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January 2005: PAUL SMITH’S DEVIANT’S DIARY - “No anal sex please, we’re squeamish” - Looking at modern sexual attitudes and laughing at them in the style of Bridget Jones or similar.
The British attitude to sex can best be seen in our incidence of teenage pregnancy. We have the highest number of children having children in Europe, showing that when it comes to copulation, we’re much keener to do it than we are to think about its possible consequences. Talking about it is even less common, unless we include bragging. Since bragging is a young man’s version of lying about it, perhaps we shouldn’t.
Our national attitude to pornography, on the other hand, is somewhat more complex. It’s been said the only true measure of a countries democracy is how much freedom its press has. And in this country our press is free to print several big pair of breasts, complete with prominent nipples, in each and every daily issue. It’s an institution not unlike foxhunting; it’s traditional but not everyone approves of it. Nevertheless if its boobs you want over breakfast at least there’s lots of choice. Choice being a something of a keyword of this piece. But then, I question whether boobs are pornographic at all. Are these photos of Kim, 19 from Solihull simply artistic? Whatever. There can be no argument that ‘proper porn’ should be kept just for adults and out of indiscriminate mass media and off daytime television. In this country at least I believe the wider attitudes to it are more divided by age than religion, class or gender.
As an example, my wicked stepmother (she’s not evil, she’s ‘wicked, man’) doesn’t approve of me writing for this magazine. She thinks the commercialisation of sex is a bad thing and a part of me does feel she has a point there. I’m old-fashioned enough to think sex is best kept between two people who love each other very much. Of course, it’s not always possible to find two people who are in love who want someone between them... But no one has ever twisted my arm to buy a sex toy, wank-mag or blue film and if serving what appears to be a basic human need for erotic stimulation is somehow profiteering from it, then this industry is no more guilty then the multinationals who sell us our food to eat or water to drink.
Felicity (my WSM) asked if I’d be happy to have my (fictional) daughter working in the industry and I had to admit that if it was in front of the camera, probably not. On the other hand, you know better than I do there’s a lot more scope to the business of entertaining adults than being a porn starlet and I did make that point to her. I went on to ask her if she’d be happier for me to write for a tobacco industry magazine. You don’t need a licence to open a tobacconist yet they sell a highly addictive product that kills many tens of millions of people around the world every year. Somehow buying a packet of fags carries none of the stigma grabbing a copy of Wobbly Jugs Monthly does. You can sell 500 cigars that’ll give you cancer as soon as you look at them to a 16 year old with asthma but even with a carefully controlled licensing system you can’t sell porn to a 16 or 17 year old who can legally do everything featured in the magazine or movie and more. It seems strange to me, but that’s probably because I’m not a politician.
To my knowledge pornography and sex toys have never been linked to coronary heart disease, emphysema, lung or throat cancer. I don’t believe any doctor ever had to write, ‘Cause of death: chronic dildo abuse’. Sure, they have to be pulled out of peoples’ bottoms from time to time, but no one ever died directly of embarrassment either. This reminds me of one story the nurse I used to live me told me was about a young woman whose parents had left her at home when they went on holiday together. The boyfriend was invited over, there’d been some horseplay in the bath (without a horse though) and the soap had been ‘lost’. You can imagine the conversation: “Is the soap up your end?” “YES!” Their own efforts at retrieval proved ineffective so they went off to casualty where it was duly removed with something like sugar tongs. Afterwards the girl asked for the soap back because her parents “would wonder what had happened to it otherwise”. You can picture the scene. Her father wants a shower after getting back to the UK and ends up lathering his face with something that had been up- Gugh!
Back on the topic of the British attitude to sex and all things sexual, I enjoy travel and while I’ve not walked in the Himalayas I do know the very real fear of death by exposure while trying to find a Hotel open on New Year’s Eve in Norway. More importantly, I’ve seen the broader attitude to sex, nudity and porn that many of our European cousins enjoy.
On every street corner news kiosk in Milan I saw a picture of a naked woman selling…scarves, cars, haemoid cream, goats cheese…really, just about anything. Roadside stalls on Cyprus were pilled high with Sol beer and groaned under the weight of hardcore smut. They like their transsexuals out there, I can tell you that. I don’t think we should go that far here but not for the reason that’s often touted; that porn is bad because it’s demeaning to women. There’s also the suggestion it’s demeaning to the men who enjoy it, which is pretty patronising to all the women who enjoy it too, in my book. What I find demeaning is being treated like a child while performers are told what they can and can’t do with their own bodies. I feel like typing ‘That’s how Hitler got started’, but I’d have no proof to back this up. I don’t really think the Third Reich was formed to deal with the problem of erotic French lithographs being smuggled in over the border.
