The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong (36 page)

One can only assume what a writer that spiteful would make of talented historian Lady Antonia Fraser, who has written about her adulterous relationship with Harold Pinter, or indeed the affairs
and polyamory informing much of Simone de Beauvoir’s writing. And the Bloomsbury Group? Probably right out.

There’s a kind of schizophrenia in modern feminism. On the one hand, we’re told that anyone who believes women and men should have equal rights under the law is a feminist,
‘whether they know it or not’. On the other, we’re told that one or another group is made up of ‘gender traitors’. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that I believe
in equal rights regardless of sex, with the very loud voices calling people like me enemies of feminism.

Capital-F Feminism is a brand few people identify with, while small-f feminism is still an ideal most people support. Unfortunately, that distinction is sometimes lost on the more vocal elements
within feminism. It leads to an atmosphere that pushes away more potential allies than it draws in.

Because of this, feminism has real problems with women who don’t buy its entire ideology wholesale. Its desire to embrace all women is undermined by its compulsion
to demonise a large percentage of them. It marches in the streets for the right to ‘reclaim’ the word slut in the popular Slutwalks. It also marches in the streets for the right to
belittle and ridicule Playboy Bunnies outside a club in London.

In case the irony here isn’t clear, the Bunnies are being judged by feminist protesters 1) on account of their sexy appearance and 2) on account of their appearance alone. The thing they
are guilty of is doing a legal job for pay which, while not rocket science, is at least a good use of some people’s inborn talents. In other words, there is a lot of cheek in decrying people
who use ‘slut shaming’ to belittle women whilst doing the exact same thing yourself. The right to demonstrate is important, but increasingly these demonstrations take the tone of attack
and use the language of abuse.

And, of course, there’s the usual lambasting from people who think that people like me or like the Playboy Bunnies are not proper women. Thus it’s entirely reasonable, even
necessary, to say, write, and publish degradations. Take, for example, this quote by Julie Burchill: ‘When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible
betrayal of all women.’ How’s that for a way to support women.

Slut shaming of this kind is at least as old as
Notorious,
with Ingrid Bergman’s slinky outfits, drinking problem, and reckless driving. Levy’s right, that women are betraying
other women, but I think she’s got it the wrong way round. It’s the feminists who have taken up the finger-wagging role of the patriarchy.

So, yeah. I turned in my metaphorical feminism membership card because you know what? It sucks to have people write national newspaper columns about how much they not only hate people like you,
but also you in particular. It’s disappointing to find the much-lauded feminist writings of your day have all the depth and insight of a
Heat
article.

A lot of feminists go around clutching their pearls at the thought that there are women like me who don’t want to be among their ranks. A lot of them also spend considerable effort
delineating exactly who is a ‘real’ woman or an ‘authentic’ feminist and good
enough to be on their team. Often, the same people are doing both of
these things. It doesn’t take a genius to point out the irony.

How, for instance, does it benefit feminism to ridicule people like Jordan? You might not like her body of work (so to speak), and be mystified by her success, but it’s not like she was
going to be the next Nobel prizewinner in physics anyway. She uses her abilities to the utmost, and she is famous neither for whose daughter she is nor whose wife she is. Bootstraps and pluck,
nothing more and nothing less. That is still a strikingly uncommon distinction in this country, even today.

Jordan is to a lot of people what Madonna is to the middlebrow chattering classes: a woman whose razor-sharp business acumen has trumped her modest artistic talents. Well, I say good for her.
And it’s a shame so many rush to write her off, and other women like her, because they like pink clothes and don’t talk posh.

This tendency for the critics and commentators to draw a line between women who ‘respect themselves’ and anyone who has ever waxed their pubes, is based on a failure to acknowledge
the ways in which an entity can differ from itself. It is not acceptable to accuse a woman of being inauthentic simply because her choices differ from the ones you might make. A stripper is a
woman. We are women. The category is big enough to handle us all, from born women to transwomen to those who simply question their gender and sexuality. It is strong enough to handle all
women’s histories, be they Ivy League-educated, Page Three models, or living on the streets.

