Wanna read something disturbing? Stroppyblog has done a survey on the what lefties do in bed (part 1, part 2, part 3.) Okay, so most of it is just an excuse for a load of in jokes between the various sections of the British left, but there is some interesting information to be gleaned from it.

The clear majority of respondents (72%) were male. Around two-thirds of respondents use porn at least occasionally. A third of respondents think porn degrades women, with a lot of ‘not sure’ answers. A similar number (28%) think that porn should not exist under socialism; 23% think that sex work should not exist under socialism, with a lot of people answering ‘depends what type.’

So what does this tell us? Firstly that lefties, who tend to have a theory on pretty much everything, have no unified approach to sex. In my experience most left-wing bloggers, who are generally male, tend to avoid or fudge the subject. It does however come up quite regularly on Splintered Sunrise and A Very Public Sociologist, and Madam Miaow can be also very funny when she deals with the subject.

The survey also tells us that a lot of people- presumably men, as they are primary users of porn- are hypocrites, in that they use porn even though they think it degrades women. I also suspect that the ‘hmm, not sure’ response may be code for ‘yes, but I don’t want to admit it’. Now, this is interesting because we are running up against the biggest problem with socialist theory, namely that creating a world in which people are not exploited or degraded might not be compatible with human desires, in this case male desires. And human desires are not so easily circumnavigated, nor should they necessarily be. Sometimes ideology doesn’t translate well into real emotional life; lots of liberal minded people are totally in favour of free love, right up until the point when their partner sleeps with someone else.

Again my mind returns to Valerie Solanas and the SCUM manifesto. It almost seems to me that she has the right idea, but unless you seriously want to suggest the creation of a female only society, her conclusion does us no good. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the conservative feminists (who are usually anti-porn and indeed anti-men and anti-sex altogether) are the libertarian feminists, who produce porn for women and organise female centred, sexually uninhibited club nights. Although Female Chauvinist Pigs has it’s flaws, it does effectively tell the story of how these two branches of feminism diverged after the successes of the seventies, and the damaging this effect this had. So we get ultra-feminists working with the religious right to ban porn, and libertarian feminists working with the porn industry to attack sexual inhibition. Both approaches are far from satisfactory.

There’s an analogy to be made between the sex industry and the drugs industry. The progressive attitude towards drugs is much more clear cut- decriminalise, legalise, treat addicts. Here’s my own opinion- recreational drugs (cannabis, ecstasy, mushrooms etc) should be legalised and sold to adults in dedicated shops, which are either run by or heavily regulated by the state. Drugs are extremely cheap to produce, and the current market price reflects how much people are willing to pay rather than the cost of production. Prices could be maintained at current levels through taxation, the revenue from which could then ploughed into addiction treatment centres and other public services. Harder drugs (heroin, crack cocaine etc) should not be sold to the public but prescribed to recovering addicts in accordance with the wishes of their doctor, free of charge.

Why do I and other progressives make these arguments? Because you can’t stop people taking drugs. Drugs are fun. This is the simple, undeniable truth. Hence, you will never eliminate the consumption of drugs for pleasure. This begs another question- why would you want to? Is people taking drugs for pleasure so intolerable to society that it must be prevented at all costs?

I would argue that it’s not. The actual negative effects of drugs on people are usually no worse to that of alcohol, for example. Friends of mine who are much more into hard drugs than myself tell me that in their experience the drug which has the most potential to fuck you up is alcohol. This is probably true in the short term; in the long term, tobacco undoubtedly takes that title. Flipping through the free London Paper today, I read Babyshambles guitarist Drew McConnell arguing that alcohol and heroin are the ‘big two’ to be wary of, and he criticise anti-drugs campaigns for making an unnecessary distinction between legal and illegal drugs. I agree with him.

What is most undesirable about drugs is the industry that goes with it; pushing drugs to kids, gang wars for territory, dealers trying to hook recreational users onto more addictive drugs. Simply put, the worst thing about drugs is making the financial transaction, having to deal with the people you have to buy them off. These problems can be eliminated or at least reduced by legalisation and regulation; denial and criminalisation just works in favour of the gangster capitalists who run the drugs trade.

