Do you mean sapient? Because plants are also sentient; all sentience is is the ability to react to senses. Sapience on the other hand is the ability to have higher thought, like tool use, teaching, recognizing yourself in a mirror, etc… Finally there is the ability to feel pain which I do not think has a word. Plants from what we can tell cannot process pain, but can process negative stimuli.
I’m going to go on a different angle on this one and say that we are much tougher on sexual harassment. I feel like a lot of people from the 1950s who have grown up on pulp sci-fi like Flash Gordon could accept a lot of modern technology and the internet as basically just magic. To be fair is how a lot of modern people also accept it. But I don’t think they would be able to process the move towards egalitarianism that we have taken.
That is not to say that modern society is egalitarian only that we have made good strides in achieving that aim.
Edit: Turns out Gordon is from the '70s, but other pulp sci-fi exist so my statement stands.
I can’t believe it… THE AUSTRALIANS ARE STEALING OUR LAND!!! AMERICA IT IS TIME TO LIBERATE AUSTRALIA!!!