Welcome to the Rut

I don’t really want to talk about the whole Epstein debacle, but it’s as good a place to start as any. Elon’s spicy tweet made me laugh about the absurdity of it all

Epstein, of course, was so overcome with guilt that he hanged himself. With the kind of luck more commonly associated with Lottery winners he managed to select those precious few moments when the cameras weren’t working, the guards weren’t about, and even managed to fracture his hyoid in three places (no mean feat in a prison cell with just a bedsheet).

His partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her part in the proceedings. Whilst there exist plenty of victims, finding the actual abusers has proven harder than finding sense in one of Kamala’s speeches. The powers-that-be can assemble an assault team to ‘liberate’ a squirrel called Peanut from its miserable existence free to wander a family home - and to ‘liberate’ it from its life - but they’ve found it considerably more difficult to identify a single one of the people who actually abused kids.

Hunting down unlicensed squirrels? A piece of cake. Hunting down child abusers? No idea where to start, the bastards didn’t even have a list, or any evidence, allegedly.

Peanut, of course, was kind of famous on Instagram which is where the miscreants went wrong. They should have just done an Epstein-Maxwell and kept it hidden. Sage advice; if you’re going to help an undocumented squirrel, try not to make it too obvious.

Floating above all of this is that somewhat (t)horny issue of sex. I don’t mean ‘sex’ in the biological category sense, or even the weird genderwoo (non)sense, but the actual act itself.

The rut, the rumpy-pumpy, the slightly awkward delightful squishy-squelchy wonder of it all.

We are programmed for it. Reproduction is the central core of any species - even those pesky little vicious nanomachines called viruses ‘live’ to reproduce. The male Praying Mantis just can’t help himself even though he’s possibly not going to survive the experience¹.

I would even go so far as to say that sex rules. All of those power games, the endless scramble for status on some hierarchy, are, I think, pretty much all about (subconsciously or otherwise) promoting one’s fitness as a mate. So much of what we do, the way we behave, right down to our mannerisms and attire, is a sexual signal².

And sexual signals are not always designed or intended for the opposite sex. The well-groomed guy in the office, dominant, confident, is projecting an image of power to his fellow males to say “I’m higher status than you. More worthy of a mate than you”. That’s a sexual signal - but to other males. It’s mostly subconscious, but doesn’t have to be.

Many will deny this. They’ll dress it up (no pun intended) by saying things like “it makes me feel good about myself” etc, etc, without ever pausing to really investigate precisely why it makes them feel so good.

Sexual desire is a very powerful thing. The question is really about how that desire is harnessed in a way that helps and nourishes rather than in any self-destructive way. That’s a much harder question to answer. When it comes to sex for humans, where are the boundaries and what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’?

In the Animal Kingdom there are no such ‘moral’ qualms. Body types and shapes, and also behaviours, are all determined by the necessities of reproductive fitness and millennia of evolutionary tweaks and changes to achieve a successful equilibrium with an environment.

That’s also mostly true of humans³, but we live in a richer environment that, unlike in the Animal Kingdom, includes our own much more complex societies and mental processes which live in an ever-changing dynamic feedback. This is a kind of societal and mental environment above and beyond the mere physical kind of environment.

In the past, human sexuality and desire was somewhat moderated by the rather consequential possibility of popping out some awkward squealing little brat and the necessity of looking after the damn thing for years⁴. Evolution had to work on that too. If the mewling menaces didn’t survive, the species would have died out long ago.

Solutions, physical and behavioural solutions, had to be ‘built in’ as it all unfolded from slime mould to ape and beyond.

Won’t anyone think of the kids? Well, that’s pretty much what evolution does. It’s the only thing it ‘thinks’ about.

The Paraphernalia of Paraphilia

Human sexuality can be a very strange thing indeed. Our complex minds, still partly driven by an evolutionary equilibrium more designed and optimised for when we hadn’t developed morals, have responded to this mismatch between the ‘animal’ and the ‘human’ by developing all sorts of sexual practices.

