I’m listening to the recent episode of Gia Milinovich’s podcast (The Cluster F Theory) where she and her co-host are discussing Sarah Ditum’s book Toxic with the author. They’re discussing the idea of cultural poisoning and how the internet has affected culture over the last 2 decades.
One of the theories Ditum has proffered is that because of the toxic gossip blog culture of the early 00s, the idea of slut-shaming or shaming people for inherent characteristics like sexuality wasn’t seen as a morally negative issue 20 years ago but is now considered morally repugnant because of what happened to so many (mostly) female celebrities. Her thesis is that, in strong reaction to the internet LIbertarian free for all that was the early social web, people have changed their views on what is acceptable social behaviour and now there is a new high-status moral standard that claims to be highly empathic.
I’m thinking that this new moral standard is actually, in some ways, less moral than attitudes of the past on certain issues (like sexuality) and is instead more censorious about negative public discussion of these issues that were considered immoral behaviour in the past e.g. the push to make kink shaming seem bad.
I think, Ditum’s description of social mores changing radically because of the internet also works on this issue as well: in an academia that wants to follow the current high status social mores, particularly around sexuality, this has effectively benefitted groups like paedophiles who are now busy promoting the idea via research (and in groups online) that they are being unfairly stigmatised for an ‘inherent’ characteristic. And academics are also, via sympathetic framing of research subjects, following another new ‘moral’ development, that has arisen in recent years, i.e working towards shaming people who criticise what they see as an ‘unfairly stigmatised’ group.