I got up at 6 in the morning to watch Lady Diana Spencer marry Prince Charles
Sixteen years later, I watched her funeral three times in succession in one day, starting at 4 in the morning (I was up anyway with a baby who didn’t sleep).
I have tried to expain to my daughters the importance of Princess Diana (who was called “Lady Di” for years), insisting that they will never, ever understand both how loved she was but also how well-known she was. Culture is fragmented now in a way that it wasn’t then; we all saw the same media, and Diana dominated all of it.
After my conversation with Kristin Du Mez last week on the Bare Marriage podcast about her book Live, Laugh, Love (I talked about some of the critiques in my Substack last Friday), I’ve been musing more about the differences between Gen X and millennial and Gen Z women, and how we got where we are. And I’d like to talk about a few cultural forces (trends?) that younger people may not truly realize, and that I think got us where we are today in the church.
Gen X had a monoculture
Everybody watched MASH. Everybody watched Mary Tyler Moore. Everybody watched Cheers. Everybody definitely watched The Cosby Show. There were really only three networks, and people had their favourite shows, but we all knew these cultural references. Different generations could all experience the MASH finale at the same time, and talk about it at work and school the next day, and people could all relate.
Because of that it was actually harder to push the super conservative, tradwife type stuff. Sure, it got pushed in fundamentalist churches, but these were the exception. In most churches, the women attending were also watching The Cosby Show, where Clair was a lawyer. They were watching Murphy Brown and they’d watched Mary Tyler Moore. If you were fundamentalist, the only way to keep people from being indoctrinated into equal rights was to tell people they couldn’t watch TV at all.
And some did, and that certainly did produce some fundamentalists. But most people were going to watch TV, and the message from TV in the 70s and 80s was very much about women’s empowerment and racial equality. Girls growing up in the 80s were being taught constantly through media that they were equal; that they could dream big; that the sky was the limit.
Now, certainly there were political movements that were against feminism, but these were largely confined to the political realm (think the fights against the equal rights amendment). The same people fighting against the ERA had daughters watching shows like Moonlighting or Who’s the Boss where a woman was the boss.
And so women in evangelical churches in the 80s were often more exposed to egalitarian ideas than they are today.
Today people can be culturally indoctrinated into tradwife culture in a way they couldn’t before
As media has fragmented, and especially since the rise of social media, we don’t have a monoculture anymore. People can be pushed into subcultures, and then spend their entire life in subcultures. So Gen X women may have grown up in churches and loved Jesus, but also were taught by culture that women were equal. This wasn’t ever a case we had to explicitly make; it was baked into the culture.
So we took our sons and daughters to church, expecting them to have the same experiences we did. You love Jesus, but you also believe that women are equal. And many midlife women are taken by surprise when their kids, or the friends of their kids, turn out to be so sexist. Because older women could co-exist in church spaces and not be sexist; we didn’t really realize how life has changed for younger women.
(Caveat: I realize that many Gen X women are heavily conservative; this appears to be more of an American phenomenon than elsewhere, and even in the U.S., it appears to be focused in certain regions).
Sexual content in media was WILD for Gen X
While we had television teaching about equal rights, those rights really were only about the workplace.
When it came to sex, the sexual content in stuff was WILD, and so, so much more explicit than anything you’d see today. I think there’s this assumption that sexually there’s this trajectory where everything is always getting more explicit and worse, but that’s actually not the case. What’s happened today is that the graphic sexual content has largely been confined to certain areas of media (think HBO shows or porn), while with Gen X it was far more ubiquitous.
The teenage movies we had almost all had nudity in them. Almost without exception. You couldn’t watch a movie aimed at teens without seeing toplessness. Boobs were everywhere. We had big movies that were all about how to get girls into bed, like this was the main aim. We had Revenge of the Nerds (lots of boobs on display in that one too!). All the big action movies had gratuitous nudity too. Seriously, you couldn’t get away from it.
One of the most fun parts of being a mom to Millennials & Gen Z (my daughter Katie bridges those generations) was the AMAZING movies for teens that we didn’t have. Hunger Games? Pirates of the Caribbean? Even all the Jane Austen adaptations! We didn’t have that for Gen X.
And then there’s the coming of age movies and books that we all devoured, that looking back were seriously creepy. Thornbirds, where a priest basically ruins a girl’s life starting when she’s 10, and it’s supposed to be romantic? Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields, where it’s all about these kids who get shipwrecked and discover their sexuality? And don’t forget the Flowers in the Attic books (how did anyone ever think that was a good idea?).
