This is a war that has raged within Western culture for centuries. What I learned from writing The Pleasure Principle is that popular culture is often the embodiment and the central form that pleasure takes in everyday life and as such as a threat to those people in power who have made it their job to regulated and control pleasure and sex. More important, I also discovered that our desire and quest for pleasure in particular sexual pleasure is at the root of our desire for personal and social freedom and that freedom without pleasure is no freedom at all. Pee-Wee Herman made so many adults uncomfortable, they were glad when his creator was arrested. With the rise of gay culture came the idea that men could be sexy too.
Visibility leads to freedom, but it also leads to backlash.