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The US obsession with sex (both positive and negative) is something else. Here in Europe, sex is a normal part of human life. Not a center of everything, nor a

The US obsession with sex (both positive and negative) is something else. Here in Europe, sex is a normal part of human life. Not a center of everything, nor a sin to be avoided. Sex art is normal. Sex games are fine. There are no moral crusaders here, because sex is moral. We tell sex jokes at work and nobody faints. We are constantly perplexed why American culture is so different from other Western cultures in that regard. People keep saying "Puritans" like it answers all questions, but Puritans were hundreds of years ago. We had our own share of people with peculiar attitudes back then. Today is 2025, not 1785.

Jimerty 1y ago
>Here in Europe No, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, stop treating it as such, stop saying here in Europe or European here. You'd get annoyed if a yank generalised all of europe with a not take so don't do it yourself. State what country/countries you're talking about because social attitudes and norms vary massively across this continent!
- atemerev 1y ago
  They sure do, just like there are different states in the US with vastly different attitudes to life and everything. And yet, you can take an averaged vector of all US states and all European countries and meaningfully compare those. Or extract some things that are common through all Europe as compared through all US. I had a privilege of living for some time in Italy, Denmark, Spain and Switzerland (I still live in Switzerland). They are all really different, and yet there is something common compared to the US.
- louthy 1y ago
  Of course, it doesn't help anyone to generalise. Europe has a wide demographic. But, one thing that doesn't happen is its attitude to sex affecting worldwide commerce or other worldwide issues. Here in the UK religion and sex are not part of the national conversation. A politician mentioning their love of god would seem weird to us. The only way it enters the national conversation are when right-wing religious zealots, from the US, try to affect our laws: I'm thinking of abortion laws and trans rights. These are entirely imported issues from US religious hangups. It's quite tedious, because mostly we were on a path of reasonable discourse with relation to sex, sexuality, relationships (marriage), etc. but with the advent of social media you see pockets of society being dragged into it. I have friends in much of Europe (Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Greece) and have travelled to those destinations extensively. I still can't speak for all of Europe, but I think when it comes to sex and religion we're kinda similar. The only one that stands out to me was the Greek Orthodox church used to have an out-sized role, but even that doesn't seem to be the case any more (I just came back from visiting friends in Greece a few weeks back and we discussed this). So whilst we can't say all of Europe is the same, we can say that it's not causing global problems due to its sexual and religious hangups.
  - ses1984 1y ago
    Religion is a factor in Polish politics.
    - throwaway2037 1y ago
      Absolutely. Italy too. I think a better way to phrase it: There are many countries in Europe where a right wing party uses the rise of Islam due to immigrants as a political issue.
  - ChickeNES 1y ago
    Yeah when I went to the UK and tried to view adult content using a prepaid SIM, it was blocked and required verifying that I was an adult, and this was done at the ISP level. And I know for a fact that the UK has much stricter limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as well. What gives with people claiming it's just the US?
    - louthy 1y ago
      > required verifying that I was an adult Log in to your account and toggle the “I want porn” option? It’s annoying, but not onerous. > And I know for a fact that the UK has much stricter limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as well. I know what you’re referring to, but don’t know the full details. I believe it’s around violent porn (rape, etc). We certainly have a “think of the children” brigade. I still think the discourse is significantly more civilised than that of the US, which feels like it’s approaching virtual civil war levels. When these subjects are debated, it's usually in parliament and doesn't turn into some societal ideological divide. I think some of the policies you mention are more artefacts of the politicians not understanding the technological future we’re in, rather than ideology. Many of them think they can make the internet a safe space for kids through policy. It’s naive, for sure, but usually not dogmatic. > What gives with people claiming it's just the US? It’s not just the US, but when the people standing outside of UK abortion clinics harassing women are funded by US ‘pro life’ religious groups then you know there’s a problem. Puritanism is a US export. The vitriolic political divisions in the US, which leads to all sorts of fringe issues becoming mainstream (trans rights, for example), is leaking out into the rest of the western democracies, poisoning the debate everywhere. The Visa issue is just one more of these puritanical US exports.
- coffee_am 1y ago
