passionate sex on the need for young women to be in control, does she now blame them for all these other societal ills? How does it follow that women in control leads to less rights for women? And if she doesn't mean young women, who is this "our" she is speaking about? Society? Americans? What does that have to do with her thesis that "sex is passe'"?

This is just yet another (really badly written) essay hyping a new book, full stop.
posted by misha at 10:05 AM on July 11, 2011 [11 favorites]

This is hugely offensive -- talk about a broad brush? When o when will I see on Metafilter the same intensity about not treating groups as monolithic when it comes to those of us over 50 who ain't dead yet. Kee-rist.

When Baby Boomers stop treating the generations that came after them as so much warmed-over flotsam and jetsam that couldn't possibly match their past and present glories. (And yes, I'm old, and I wasn't offended.)
posted by blucevalo at 10:07 AM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

This is so weird. The article, I mean. Like, stupid weird.

As far as I can tell from talking with her, my boomer, hippy mother had the same number of sexual partners in her young life as I have had (namely, one). The big difference is that I know a lot more about birth control and dental dams and protecting yourself and kinks and activities and positions and stuff, and I'm not as shy talking about them, but I don't think those things make me, I don't know, a better feminist or more interesting or anything. Just better informed, I guess.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:13 AM on July 11, 2011

Sounds like crazy nonsense. Why do people write this stuff? Was it just that putting "Motherhood" and "Internet porn" in the same sentence as being complementary somehow would lead to more hits? And not just from people looking for MILF porn?
posted by delmoi at 10:13 AM on July 11, 2011

Metafilter: The abstract noun and the other abstract noun have replaced the emotive verbing of the poorly defined group of people.
posted by Tknophobia at 10:14 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I am:

1) almost 40;
2) Not offended;
3) Except by this dumb-ass article;
4) Having sex with 5 complete strangers as I type this
5) In the reservoir at Mount Tabor Park

HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW ERICA JONG
posted by everichon at 10:15 AM on July 11, 2011 [17 favorites]

Heh. I always assumed the "zipless" in that phrase meant "lacking zip, energy, and vigor."
posted by straight at 10:15 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

I know a lot of boomers; never have I heard anyone dismiss generations that came later or feel superior about past/present glories. The folks I know, write about and talk to are awfully proud of their children, fascinated and supportive of young people, who among other things, are less racist, sexist and more community-minded than we ever were. I don't think many of us would be foolhardy enough to think we broke the mold on passion or sex. The Erica-Jong-media-echo-buzzy shtick is just that, and always was.
posted by thinkpiece at 10:17 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

I wonder if the old Georgians felt this way about the uptight Victorians?
posted by crunchland at 10:18 AM on July 11, 2011

I'm almost 52. My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

This is pretty insulting, you know?
posted by Marty Marx at 10:22 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is pretty insulting, you know?

I'd say it would be insulting, if it weren't merely an admission that the poster doesn't know much about what young people are like anymore. The same could be said for Jong's editorial, as well.
posted by rusty at 10:25 AM on July 11, 2011

I know a lot of boomers; never have I heard anyone dismiss generations that came later or feel superior about past/present glories. The folks I know, write about and talk to are awfully proud of their children, fascinated and supportive of young people, who among other things, are less racist, sexist and more community-minded than we ever were.
posted by thinkpiece at 19:17 on July 11 [+] [!]

Anecdata all around, but...

I'm almost 52. My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger. Which if I was a parent, I'd be happy about.
posted by philip-random at 18:42 on July 11 [+] [!]

lol.

And as a fleeting response to philip-random, maybe we're too busy trying to figure out how to fix the boomers' fuckups, both to our psyche and to the world order.
posted by palbo at 10:28 AM on July 11, 2011 [8 favorites]

"As we have hashed out before the ny times seems to print a style of articles that implies the authors experience is that of a social trend."

This. I mean, a few months back the style section was hawking $1,500 bejeweled dog bowls. So, I dunno.
posted by Lisitasan at 10:29 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I know a lot of boomers; never have I heard anyone dismiss generations that came later or feel superior about past/present glories.

You're very fortunate, then. That's all I can say.
posted by blucevalo at 10:30 AM on July 11, 2011

I know a lot of boomers; never have I heard anyone dismiss generations that came later or feel superior about past/present glories.