It’s kind of hard to see how evolutionary ‘programming’ led to a desire for squeaky sex, for example. Dressing up in some latex gimp suit as a way of satiating one’s sexual desire seems to be somewhat at odds with anything we might consider to be ‘natural’. Yet it’s almost certainly a ‘natural’ response (in some) to a really complex set of drivers I doubt we properly understand (and probably never will).

The whole ‘understanding’ of the origin of our more ‘exotic’ sexual desires, and even those that only mildly stray from the ‘vanilla’, is not all that well-developed, I believe. Those desires seem ‘natural’ and ‘innate’ to those that have them, but they’ve arisen from a really complex set of developmental interactions between ‘minds’ and ‘society’ that I doubt we’ll ever properly disentangle.

If anything can be said to be ‘socially constructed’ perhaps the range and diversity of human sexual desires is it. Some of the more exotic fetishes have been called ‘paraphilias’ by psychologists - that is to say sexual behaviours, desires, and fantasies that fall outside the window of what is deemed to be normal.

Do Welsh androids dream of electric sheep?

It’s hard to say, but it’s likely that humans are the only animals that can consciously think about sex, and to construct elaborate fantasies around it.

Darcy may well have been attracted to a particularly fine pair of eyes, but Elizabeth was almost certainly attracted to Darcy’s rather large Pemberley. It probably didn’t occur to Austen that a modern-day Elizabeth would be living in some polycule consisting of Darcy, Bingley, Wickham, the maids, and several goats.

And here’s the issue. What sexual behaviours should be promoted as ‘good’ and ‘wholesome’? Should the whole notion of ‘good’ and ‘wholesome’ be scrapped altogether when it comes to sex? Is anything goes, given consent, the order of the day now?

That’s an issue I don’t have anything like a proper answer for. My ‘liberal’ self doesn’t really have problem with anything consenting adults get up to (provided it’s in the privacy of their own homes) but should I? Should I categorize some (legal) sexual behaviours as ‘beyond the pale’ and on what basis?

A Shaggy Dog Story?

A while back I was reading about some Australian lass (I think she was from Oz) who’d organized one of those shagathons to be filmed for public consumption. I seem to remember that she was expecting 200 guys to turn up, but over 580 responded.

I have my doubts about this story. Apparently she ended up in hospital after being somewhat over-serviced.

Let’s suppose the number is 500, and she set aside 12 hours for this lay back and think of Australia exercise. That’s a grand total of one and three-quarter minutes for each bloke. What was her initial ad like? Only premmies need apply?

The apparent ‘logistics’ of this event don’t really add up properly.

But setting aside the somewhat dubious claims of over 500 we know that there have been a few of these shagathons that have taken place.

Now, in the past it’s likely that the early hominids were bonking away in front of the whole tribe - although it’s doubtful that anything quite like a current-day human shagathon happened - probably because those males deemed worthy enough to mate had also developed a certain sense of possessiveness. That’s understandable from an evolutionary perspective. Chad ape wanted to make sure it wasn’t Tarquin ape’s offspring that resulted. You go to all that trouble being an ‘alpha’ and some nerdy little geek ape swings by and undoes all your, erm, hard work. Somewhere along the way we also developed a concept of modesty.

Overlaying all of this was the rather fundamental issue of ensuring the survival of any offspring. This overriding fact placed some very serious limitations on the free-wheeling, shag anything that moves, kind of thinking. It remained so for many, many, thousands of years until we, only extremely recently in evolutionary terms, figured out ways to reliably decouple sex from the consequences of sex.

Human societies developed in various ways, but the central feature that none could ignore was the issue of offspring. Different societies implemented different ‘rules’, but I would maintain that all of those rules, many of which appear oppressive to our modern eyes, were heavily influenced by ancient evolutionary drivers, even though the specific forms they took differed from society to society.

Our modern societies, however, have managed to almost entirely decouple the notion of sex from its reproductive function. This has been achieved by technology. In the space of an evolutionary blink we’ve fundamentally altered the relationship we have in our minds between sex and the consequences of sex.

Some would say this has been ‘liberating’. And maybe there’s an element of that. But we’ve ‘liberated’ ourselves to do what, exactly? Film ourselves shagging several hundred blokes? Watch hundreds of hours of emotionally-numbing porn as we stroke ourselves into some kind of zombie-like stupor?