  Of course one can generalize using the colloquial "Here in Europe". And generalization is useful -- one cannot go into all the complexity and details all the time, at some point one has to summarize/generalize an argument. Yes, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, but there is a large fraction that is less sex focused, it's a fair generalization and comment to express that.
- Keyframe 1y ago
  Eh? Not really. There's a gradient between North and South and East and West, and then there's UK, but some things are more or less in-common. What GP is saying is one of those things.
0dayz 1y ago
It's due to the difference in Christian values, the US has a hard on for believing that ignorance is a virtue when it comes to sin or adult topics. Like for instance the outrage if you have a sign on your lawn stating that x president is a rapist to the economy, people will say that children should not be "exposed" to such words.
louthy 1y ago
> People keep saying "Puritans" like it answers all questions, but Puritans were hundreds of years ago. We had our own share of people with peculiar attitudes back then. We literally had Puritans in Europe [1] ” The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant.[1] Puritanism played a significant role in English and early American history, especially in the Protectorate in Great Britain, and the earlier settlement of New England.” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
- saghm 1y ago
  Yeah, and then most of them left and came here, which the article cites as having caused a "radical" divergence: > Almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the Act of Uniformity 1662. Many continued to practise their faith in nonconformist denominations, especially in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches.[2] The nature of the Puritan movement in England changed radically. In New England, it retained its character for a longer period. It's not crazy to think that this could have had an outsized influence on the US given how influential New England was in the early days. Even 120-130 years after the point that the quoted section mentions, when the colonies were transitioning into what's now the United States, close to a third of them were part of New England.
  - pqtyw 1y ago
    > Church of England Doesn't mean that continental Europe wasn't full of puritanical nutjobs. Calvin himself ran a dystopian theocratic state\hellhole in Geneva yet hardly anyone references that when talking about conservativism in Switzerland. > Even 120-130 years after the point There was a significant generational backlash towards puritanism and a push towards pluralism/secularism by the late 1700s. IMHO Second/Third "Great Awakenings" had a much bigger impact than a handful of Puritans inhabiting New England in the 1600s.
    - 1y ago
jibe 1y ago
This boycott was run by Collective Shout, an Australian non-profit. They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were targeting rape, incest, and child abuse.
- actualwitch 1y ago
  Its ridiculous that your comment that has factual information is downvoted while on top of you there's a bunch of comments going on random tangents not based at all on reality.
  - hegstal 1y ago
    One of the games they are also going after is Detroit: Become Human, and they have gone after things like GTA in the past. Just because they claim they are going after things for those reasons doesn't mean that's actually an accurate claim as to what they are trying to go after. Though it's good to point out who is actually (supposedly) responsible.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  > They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were targeting rape, incest, and child abuse. https://www.collectiveshout.org/campaigns https://www.collectiveshout.org/campaigns includes a number of campaigns against porn in general, so yes, they absolutely are targeting all sex games - simulated rape, incest, and child abuse are merely their first victory.
cess11 1y ago
The US is largely theocratic and has in part because of this managed to resist socialism and other forms of scientific governance to a much larger degree. Using religious leaders as power brokers is a clever strategy, they'll never budge due to the better argument or scientific reason, hence making it almost impossible for non-violent progressive movements to having an effect at the macro level.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Are you sure it’s a good thing to be so small minded that reason won’t reach you, just because you happened to avoid those big ideas that turned out to not work?
- Geee 1y ago
  Lmao. Socialism is pseudo-scientific bollocks, like flat earth theory.
  - alphager 1y ago
    My healthcare, pension and workers protection proves you wrong.
    - EddieSpeaks 1y ago
      [dead]
  - fortyseven 1y ago
    Any not just pull off the bandaid and tell us you don't really understand what socialism is.
mango7283 1y ago
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-Valve-to-kick-out-porn-games-10492840.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-V... Please explain. "In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that were labeled as “adult” and did not have an age rating. To be able to offer them, the US company would have to integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam in Germany. Because Valve has not yet implemented such a system, sex games remain blocked in Germany. "
- atemerev 1y ago
  Hm. Okay, you are right. Worse than I thought.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Jimerty 1y ago