Did these boomers know anyone who voted for Nixon?

Cheap joke aside, you're saying this in a thread about an article by a boomer doing just that. And it has happened in this thread, too. You can say these aren't representative, but you can't say that it doesn't happen, or that it isn't a prominent feature of the conversation about "young" (i.e. under 30(!)) peoples' sexual or political practices. Jong's piece is published in the NYTimes, for pete's sake.
posted by Marty Marx at 10:31 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Is sex passé? No, Erica Jong's idea of sex is.
posted by xod at 10:32 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

NOTHING on screen is as raunchy or discomforting as Last Tango in Paris. Certainly not horny vampires + My Girl.
posted by Lisitasan at 10:35 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Much of what I'd say has already been said up-thread, but I'll add this: why is there always this assumption that monogamous sex is boring sex? My personal experience has always been that the sex gets better the longer you've been with someone.
posted by asnider at 10:46 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

And, to self-edit, I should probably have said: why is there always often this assumption that monogamous sex is boring sex?
posted by asnider at 10:49 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm saying Erica Jong has always been a media-constructed talking head on the topic of sex, not to mention a one-hit wonder. To extrapolate that hers is a widespread boomer mindset, as young rusty did in his first post up yonder, is the kind of simplistic, dismissive interpretation that MeFites are known to loathe. Except when it comes to boomers.

And, I don't know how "lucky" I've been. I live in Manhattan, so that helps. But so does Jong.
posted by thinkpiece at 10:52 AM on July 11, 2011

It's not solely an anti-boomer thing, it's a common intergenerational thing and people my age certainly get our share of accusations of being lazy, spoiled, unrealistic, entitled, etc.
posted by the young rope-rider at 10:55 AM on July 11, 2011

I'm almost 52. My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

Go watch an episode or two of Maury to see "careless passion."
posted by Mister Fabulous at 10:55 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

There's something wrong with sex! It does not work right anymore! Here are two anecdotes. Here is a completely unsupported rhetorical explanation of the trend I have not adequately demonstrated exists. What can be to blame? Clearly... INTERNET PORN.
posted by nanojath at 10:56 AM on July 11, 2011

What can be to blame? Clearly... INTERNET PORN.

It's worse than that; it's not even clear that she's talking about porn. She doesn't attempt to define what she means by "internet sex," and so we're forced to guess.
posted by asnider at 10:59 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

And I think, honestly, that these articles are in part about fear and dismay about aging.

This, this and only this. I'm reminded of that wretched "KIDS THESE DAYS LIVE WITH THEIR PARENTS SOMETIMES ZOMG THOSE AWFUL KIDS WHY IN MY DAY" article from a few days ago. This is a circle of life thing - some folks get old and begin to resent the young for it. Some folks get to write stoopid getoffmylawn editorials to complain about the kids. This process is predictable as sunrise - every generation regards itself as awesome and all before or after it as lacking in some fashion or another. This process underpins basically the entire latter half of Andy Rooney's career (and will for David Sedaris in twenty-thirty years). "Sexual passion is on life support" today? Utter nonsense. You should have been to our last cast party, Ms. Jong.

But without intergenerational crankiness, 90% of all newspaper editorials vanish. So please yourselves I guess, boomers. Maybe the next one can be about how much better your music was.
posted by EatTheWeak at 11:00 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

...the kind of simplistic, dismissive interpretation that MeFites are known to loathe. Except when it comes to boomers people that annoy posters.

Better.
posted by verb at 11:00 AM on July 11, 2011

Antibiotic resistant gonorrhea and the future of oral sex
posted by homunculus at 11:10 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling

I guess somebody's partner hasn't discovered butt humping.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:10 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Antibiotic resistant gonorrhea and the future of oral sex

Fuck it, I'm wearing a HazMat suit from now on.
posted by Justinian at 11:11 AM on July 11, 2011

It's not solely an anti-boomer anti-elder thing, it's a common intergenerational thing and people my age certainly get our share of accusations of being lazy, spoiled, unrealistic, entitled, etc. ~~ said by Youngster [insert date]

or ... what EatTheWeak said.
posted by Surfurrus at 11:12 AM on July 11, 2011

Fuck it, I'm wearing a HazMat suit from now on.