My ‘liberal’ sensibilities are somewhat struggling to come to terms with this as an overall ‘good’ for society.

The Decoupling of Coupling

When someone trots out the tired phrase “our children are our future” doubtless there will be some who roll their eyes. However clichéd it might be, it’s also true. If we stop having kids, as a species, then we don’t have a future.

But what kind of future is it that we envision for them?

By all accounts, we’re not doing very well. A frighteningly high percentage of kids are said to be struggling with mental ill-health in our ‘modern’ societies. We’ve foolishly constructed a kind of positive-feedback loop where these struggles are now seen as some kind of badge of honour or part of an ‘identity’ instead of something to be overcome. By doing the whole ‘celebrate’ thing so beloved of the ‘woke’ way of thinking, all we’ve done is created a new shiny impetus for kids to be unwell - and to feel good and ‘special’ about being so.

That’s only part of the story, because I don’t think it’s all some ‘faux’ issue. I think a significant number of our kids, perhaps over 25% if some surveys and studies are to be believed, are genuinely having problems.

But what are we to compare this to? Societies of the past where hardly any kid was educated and, when they were old enough, used as another source of labour? Societies where it was necessary to have several kids because you weren’t sure how many of them would survive?

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here because I don’t know anything like enough history - and certainly not very much about the living conditions of the ‘common’ man and woman in the past - but would it be wrong to think of the half-century between something like 1950-2000 as some kind of ‘golden age’ where, at least in the ‘west’, we were able to produce⁵ kids who grew into reasonably well-adjusted and functional adults?

Idle speculation like this aside, the fundamental question remains. What’s the ‘right’ or ‘best’ way to bring up kids? I suspect there’s no single way to do a good job in this regard, and plenty of ways to do a god-awful job.

What are we to tell them about sex? I’m a firm believer in “if they’re old enough to ask the question, they’re old enough for an answer” - in an entirely age-appropriate way, of course. It’s also OK to let your kids know that you don’t always have all the answers.

But is it really ‘right’ that we expose kids to hardcore porn from young ages? Not deliberately, unless you’re sick, but the sheer availability of this stuff makes it almost impossible to police unless you ban all online devices and only allow them to have friends or interact with those who don’t possess online devices.

If this is where kids are getting their ‘understanding’ of sex and relationships from - or even some of that ‘understanding’ - then Heaven help us.

For this we have to blame the adults who, perhaps, should have known better. By elevating sex to being a goal in and of itself and deliberately eschewing or minimizing any physical or emotional consequences of it we’ve shaped society in a very particular way. What did we think might happen when we glorified the pursuit of sexual pleasure and mistook this for fulfilment?

I don’t think many of us want to return to some kind of sexually-repressed society where everyone has sexual hang-ups, but do we really think being an OnlyFans model is some kind of noble calling or career choice?

There’s surely some kind of middle-ground to be had here, but how do we get there? It’s certainly not something that can (or should) be enforced.

I think this focus on sex, almost to the point of obsession with some, is not doing good things to previously healthy young minds.

This is one of the points this article from June this year makes. I think the author does stray into more ‘religious’ and ‘puritanical’ mode at times but, nevertheless, it’s well-worth considering what he has to say.

I Must Be Living in a Simulation—Because No Way This Is Real

Dr. Roger McFillin, a clinical psychologist, talks about a day he spent trying to catch up with modern ‘pop culture’ and describes his encounter with the video of some live event given by a very popular online ‘influencer’, Alex Cooper the host of the Call Her Daddy podcast, who talks a lot about sex issues

Picture this: thousands of screaming fans- most young women who are probably still under the age of 25. But here's the shocker—a percentage of the audience was mothers with what appeared to be their pre-teen and teenage daughters. Shots of them walking into the arena wearing t-shirts and acting like it’s Christmas morning. MOTHERS. WITH. THEIR. DAUGHTERS. Cheering like they were at a boyband concert. I found this odd.

Who brings their 13-year-old to this? I thought, genuinely confused.

