I like a bit of sex in the morning which is why I listen to Radio 4. Today did not disappoint. 

First up, we had a story of how much sex the British are having. We are, it seems, enjoying less as a nation today than we did a decade ago – around five times a month on average as opposed to six, if you are interested.

But, don’t panic: it’s not all self-discipline and abstinence. We are having more underage sex: apparently 31% of under-16s have had sex compared to 29% ten years ago. We have more partners than we once did: an average of 7.7 for women aged under 44 and 11.7 for men. Around one in thirty men paid for sex (or, at least, admitted to doing so). And one in ten women, and one in 70 men, said they had had sex against their will (I believe this is called rape).

Moreover, even the overall headline fall may only be a decline in normal sex (i.e. when there is someone else there). It is distinctly possible, mused one of the researchers, that the increased availability of on-line porn is serving as a substitute for sex.

Following this, there was a story about a report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups. 

The result of a two-year inquiry by the Children’s Commissioner into child exploitation and gangs, this “found shocking and profoundly distressing evidence of sexual assault, including rape, being carried out by young people against other children and young people.” According to the Today programme’s interview with Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, the problem was not simply one of income or class. “These kinds of attitudes prevail now in all kinds of different neighbourhoods and schools including in middle-class areas.”

The inquiry found 2,409 known victims of child sexual exploitation (i.e. child-on-child exploitation) and found a further 16,500 at risk. “Shocking as these figures are,” the report commented, “we know the true figure is greater.”

The reasons? Inevitably they are complicated but (wait for it) adult pornographic material was heavily to blame. (Astonishingly, Berelowitz claimed that “pretty much 100% of boys are looking at adult pornographic materials”. Presumably she means teenage boys, but even so this is a heart-sinkingly high figure.) So, perhaps were “highly-sexualised pop music videos” – at least that was what John Humphrys asked and, although she didn’t quite take the bait, Berelowitz did say that “the music industry has a lot to answer for.”

Now, I’m no Professor of Sociology, which is probably why I instantly thought there might be the thinnest gossamer thread of a connection between these two stories. Perhaps an obsessively sexualised culture provides the conditions for widespread, apparently-normalised sexual abuse.

Thankfully my ignorance was corrected as John Humphrys subsequently asked precisely that question of the professor behind the first set of research and was told that there was none. “I draw quite a strict divide between liberalisation and sexualisation,” she said. What was Orwell’s line? “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

It is reassuring to believe that we can slice-up and seal life in culture-tight containers: public/ private; pornography/ pop; adult/ child; liberalisation/ sexualisation; etc. It is reassuring to believe that we are sufficiently morally mature and rationally reliable not to need any ethical authority beyond my own personal moral compass. And it reassuring to know that no-one will judge me if I do get something badly wrong, even – and admittedly this is unlikely – if I am obviously to blame for it. Reassuring, but nonsensical. With every new report, these royal robes of liberal orthodoxy become ever more threadbare.

Oh, how we ridiculed the Victorians: such prudes, such hypocrites; so much repression, so much hatred of the body; so much casual misogyny. Oh, how we mocked traditional Christian sexual morality: Abstinence? Virginity? Lifelong fidelity? Come on. If only the Victorians, if only the Christians, if only today’s sexual repressives were more tolerant, more liberal, more permissive, they, like us, would be so much happier, and society so much healthier.

Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos

Image from flickr.com by Zohar Manor-Abel under the Creative Commons Licence.