Yes, there’s lots of sexual content available for young people today, but it’s in places where the point of it is the sexual content. For Gen X, you saw sexual content when you just wanted to see a movie.
And I just wonder how formative that was. So many of the gross guys talking about sex in the pulpit today grew up on those movies as teens. They watched Revenge of the Nerds. They didn’t see epic movies like Lord of the Rings until they were older; the formative stuff was all about sex.
Parenting was quite hands off
Boomer parents simply weren’t that involved. Even the stay at home moms. I’ve seen time studies that show that today’s working moms spend more time each day interacting with their kids than stay at home moms did a generation ago. When we grew up, the idea was that you played on your own and largely left your parents alone (this is not a commentary on my own mom who read to me a ton and coloured with me and took me to parks!).
But as teens most of us had part-time jobs, something that isn’t as prevalent for teens today. We travelled the city by ourselves, those of us who lived with public transit. We looked after ourselves after school, earned our own money, and were quite independent much earlier, because we could afford to be in a way that is not as true today.
And so Gen X relied on peer groups and culture far more than other generations have.
Gen X kids growing up resembled each other more than Gen Z or Millennial kids growing up. Today there’s such a gap between those raised by involved parents and those not; between those with money and those without; between families that have rules about screens and those who don’t. So we have much more defined subcultures and stratification than we did in my generation.
What does this mean about church culture today?
Putting all of this together, here are just a few thoughts I have about conservative evangelical church culture today, where Gen X pastors make up the majority of the pastorship:
- Pastors are more likely to assume their experiences are the norm. They grew up in a monoculture, and so they assume that those in the pews will also see things the same way they do. That’s why so many pastors are so thrown when younger people especially reject the stuff they teach because they find it not true to reality. There only is ONE reality, after all!
- Pastors are primed to see gratuitous sex content as not that big a deal. Our generation grew up with the objectification of women everywhere. Even as women made progress in the workplace, the sexual objectification intensified. So to sexually objectify women seems normal, and women complaining about it makes them seem like prudes. Certainly men can complain about how women dress; but for women to complain about being sexualized seems like women complaining against the nature of things.
- Pastors are more likely to see social media and other forms of media as a threat to their dominance. The idea of multiple ideas competing for attention is not normal for our generation, and shutting it down seems like the best course of action. And so railing against social media and trying to control the media people watch and listen to will be an increasing part of their efforts.
- Pastors are more likely to point to women as the problem with society. When we were growing up, sure women had more opportunities, but men still had their dinner made for them. They weren’t expected to change diapers or interact much with the kids. So pastors saw both women work and do everything at home, largely without compaining or making a big issue out of it. As women start to speak up about how unfairly they’re treated, it seems as if women are just being selfish, and aren’t strong like women of the past. What they may fail to see is that even though 1970s and 1980s culture opened up the workplace, everything else remained the same. And women have always been overworked and tired.
I do believe that millennials and Gen Z will change the church–by splitting it
Millennials and Gen Zs are far more comfortable with the idea that there are multiple competing worldviews or opinions on things, and far more comfortable finding their own tribe, rather than trying to fit together with people who believe all different things.
Gen X and Boomers tried to paper over problems; millennials and Gen Z are more likely to call them out in the open, and say that they need to live with authenticity.
For the church, that will likely mean a splitting that will increase in momentum. I do believe that while previous church splits have largely been over doctrinal issues, future ones will be more over power and justice. Churches that believe all different things about baptism and the Holy Spirit will cling together based on whether or not they see Christianity as a way love others or as a way to cement power over others. Right now those two groups co-exist in churches and denominations; it’s not likely they will in the future.
We’ll likely see Western Christianity fracture even more, but hopefully out of that fracturing something else will come that will focus more on Jesus and not on preserving culture or power.
I don’t think Gen X can lead that. I think millennials and Gen Z can. And I’m excited to see what they do!
What do you think are the big differences between Gen X and millenials? How do you think this will influence the church? Let’s talk in the comments!
That’s very interesting. That would explain why my adult kids definitely see things as more black and white. Why they are so quick to call things out. Also why there are so many different ‘groups’ of beliefs. This monoculture that we had. It is difficult to understand today’s world. How people get sucked into believing one thing over another. But if that is what your feed gives them, repetition reinforcing that belief. Good explanation. Thanks.
