Sex sex sex! Clive Ashwin looks at the evolution of sexual mores in British society

‘Has Quakerism moved forwards in the intervening forty years?’

Having seized your attention with the title, and ensured that this is an article that everyone will read, let me proceed. If you don’t actually receive the Friend at home, but are reading it furtively at your local Meeting house, you might find a quiet corner where you can pretend to be reading more weighty articles, or the small ads.

I belong to an unusual, and perhaps unique, generation. I was born in 1937. At primary school I was subjected to the first attempt to provide mass sex education. This was probably prompted by the war, which resulted in widespread social and moral confusion, accompanied by the introduction of easy and cheap contraception.

My first sexual education came from a series of BBC radio programmes for schools. I remember sitting in a class of some fifty children, facing a loudspeaker at the front of the room, while our teacher drew pictures of mysterious things like penises and ovaries on the blackboard.

I found the programmes thrilling, comparable to accounts of Scott’s journey across Antarctica or Wright’s invention of the aeroplane. It opened up a whole region of knowledge which I never knew existed. I was keen to spread the good news.

At home I did drawings on my blackboard of what I had learned at school and explained to my embarrassed mother and father the basic facts of procreation, supported by my drawings of ovaries and spermatozoa. It never occurred to me that they might have figured this out already.

In retrospect, I realise that the well-intentioned series provided by the BBC was a case of Hamlet without the prince of Denmark. I cannot recall any mention of the emotional, social, psychological or spiritual implications of sex, and it is these which are most likely to create the foundation for a fulfilling and life-enhancing experience of sex rather than any amount of biology.

In the decades which have passed, our perception of the rightful place of sex in our lives has been transformed, together with what is moral, legal or socially acceptable. An important watershed, which took place in 1957, was the publication of the so-called Wolfenden Report, and the move towards the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships. The document will go down in history as, in the eyes of many, an enlightened staging post in the slow and tortuous progress towards a more humane and tolerant vision of sexual pluralism.

In 1960, Penguin went on trial for the publication of DH Lawrence’s sexually explicit novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Penguin’s acquittal was another major step towards greater sexual frankness.

Varieties of sexual behaviour which had been previously regarded as perverted or criminal were brought into the light and, in due course, endorsed by the social conventions of marriage and parenthood. Quakers like to recall that their faith group was the first to recognise same-sex relationships by the ceremony of marriage.

Many faith groups remain cautious or actively hostile to the vision of acceptable sexual relationships now promoted by our educational and social organisations. We have seen cases where assumptions surrounding acceptable or desirable sexual relationships come into direct conflict with the religious and social norms of the communities our schools are intended to serve. In this situation children can become the rope in a tug-of-war between state education and inherited family values.

The upheavals of the early 1960s created the climate for the publication in 1963 of the bold and explicit Towards a Quaker View of Sex, edited by Alastair Heron. It would be easy to criticise, ridicule or condemn this document with the hindsight of sixty years, but perhaps Quakers should be complimented on at least attempting to bring peace, clarity and tolerance to such a contentious area. At the time, frank debate took place at all levels of the Quaker community, with reactions of every kind. I remember a matronly elder boldly informing me that she had read Lady Chatterley’s Lover from cover to cover but found it ‘boring’!

‘Our perception of the rightful place of sex in our lives has been transformed.’

Sexual permissiveness and pluralism have inevitably created a culture of turbulence and unpredictability. In commercial or social organisations, those in positions of authority may feel they can treat it as a licence to impose their sexual impulses and fantasies on the less powerful. Public figures sometimes find that what was regarded as humour or harmless flirting twenty years ago might now be regarded as a serious sexual offence. Interest groups set themselves up as arbiters of the behaviour of those around them, leading to a ‘cancel culture’ where even the inappropriate use of a word can have catastrophic consequences for the speaker.

Allegations of past behaviour, often when neither the complainant nor the alleged offender can produce any reliable evidence, can now provoke a presumption of guilt. Lives are put on hold, sometimes for years, while the presumed offender tries to prove their innocence. Sometimes there is no resolution, but in the meantime a career and a reputation may be destroyed.

The popular enthusiasm for these show trials is, perhaps, an index of our society’s continuing unease with sex. The trials provide us with an opportunity to appear high-principled in our judgment of others, a modern survival of the witchhunters of the seventeenth century. In order to demonstrate virtue in our own behaviour, we feel the need to create icons of sin or bad behaviour in others. In such circumstances the core Christian values of tolerance and forgiveness have no place.

Social media has played a corrosive role in this process, and should perhaps be re-named the ‘anti-social media’. Some would advise a young person setting out on life’s journey never to put anything personal or intimate on such a platform: it might come back to haunt you.

‘Content moderators’ who restrict online material because of its violent or sexual nature regularly suffer from PTSD and other forms of disorder. Nations are now understandably limiting access by young people, as in Australia. Since most of the functions of social media can be fulfilled by previously existing media, perhaps Quakers might ask themselves whether it would be consistent with our testimonies of simplicity and economy to abstain from their use altogether.

Many issues remain unresolved. Is the surgical reassignment of gender consistent with the notion of therapy? What are the limits of sexual behaviour dictated by our faith? Should sex workers be accepted as a respected profession?

The most recent entry of relevance in my copy of Quaker faith & practice dates from 1994 and is a quotation from a minute of London Yearly Meeting: ‘The Yearly Meeting has struggled to find unity on this [subject of sexuality], which comes so close to the personal identity and choices of each one of us’ (22.19). Has Quakerism moved forwards in the intervening forty years? Who will have the courage to discern and express a truth consistent with our faith? What canst thou say?

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Comments

We are told that gender and sex are separate things.
Why, then, are we expected to treat a person’s gender identity as if it is their physical sex?

By Moyra Carlyle on 11th January 2025 - 4:21

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