Raunch culture drowns us all in a sea of sleaze

Overt sexualisation is endemic and women's magazines are perhaps most to blame

THE excoriating insight into modern mores from the popular English comic writer Ben Elton is a relatively new experience for me. His darkly funny novel Blind Faith is set in a post-apocalyptic Britain ruled by a priestly caste who are devotees of a Big Brother crackpot religion devoted to Diana and the Love.The main feature of this religion is a sterile form of sexual licence. No one is allowed any form of sexual modesty: not in their dress or even in the most intimate parts of their lives.

Men and women wear as little as possible, the exposed mounds of pierced and tattooed flesh intruding in the most sensually appalling fashion in every public place. Meanwhile, little girls are encouraged to wear imitation versions of their mothers' gaudily sexualised clothing, while being jealously guarded from any hint of sexuality.

The sexual lives of married couples are scrutinised by the priestly caste. Women are brainwashed into thinking that marriage thrives on sex manuals and push-up bras and men are forced into parodies of sexual performance. Children are rationed. Marriages fail, becoming as cheerless and loveless as the sexuality of the porn films they are forced to imitate. Sound familiar?

When you listen to some of the sneers and jeers that emanate from the present priestly, and priestessly, class every time the subject of sex is mentioned by someone with an ordinarily conservative view of life --and that includes sexual modesty and a reverence for procreative sex within marriage -- you would think overt sterile sexuality is now compulsory, a bit like sport used to be when I was at school.

We really are living in looking-glass land. The people advocating continence, faithfulness and virtue are jeered, while the promoters of sexual promiscuity, fecklessness and vice pass po-faced feminist judgment.

Using the moral yardstick of the women's magazine, today's little Alice reads Dolly and gets tips on fellatio, while her mum is addicted to Twilight and is trying to look 16. It is amazing any girl comes out with her sanity, let alone her virginity, intact.

How did this happen? One explanation is the huge power of media aimed at women.

If you value sex, marriage and sexual modesty, the last magazine you probably read was Australian Knitting Patterns, 1970, or thereabouts. These days even The Australian Women's Weekly, once bastion of common sense and taste, has been forced down-market.

If you read the magazines for women that are supposed to set trends you will certainly have a different view of Australian sexual norms.

Rather than men such as Tony Abbott being moralisers or the arbiters of moral norms in Australia, it is actually the powerful female editors of women's magazines, especially Cosmopolitan and its junior version Dolly, which are the moral arbiters today.

When Abbott made his comments in Women's Weekly about his daughters and sexuality, who did the news media turn to? The likes of blogger and tweeter Mia Freedman are routinely asked for their opinion on sexual matters and we have also come to expect comments from female academics such as Catharine Lumby, author of The Porn Report.

Their comments are usually steeped in the pernicious gobbledygook of sexual politics, while at the same time advocating a degree of sexual licence that is very damaging for all young people.

No wonder there has been a series of popular online protests against the overt sexualisation of girls such as Kids Free to be Kids, Young Media Australia and Australian Women's Forum. The people doing the protesting are mostly ordinary mums.

They are fed up with more than the imagery of the media. They are frightened by the huge potential to harm their children.

This used to be called corruption. Publicly protesting this stuff is a direct slap in the face to modern raunch culture.

However, at the same time, the women's media sneers at the "new moralists", who are preventing expression of sexuality by "young women" (as they insist on calling prepubescents to 30-somethings). But, with appropriate gravitas, the editors tell us they are very worried about the body image problems of girls .

There is even a government group set up to deal with this, the final imprimatur for any useless agenda.

Solution? A few size 10 models instead of size 6s.

This phony angst about body image in a sea of sleaze almost prompts me to take seriously a naked Hawko, hoping to be a "role model" with her less than perfect left elbow.

Perhaps Dolly wants to encourage Australian girls to lose their body image inhibitions, so that they can lose their virginity if they wish when they morph from girls to young women, most of whom are morphing rapidly, to size 20.

A disturbing aspect is that although there is vigorous protest from children's advocates and anti-porn feminists against raunch culture, there is very little said about boys and men. They don't rate in the feminist universe, except as the exploiters of women and girls.

Boys are just as exploited, perhaps more so. They are confused and vulnerable, especially about the availability of girls.

When girls start reading magazines such as Dolly and plastering Facebook sites with imaginary exploits with hot guys, most of the real boys of their age have barely graduated to Top Gear and Mad.

Sexuality is the domain claimed by feminists. But sexual politics is really about the women who have influence, such as Freedman, who claims with a straight face after working on sexually exploitative women's magazines in Australia that "diversity, empowerment and reality" were her editorial mantras during her time as editor-in-chief of Cosmo in Australia. She should have thrown in world peace. We might have believed her.