The intolerant narrative in which women who display sexuality are victims and must be educated or otherwise made to pay, and in which men are portrayed as stupid or uncontrollable predators, is
a trope common in many forms. It also raises its ugly, judgemental head in everything from fundamentalist propaganda to horror films. It seems women, regardless of the gaze – be it male or
female – are inevitably ruined by raucous behaviour. There’s a judgement suitable to every point of the ideological spectrum: they have sinned, gone wild, been tricked, or internalised
the oppressor. Take your pick.

People like me are far from the first to be turned off by a movement that trivialises and rejects our concerns. Feminism has a long and storied history of excluding people it should be embracing
as allies –
sex workers, transwomen, women of colour, to name just a few. The message seems to be that feminism is so embattled, the struggle so hard, that they only
have the time to really care about middle-class able-bodied Western white women right now. But that the rest of us should hold the line for our so-called sisters, who more often than not are the
cruellest and most spiteful haters of all.

By and large, in the West, women are not ignorant of feminism. They are all too aware that its loudest proponents can often seem the most insecure, rejecting more women than they accept. Surely
that’s not very feminist. Surely that’s not the point.

And whether you choose to call yourself a feminist is nowhere near as important as the life you live. To be a hardworking and determined person, to be someone who refuses to be shamed by either
the left or right, is far more important to me than any philosophy. Life is not about the labels we choose. Life is about how we live it.

No one would argue that the issues surrounding sex, sex work, sexuality, and so on aren’t important. And, in some cases, they are certainly the kind of things government
might reasonably be concerned about. So, how to stop the cycle of Agenda Setting, Constellation Making, and Evangelising? Here are some suggestions:

Beware of policies being sold to government, not to communities.

Take, for instance, the ‘sexualisation’ agenda. This has largely bypassed the people whose interest is arguably the greatest (families) and gone straight to
top-level consultation instead. It’s not only that national government might not understand the issues at stake; they often have misaligned agendas. Solving a problem is not remotely as
valuable to them as making the right noises to win votes. The kudos for bringing in a new policy can be irresistible. And if it all goes wrong, as it often does, the government can either move on
to the next new policy, or can blame others for its failure.

Ask if the fundamental issues are addressed.

Almost all approaches to sex work fail to consider the diversity of
factors that drive the industry. The ‘Swedish model’ with regard to sex
work is an excellent example of this. Lots of hype, not a lot of data on whether paid sex work has actually stopped or whether anyone’s life outcome has been improved as a result. One common
ploy of Evangelisers is paper churn, and this helps to hide the lack of hard data. Watch the coverage of the issue and you’ll eventually see proponents of the Swedish approach mention how
‘pressure’ is ramping up on this topic – pressure that they themselves have generated through col-umn inches. As if this means anything other than that there are lots of people
willing to believe the hype. Yes, a good idea will generate lots of coverage. So does a bad one.

Ask what qualifies these people to have more influence than you do.

The people influencing (and in some cases outright dictating) policy are often no more qualified than anyone else. And when experts are consulted, they are often tied up in
industry or ideology to the point of not being able to give an unbiased assessment. The people making recommendations about the internet aren’t technologically savvy, the people influencing
sex education are not educators, and so on. We can, and should, demand better than that when their decisions affect our lives.

Ask if more is actually better.

There is an impression when it comes to public policy that any idea, no matter how flimsy, must be rolled out
big
and
now.
More consultations, more policies,
bigger conferences, more media coverage. The ‘sex trafficking’ issue is a striking example of this. Few ask if the increase in activity is actually producing results – or even if
the problem exists at all. I find this curious because there are ways to answer these questions. Yet I’ve never heard of them being used in advance of money being allocated. A good rule of
thumb ought to be that more is seldom better unless there has been a sea change in the way a perceived problem is approached.

