You can have the sexual revolution or common decency – but not both
by Laura Perrins, TCW:
IF the Russell Brand scandal tells us anything – sleazeball promoted by mainstream media and then taken down (and now directly targeted by the Government) when he became politically inconvenient – it is that better never means better for everyone. Take the sexual revolution. For some this led to happiness, for some to ‘progress’, for others to more pressure and without doubt, for society overall, to more irresponsibility. For all the genuine sexual liberation, few came through unscathed. Younger women and girls were particularly vulnerable to sexual demands they no longer had an excuse to reject, losing their virginity too soon, acquiring STDs. Too bad. That was just hard luck.
But was it so wonderful for boys and young men? While the lotharios amongst them made hay, the rest felt pressured and wretched. The sexual revolution ‘bonanza’ was indeed for the scumbags, predators and sex pests who existed long before the names of Harvey Weinstein and Russell Brand and all the rest were known, exposed (some unjustly hounded) by #MeToo. What began as a revolution that celebrated free love and liberation came to evolve into something much darker; debauchery, exploitation and outright rape, aided by women (some naive or knowing), not just behind the closed doors of the rich and protected – of celebrities, moguls, politicians and princes – but via Asian grooming gangs’ taxi services across the most deprived cities.
The former of these is why #MeToo was inevitable. Now I have had my issues with #MeToo. I dislike its lack of due process; I’m uncomfortable with vague and ever-changing standards of what counts as wrongdoing and what doesn’t. But the movement was inevitable simply because the granddaughters of the sexual revolution spent a little time in the legacy enabled by their boomer feminist grannies, and thought, ‘Thanks but no thanks. I’m not putting up with this.’ (Never mind if I have put myself out there, I am defining the terms of ‘consent’ – not though arguing for a return to traditional sexual mores).
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