Wait. Maybe I got this all wrong. Maybe I'm being judgmental. There's no way this could be as raunchy and inappropriate for kids as I initially thought, right? There must be some positive empowerment message I'm missing. Maybe Alex has evolved beyond the sexually explicit content. Maybe this is actually about female entrepreneurship or overcoming adversity.

Surely no parent would voluntarily expose their child to such degrading content and call it empowerment? As a father of daughters, I was genuinely baffled by the appeal. Call me old-fashioned, but when I think about aspirations for my girls, 'meaningless sexual encounters with strangers' doesn't exactly make the list.

The opening show was in Boston, where Alex went to college. With great pride and theatrical flair, she regaled the crowd with stories of her sexual escapades throughout the city. Then came the punchline that broke my brain: she announced that Boston was where she got her first sexually transmitted disease—proclaiming it with the triumphant energy of someone who'd just liberated France or discovered penicillin. Not kidding.

The crowd went absolutely wild.

Mothers and daughters—some who looked like they couldn't even drive yet—jumping up and down, screaming with joy about... an STD. A sexually transmitted disease. As if contracting chlamydia was some kind of feminist achievement worthy of a standing ovation.

I’m not at all sure that exposing young developing minds to sexually explicit material is a great idea. I don’t think it’s good for boys or girls. I’m pretty certain their young minds haven’t quite developed enough to deal with it ‘appropriately’ - I’m not sure anyone’s mind has developed enough to deal with it ‘appropriately’, be they young or old.

I think most people, even some quite ‘progressive’ types, would baulk at the idea of exposing their kids to such material and believe it to be damaging to young minds. Yet we’re locked into some kind of stasis where any practical measures proposed to limit the damage are seen as ‘oppressive’ or just another gambit by the ever-present bogeyman of The Patriarchy™.

I think many of us get the sense that too many of young people are somewhat ‘rudderless’ - not all by any means - but we only have ‘ourselves’ to blame. Over the last few decades we’ve been happily dismantling all sorts of ‘Chesterton’s fences’ without understanding anything about what the consequences of that might be.

Old institutions like religion and marriage and child-rearing and family are often seen in a somewhat dismissive light, sometimes for understandable reasons, and yet these very things often provided us with some kind of bulwark against excess. They moderated some of our ‘worst’ and more damaging impulses to some extent.

Perfectly? Not by a long way - but what have we got now? What do we look to to be able to begin to repair some of the damage to young minds that we have caused?

Where Do We Go From Here?

I’ve no idea. I wish I did have more of an idea. I don’t know how we ‘fix’ any of this - but I think a lot of us appreciate there’s something to be ‘fixed’ however inarticulately we might express it and however much we may be accused of indulging in a ‘moral panic’. It’s kind of obvious that, clearly, something is not going right with far too many of our kids.

A big part of that, I believe, is our “Welcome to the Rut” approach to society.

1. It seems that when the female Praying Mantis is well-fed they can decide to forego the tasty hubby-snack. Guys - this is why you should always pay for meals on a date

2. People tend to get really hung up on this term. It doesn’t really mean what a naïve interpretation would seem to suggest. Just because we’re continually sending out sexual signals does not mean we (necessarily) want to mate there and then (or even later after a nice meal and a couple of glasses of wine)

3. ‘Mostly’ might be overstating it a bit. We don’t really know. Humans have the capability to consciously, or even unconsciously, override evolutionary impulses and influences. We can also override ‘socially constructed’ imperatives. I doubt the old nature vs nurture debate, in all its variations, will be settled any time soon. In my view it’s foolish to entirely ignore ‘nature’ because foundational pushes, nudges, and influences haven’t gone away, even if we can often bury them or moderate them to some extent. Our passion and struggle to place ourselves higher on some hierarchy (of which there are many), for example, stems from deep evolutionary imperatives that few seem able to wholly override

4. I’m being somewhat dishonest here. For many people, including myself, being a parent has been the most wonderful and enriching experience I could imagine. It’s by far and away the most significant ‘achievement’ of my life. Yes it can also be bloody hard work, frustrating and exasperating, but I wouldn’t change anything (except my own crappy parenting at times)

5. Of course I’m only talking averages and trends here. There will be many horror stories at the edges of this ‘bell curve’