Individual Sovereignty, Freer Sex and Diminished Privacy: How an Informed and Realistic Modern Sexual Morality Provides Salvation from Unjustified Shame

Abstract

This article explores the effect that increased accessibility to electronically stored information has had on Millennials’ viewpoints regarding sexuality and morality and concludes that the democratized mass dissemination of information has resulted in a radically diminished need for privacy. This controversial perspective is developed through an historical recounting of the means by which traditional morality developed and became a tool of sexist and racial oppression wielded by the dominant class through monopolistic control of the media and mass messaging. Exposure to modern sexual morality through the internet has revealed the fallacy of adherence by most individuals to these traditional norms. The result is an elimination of the feelings of shame felt by those who previously believed themselves to be deviant as they recognize that they are actually part of the norm. Privacy is the doctrine that allows us to control how we are perceived by others. If we keep private that which makes us ashamed, then the current, internet catalyzed, informed sexuality has reduced our need for privacy because it has reduced the things for which we experience shame. Contemporary sexuality, as reflected by Tinder for example, typifies these increasingly informed views of morality, sexuality, shame and ultimately privacy. The associated decrease in the need for privacy results from nothing less than an unprecedented, information based, reconceptualization of sex, sexuality, religion and morality. This altered conception of privacy is ultimately echoed in our jurisprudence, which reflects the shift away from an antiquated morality of higher purposes to a Constitutionally based, age of enlightenment influenced, morality of self-fulfillment.