Pornography corrupts the young. Discuss. I feel the young don’t need much help being corrupted. They’ll do it all by themselves, looking up rude words in dictionaries and comparing notes, as it were. Just watching a Britney Spears video can leave me feeling a little corrupted and I’m 33. The idea that porn corrupts generally is worth a thought though, surely. What is meant by corruption? If it means people who are dissatisfied with their own sex lives end up fantasising through pornography and having a wank rather than an affair, isn’t that a Good Thing? Which is more morally wrong - enjoying sex and being entertained by pornography or trying to suppress other peoples human rights to self expression through oppression? That’s rhetorical, by the way. My philosophy is so long as it doesn’t harm anyone I’m all in favour of informed choice.
If you’re ever lucky enough to be able to press someone who thinks erotica ‘shouldn’t be allowed’ on their reasoning, it usually comes down to a mixture of their own insecurities and a fear that porn leads to horniness and horniness leads to sexual attacks on women. There. I’ve said it. I’ve expressed the link between sex and aggression that’s tucked away at the back of all our ape-like minds. It’s believed that in more liberal, sexually progressive countries like the Netherlands rape is actually a rarer crime than it is here. So perhaps access to hardcore porn is a healthy alternative for those in any society who might do such a thing. Alternatively perhaps Dutch rapists are just too stoned to be hanging about in dingy multi-storey car parks to do the deed. Maybe the lighting in multi-storey car parks in Holland is better than it is here… In the same way I can’t put a good argument together as to why porn lowers sexual violence against women I think it’s amazing how other people have put the reverse argument together and got it promoted to an accepted truth. Why fiercely restrict porn when any idiot can see alcohol has a much bigger part to play in acts of violence of all types, against everyone? Could it be as simple as porn’s an easier target.
Stereotypically the woman’s attitude to sex (with the lights off, but his socks still on) has been one of lying back and thinking of England (or Hugh Grant), which suggests it isn’t a lot of fun for girls. This hasn’t been my personal experience, mind. The man would want his Conjugal Rights and the little wife would be expected to come across with the goods. The very fact that rape inside marriage wasn’t a criminal offence in the UK until recently is very telling. Before then it could only be prosecuted as sexual assault. I hope we live in more enlightened times. Perhaps, in the days of films like ‘No Sex Please We’re British’ (1973) sex really was a dirty word, but in a country where more children are born out of wedlock than in it now, I suspect most people have cast off a puritanical yoke or two. A vocal minority still hang on to the days when ‘a glimpse of stocking was something shocking’ but being old they’ll soon be dead and we can get on with our lives as adults without their moral interjections…I’m ranting now, aren’t I?
I’m glad I don’t live in Southern Ireland, where it’s still the dark ages. There’s not a single licensed shop south of the border basically because the existence of such dens of iniquity are a danger to the fabric of society, the honourable state of marriage and morals generally. Which is why priests have no choice but to bugger choirboys and run off with married women to Benidorm. If only there was a specialist magazine they could read which would help them deal with their perfectly natural urges in a more acceptable way. They could call it ‘Dirty Habits’. I don’t think anyone would say God doesn’t like sex since he blessed us all with the ‘bits and bobs’ as well as the desire to do it. Or was that Satan in snake form? I’m a bit woolly on some theology. Mind you, I remember from Sunday school that apparently he sees everything we do, so one has to question his motives for inventing male and female in the first place. You have to wonder why we don’t reproduce asexually or via spores or something if you believe f’ing has no place in his ineffable plan.
So there you go. We’ve had sex, love, intolerance, porn, the demon drink, ageism, violence, cigarettes, politics, a mention of the war, ranting, Europe, a random story about a bar of soap lost up a young woman’s bottom, teen pregnancy, bragging, Hugh Grant and religion. This magazine is practically a night out in itself.
Small aside, my copy of MS Word doesn’t like the word fags in the context I used it above. It’s offering me fag’s and fags’ as alternatives. Grammatically fag’s refers to something owned by a fag, and fags’ refers to something owned by several fags. Oh those crazy Americans. Word does something similar with dykes. Someone should have a word. No pun intended, or, indeed, successfully delivered.
A final word for anyone who still thinks sex is dirty, wrong or bad - you’d not be reading this if your dad had worn a stronger condom.
Paul Smith is still free to a good home. Kinky Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please.
1900ish words on attitudes, with attitude, Dale.
Paul.