I once again find myself wanting to share my thoughts because I at once deeply relate and can share some of those experiences but also I live in a time thst feels radically different from the world you gre up in and I have opinions.
So I am a conservative guy. Politically and theologically I am a conservative guy. So are my grandparents who were a huge influence on me.
You brought up the finale of M.A.S.H and I know it. I have seen it with my grandparents. We talk and watch shows together all the time.
I once remarked watching Columbo with them that the idea of somebody just going on a plane with a gun is wild to me.
I also find it interesting thst a lot of near thirty year old like me are watching older shows ir reboots of older shows. I think I do it because I hate a lot of modern shows and how they handle characters I grew up with.
The recent show Lanterns come to mind because that show bastardizes Green Lantern. It is to busy thinking it is brilliant and living out weird fantasies of owning conservative guys that it fails to even ask what Green Lantern is even meant to be.
I often feel reading snd watching your stuff like I can walk and chew gum.
On the one hand you have taught me so much and I have grown as a person because of you.
On the other sometimes I feel like I am being lumped in with folks like Driscoll and I go look I am a conservative guy. I am a guy who can not stand Marxist nonsense. But I also dont like people bullying women making them feel unsafe because I grew up with that.
I can look at films like Americsn Pie and Revenge of the Nerds and go oh wait that is sexual assault while also looking at folks like Anita Sarkeesian and thinking maam do you have any idea how dumb you sound trying to tell me and also tons of women that they are bad people for looking at a charactervlike Bayobetta and going damn that lady is hype this game is fun?
I got into it a bit about the art episode because I was like ok I see the point she was making but also paintings like The Birth of zmVenus are beautiful though. I looked and thought yeah I can understand why it can feel dehumanizing to be desired but I also went but everyone wants to feel like they are fascinating and wonderful.
I would honestly love to see talk to folks like Inspiringphilosophy again.
I also want to help you better understand what men are going through because well I want to feel understood in much the same way you have helped me better understand women.
Codec,
Apologies for the short response, but I’m quite pressed for time—may I ask what you mean by “conservative”? Just want to make sure we’re on the same page about our definitions! Different people mean wildly different things by that word, I find.
I personally consider myself to be rather left-leaning politically, but that’s because I feel strongly that the role of government is to care for the people, and that welfare programs and the like are the best way we have to go about that currently.
Now that being said! My political views, whether I consider myself “left” or “liberal” or “marxist” or whatever, my views are founded first and foremost in my vow to love my neighbor and follow Christ’s example.
And naturally, I assume your views are founded on the same! So I wanted to assure you of this, at least: Please don’t feel too isolated, although the two of us may have different ideas about how best to accomplish it, I very strongly suspect that we both want people to be safe and healthy. Life, liberty,and the pursuit of happiness for all!
And therefore, regardless of what you call yourself, I consider us allies in the effort to make the world a better place, even more so with your openness and willingness to engage in conversations like these!
Regarding Bayonetta too, I think there’s a middle ground. Like you said, we can walk and chew gum! I can go “Aw heck yeah, cool witch lady!” and also acknowledge “Bayonetta did not choose her own character design, an artist chose to make her like that for a reason.” Holding both of those thoughts in my head and chewing on them both greatly enriches my experience!
Codec, I so appreciate your long and thoughtful comments. I don’t know that I can adequately respond. Maybe because I am now a lot older than you, I can’t understand your context as well as others might do. But let me make two comments, which your comment has made me think of.
First, in terms of your being conservative, I think — and this is a new thought, so I’m tentative about it, and I think I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here — that there is an important distinction between principles and politics, between values and theology, between what we hold as goals and what we think of as the best way to achieve them. For example, standing against the bullying of women (or of anybody) is a principle, a value. How best to protect people from bullying — does one support complementarianism because it promises to protect women, or does one espouse egalitarianism because one sees that as the best road to safety for women? Or, as another example, do we all agree that Christ calls us to care for the poor, but some of us see government-sponsored welfare (is that what you would see as Marxism?) as the best way to do that whereas others (usually Conservatives) believe that removing government props like welfare builds independence and results in more people escaping poverty? Being against oppression and poverty are values. They speak to one’s character. Having an opinion about the best way to achieve those goals, that’s politics or theology. And those kinds of debates are what politics is for, but I don’t think they define us in the same way that our values define our character. Values are where we can, ideally, come together in unity and mutual respect, even as we disagree about the best means to serve those values. And those political or theological beliefs (unlike values?) ought to be open to revision when confronted either with persuasive arguments or irrefutable data. They can and do change. I hope that values are less changeable. And being conservative or liberal is a description of one’s politics more than of one’s values.
