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Posted this on Reddit, but I think you guys may be interested in this too.
Violence, just by itself, can be good or bad. At its core, violence is a show of force, and sometimes, that show of force ends in a gorey picture. But if we completely remove any possibility of showing that brutality, then the violence in fiction becomes a cartoon and might as well not even be there besides for slapstick. Sex, on the other hand, is a very private and intimate act between two or more people, and seeing that described explicitly in non-pornographic fiction is both unnecessary and cringey because the details have zero bearing on the story and the reader is obviously not one of the involved parties in the act. You can get across the consequences of implied sex and a relationship completely without going into lewd detail. You can't strip that detail out though with violence without rendering it at least mostly inert and ineffective. And that is why violence is more tolerated and detailed sexual acts are not.
Violence, just by itself, can be good or bad. At its core, violence is a show of force, and sometimes, that show of force ends in a gorey picture. But if we completely remove any possibility of showing that brutality, then the violence in fiction becomes a cartoon and might as well not even be there besides for slapstick. Sex, on the other hand, is a very private and intimate act between two or more people, and seeing that described explicitly in non-pornographic fiction is both unnecessary and cringey because the details have zero bearing on the story and the reader is obviously not one of the involved parties in the act. You can get across the consequences of implied sex and a relationship completely without going into lewd detail. You can't strip that detail out though with violence without rendering it at least mostly inert and ineffective. And that is why violence is more tolerated and detailed sexual acts are not.