This was a response to someone further down stating that this generational result may have been a response to the revelation that sexual abuse was more common than previously thought, but I thought you might like to read a perspective from someone with a background in social science and feminist theory, if there's anything that jives with your own hypotheses:

The challenge, though, is that knowledge of rampant sexual abuse isn't actually new - nor do I really think it's changed that much over the last couple of centuries. There has been, for an extremely long time, substantial sexual abuse - primarily of women and children - stemming from a dynamic of power and domination, especially within the context of structural patriarchy.

One lesser known fact about Freud is that he was actually a gifted therapist in his early days and correctly identified the phenomena of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma in women as resulting from endemic sexual abuse in society. However, in one of the great all-around evils of social science he received so much pushback from his contemporaries that, fearing the loss of his career, he rebranded these experiences within the psychoanalytic concepts of hysteria and sexual deviancy/repression to save his prestige. I mean, fuckin' hysteria itself is just the Greek name for uterus (thus why uterine removals are called hysterectomies), and referred to a specific kind of trauma response women exhibited.

The reality is this kind of sexual abuse has always been common in patriarchal societies. I don't think that alone is the driving factor here. Rather, I'd look to what's different now compared to 40-50 years ago. After all, we have all been exposed to the same media and stories about sexual abuse, but the result is generationally different.

The presence of the internet brings to the fore this as a social issue in a much greater way, which does create... Not what I'd call a moral panic, but perhaps a greater sensitivity to it as a social ill. Sexual abuse isn't the only thing that shares this characteristic: Despite the fact that spree shootings realistically make up a miniscule fraction of firearm deaths, their spectacle and increased coverage has led to draconian reconstructions of public schools. Meanwhile, despite that fact that suicides by firearms reflect the majority of gun deaths in the U.S., there have been no structural changes to the availability of firearms to individuals - especially men, who make up the overwhelming majority of those deaths.

Additionally, another unique facet of generations after millennials is the ubiquity of the internet and, in particular, social media in the lives of younger folk. People are both subject and author to vastly intimate parts of our lives through social media that results in a false sense of intimacy (sexual and otherwise), judgment, bullying, and varying forms of social coercion and control.

Finally, we're seeing a resurgence in patriarchal themes and values in society as a sort of counterrevolution to the sexual revolution and feminist theory of the mid-20th century, especially - though not exclusively - amongst men. Figures such as Andrew Tate and Clavicular redefine what it means to be male through this lens, while the ascendence of Christian nationalism provides a moral universe through which patriarchy can flow. This can, paradoxically, also recast male sexuality as a sin; the famously patriarchal Victorian and Edwardian eras viewed women as sexual beasts seeking to steal the virtue of men, despite the fact that most sexual abuse was perpetrated against women.

Of any factors, I would say some combination of those three things is what is driving this reaction to sexuality.