Fast forward 545 years, and while a lot of things in the world have changed, male teenagers (or older) wanting to look at naked female flesh, and being willing to pay for that, is still a constant. After Twitch becoming a platform for hot tub streams, now journalists are discovering sexually suggestive content on TikTok. And while that fact didn't surprise me at all, I do find it weird how these subjects are discussed in modern media.

One surprising aspect is looking at sexual content on social media through a very legalistic lens: Does this content violate the rules of the platform? Does it violate the law? Thus the "15-year olds" in the title of the article linked above, because that would violate both TikTok company rules and various child pornography legislation all over the world. But once we made sure that these girls on TikTok are actually 18+ years old (and lying about their age to appear younger), would that really make the situation okay? Imagine parents discovering the sexually suggestive stream of their daughter on social media, would they be okay with it just as long as the girl was at least 18?

The other strange aspect is that journalists feel obliged to characterize the young women involved in this as being victims, and "exploited", or even "forced". Personally I consider myself to be a feminist, and that up to and including the point where I believe that a woman can choose out of her own free will to engage in sex work, and many do so. Some of the young women doing hot tub streams on Twitch made quite a lot of money out of it, with no indication of any external male force involved. Of course some of them also later regretted those decisions, but at the time apparently showing parts of their body online for a lot of money sounded like a good idea. I find it curious that if you compare different forms of illegal trades, the trade in sex assumes that the buyer is the criminal, while the trade in drugs assumes that the seller is. That is probably due to society's inability to admit that in most cases of anything, responsibility is shared, and lies with more than one person or side.

I think that it would be more helpful to regard all "showing of naked flesh for money online" as part of the same business. Is there really such a big difference between a hot tub stream and adult webcam sites? Isn't it all just different shades of grey, with no clear black & white in sight? Then maybe we could progress to a more helpful step, which would be to ask ourselves why taking their shirt off on a stream is better money than working for some women. The financial transaction between the man willing to spend $50 to see something sexually suggestive or explicit, and the woman willing to provide that content for that money, is telling us something about economic inequality (and not just the economic inequality between men and women). But it is also telling us something about the evolution of sexual morals, and how these evolve over time, not always in lockstep with legislation. It says something about society today if every platform on which imagery can be exchanged against money has a porn problem.