Second, I sympathize to an extent with your reluctance to categorize art, perhaps because I too love *The Birth of Venus* and have always found it incredibly beautiful. But surely a work of art can be beautiful and deeply moving and yet we can still say, “Oh yeah, I never realized how many paintings portray women as objects of desire, and this is one of them.” It is not necessarily a criticism, merely an observation.
And you’re absolutely right. I think most of us want to be desired — but for ourselves, for everything that we are, not merely for our bodies. As you put it, we want to be thought of as fascinating and wonderful. And that goes way beyond our being merely a collection of body parts. We want the person we love to want US, no substitutes possible. Now, I haven’t (yet) read the book in question, but I wonder, is the author suggesting that desire is bad? Or is she simply pointing out how many more works of art portray women as objects of desire than portray men as objects of desire — which they certainly can be, just as much as women can be? Is her point that women, in art, have far fewer roles they can enact than men do when portrayed in art, and that this is limiting and gives a false and incomplete picture of what it is to be a woman? In other words, maybe I enjoy being an object of desire, depending on who is desiring me and for what reasons, but it would be nice to be recognized as also being so many other things? Not to be typecast? Or — and I think this likely — is the author’s point that such portrayals, if they focus only on impersonal desire (“I don’t know who you are and I don’t care, but I want your body”), really are dehumanizing to the person being locked into that objectified position, whether the person is male or female?
Anyway, I don’t know whether or not these reflections will resonate with you. I may have missed your main concerns. But thank you for getting me thinking. I enjoyed it.
Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I appreciate them. My values are very much ones based on the ideas of becoming a responsible person of the value of work and industriousness and that being charitable is less about handouts which is almsgiving which yes is a good thing and I work with the homeless but charity to me is more about seeking out what might truly help your fellow man. In that way I think that things like literacy and helping people learn to take care of themselves is in fact one of the most charitable things mankind can do for its fellow man. I am more egalitarian because I see partnerships between men and women as something beautiful. I can walk and chew gum. I can understand that calls to repeal the nineteenth amendment are ultimately reactions to radicals. I look at that prospect and realistically I go yeah repealing the nineteenth amendment will not help it would only punish women who haven’t done anything. I can say that while also saying that women who espouse misandry are doing a massive disservice to humanity as a whole. I can also say that I think that Every Man’s Battle is setting up men to fail because I have lived it. I can look at Miss Du Mez and I can go you are a historian you know more than me about history while also pushing back saying that people like Billy Graham did a lot of good for the world and for Jesus while also being like his son should stop harassing that Nagmeh lady. I can look at that art lady and go wow I don’t know a lot about history and this video taught me about some cool art and about different things going on at different times in history while also going ok hold on I really don’t want to see a world without paintings like the Birth of Venus or without the artistic motifs you see expressed in stories I love like Macross or the Princess Bride. I can understand how the pornagraphic style of relating is a genuine problem while also saying that acting like men finding women amazing and even somewhat scary shouldn’t be shamed and that women shouldn’t be attacked for wanting to feel beautiful any more than men should be shamed for wanting to be capable. I hope this helps folks better understand what all I mean.
I don’t think my first comments will be approved so here. Men shouldn’t be attacked for wanting to feel beautiful and dress as revealing as women do to like how you look in it and feel more comfortable. There are men like me who hate that the admiration of beauty and being visually desired so often has been one sided for women and more things encouraged for women to look very attractive, and not only not be encouraged for men, but shane is for the same things. An example is women having gotten acceptence decades ago to dress revealing shame free, while the opposite mentality was turned on men by the 90’s.
“You couldn’t watch a movie aimed at teens without seeing toplessness. Boobs were everywhere.”
“Mama Moofkie’s Magic Milk Dispensers”, floating weightless in front of the torso they were theoretically attached to.
(Close to 40 years in or adjacent to Furry Fandom exposes you to a LOT of Ridiculous Fantasy Anatomy.)
In the words of the prophets the Holy Modal Rounders (a regular on Dr Demento throughout that period):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxqcJEkG_jk
It is also worth noting that back then, there wasn’t a PG 13 rating back then. It wasn’t until stuff like Gremlins and the like where they created PG 13 as a middle ground.
