School plan must be willing to criticise the sexual revolution

We have bequeathed young people a world where no one seems to know what the sexual rules are anymore, writes David Quinn

There is a television series called The Affair. The name tells you what the series is about, although actually the affair itself is only a central feature in series one. After that, the show is about the affair’s dire consequences in the lives of everyone else, including the wife and children of the man who has the affair – Noah Solloway – and eventually the terrible consequences for Noah and the woman he has the affair with, Alison.

Noah is the central character, and he is a selfish man. He is also handsome, and charming when he wants to be, but his basic selfishness keeps letting him down, and the lives of those around him.

But almost no-one in the series is very likeable. They are all deeply flawed people in their own various ways. There really isn’t anyone you can root for on a consistent basis. Just as you are coming to relate to one of the characters, they go and do something awful.

Consequences

In a funny kind of way, and maybe without intending to, the series is about sin and its consequences, and the Bible sayings about the consequences of some terrible sin lasting down to the third and fourth and even seventh generation. This series doesn’t go that far down, but it does show the lives of several generations worth of characters and how bad behaviour has lasting consequences.

In any event, the current series takes place about ten years after Noah, and the wife he betrayed, Helen, have divorced. The oldest daughter, Whitney is now grown up and the series has delved into the whole #MeToo movement in a pretty big way. #MeToo exploded when revelations about the revolting, sexually predatory behaviour of Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein emerged and then lots of other women came forward to see how they, too, has suffered abuse at the hands of powerful men.

No-one seems to know what the sexual rules are anymore”

In past seasons, Noah has become an occasionally successful author and in the current series he is about to have a new book published but before it comes out, several women from his past emerge to speak about how badly he has behaved toward them. One woman, his former publicity agent, says he pressured her into having sex with him.

One of the ‘tricks’ of the show is to depict certain incidents from the point of view of different characters. They each remember the same incident in different ways and so Noah might remember the something one way, and his former agent another. She might feel she had been pressured into sex and he might feel she had consented. Who do you believe? The #MeToo movement’s catch-cry is ‘believe her’.

The audience isn’t sure what to believe. Nor does Noah’s ex-wife. Despite his bad behaviour towards her, she still wants to believe well of him for the sake of their four children. Whitney, their oldest, wants to believe him, but then turns on him because she seems to be projecting her own bad experiences of men on to him.

As mentioned, at the heart of The Affair is an awful sin, and its consequences for years afterwards, but it is also about the confusions of the sex revolution, even if the writers themselves mightn’t quite see it that way themselves.

No-one seems to know what the sexual rules are anymore. They are still aware you should be faithful within marriage, but after that, there is little guidance. You make things up as you go along. You want to have sex with this person, and so you do. But then you decide you don’t really like them, and you break up in short order. Or you never wanted to be involved with them at all, and therefore you never see them again after that one-night-stand.

Or looking back, you wonder if you ever wanted to have sex with that person at all and maybe they pressured you into it. Or maybe you were both drunk at the time.

A big review of the way Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) is taught in schools is currently underway. It thinks it can sort out the above scenarios by teaching consent properly. But that won’t do it. Not even close.

For example, via social media last week, a journalist, Flora Gill revealed that the fellow she lost her virginity to 10 years before, aged 18, had suddenly turned up again out of the blue to announce to her via Twitter: “You write for GQ! That’s amazing. You might be the most accomplished person I’ve ever slept with”.

But after their brief liaison, this charming fellow ‘ghosted’ Gill, that is to say, stopped contacting her as if he was dead.

Hint

Now, there is not the slightest hint that what took place between the pair was not fully consensual. Flora Gill is not suggesting that at all, but it can’t have been nice to be ‘ghosted’, especially when you’re only 18.

What would the drafters of the planned new RSE programme have to say about this? That there was consent and therefore everything is fine? Or will they teach that there should be something more, so you are less likely to feel used or let down afterwards, that there should be a relationship first as well, maybe even marriage?

The sex revolution deliberately detached sex from both marriage and relationships in the name of freedom. It says that we are free to have sex when we like, with whom we like so long as it is consensual.

But this basically teaches us that it’s ok to treat one another as consumer items if we want, if that’s our choice. And then we are shocked when people end up feeling used by each other, disrespected, and when they are ‘ghosted’ afterwards.

The new RSE programme should teach pupils how to critically analyse the sex revolution. But it almost certainly won’t. It is bound to be very shallow, if not downright harmful, and therefore it will fail the very people it is aimed at.