THE PRACTICE

The Sexual Liberation Movement aimed for freedom in sexual exploration and experimentation (Escoffier J, 2004). This included normalisation of sex outside of marriage, exploration of one’s sexuality, masturbation, and control over one’s body. The focus on sexual exploration and control over one’s own body is one of the main aspects of this movement that enticed me. Personally, I find putting personal choice over societal norms is a theory that does not bode well with individuals that lives in a conservative country. A country where upholding traditional along with religious beliefs is the norm, especially within the older generations. Therefore, the idea of diverging beliefs within the younger generation is one of the main factors that lead to the creation of this topic.

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Generally, the rise of counterculture is the main contributing factor in creating societal changes as this group goes against the mainstream social values and norms (McIntosh, 2020). These groups presence is prominent during turbulent times. This describes the social and political climate in the United States during the 1960s as this era showed a rise in these groups (McIntosh, 2020). Although the prominence of counterculture in recent times is not as huge as it was before, the creation of the Internet helped in keeping the ideologies fought for alive, regardless good, or bad (Lewis, 2020).

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This leads to one of the Sexual Revolution ideologies, which is the normalisation of pornography (Escoffier J, 2004). Due to digitalisation and the Internet, said ideology is very much alive as pornographic content is now easily available online. Combine this with sexual exploration and control over one’s own body, it shows that there are individuals who feels liberated by doing digital sex-work. Whether or not they were inspired by said ideologies, one cannot deny the impact of the Sexual Revolution Movement as sex-work is one of the main causes that they were fighting for.

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As stated earlier, the Internet is used to keep the ideologies by previous counterculture movements alive. Which is a platform that most people-specifically the younger generation, uses. Personally speaking, the Internet is the reason how I came to learn about this movement and its ideologies. This movement reflects on the western culture of self-liberation and self-expression, which is seen in the Sexual Liberation Movement aim of normalizing sexual expression. Something that is not the norm in a conservative country such as Malaysia. Which is another reason why I created this topic, to know if this self-liberation and expression culture is present in young adults in Malaysia.

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Going back to my main topic, which is How Young Adults in Malaysia view Digital Sex-work, I chose Digital Sex-work as the representative of self-liberation and expression culture as that ultimately reflects the modern-day impact of the Sexual Liberation Movement. This “modern impact” is shown in the questions revolving around porn consumption, views, and support towards digital sex-work. In the animation, I concluded the story by stating that the data gathered shows that the majority is ultimately neutral towards all of this. Which is a mistake in my part for giving an option to choose neutral in my survey. This creates a very unconclusive data as neutrality is similar to no answer at all. In conclusion, my final animation makes it clear that this project aim is to learn about the impact of the Sexual Liberation Movement in modern times.