The text is painfully awkward, not McCarthy at his best.
1985 isn't usually considered a locus of Victorian attitudes toward sex, at least in the United States. The Hayes code was abolished in 1968. The Miller test was established in the late seventies, reducing publisher risk for content that would have been considered pornographic a decade or two earlier.
Anxiety about sex—and particularly homosexual sex—didn't significantly rise again until the early 2000s, around the time Lawrence v. Texas was decided. The Puritans have been loudly agitating for blanket censorship ever since.
I'm not talking about Victorian attitudes in particular. Sex is often considered private, even today. I'm pointing to a resolution of the apparently irony of describing violence but not sex.
1985 isn't usually considered a locus of Victorian attitudes toward sex, at least in the United States. The Hayes code was abolished in 1968. The Miller test was established in the late seventies, reducing publisher risk for content that would have been considered pornographic a decade or two earlier.
Anxiety about sex—and particularly homosexual sex—didn't significantly rise again until the early 2000s, around the time Lawrence v. Texas was decided. The Puritans have been loudly agitating for blanket censorship ever since.