Sex

It was about a week ago, at 8 p.m., when our blackout happened. In the 1980s people would have headed for the bedroom or out to loot the local off-licence. In 2013, however, our first reaction was to check the battery health of our mobile phones. This relationship between sex, crime and consumer electronics may be important. The recorded fall in sexual activity among those aged 16 to 44 in the recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was widely attributed to the ‘growth in social media’ and to our new habit of taking smartphones and tablets to bed. Plausible as this sounds, I don’t think the survey proves

It was a curious coincidence, don’t you think, that the sexual conduct findings that the Lancet published today coincided with the publication of a report from the Deputy Children’s Commissioner, Sue Berelowitz, about child-on-child sexual violence? The two stories were juxtaposed uncomfortably in the news. In the case of the Lancet survey, which is conducted every decade, it was comically hard for broadcasters to know how to play the findings, which were a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand women are becoming more like men and admitting to significantly more sexual partners – ‘of both sexes!’ marvelled John Humphrys, on the Today programme – than before. So

Tonight, the Spectator will host a debate on the motion: ‘Addiction is not a disease’.  Damian Thompson, Theodore Dalrymple and Dr Aric Sigman will lock horns with Trinny Woodall, Dominic Ruffy and Vic Watts to decide whether addiction is a medical condition or a pattern of immoderate behaviour. The extraordinary story of Reverend Flowers is likely to feature in the discussions. As Melanie Phillips writes in this week’s Spectator cover piece: ‘So what about all those drugs and orgies? The behaviour which even his former rent boy described as ‘debauched’? How could a man with such predilections have got away with being a Methodist minister for 40 years? Flowers claims the

Bravo Melanie McDonagh. Your stand against the coarsening of society’s sexual sensibilities is very welcome. But it is not just in Britain that porn has gone mainstream. We French now have our share of outrageously lewd tastes, too. Long gone are the days when the French could hide their perversions behind a veneer of sophistication, as if sex was somehow something that the French did in a classier – plus distingué – way. Our revolutionary ancestors would roll in over in their graves if they knew how unenlightened and childish we have become when it comes to pleasures of the flesh. Crude, cheap sexual material, whether it is on TV

Jesse Norman MP, who used to lead the Prime Minister’s policy forum, is using his spare time to write for ConservativeHome. About twerking. For those of you who have missed this craze, the Oxford English Dictionary, in a shameless PR stunt, added the term to their latest edition: ‘To dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.’ Turning to Jesse’s piece, apparently ‘the press have started to scrutinise’ Norman’s ‘public remarks with all the fervent enthusiasm of a group of Miley Cyrus fans at a twerking convention.’ How could we not? After all, Norman is the author of such deathless prose as this:

These days there are sophisticated and scientific solutions to the dismal problem of unwanted childlessness — there are IVF, Viagra and well-established egg and sperm donor services. We think of these as recent advantages and give thanks for the modern age. But what only very few people are aware of is that long before sperm donation was practically or ethically possible, in the early 20th century, a secret sperm donation service existed for those women most in need. Helena Wright was a renowned doctor, bestselling author, campaigner and educator who overcame the establishment to pioneer contraceptive medicine in England and throughout the world. Kind, intelligent, funny and attractive, Helena had

In a very rum letter to the Daily Telegraph, the Mother’s Union of all people joined with some other bodies to demand that ‘primary schools should teach the correct names for genitalia’. What can they mean? A confederate of the Mother’s Union in this campaign, the Sex Education Forum, says that by the age of seven, children should name ‘external genitalia’. From examples supplied, it seems to want us all to speak Latin. It’s as if we should no longer say womb but uterus, not skull but cranium, not big toe but hallux. By using Latin names for genitalia, the campaigners hope to avoid ‘perpetuating shame’. I wonder whether they

Gripped by his habitual despair, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote to a friend in 1872, ‘I am appalled at the state of society. I’m filled with the sadness that must have affected the Romans of the 4th century. I feel irredeemable barbarism rising from the bowels of the earth.’ Warming to his bleak scatological theme, he continued, ‘I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.’ Many commentators would feel that exactly the same words could be applied to modern Britain. According to the pessimistic narrative of national decline, Britain is now drowning in

The verdicts have been delivered in the Operation Bullfinch trial. Seven of the nine men have been found ‘guilty’. The case involved the highly organised sexual and physical abuse of underage girls in the ‘care’ system. This was carried out by a gang of men in Oxfordshire over the course of nearly a decade. As I wrote of one of the most shocking aspects of the case: ‘One of the victims sold into slavery was a girl of 11. She was branded with the initial of her “owner” abuser: “M” for Mohammed. The court heard that Mohammed “branded her to make her his property and to ensure others knew about