Some places they make you pay extra for that.
posted by Tknophobia at 11:14 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I remember reading "Fear Of Flying" when I was about 17 and thinking WHAT...? About every other sentence. I assumed the fault was in me and my callow youth. I was wrong.

This is a circle of life thing - some folks get old and begin to resent the young for it.

But no, it isn't that simple. Many of us who criticised the "kids" who live with their parents long beyond the point of decency do not fall into that category, I'm afraid. I don't resent young people at all. I often praise them. I think kids today are much more worldly and far better-looking than we were in my day, for example. There are less trivial examples, too. But sorry, hearing many of these late-twenties-and-beyond middle-class "kids" bitching about lack of money and opportunities is just pathetic, lazy bollocks. That is a case where they need to stop making excuses, take a couple of risks, develop a sense of shame, get the hell out into the big, scary, expensive world and shape the hell up.
posted by Decani at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

To extrapolate that hers is a widespread boomer mindset, as young rusty did in his first post up yonder, is the kind of simplistic, dismissive interpretation that MeFites are known to loathe.

I would be arguing with you, but the arrogant, self-important, entitled, and belittling tone you've consistently taken in this thread is pretty much doing my work for me. I think I can safely say that my disclaimer specifically did not apply to you.

By the way, happy birthday to me! I'm 35 today. So either I'm not young, or you are old.
posted by rusty at 11:27 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling

At this point, I was skimming the stupidity and thought this was an oblique critique of men with diaper fetishes and thought, "What the hell is a man-distancing sling?!"

My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

Also, I disagree with Jong, but I also think people probably have much less sex now than they did before the age of electric light. I also think people have much less sex again their will these days, which is a good thing.

Passion cuts a whole bunch of different ways.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:28 AM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yes, being "shushed" does aggravate me, it's true.
posted by thinkpiece at 11:32 AM on July 11, 2011

How many young people do you think she knows? I bet she doesn't come out to the bars where kids can actually afford to hang out, which is where most of the casual fucking happens. Just because we're not rolling around in the mud doesn't mean we aren't getting laid.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 11:48 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

A small correction -- the piece on Violet Blue's blog is actually written by Thomas Roche, another writer definitely worth reading, but not Violet. Hence the "as a man" comment.
posted by gingerbeer at 11:49 AM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Great to see my kids not doing the stupid fun dangerous things I did. But I also wonder about what's getting lost as life becomes more of a careful ordeal than an enthusiastic adventure. We do need our kicks when young, less all the life energy gets turned inward and manifests in all manner of chaotic neuroses, insomnia, depression etc

....How do you know that the young aren't still getting their kicks, but just that they're doing that through some means other than sex?

I mean, hell, I'd be getting sexual kicks if I could, but ain't nobody really much offering these days, so I've instead been doing other things like "learning to solo camp" and "trying to ride a standing paddleboard", and those have been way fun.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:50 AM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yes, being "shushed" does aggravate me, it's true.

Oh, I see the confusion! Sorry, I wasn't shushing you. I was shushing everyone else on your behalf, so you could retain all the fantasies of generational superiority that you went on to espouse. I was just trying to make a safe space for your self-satisfaction.
posted by rusty at 12:05 PM on July 11, 2011

Better to give up men and sleep with one’s children.

Better not to extrapolate anything meaningful from such run-on flimflammery!
posted by obscurator at 12:23 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

WHO IS SLINGING THE BABIES? is what I want to know.

Is there at least a foam pit?
posted by everichon at 12:29 PM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I decided to check out Fear of Flying a few years ago.
I suppose I'm "spoiled" by those she influenced (like Violet Blue), but I finished it and said, "Meh. I wonder why she hates Englishmen so much?"
posted by luckynerd at 12:50 PM on July 11, 2011

Young people aren't having sex because we have to work our asses off just to stay afloat.

I think I speak for the bulk of my generation when I say that the best thing we can do for the Boomer generation--the generation that lost the Vietnam War, the generation that embraced 70's mass consumerism, that embraced the deficit spending and rampant excesses of the early 80's, and got divorced and on Valium and Prozac in the late 80's and 90's and that in the 2000's left America as the butt of some historical joke--I think the best thing we can do for them is cut medicare to zero and give them a taste of the Great Depression in their twilight years.

