The modern world’s strange combination of permissiveness and puritanism is enough to put anyone off sex.
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Topics Culture Feminism Identity Politics
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Sex is everywhere today, from Onlyfans and p*rnhub to LGBTQIA+ activism and Pride parades. Mainstream pop culture presents sexual fetishes, kink and bondage gear as though they’re completely normal. This year’s UK Eurovision performance included half-naked men rolling around on top of each other wearing codpieces; the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics featured scantily clad drag queens as its debauched centrepiece.
Yet while our culture appears sex-obsessed, we as a society are becoming less sexually confident and are increasingly having less and less actual sex. One survey revealed recently that 45 per cent of men aged between 18 and 25 have never approached a woman in person for a date. What’s more, the hyper-sexualisation of our culture, the p*rnographic focus on body parts, has gone hand-in-hand with a denial of the reality of biological sex.
The causes of this derangement of our sexual life lie in the contradictions of woke progressivism. Our achingly right-on elites simultaneously value both excessive permissiveness and excessive safety. We are told that each and every sexual desire must be permitted, as demonstrated by the ever increasing amount of flags for different sexualities and gender identities. Yet thanks to the rise of movements such as #MeToo and ‘believe all women’, we are simultaneously being encouraged to see a raised eyebrow as a microaggression.
Indeed, there have been repeated attempts in recent years to broaden the definition of sexual harassment in the UK to include ‘catcalling’, which can include whistling or bibbing a horn at a woman. And if men travel on the London Underground they might come across a mayor of London poster campaign telling them that staring could constitute sexual harassment. They’ll also be urged to say ‘Maaate’ to stand up to sexism.
Yet at the same time, Tube travellers will also be confronted by posters promoting the surgical removal of healthy women’s breasts. During this year’s holy month of Pride, the mayor of London endorsed a range of trans-activist posters. It included one titled ‘they / them’, which showed a young woman revealing her mastectomy scars. Surely, the unnecessary surgical removal of breasts in the service of ‘gender identity’ is a far greater act of aggression and misogyny than a lingering look or a wolf whistle?
Examples of the contradictions and incoherence of woke progressivism abound. On Friday Night Live on Channel 4 in 2022, actor and comedian Jordan Gray stripped naked and exposed himself to a studio audience before playing the piano with his penis. Oddly, the woke left saw a man waving his co*ck around as a great expression of empowerment and inclusion. This is because Jordan Gray identifies as transgender. When he stripped naked, he not only showed off his penis, he also exposed his fake breasts. It seems that a man is free to expose himself just as long as he also exposes the results of his ‘gender-affirming’ surgery.
Talk about mixed messages. The woke left is pointing in opposite directions at the same time. Its commitment to transgenderism leads it to celebrate the destruction of sex categories and boundaries as some sort of progress. Meanwhile, however, its woke feminism leads it to mount puritanical witch-hunts of men, clamping down on any unwanted expression of male heterosexuality regardless of how trivial it is. Both positions are as untenable as they are contradictory. Yet woke orthodoxy pushes both, inducing a cognitive dissonance in all exposed to it.
No wonder so many people are seemingly opting out of sex altogether. This is to be expected when the dominant culture creates such a confused and confusing climate around sex. Simultaneously ultra-permissive and nastily puritanical, woke is proving to be a massive turn-off.
Amy Gallagher is a commentator for New Culture Forum. Find her on X: @standuptowoke.
Picture by: Getty.
To enquire about republishing spiked’s content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.
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Topics Culture Feminism Identity Politics
Tags #MeToo Gay rights Love and sex
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