Sexual freedom is turning into sexual fear as a counter-revolution shifts our attitude towards sex
WE are in the middle of a profound shift in our attitude towards sex. A sexual counter-revolution, if you will.
And whereas the 1960s saw a freeing up of attitudes towards sex, this counter-swing is turning sexual freedom into sexual fear, and nearly all sexual opportunities into a legalistic minefield.
The rules are being redrawn with little idea of where the boundaries of this new sexual Utopia will lie and less idea still of whether any sex will be allowed in the end.
Each episode in the revolution is grimly fascinating, and each has its own internal propulsions.
For instance, nobody outside Hollywood could regret the disgrace of an overpraised toad who spent too long surrounded by overly attractive people.
After Harvey Weinstein’s downfall, who could not enjoy the sweep of Tinseltown for DNA evidence — or mere hearsay — exposing that whole rotten, preachy, liberal facade?
Since then, the powerful weapon of social media has whipped this along in every unpredictable direction.
A GQ journalist was given the heave-ho after that famously prim publication learned he had made an ungallant pass some years ago at a lady who was not his wife.
A preachy hack from a left-wing website was found to have behaved grimly with women and his career too was dashed to the floor by people high on the octane of unreflective moral outrage.
This week the urge to purge the pervs has turned on the Houses of Parliament, with stories about “the Weinsteins of Westminster” moving from the blogosphere to the newspapers.
This has centred on a list of MPs alleged to have behaved inappropriately towards women and 13 towards men.
Michael Fallon has already fallen on his sword and the investigations are spreading almost daily. But remember, this is not a list of people alleged to have committed crimes. It is a compilation of people heard to have been in some way forward with researchers.
Some allegations will require a police investigation, maybe even prosecution.
If the outing and shaming of sexual predators encourages other victims of actual crimes to come forward then good should come from it. But it is away from the law that the real revolution is happening.
Accusations of monstrous abuse are being mixed with news that Damian Green touched a woman’s knee.
This week, The Crown actress, Claire Foy, was forced to issue a statement saying she had not been offended after angry Twitter users pointed out that actor Adam Sandler had touched her knee — twice — during their appearance on The Graham Norton Show.
If deeds are so dangerous, what can be said about words?
Sad to say, not all men are pitch-perfect in vocabulary and timing. Some are crass, some incorrigibly so.
A BBC journalist recently revealed that in a restaurant some years ago an older male colleague had told her: “I’m unbelievably sexually attracted to you.” She said: “I had experienced sexism in the workplace before, but not in such an overt way.” But was that really sexism?
A new generation is being encouraged to redraw the lines of acceptability in a way that goes too far. What once was clumsy has now become unacceptable. And from unacceptable it is being made sackable and then elided with the criminal.
When the sexual revolution began in the 1960s it re-framed sexuality in the direction of greater freedom and licence. For all the good that movement did, who doesn’t wish it had been more thought through?
The pro-paedophilia groups which fixed themselves among the gay and women’s rights movements not only seriously damaged those movements but showed how hard it is to sort good claims from bad amid the stampede of the crowd.
Likewise, the present events are picking up claims which should be treated with deep suspicion. Are we comfortable with the idea that whenever sexual interest is expressed it must be fully reciprocated at the risk, when declined, of utter ruin?
We might expect people in public life to behave well, but do we want a situation where everyone there must be monogamous or celibate? Would the public like this morality to trickle down to them?
Worse lies beneath these presumptions. Not least the whipping up of fear and loathing between the sexes. A loathing familiar to male students, who appear to be treated as rapists-in-waiting.
Foremost propeller of this is a form of modern feminism which is, in fact, barely disguised contempt for men.
In an essay, sociology professor Lisa Wade argues: “We need to attack masculinity directly. I don’t mean that we should recuperate masculinity — that is, press men to identify with a kinder, gentler version of it — I mean that we should reject the idea that men have a psychic need to distinguish themselves from women to feel good about themselves.”
Other women writers have taken it upon themselves to issue instructions for men on how to behave. This “feminism” isn’t producing guides for helping men. It is producing manifestos for torturing them.
If we are to enter this new puritanical era, at least let us not enter it silently. Allow it to be admitted that many women, as well as men, are happy to use their looks and wiles when these work to their advantage.
Attractive people attract attention and not all find this a disadvantage.
Unless we decide that only a super-class of beautiful people are allowed to seek sex, we should accept that people in the lower to middling ranges of attractiveness should be allowed the odd punt too.
None of this justifies men in positions of power behaving like pigs towards people who work with them. If there is good to come from this then it would be in such behaviour being deemed more unacceptable than it has been.
But sexual etiquette is not a science. It is improvisation in an imperfect battlefield. Only at the most extreme end does the law have anything to say. Everywhere else we are talking about the exercise of manners.
True, we may be rethinking those manners. But let us not do so in the midst of a moral panic, high on counter-revolutionary retribution.
Or if we must, then let us still worry a little about where this stampede may yet take us.
. Douglas Murray is the author of The Strange Death Of Europe (Bloomsbury, £18.99).
