Honestly this article is pretty bizarre. It seems to give liberalism a free pass for the way they have contributed to an overly sexualized culture, while demonizing conservatives for their part.
The main justification here is that conservatives are being exploitive when they do it, while liberals are being empowering. However the examples they use of modern day liberal sexualization, Sydney Sweeny and Haley Welch, both control the narratives on their body and are making money off of it. The examples they give that are genuine examples of conservative exploitation are 20+ years old, and not particularly conservative. Any idea that Girls Gone Wild was seen as partisan is revisionist history.
Another justification, that liberal sexualization is for women while conservative sexualization is for me, is laughably ridiculous. Sure, liberally coded women who sexualize themselves virtue signal about feminism, but a lot of it is just for show. The audience for a lot of these influencers especially are teenage boys who get drawn in by the parasocial aspect of it all. If anyone thinks a female twitch streamer is wearing a microbikini and making borderline sex sounds because that's just how she rolls or to destigmatize these things is absolutely delusional.
Even the part about sex shaming prominent liberal women falls flat. I've seen plenty of things shaming prominent conservative women for their appearance. Twitter made a pastime of calling whatever mildly attractive blonde anchor the right wing had today ugly. I've seen plenty of comments on DTjr's wife. It was speculated Cadence Owens had a "stanky pussy". I'm pretty sure the squad at one point made T shirts making fun of MTG for having a "bleach blonde, bad bitch, butch body". Like yeah she started it but you can't act like you have some moral high ground when you accept shit like that.
The most damning of all is this entire article seems to think sexualization and exploitation are only things that can happen to women.
Men have gotten increasingly sexualized in the media over the past few years, and the charge has been led by liberal culture. A lot of the way men are depicted are even more unrealistic than how women were depicted in the 2000s. Your average male shirtless scene in media involves steroids, cutting, a med team, and a heaping of CGI. Sure people like Hugh Jackman have a choice, but some up and coming actor sure as shit don't.
Male politicians also get a million different comments about them from the left. There have been a million different nuts on exactly why Trump married Melania, speculation that she was a prostitute, and implications she was a prostitute. I do not know what Kamala Harris' boobs look like, but I am well aware that Trump supposedly has a misshapen penis where the head is too large for the shaft. Even if you wanna say Trump deserves it, the left does this shit all the time. JD Vance has less baggage than Harris in terms of relationships, yet liberals decided to run a straight up misinformation campaign about how he fucks couches. God forbid any male conservative be below 5'10", because liberals will use that as some sort of "gotcha" to the point they'll hire fucking skywriters. Even if the dude looks like literal GigaChad, he'll be hit with a million different comments about how he can not sexually satisfy women.
I swear I need to stop reading Lemmy. Every second I stay on here is a second I get closer to staying home on election day out of pure spite.