Now, back to porn and prostitution. The act of having sex is certainly not harmful or immoral in itself; if we can make the case that taking drugs for recreation is okay, then we can surely say the same about sex. What is harmful is the act of paying someone to have sex, whether it’s directly with the client or to be filmed in a movie. Simply legalising the sex industry does not work; despite operating legally the porn industry is extremely sexist and exploitative, and legalising prostitution does not necessarily provide an improvement in working conditions. If you’re in any doubt about that, read some reports about the conditions in legalised brothels in Nevada. The Netherlands take a much better approach, with a recognised sex worker’s union leading to much better working conditions, but it’s still hard to escape the conclusion that having sex for money is fundamentally degrading and should ideally be eliminated from society.

So what do we do about this? I’m not in favour of legalising prostitution, but decriminalising those who work as prostitutes, and giving them the help they need to achieve a change in career. This problem is analogous to, and indeed crosses over with, the attempts to tackle drug addiction I expressed support for above. As for the ‘recreational drug’ of the sex industry- pornography- we need to take an approach similar to recreational drugs. Porn is already legal, and rightly so, but the production of porn should be regulated more heavily than it is at the moment to protect the rights of those who appear in porn. It should also be noted that there is an inverse correlation between the availability of porn society and the incident of sexual assault, as frustrated men can relieve their tensions without resorting to physical violence. Another argument against criminalising porn, then.

Finally, here’s a more radical solution to porn. Given that it is the exchange of money for sex and not sex itself which is the problem, why not eliminate the financial transaction from the equation? Place a ban on people paying others to be filmed having sex, and paying for material of people having sex, but not on the creation or dissemination of pornography itself. Thus the porn industry would become something done by amatures out of their own volition. If you don’t think that people would be willing to film themselves having sex and have that distributed on the internet for free, you probably haven’t been keeping track of trends in this area of commerce. Amature porn is fast catching up on professionally produced porn, and there’s more than a few people who get a thrill out of making home movies and having strangers watch the results. What this would result in is a reduction in the amount of porn featuring unrealistic models doing unrealistic things, but then that’s probably a good thing, and would make our perception of sex as a whole somewhat more realistic.

I can see a couple of problems with this approach. Firstly, if you’re not charging money for distributing something, you have no control over copyright. I can sympathise with someone who makes home movies but doesn’t want them ending up all over the internet. However, I’d say that the only way to avoid that is not to put material of yourself on the internet; given the nature of the beast, it’s best to assume that everything you put on the internet will be seen by everyone you know. (I remember a minor scandal a few years back, when it was discovered that ‘Friends Only’ Livejournal posts could be read by searching for them in Google.) Secondly, it’s possible that an underground industry dealing in the more violent and unpleasant aspects of pornography may spring up, out of the reach of state regulation. This could be dangerous; the only solution is vigilance against such activities. The government is already planning on passing a bill against ‘extreme pornography’, which covers the sort of things that people really would have to be paid to do rather than do out of their own free will.

So, that’s my two cents. Anyone wanna start a debate? While you’re chewing that over, here’s a huge phallic symbol to feast your eyes upon.

Insert joke about the thrust of British capital here…

Skins is a drama/comedy which centres around a group of 16 and 17 year old students at a sixth form college. It was co-created by Jamie Brittain, a friend of mine from high school, and is set in the city of Bristol where we grew up. I missed it first time around in January but caught the recent re-runs on E4, and in my opinion it competes only with Torchwood for the title of best thing on British TV this year. As with Torchwood it’s great seeing something set and filmed in places I used to be on a regular basis, and there are plenty of situations and characters in Skins which are familiar as well.

One of the best things about Skins is the music. I missed episode one first time around, so the first Skins I saw was the beginning of episode two, where Cassie observes the wreckage of the morning after the night before with Mogwai’s Cody playing in the background. Immediately I knew the series was going to be excellent. The use of Spiritualized’s Do It All Over Again at the end of episode four was also an inspired accompaniment to the story.

Name-dropping aside, I do have a couple of points to make about the programme. Firstly- Skins = New Rave! This rather tenuous insight occurred to me whilst watching the Skin’s ‘Secret Party’ mini-episode. A paper thin plot is used to justify having a big party using the Skins cast and fans. Observe…

Decadence, debauchery, charity shop fashion and quality music. Naturally I approve, and it occurs to me that the music, clothes and general feel of the video epitomise what New Rave is supposed to be about.

