I didn't mean to come back to Brave New World twice

I'm still in the process of reading Brave New World (It's been going very slowly because I can sense something portentous on the horizon of the book, and that always slows down my reading, especially if I think whatever is about to happen is bad. It's my mind's way of dealing with the possibility of negative things happening to the characters I guess). I just read a passage that absolutely destroyed me.

For this entry to make any sense, we have to first agree on the fact that when a person reads Brave New World, they are essentially entering into a contract with the book. This contract is, namely, that one should think that the "Civilization" portrayed in Brave New World is entirely negative and that the "Savages" (aka people who are not raised in test tubes) are somehow better because they retain their Christianity, religion, literature, individuality, etc. Huxley sets up a then vs now construct, and I suppose the idea is that the reader is supposed to come down on his side (then). (Btw I haven't finished the book so maybe I should save the book reports until then, but I like writing about things as I experience them, so here we go!)

From here on out: SPOILER ALERT

But here's the thesis of my post: I just don't agree with Huxley. I'm not saying everything about Brave New World's "Civilization" is what I want from my ideal society, but there are some aspects of it that are okay, or at least not unacceptable to me. And the dealbreaker for me is the scene where Lenina and the Savage (aka John) confess their love to one another. Lenina, who was socially conditioned to give her body to any man who asked for it, immediately undresses and goes to hug John. Her sudden undressing produces this result:

The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.

"Ow, you're hurting me, you're...oh!" She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she had seen his face--no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast, "But what is it, John?" she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. "What is it?" she almost screamed.

And as though awaked by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. "Whore!" he shouted. "Whore! Impudent strumpet!"

"Oh no, don't, do-on't," she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.

"Whore!"
"Ple-ease."
"Damned whore!"

So, to use the words immortalized by Kenan Thompson in his nefarious SNL skit, WHATUP WITH THAT?

Ok, so the Savage believes in choosing one woman and living with her forever. His character's motivations are complicated because he loves his mother, a woman who slept around because she believed that "everyone belongs to everyone," so he has some sort of deep oedipal resentment for the idea of sleeping with a woman and being promiscuous. But this reaction just smacks way too intensely of the madonna/whore dichotomy. Lenina was perfect to the Savage before this incident: divinely beautiful, he could barely look at her, he trembled in her presence, blah blah blah. And then she shows one sign of sexuality and she's a DAMNED JEZEBEL! Besides the fact that the poor girl has nearly no agency in deciding how to deal with her sexuality because she was being hypnotized in her sleep practically her entire life.

Madonna vs Whore is a binary used to oppress women that is practically as old as time itself, and I just don't buy the fact that having lots of sex is so bad, as Huxley makes it seem. But then again, I couldn't give a damn about most of the Bible's commandments of morality, so maybe I'm just largely missing the point.

I guess what I'm asking is--does this instance of extremely screwy sexism illuminate the fact that Brave New World is, frankly, no longer relevant?