Hot crossed buns
Do you remember “Good Friday”? This year. Great, wasn’t it? I spent it alone in a house with perhaps the laziest cat this Jesus fella (or his dad, I get confused) has ever created.
While Kit-cat (blame the owners for its name) formed a snoozing ball of fluff on the sofa, I killed my own life-minutes by surfing over our golden beach of Lib Dem Blogs and slipped onto this post on Liberal Revolution – Can we just get off mens’ [sic] backs?
Dangerously it got me thinking, and several weeks later my thoughts have finally ordered themselves into the following paragraphs:
It seems to me that members of our strange species have an instinctive distrust of any sexuality different to their own – hence the belligerent attitudes to homosexuality that are witnessed in many societies at many times, and the oppression of female sexuality (of any kind) throughout paternalistic eras.
I know men who are clearly (even if they won’t admit it) wary and disapproving of female sexuality. In wider society, this is evident in the lingering notion that a man should be embarrassed and even ashamed if women close to him (especially kin) are seen to be sexual, as well as in the very apparent derision directed at promiscuous women (who are viewed as less moral than promiscuous men).
Although such notions smack of biting the hand that feeds you, they seem imbedded and difficult to remove. Escaping them requires understanding that our instincts are leading to irrational prejudice; fortunately such understanding is possible via a kind of “consciousness raising”, a term used by Richard Dawkins, appropriately borrowed from 1960s feminist groups.
As for why our instincts lead us in this direction, I have no idea. Something to do with binding families, sticking to one’s clan, perchance.
However, while these instincts instruct our judgements, resultant judgements inevitably end up in the political sphere, as people seek to impose them on the freedom of others. Note the convoluted arguments still made in increasingly desperate attempts to oppose equal rights for gay people.
Yet also note the attitude to activities that cater for male heterosexuality, and the current mode for bashing these activities – as outlined on Liberal Revolution. In this case distrust and wariness of male sexuality can be a stimulus for objections to pornography, strip clubs and even lad mags. Activists vehemently claim that each of these voluntary and private exchanges between consenting adults cause all manner of social ills, thus causing a social problem that must be confronted by the (enabling, caring, benevolent) state.
This situation is a wonderful opportunity for the Someone Think of the Children brigade, a franchise of the US-based mentalists who have sex, produce kids, and then deprive their kids of learning about sex.
It also plays directly into the hands of the loudest minority that blights local politics and all three main UK parties — the Association of NIMBYs. John at Liberal Revolution rightly calls the exploitation of this issue a “planning battering ram for the prurient or jealous.”
Sadly I can only conclude that the instinctive distrust of alien sexualities leads to us seek control of the other side, perhaps through fear. This seems a strong explanation for the aforementioned paternalistic control and oppression of female sexuality witnessed arguably throughout human history.
It also seems a likely basis for the pseudo-feminist yelping of power-crazed women in Labour’s cabinet who, along with their allies, are determined to politicise sex and increase state control over any activity that relates to male sexuality – even while their own husbands are sat in “second homes” investing our money in digital copies of Debbie Does Dallas.
As liberals we should be clear about distancing ourselves from such sanctomonious and reactionary politics.
Tags: liberal revolution, sex