"Don’t we all deserve sugar in our bowls?"

Shut the fuck up, you self-indulgent, self-promoting gasbag. Thanks to you, the younger generation can't afford to put Corn Flakes in their bowls
posted by Pastabagel at 12:57 PM on July 11, 2011 [12 favorites]

> My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of
> careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

Or anyway the degree of careless passion that I now remember having had thirty years ago. Rainwater was beer back then too, I remember that very clearly.


> we're too busy trying to figure out how to fix the boomers' fuckups, both to
> our psyche and to the world order.

And here we haven't really even finished working out the fuckups of the Australopithicines, let alone the Indo-Europeans. Actually we've got a pretty massive fuckup backup in the queue, and we'll be getting to the the boomers' fuckups around the time of the heat death of the universe at the present rate. Press 5 if you would like to leave a message.
posted by jfuller at 1:04 PM on July 11, 2011

I know a lot of boomers; never have I heard anyone dismiss generations that came later or feel superior about past/present glories.

What the hell do the boomers have to to feel superior about? The fact that you write such a sentence makes it clear you/they feel superior. But what on earth would the boomers have to feel superior for? What the hell was their great contribution?
posted by Pastabagel at 1:05 PM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

It wasn't so much anti-free love as one big public service announcement that sex has some serous consequences that other generations either didn't discuss openly or didn't have to handle.

Other generations did. They got married, possibly at the point of whatever the local equivalent of a shotgun was, whether they liked it or not. Jong's generation, or at any rate, the bit of it she represented, was the one that decided the fallout was everyone else's problem. To quote her daughter:

Or possibly it was the trauma of sitting through my mother’s fourth wedding and listening to my mother call my stepfather a "horny Boy Scout." It was a phrase I did not soon forget. In fact it still haunts me to this day.

Jong, to me, sounds like Greer dnd similar of her contemporaries; bitter that young women don't fall at their feet to hand upon their every word. As they age, it becomes clearer that the only problem they ever had with patriarchy was that they weren't the ones in charge.
posted by rodgerd at 1:09 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Jong was born in 1942. She isn't a boomer, she's a war baby.
posted by brujita at 1:10 PM on July 11, 2011

listening to my mother call my stepfather a "horny Boy Scout."

I'm really torn between not wanting to know a single jot more and being intensely curious as to whether this was part of an extended tent-pitching metaphor.
posted by Greg Nog at 1:12 PM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

I'm really torn between not wanting to know a single jot more and being intensely curious as to whether this was part of an extended tent-pitching metaphor.

I like where your head's at.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 1:17 PM on July 11, 2011

listening to my mother call my stepfather a "horny Boy Scout."

I want to know how this came up in her sessions with her therapist (because it is unimaginable to me that she did not see a psychiatrist and brag about seeing one) and two, I would also like to know how many religions and "spiritual journeys" she had over the course of her lifetime. Religions are to boomer women what sports cars and affairs were to boomer men.
posted by Pastabagel at 1:17 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm really torn between not wanting to know a single jot more and being intensely curious as to whether this was part of an extended tent-pitching metaphor.

All I'm saying is don't look too closely at those merit badges.
posted by Uniformitarianism Now! at 1:19 PM on July 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I want more articles where Boomers teach non-Boomers how to be more like Boomers.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:22 PM on July 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

Pastabagel, I was responding to this comment, which struck me as brushing boomers with a they-think-they're-so-superior label, to say that I don't feel that way: When Baby Boomers stop treating the generations that came after them as so much warmed-over flotsam and jetsam that couldn't possibly match their past and present glories.

Rusty, here's the comment that started it all. They're old now. Is it too much to ask to let them just quietly pass away with their lifelong delusions intact? I can't imagine such a comment earning close to 40 favorites in a thread about any other domographic group; I honestly don't see why I should let it pass unremarked upon here.
posted by thinkpiece at 1:32 PM on July 11, 2011

Rusty, here's the comment that started it all. They're old now. Is it too much to ask to let them just quietly pass away with their lifelong delusions intact? I can't imagine such a comment earning close to 40 favorites in a thread about any other domographic group; I honestly don't see why I should let it pass unremarked upon here.

