Millennial reality

Agbo Agbo

A married female colleague once came to test my knowledge of fashionable acronyms to ascertain how “current and up-to-date” I was. She said I better be “up-to-date” since I’d be married someday, have and raise children.  In the “examination,” I failed woefully as I only got two out of ten! I can’t remember most of acronyms now, but one has stuck since then – POS.

As far as I was concerned, POS stands for “point of sale,” what else could it stand for? I reckoned. My colleague simply laughed her head off. When she was done laughing she said it means “parent over shoulder” in millennial and Gen Z parlance. She got to know from one of her daughter’s friends after persistent enquiries. “POS,” she told me, is used by millennials and Gen Z’s to wade off nosey parents and to alert chatting friends that they have to change the topic of discussion.

As a result of that lesson, I promised myself never to fail in future “examinations” and to always be “current and up-to-date” in understanding parlances, especially as a researcher and trend analyst. This was why I found the recent resignation of Katie Hill, a female member of the US congress quite interesting and a further eye opener. For those who may wonder how that concerns us in Nigeria I have just a sentence in answer: pay close attention to whatever happens in the US or Europe because it’s likely to concern your children. So, who’s Katie Hill and why bother about her?

When we discuss Katie Hill we discuss what is now very common with millennials: revenge pornography. Katie Hill was one of twenty millennials, most of them women, who won seats in US Congress, increasing the generation’s representation six fold in one cycle and giving voice to the second-largest bloc of eligible voters. A few weeks back, she resigned after nude pictures of her “throuple” relationship with a female campaign staffer were released online without her consent. She also came under a US House of Representative Ethics investigation for another alleged relationship – this time with a male legislative staffer.

For the purpose of non-millennials, a “throuple” is a relationship between a married couple and another individual. This individual lives with them, sleeps on the same bed with them and even has sex with any of the other partner with three of them in the picture! Millennials are navigating a rapidly shifting landscape of technology, sex, and power.

A further clarification is needed: a “throuple” is different from a “threesome” – a threesome is a “one-off” sexual encounter between three people, while a “throuple” is an ongoing romantic relationship. The term is a blend of the word “three” with the word “couple.” Sometimes, they’re also called triads or three-way relationships.

Hill’s case sits in the middle of the three-way intersection between technology, sex, and power: Technology has changed sex; sex has changed power; and power is newly vulnerable to strains of disgrace that didn’t exist a decade ago. Technology provides new and humiliating ways to document sexual encounters, and all sexual encounters – especially when they involve a public figure – are now subjected to brutal public dissection. This is a thorny 21st century code of conduct that we have to grapple with. Years ago, pictures of a then serving Nigerian senator were uploaded on the internet by the ladies he had sex with in a seedy hotel room.

On January 9, 2014, I shared the experience I had first hand on this issue in my article “As revenge pornography takes center stage.”  It involved a young undergraduate whose nude pictures and video were shared on the internet by her ex-boyfriend because she ended their romantic relationship.

Hill, who is openly bisexual, admits to the relationship with the female campaign staffer. She denies the relationship with the male legislative aide, and has accused her “abusive” husband of orchestrating the smear campaign amidst their stormy divorce. The now published pictures and messages showed that they documented some of their sexual escapades.

Since millennials live most of their lives online, it’s therefore not a surprise that their sex lives have gone digital as well, and Hill was no exception. Last week, a “sex tape” of a young woman involved in the act went viral. She was said to be a 300-level student in the Accounting Department of Babcock University in Ogun State, while the man was said to have been expelled by the institution following his involvement in social vices and examination malpractices.

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It was reported that the man had checked into a rehab centre and his girlfriend paid him a visit there. However, during the visit, both lovers engaged in steaming sex and captured the action on video. The man reportedly shared the footage with his friends. It was alleged that he also had sexual intercourse with one of his friends’ girlfriend, and after discovering the escapade, the friend allegedly released the video to other people till it became public knowledge.

You’ll be dead wrong to assume that with such exposures millennials would be more careful how they live their lives. A 2015 study found that, like Hill, 82% of adults had “sexted” in the past year, mostly with their partners in a committed relationship. But all those sexual messages can be easily weaponised by disgruntled exes or abusers. In 2016, another study from the journal Data & Society found that 1 in 25 Americans – roughly 10.4 million people – have either had their photos posted without their consent or had someone threaten to do so. For younger women, that figure rose to 1 in 10.

The weaponisation of nudes is being considered by some as a 21st century sex crime that needs a law to address it. Hill’s nudes, including one of her combing her campaign staffer’s hair while naked, were leaked to a conservative blog and to the Daily Mail – in the UK -, which forced Hill to admit to the affair and apologise. But for millennials who are young and single in the age of dating apps, leaked nudes may soon become ubiquitous – and could eventually be considered as scandalous as a past divorce or a failed business: just another part of everyday life.

But Hill’s case also illuminates the tricky nuances of workplace relationships in the #MeToo era. The cultural reckoning with sexual harassment has cast a pall over many workplace relationships, and especially those between a boss and a subordinate. According to the new code of ethics, consent is impossible when there is a power imbalance involved. We’ve had our own fair share in Nigeria with the “sex-for-marks” scandals of recent times.

She admitted to her relationship with her female campaign staffer Morgan Desjardines – which is unethical and worthy of resignation; but according to reports, this does not necessarily violate House rules because Desjardines is not on her congressional staff. She described as “absolutely false” her alleged relationship with legislative staffer Graham Kelly. Of course, that raises other thorny questions. Can a relationship still be problematic even if neither party says it is? Is the power imbalance alone enough to make it wrong? It’s against US House rules to have sexual relationships with congressional staffers, which is why Hill faced an ethics probe into the alleged relationship with Kelly. It raises another question: Would she have faced the same public humiliation if she were a man? Would she have been afforded the same sympathy?

Hill’s premature departure from the US Capitol also hints at a political peril that is heightened for digital natives like her. “I never claimed to be perfect,” she said in a teary video to supporters. “But I never thought my imperfection would be weaponized and used to try to destroy me.” And yet, the weaponisation of imperfection is the defining threat for millennial’s in public life. So much more is documented for this generation, and therefore so much can be dug up. All of it – nudes, texts with old friends, angry emails, coarse jokes – just waiting to be exhumed and distributed for public “consumption.”

Welcome to the millennial reality.