>Here in Europe No, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, stop treating it as such, stop saying here in Europe or European here. You'd get annoyed if a yank generalised all of europe with a not take so don't do it yourself. State what country/countries you're talking about because social attitudes and norms vary massively across this continent!

atemerev 1y ago
They sure do, just like there are different states in the US with vastly different attitudes to life and everything. And yet, you can take an averaged vector of all US states and all European countries and meaningfully compare those. Or extract some things that are common through all Europe as compared through all US. I had a privilege of living for some time in Italy, Denmark, Spain and Switzerland (I still live in Switzerland). They are all really different, and yet there is something common compared to the US.
louthy 1y ago
Of course, it doesn't help anyone to generalise. Europe has a wide demographic. But, one thing that doesn't happen is its attitude to sex affecting worldwide commerce or other worldwide issues. Here in the UK religion and sex are not part of the national conversation. A politician mentioning their love of god would seem weird to us. The only way it enters the national conversation are when right-wing religious zealots, from the US, try to affect our laws: I'm thinking of abortion laws and trans rights. These are entirely imported issues from US religious hangups. It's quite tedious, because mostly we were on a path of reasonable discourse with relation to sex, sexuality, relationships (marriage), etc. but with the advent of social media you see pockets of society being dragged into it. I have friends in much of Europe (Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Greece) and have travelled to those destinations extensively. I still can't speak for all of Europe, but I think when it comes to sex and religion we're kinda similar. The only one that stands out to me was the Greek Orthodox church used to have an out-sized role, but even that doesn't seem to be the case any more (I just came back from visiting friends in Greece a few weeks back and we discussed this). So whilst we can't say all of Europe is the same, we can say that it's not causing global problems due to its sexual and religious hangups.
- ses1984 1y ago
  Religion is a factor in Polish politics.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    Absolutely. Italy too. I think a better way to phrase it: There are many countries in Europe where a right wing party uses the rise of Islam due to immigrants as a political issue.
- ChickeNES 1y ago
  Yeah when I went to the UK and tried to view adult content using a prepaid SIM, it was blocked and required verifying that I was an adult, and this was done at the ISP level. And I know for a fact that the UK has much stricter limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as well. What gives with people claiming it's just the US?
  - louthy 1y ago
    > required verifying that I was an adult Log in to your account and toggle the “I want porn” option? It’s annoying, but not onerous. > And I know for a fact that the UK has much stricter limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as well. I know what you’re referring to, but don’t know the full details. I believe it’s around violent porn (rape, etc). We certainly have a “think of the children” brigade. I still think the discourse is significantly more civilised than that of the US, which feels like it’s approaching virtual civil war levels. When these subjects are debated, it's usually in parliament and doesn't turn into some societal ideological divide. I think some of the policies you mention are more artefacts of the politicians not understanding the technological future we’re in, rather than ideology. Many of them think they can make the internet a safe space for kids through policy. It’s naive, for sure, but usually not dogmatic. > What gives with people claiming it's just the US? It’s not just the US, but when the people standing outside of UK abortion clinics harassing women are funded by US ‘pro life’ religious groups then you know there’s a problem. Puritanism is a US export. The vitriolic political divisions in the US, which leads to all sorts of fringe issues becoming mainstream (trans rights, for example), is leaking out into the rest of the western democracies, poisoning the debate everywhere. The Visa issue is just one more of these puritanical US exports.
coffee_am 1y ago
Of course one can generalize using the colloquial "Here in Europe". And generalization is useful -- one cannot go into all the complexity and details all the time, at some point one has to summarize/generalize an argument. Yes, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, but there is a large fraction that is less sex focused, it's a fair generalization and comment to express that.
Keyframe 1y ago
Eh? Not really. There's a gradient between North and South and East and West, and then there's UK, but some things are more or less in-common. What GP is saying is one of those things.

