The Spectator - October 20, 2018

the educational and the erotic become one.

Even drugs are now sold with the imprima-

tur of moral goodness. When I was a teen-

age druggie in the 1970s, there was always

something morally dubious about the pur-

chase and consumption of drugs like cocaine

— and that was a crucial part of their appeal.

But these days, we even want our drugs to be

fair-trade. Here is one boast from a group of

online dealers: ‘We are a team of libertarian

cocaine dealers. We never buy coke from car-

tels! We never buy coke from police! We help

farmers from Peru, Bolivia and some chem-

istry students in Brazil, Paraguay and Argen-

tina. We do fair trade!’ Of course no one can

verify claims like these, but they show that

there is a demand.

Personally, I prefer the decadence of

the past to the phoney moral posturing of

the present. By all means, be a perv. Gorge

yourself on guilty pleasures. But please don’t

dress your indulgences in ethical concerns.

That’s just too disgusting for words.

SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST

Cosmo Landesman and Renee Denyer on

the ethical sex trade.

No longer are you some sleazy

onanist objectifying women.

You’re actually ‘empowering’ them

men when — thanks to the internet — you
can do everything from the privacy of your
own home?
Those shops of old failed to move with
our enlightened times, and take the sexism
out of the sex trade. Instead of embracing
gender politics and feminism, they remained
male bastions of erotic exploitation. But
where we once had dirty-mac wearers scut-
tling out of Soho sex stores with their brown
bags full of sinful pleasures, we now have
well-lit, female-friendly sex shops like Har-
mony on Oxford Street, where the smiling
staff are always happy to help.
These days you can sit back and enjoy
pornography and still be a sensitive and
caring #MeToo Man, thanks to the grow-
ing market in ‘feminist porn’. No longer are
you some sleazy onanist objectifying women.
You’re actually ‘empowering’ them by pro-
viding support for women of all races, gen-
ders, sexual identities and sizes as they get
their kit off. There are even celebrated femi-
nist porn directors such as Cheryl Dunye.
You may laugh but I will have you know that
Ms Dunye’s film Mommy Is Coming won the
Orgasmic Original Concept prize at the 2012
Feminist Porn Awards.
There’s another kind of mainstream porn
available, one that is far too high-minded
ever to admit its pornographic nature. This
uses surveys, scientific research, statistical

data — often with hardcore visual aids — to

unravel the mysteries of female pleasure. It

wants all of us to have good, healthy sex so

that we can become good, healthy people.

Let’s call it enlightenment porn.

The website OMGYes is a perfect exam-

ple. It’s like a book club for your vagina. Here

women talk ‘honestly’ and share with each

other their favourite sexual techniques. Each

topic comes with an explicit how-to video that

left even an old degenerate like me blushing.

But of course OMGYes would never think

of itself as porn. It, too, is all about empow-

erment. It lets women speak out and break

the ‘silence’ and ‘bust the taboos’ that repress

female sexuality. You’re not some sexual

narcissist concerned with your own gratifica-

tion, but a member of a pro-orgasm move-

ment that is setting women free. The ethical,

‘I want you to know I’m seeing someone else.’

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