It is also the reason why they made E10 for video games around the late 2000s. You can thank stuff like Smash Melee for that who was rated T due to the better graphics despite the fact the gameplay was no different than Smash 64 before it. I remember having to fight my mom to get me to buy Smash Melee. I had to rent it to show her it was no different than 64.
Indiana Jones and Gremlins did indeed help to create PG 13 as a rating. The fact that Smash Melee caused you that kind of trouble is wild to me.
Yeah it’s because my mom had a rule of “no T rated games until you turn 13” and the the with Smash Melee was that because the graphics were more realistic, it got a T rating when it shouldn’t have even though Smash 64 got an E
Honestly my mother was pretty strict with stuff but that still didn’t stop me from basically living a double life online doing things I wasn’t supposed to
Very relatable honestly. I like that folks here think I am a good guy. I try to be.
Codec,
Fwiw, I’m an older woman who has read your contributions here for a good while and though much of the gaming references go over my head, I have seen your honesty about your struggles and seen that your heart is in a good place. You acknowledge the damage that has been done to women in some church spaces, and you strive to improve upon that. You have been hurt as well by these toxic spaces.
You are striving to be a part of the solution, and you will do that imperfectly. As will I. As will Sheila, and everyone else who tries- because we are human. But you are trying and that is admirable.
I Samuel 16:7
Romans 7:15-25
II Corinthians 12:9
Phillippians 4:8
And as a literacy center volunteer, I love your view of helping others learn to help themselves. 😀
“Indiana Jones and Gremlins did indeed help to create PG 13 as a rating.”
“Indiana Jones” as in the original “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or as in the first sequel “The Temple of Splatter”?
The first was classic Thirties-style Pulp Adventure with the first new original Pulp Hero in decades.
The sequel was a Splatter flick, pure and simple.
I’m around your age, so thanks for the walk down memory lane. I agree with the monoculture vs. super-specific subcultures determined by algorithms.
With the books, it’s true that lots of them, especially those that girls read, were more explicit. On the other hand, they also tended to show things from a female perspective, and have a plot that involved more than just sex. Some of it was problematic, where it didn’t always make it clear that grooming was a problem, but in other cases it was pretty clear that things being depicted were bad (like Meg in The Thornbirds being raped on her wedding night, although the book doesn’t use that word). Today, it seems that there is often a wider divide between books/movies, which don’t have sex, and porn, which only has sex and usually depicts it in a pretty dehumanizing way, and rarely from a female POV. In the 1980s, a teen girl could read her mother’s Judith Krantz novel and read about a heroine who runs a business or flies planes or fights Nazis, and also happens to have great sex.
Oh, gosh, I remember Judith Krantz!
As a latter end Gen X’er, I completely agree with this. My husband is 9 years older than I am and MUCH more stuck in his ways. oh, how I hate it!!!!! It has made life pretty difficult this last year since accidentally deconstructing from my political views (former MAGA here…I’m sorry). He is still very much all in. He listens to people like Josh Howerton…oh my freaking gosh….
He just doesn’t want to learn or evolve. He says he’s solid. I say he’s stagnant.
I was born around the beginning of Gen Z. My parents were born right at the tail end of the Baby Boom, so culturally they were quite similar to Gen X. I found your post very helpful in understanding their point of view, as I’ve never seen all the cultural factors spelled out like this. In particular, it seems that the sex saturation that Gen X experienced likely contributed to the purity culture I grew up with. Purity culture’s seemingly contradictory sex obsession + sex revulsion is easier to understand when considered in that light.
Late-period Boomers are very different from early-period Boomers; so different that some Generational Analysis splits them off into a separate “Generation Jones”, a transition between Boomer and Gen-Xer incorporating characteristics of both.
Here’s a YouTube video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjBMW2ZNwOo
“Purity culture’s seemingly contradictory sex obsession + sex revulsion is easier to understand when considered in that light.”
A rock-slam reaction to what came before.
I’m Late-period Boomer, and I know the Sexual Revolution and its aftermath messed my head up.
70-year-old male virgin, InCel in the original definition of the word.
The Sexual Revolution and its aftermath destroyed my ability to trust women or see them as capable of virtue or trust. It’s the reason I moon over Furry art; I can see a woman as worthy of trust only if she is visibly NOT human.
Line from an unpublished (and probably unpublishable) novelette of mine, an exchange between two paravulpine non-humans whose species mate for life:
“Have you considered a human-vixen? They think we’re ‘cute’.”
“Have you ever seen their erotica? They rut like animals – no pair-bonding whatsoever!”