Hipsters, conservative Christians, tweens, Twilight fans, theater critics, actors who turn into social activists, people who cut other people off in traffic, people from New Jersey, Florida, or Italy...

I'm not saying you should let it pass unremarked on, either. Just noting that the "My Group Is The Only Group People Mock Openly" thing is something that everyone feels when they're in the group getting mocked at the moment.
posted by verb at 1:54 PM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

To extrapolate that hers is a widespread boomer mindset, as young rusty did in his first post up yonder, is the kind of simplistic, dismissive interpretation that MeFites are known to loathe.

To extrapolate your experience in Manhattan to the whole is also a fallacy.

The "young rusty up yonder" routine is a bit patronizing as well.
posted by blucevalo at 1:59 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Buck up, thinkpiece. One day, Rusty and all the people who favorited his comment will get old, and the people 40 years younger than them will probably wish them dead, too. That's just the great circle of contempt of life playing itself out.
posted by crunchland at 2:32 PM on July 11, 2011 [5 favorites]

As someone who can't hate on Erica Jong too much since, by her standards, I am apparently a young person (fuck! thank Christ!), I will say I think it's worth noting that the boomers seem to think they invented everything, except for loathing their forebears, which apparently my generation thinks that it invented. I don't understand how people are able to keep these generation gap debates going when a cursory glance at the old media of, say, thirty years ago (I'm talking about magazines, primarily, which were like blogs on endless reams of shiny paper peppered with advertisements for cigarettes) will show you that the same tired internecine bullshit was hashed out way back when, only the young people were the boomers and the old people are all now dead, just as one day the boomers will all be dead and we the graying youth will take their place and be mocked mercilessly for dicking around with our iPhones and watching My Little Pony and posting to MetaFilter as the economy collapsed and abortion was outlawed by inches and if we were all so great how come we didn't do something about it, huh? I mean, really. None of this is new, at all.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:30 PM on July 11, 2011 [8 favorites]

Wow. Nothing like Metafilter for getting it's Boomer hate on. I'm not a fan of Jong (and as someone pointed out, she'd not even a baby boomer) but what the hell is with the knee-jerk hatred of every one of us born before 1965?
posted by octothorpe at 4:11 PM on July 11, 2011

I think the best thing we can do for them is cut medicare to zero and give them a taste of the Great Depression in their twilight years.

as tempting as that is, some of them are our parents. If I could screw over just the people who got us into this situation without screwing over my parents, I'd do it...

(and, you know, even if This Damn Economy is my parents' fault, which it's not, I'd probably still stick up for them. what with the raising me and all. I appreciate that.)
posted by madcaptenor at 4:12 PM on July 11, 2011

what the hell is with the knee-jerk hatred of every one of us born before 1965

You all exude a faint odor of petrichor, and for some reason this brings me right down.
posted by everichon at 4:18 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

what the hell is with the knee-jerk hatred of every one of us born before 1965?

Never trust anyone over thirty, remember?
posted by verb at 4:39 PM on July 11, 2011

will show you that the same tired internecine bullshit was hashed out way back when, only the young people were the boomers and the old people are all now dead

Yeah, go ahead American young'uns, hate on your parents etc all you want, you'll never touch the glorious heights the boomers achieved in the 1960s while their folks were enthusiastically feeding them into a meatgrinder of war called Vietnam.

Vietnam American war dead by year (1966-70):

1966: 6,143
1967: 11,153
1968: 16,592
1969: 11,616
1970: 6,081

Or as Bruce Springsteen put it in Adam Raised A Cain:

You're born into this life paying,
for the sins of somebody else's past,
Daddy worked his whole life, for nothing but the pain,
Now he walks these empty rooms, looking for something to blame,
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames
posted by philip-random at 4:54 PM on July 11, 2011

As Brujita pointed out, Jong is a war baby (1939-1945) rather than a Boomer. This is a unique and truncated cohort that came at the end of the last Fourth Turning, a period of crisis from 1929 to the end of the war. War babies were born into the culmination of the last crisis. The period of "awakening" (see article) that followed started with the prophecies of the Boomer generation, and is ending with the approach of another Fourth Turning and Crisis phase.