0dayz 1y ago

It's due to the difference in Christian values, the US has a hard on for believing that ignorance is a virtue when it comes to sin or adult topics. Like for instance the outrage if you have a sign on your lawn stating that x president is a rapist to the economy, people will say that children should not be "exposed" to such words.

louthy 1y ago

> People keep saying "Puritans" like it answers all questions, but Puritans were hundreds of years ago. We had our own share of people with peculiar attitudes back then. We literally had Puritans in Europe [1] ” The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant.[1] Puritanism played a significant role in English and early American history, especially in the Protectorate in Great Britain, and the earlier settlement of New England.” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans

saghm 1y ago
Yeah, and then most of them left and came here, which the article cites as having caused a "radical" divergence: > Almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the Act of Uniformity 1662. Many continued to practise their faith in nonconformist denominations, especially in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches.[2] The nature of the Puritan movement in England changed radically. In New England, it retained its character for a longer period. It's not crazy to think that this could have had an outsized influence on the US given how influential New England was in the early days. Even 120-130 years after the point that the quoted section mentions, when the colonies were transitioning into what's now the United States, close to a third of them were part of New England.
- pqtyw 1y ago
  > Church of England Doesn't mean that continental Europe wasn't full of puritanical nutjobs. Calvin himself ran a dystopian theocratic state\hellhole in Geneva yet hardly anyone references that when talking about conservativism in Switzerland. > Even 120-130 years after the point There was a significant generational backlash towards puritanism and a push towards pluralism/secularism by the late 1700s. IMHO Second/Third "Great Awakenings" had a much bigger impact than a handful of Puritans inhabiting New England in the 1600s.
  - 1y ago

jibe 1y ago

This boycott was run by Collective Shout, an Australian non-profit. They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were targeting rape, incest, and child abuse.

actualwitch 1y ago
Its ridiculous that your comment that has factual information is downvoted while on top of you there's a bunch of comments going on random tangents not based at all on reality.
- hegstal 1y ago
  One of the games they are also going after is Detroit: Become Human, and they have gone after things like GTA in the past. Just because they claim they are going after things for those reasons doesn't mean that's actually an accurate claim as to what they are trying to go after. Though it's good to point out who is actually (supposedly) responsible.
like_any_other 1y ago
> They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were targeting rape, incest, and child abuse. https://www.collectiveshout.org/campaigns https://www.collectiveshout.org/campaigns includes a number of campaigns against porn in general, so yes, they absolutely are targeting all sex games - simulated rape, incest, and child abuse are merely their first victory.

cess11 1y ago

The US is largely theocratic and has in part because of this managed to resist socialism and other forms of scientific governance to a much larger degree. Using religious leaders as power brokers is a clever strategy, they'll never budge due to the better argument or scientific reason, hence making it almost impossible for non-violent progressive movements to having an effect at the macro level.

9dev 1y ago
Are you sure it’s a good thing to be so small minded that reason won’t reach you, just because you happened to avoid those big ideas that turned out to not work?
Geee 1y ago
Lmao. Socialism is pseudo-scientific bollocks, like flat earth theory.
- alphager 1y ago
  My healthcare, pension and workers protection proves you wrong.
  - EddieSpeaks 1y ago
    [dead]
- fortyseven 1y ago
  Any not just pull off the bandaid and tell us you don't really understand what socialism is.

mango7283 1y ago

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-Valve-to-kick-out-porn-games-10492840.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-V... Please explain. "In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that were labeled as “adult” and did not have an age rating. To be able to offer them, the US company would have to integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam in Germany. Because Valve has not yet implemented such a system, sex games remain blocked in Germany. "

atemerev 1y ago
Hm. Okay, you are right. Worse than I thought.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]