It's a matter of discipline, learning, and self-awareness that "the west" has only consciously engaged in for about a century, and the Arab world has hardly touched it for centuries.
I'm not sure 'the west' has really engaged in it at all.
We don't handle anarchy any better than anyone else does. Our usual response is to try to package it and sell it, or repress it. One drains the juice out of it - like porn, which is almost exactly but not quite completely unlike real sexuality. The other easily becomes bizarre, as with the proverbial wardrobe malfunction incident, and any number of Republican 'values' senators with exotic sexual histories.
People are still very confused about sexuality, especially in the media. It's okay for Britney not to wear knickers, and makes for good PR copy. But imagine the outrage if George Clooney flashed his genitals while getting out of a limo.
I'm not sure what that says about feminism, or indeed anything much, except that maybe being explicitly sexual is part of the job description for female singers in a way that it isn't quite for male entertainers.
you are the media you consume.
What happened in the 60s is that the media started discussing sex, starting a revolution (of sorts) which took around twenty years to move from pinched disapproval to orgasms during prime time. And it was only last year that you could go to see a non-porn film with non-simulated sex in it. (Very daring, but a little odd considering how much porn there is around. Maybe people went to see it for the acting.) You still can't expect to put on a theatre production with people having real sex in it. You certainly can't start a religion devoted to sexual expression. (Although god knows some of the Osho people have tried.)
If anything now the media are oversexualised - usually for cynical commercial reasons. And there's still not much chance of a prime-time festival of erotica on mainstream TV - especially not in the US, where there's still confusion about the difference between porn and erotica, and a rabid fundie and authoritarian base which is just plain psychotic about sexuality.
We're really not as open as we think we are. When sex appears on TV, it's hardly ever without mixed messages about transgression and naughtiness and/or a commercial angle.
Media sex is rarely generous in the sense of promoting sexuality as something which can be shared in a relaxed and effortless way. It's either being sold, being used to sell, or framed as something that's being used to shock and titillate because talking about it and showing it is oh-so-very edgy.
In fact we'd rather have a public festival devoted to death than to sex.
I understand it, the big change was "the pill". The big period of "sexual liberation" can be (I thought) measured from its introduction to the re-appearance of drug-resistant sexually transmitted bugs of varying nastiness--I suppose the AIDS iceburg was the end of that period. Hey, there's a quote about that.
Hunter S. Thompson - Wikiquote
There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix -- a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get...
(I know it's not quite on topic, but...such great writing!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Doesn't mean everyone will do this, or that your family or some church or the media won't judge you. Or that there are not a lot of sickos out there. But mostly no one "in the west" can be arrested or blacklisted (let alone killed) for challenging old stereotypes about how men and women should comport themselves. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
have the ability to talk openly and frankly about the matter and engage freely exploring and figuring out for ourselves what it means or doesn't mean to be a man or a woman,
This comment isn't aimed at you, but I find it impossible to think about this line of conversation without frowning deeply. There are so many hidden assumptions of doubtful validity lurking here.
</semi-snarky stereotype>