Jong seems more like an insecure exhibitionist (see Fear of Flying) rather than an entitled, confident, Boomer.

Dylan, Lennon and Jagger were also war babies, for instance, and seem (to me) to capture a different mindset from the post-war generations.
posted by psyche7 at 4:56 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think the best thing we can do for them is cut medicare to zero and give them a taste of the Great Depression in their twilight years. --- Even the most draconian of the current proposals to solve the medicare problem don't kick in for 30 years, so the medicare benefits they cut will be ours. But fear not! We'll all be working well into our 90's thanks to them pushing back the retirement age. We'll be so busy greeting the shoppers down at the Walmart, we'll hardly miss it. Enjoy your cat food!
posted by crunchland at 4:59 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dylan, Lennon and Jagger were also war babies, for instance, and seem (to me) to capture a different mindset from the post-war generations.

Can you expand on that? ( I don't know much about the cultural distinction, except the actual distinctions based on birthdate of during the war/post war.)
posted by sweetkid at 5:00 PM on July 11, 2011

Can you expand on that? ( I don't know much about the cultural distinction, except the actual distinctions based on birthdate of during the war/post war.)"

The first of the Boomers were 20 turning the Summer of Love in 67, but they were dropping Acid and listening to music made by the generation before.

Damn cat walked on keyboard and now I canøt punctuate anything ...

Sorry, sweetkid, just my feeling as one myself, that later generations canøt indentify with the fear and uncertainty built in to growing up in the world during those years. Dylan, Lennon and Jagger (Brian Wilson, Hendrix, Clapton, other examples) are the prophets and elder gods of the postwar generations, but they were actually born with a different set of assumptions about life, and in my imagination, at least, this is reflected in their music and why they have functioned as prophets and root sources for popular culture. We wont get fooled again, the Who is all warbabies except for Keith Moon. Led Zep, on the other hand, is all Boomers except for Jimmy Page. Make of this what you will, but weøre here to tell you it can happen again.
posted by psyche7 at 6:01 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Help! Help! Gramma's not gettin' laid!
posted by klangklangston at 6:22 PM on July 11, 2011

Jong was on a US army base in (then) West Germany with her second husband in the late 60's.

In addition to the autobiographical Isadora novels, she has published a piquaresque Georgian novel, a time travel novel in which the character becomes Shylock's daughter and seven volumes of poetry; most of which has been well-received.>


She IS one of my favorites, but I do disagree with her about baby slings.
posted by brujita at 6:24 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

HAVE been
posted by brujita at 6:49 PM on July 11, 2011

After this thread, I'm going to make an agreement with my 13 year-old neice. If I ever start harshing on her generation, she is to kick me repeatedly in the shins until I come to my senses. I figure it's the least I can do for her.
posted by happyroach at 8:13 PM on July 11, 2011

I'm almost 52. My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

I don't represent my generation. Most of them have fun.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:02 PM on July 11, 2011

I don't represent my generation. Most of them have fun.

Maybe it's because they're not in Australia.
posted by brennen at 10:42 PM on July 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Just wait until Jong finds out about planking and "rainbow" parties.
posted by drezdn at 9:00 AM on July 12, 2011

"The teenage fellatio craze exists mainly among adults."

So many conflicting messages.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:10 AM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

teenage fellatio craze

Great band name.
posted by philip-random at 9:14 AM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

teenage fellatio craze

Great band name.

Wouldn't you feel dirty watching them play though?
posted by drezdn at 9:18 AM on July 12, 2011

To add something serious to this post, there's a huge divide between the boomers and the alphabet soup generations. This is definitely not unique in history, but now, the older generations are far more likely to be still around in large numbers trying to stay relevant.

One example of a real life metaphor of the whole situation (and why it got so much traction) was the Jay Leno/Conan fiasco. With Leno as a voice to the boomers and up, when he left Late Night, it felt like Xers and beyond were finally taking the lead. Then Jay Leno wanted his show back.
posted by drezdn at 10:15 AM on July 12, 2011

I'm almost 52. My overall gut take on young people today is that they do seem to lack a degree of careless passion that we all had when I was thirty years younger.

Or, perhaps, they do all their mischief when they're not in the company of 52-year-olds. Just sayin'.
posted by davejay at 10:26 AM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]