If history has taught us anything, it’s that prohibition doesn’t work.
It didn’t stop Americans from drinking booze in the 1920s, it didn’t stop people of the same gender from being attracted to one another before 1967 in the UK and it certainly has never stopped Brits from taking recreational drugs in their hundreds of thousands.
It didn’t stop teenagers at my school from having sex before they were legally able to do so. It didn’t stop people flouting the rules to have sex during the first lockdown — and it certainly won’t stop them this time.
And yet, since Saturday in London — and before that for areas of the North and Wales — it is now considered illegal for people who don’t live together or who aren’t in a ‘support bubble’ to have sex indoors.
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Before you start googling whether it’s legal to have sex outdoors and where, I just want to acknowledge how utterly absurd this situation would have seemed to our pre-pandemic brains.
Yes, that’s right, the Government is telling people when and how they can have casual sex — it’s state-mandated celibacy.
But in this strange dystopian reality we now live in, such a concept doesn’t feel quite so absurd anymore. The pillars of acceptability upon which we used to rest our collective understanding of normalcy have toppled, and now everything is up for grabs.
Look, I get it. This year has been a lot and I honestly don’t envy those in charge and the thorny decisions they’re having to make right now. Tens of thousands of people have died in this country because of this disease, and over a million globally. It’s serious.
But what I do object to is the Government’s prudish attitude towards sex, when it has access to so many examples in recent history and beyond that demonstrate just how fervent people’s need to shag is — and how easily it drives them to break rules.
During the first lockdown, it made more sense. We didn’t really understand the virus, its transmission and how to stop it. We were all very scared — and rightly so. But this virus isn’t such an unknown entity these days.
Things have progressed and so has Government advice. Children have gone back to school, gyms have reopened — we’ve found ways around these complicated issues that have enabled society to get moving again safely. So why not extend this to sex?
Instead of telling people not to do it, why not accept that they probably will anyway and so equip them with advice on how to do so as safely as possible?
Off the top of my head I can think of certain positions that might be less risky in terms of transmission.
And as weird as it sounds, I’m sure some people would prefer to have sex wearing a mask or without kissing if the alternative is indefinite abstinence. Innovation often springs up in response to a problem that needs to be resolved.
I find it hard to believe that if our leaders and their scientific advisors really wanted to, they couldn’t find a workable solution to this one.
The Government has shown that it is capable of agile thinking around complex issues when it wants to be. If you want evidence of this then look no further than efforts to keep the economy running by making exemptions in higher-risk areas for shops, restaurants and bars to stay open.
The truth is that whether or not it’s allowed within the current advice, people will continue to have casual sex
And while I understand the importance of this in terms of the impact it will have on the livelihoods of Brits and their ability to stay in work, I would argue that sexual contact is just as important.
It’s a basic human need, and deserves the same level of respect as the right to work. Depriving people of the ability to touch one another or experience intimacy during an objectively scary and isolating time seems especially cruel.
Imagine, if you will, the impact that this sort of ban has on single people living alone — I know myself how hard it can be as someone who went over 100 days earlier in the year without touching another human.
And though my own situation has changed since that time, meaning that this legislation doesn’t directly affect me, I still feel a lot of empathy for those well-meaning people who are faced with the difficult decision of balancing their basic sexual needs and their desire to follow the rules.
Apart from nothing else, telling people not to do something often makes them want to do it even more — ask the parents of any toddler. This is surely even truer when it comes to sex — an area of life where people often enjoy feeling ‘naughty’.
But more than anything, I can’t help but think that this all feels a little old fashioned. Call me naive but haven’t we evolved past these prudish attitudes towards sex in this country? Is it really that hard to admit that the majority of people like having sex? And is that really such a bad thing? God knows there’s not much else making us smile this year.
And before you jump down to the comments to ask if it’s really that difficult to be chaste — the answer is yes! It is for some people. Sexual desire and libidos exist on a spectrum, and having a high sex drive is just as natural as not having one at all.
It’s high time we stop being so embarrassed about sex; it’s dangerous in so many ways, but especially now, during the pandemic, when this shame has started to seep into policymaking.
Especially if it leads to a scenario where the Government can hand out fines to horny people who are following an innate desire that has existed in humans since time began.
If we can find ways for a dentist to dive into someone’s mouth to extract a tooth in a coronavirus-safe way, surely we can find ways to have sex safely too.
The truth is that whether or not it’s allowed within the current advice, people will continue to have casual sex. And if there are ways to reduce the threat of disease spreading when they do this, I think they deserve to know.
And in the current climate, more progressive thinking about this issue is something from which we all stand to benefit.
If we’ve learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that the rules simply don’t work unless we all stick to them.
But asking people to decide between their carnal desires and their morality is a difficult game to play — and it’s one that the Government will lose.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/20/asking-us-not-to-have-sex-is-unrealistic-13452256/
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