When in doubt, believe the results, not the agenda.

A rule to live by, and one for policy makers specifically. If someone claims they have a great new approach to . . . well, anything . . . wait for their initial results before
investing heavily in their ‘grand plan’. It’s not hard to do – testing concepts on the small scale before conducting large experiments is a common approach in science.
However, the nature of politics (and perhaps politics in the modern age) seems to heavily reward grandiose schemes and overhyped sound bites . . . which takes us right back to the first point on
this list.

And of course . . .
When in doubt, follow the money.

The vast majority of people influenced by Agenda Setters, Constellation Makers, and Evangelisers are not bad people. They may ignore rafts of evidence simply because it’s
contrary to their beliefs. They may rely on gut feelings because looking outside our own direct experience is a difficult thing to do. It’s misguided feelings, not avarice, that muddy many of
the issues surrounding sex. The confusion also leaves their ideals open to being hijacked and their words free for the service of aims they would probably not agree with.

Reasonable people can always be shown proof that will change their minds. I myself have been subject to a mind change or two in my time. And this is what gives me hope that eventually the idea
of evidence-based policy will become reality, not just a fashionable buzzword deployed in the service of worrying agendas.

Sometimes it seems as if the media are obsessed with promoting a general view of recent changes previously derided as ‘Victorian’. There are indeed parallels. The end of the
nineteenth century and start of the twentieth brought new technologies to add to the dissemination of ideas through mass media (much like the internet today) . . . with the predictable horror and
blame that brought then, just like now. The political class made some unexpected alliances as a result; again, we see this happening. One has only to look at the upcoming US elections and some of
the changes being suggested by the current UK government to see coalitions of conservative Christians and middle-class ‘progressives’ joining forces when it comes to general disapproval
of
technology and sexuality. Back then such groups used rhetoric and political influence to bring us such advancements as temperance, Prohibition, and so forth. Now
there’s endless ‘debate’ and frothing about the problem of young women going out in short skirts and having an alcopop.

It was only the immediate problems of worldwide economic depression and two devastating wars that broke this obsession with public morality. The generations that had grown up under the policies
influenced by late Victorian thinking rejected them. Perhaps they did so because all of the moralising in the world could not and demonstrably did not stop true suffering and true evil from
flourishing in arenas that had nothing to do with private sexuality.

Is there scope for the pendulum to swing back now, short of anticipating a global political apocalypse? There is. Information is the great leveller, always. I personally am more hopeful than
pessimistic. With mainstream media becoming more aware and sceptical of the misuse of data and statistics by hugely biased interests, it’s possible to foresee a time when arguing over, say,
whether sex workers should be added to the sex offender’s register is consigned to the minority interest of extremist groups, much like opposition to same-sex marriage is now. It is with that
hope and in that spirit that I imagine a world in which reason and experience finally trump the playground demons of rumour and fear.

Acknowledgements

T
his book would not have been possible without the work of a large number of people in sexuality studies, sex education, and biology research. The
excellent work by Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Petra Boynton, Teela Sanders, and Laura Agustín has been particularly helpful, as have other contributions by too many to list (but hopefully
thoroughly credited in the endnotes!). Thanks to the Centre for Sex Work Research and Policy UK mailing list, and in particular to Michael Goodyear, for support. Commentary on current issues in sex
and relationships education from Justin Hancock and Sarah Thomasin was also very useful.

I have been fortunate to get help on collecting data and finding information from loads of people. In particular I would like to thank Wendy Lyon, Anna Arrowsmith, Jane Fae Ozimek, and Catherine
Stephens. Alex Zhavoronkov is the creator of the useful Funding Trends website. Shoutouts to Madison Young and Maxine Holloway for a place to crash and an excellent library to plunder. Special
thanks to Furrygirl, whose writing on the leaked diplomatic cables proved invaluable.