First of all, what is New Rave? Well, depending on who you ask it’s either the Next Big Thing in pop music or a load of NME-contrived hype. Previously I’ve been of the latter persuasion, and so it seems was John Harris when he wrote this article about the emerging scene just over a year ago. Then again, he didn’t like rave the first time around either.

There is ridiculous amount of debate over whether New Rave as a genre actually exists or not. I’m not really interested in this argument; whatever you want to call it it’s undeniable that a strain of indie which combines guitar music with dance has emerged over the last few years. Like the term ‘Emo’ not all bands having such a sound like the label ‘New Rave’ being foisted upon them. I’m just using the phrase for the sake of convenience.

The band featured in the video above are Foals, and are actually rather good. Take a look at the artist charts on these two New Rave groups on Last.fm for other bands associated with the scene. To those lists I’d add my personal favourites the Whip (see the awesome video for recent single Divebomb) and CSS (see Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above.) The strain of indie represented by these bands and others can be traced back to Bloc Party’s first album- see Banquet for an example of finely crafted indiedisco- and the remixing of the entire album by established electronic artists helped establish the connection between indie and dance.

My contention is that the music and culture represented by Skins is in part feeding into this new musical movement, whatever it ends up being called. The influence of the programme may become more explicit as time gives us perspective. If the programme makers really have contributed to this culture (rather than exploit it, as the industry will surely do when and if it gets big) then they will have created a small piece of cultural history.

Now for the other point (warning: a few minor plot spoilers follow.) A lot of moralising has been done about the drug taking and sex depicted in Skins. The tabloid press, notorious for their lack or irony, take it all at face value and denounce the show as immoral and corrupting. Of course Skins is an exaggeration; all the best comedy is made by taking real life situations and pushing them to the extreme. It’s a comedy, not a documentary; but what makes the programme popular and relevant is that it does have an element of truth to it, and its probably closer to reality than moralising teen dramas such as Hollyoaks.

So what does Skins tell us about growing up in Britain in the 21st century, other than that kids are fucked up? Well, the stock reasoning of the Daily Mail et al is that the wayward kids are the result of drug dealers preying on our youth, or black cultural influences, or programmes like Skins, or deadbeat single mothers, or immigrants, or whatever. The finger is pointed firmly at ‘the Other’, factors which exist outside of the typical white middle-class family home, which is a source of support and stability. What Skins portrays is a generation going array precisely because of the sort of bourgeois family life that small-c conservative tabloids espouse.

Take Tony and Effy. Their dad (played by Harry Enfield) is a pathetic character, which is aptly illustrated by his painfully embarrassing conduct at his own birthday celebration at the start of episode eight. Tony, an existentialist, hides a contempt for his dad and subtly undermines him at every opportunity. Effy is silent throughout the day but every evening secretly escapes her parent’s neurotic protectionism and returns at dawn after a night of sex drugs and partying.

Or take Cassie, whose mum and (step?) dad are too obsessed with each other to notice her anorexia and self-destructive tendencies. Or Jal, whose comfortable record producer father has no interest in her talent at classical music and secretly blames her for the departure of her mother. Or Chris, whose parents were torn apart by the death of his brother and now want nothing to do with him or each other. Both Sid and Michelle have parents who appear to be incapable of conducting a steady relationship, and Josh and Abigail’s mother is a wealthy psychologist who plies them with pharmaceuticals which seem to do more harm than good.

The behaviour of the kids is clearly linked to the actions of the parents, and significantly the parents are not cases for the social services; rather, they are the sort of people who would be more likely to buy the Daily Mail than feature in it. In fact, very few adults at all are portrayed kindly in Skins. The teachers at the sixth form college attended by the characters are selfish, manipulative, naive or just plain incompetent. Also the show contains subtle digs at private healthcare, private education and the class system which is prevalent in Bristol, a schizophrenic city which badly wants to be London.

All in all, it’s nice to see something on TV which doesn’t feature the usual rehashed plots and predictable villains. Season two is due early next year. Meanwhile, here’s some more Decline: