What will save children from the net? More sex in books



English writer Malorie Blackman has called for children to receive their first information about sex not from the net, but from 'realistic' scenes in books.

Good on Malorie Blackman, the new Children’s Laureate, who – in the wake of a mini-summit about minors and pornography – has called for children to receive their first information about sex not from the net, but from ‘realistic’ scenes in books.

‘I would rather my daughter read about a loving sexual relationship in a book . . . than getting her information from innuendo and from porn and the rest of it,’ she said.

In case anyone under the age of 45 is reading this, here’s the thing: it used to be really, really hard to find out and read about sex, let alone see or view anything graphic or explicit.

Just the word ‘book’ in this context is cue for a rose-tinted reverie on my part for the olden days, when moral panic was not all about pornography and what children were doing online, and it was leather-bound hardbacks that were forbidden fruit.

In fact, you had to be a pretty determined bookworm to glean anything at all, which was no problem for those of us who grew up in boring, rainy Belgium in the 1970s without a TV.

The picture of sex my generation received was all from books – until we could sneak into Emmanuelle films – and fairly random. For example, I would steal into my mother’s room to look at a grainy image of long-haired women sitting in a solemn circle, examining their own cervixes in mirrors, in her copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves (a consciousness-raising classic of the period). Apart from that, all our sex ed came from novels.

We had Judy Blume, Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins, Wilbur Smith’s chiselled heroes of the sun-baked veldt, Jilly Cooper. I even read an American writer who referred to orgasm as Pleasure with a capital P, and John Updike (as I said: no TV), who went through a worrying phase of calling the penis a ‘yam’. I could go on and on.

Images of perversity and depravity pour into our homes in an unstoppable torrent of effluent via our internet giants, which they are unlikely to plug as porn provides them with more than 30 per cent of their revenues

But our children don’t have to wade through hundreds of pages to find their intel (mine have never even glanced at the stack of erotica on the landing) as images of perversity and depravity pour into our homes in an unstoppable torrent of effluent via our internet giants, which they are unlikely to plug as porn provides them with more than 30 per cent of their revenues.

So now I’m a middle-aged mother, I don’t EVER lie awake at night worrying about what my children might have read.

I lie there worrying about what they might have seen online, the images and films of Neronian depravity, available in two clicks of a mouse. And I feel like sobbing when I hear people discussing, as they did on the Moral Maze on Radio 4 last week, horrific images of girls being raped and abused.

Of course, then, the idea that we can pop the porn genie back in the bottle, and bring back the book, is a very attractive one. For Blackman’s wistful hope for her own daughter touches on live, important and emotive issues: that of children not reading; that of children either finding or seeking porn on the net (dealt with in a 90-minute pop-up summit in Westminster last week, ie not dealt with at all); and, most nightmarish, the problem of the representation of the sex act on screen, and how this will pervert the impressionable minds of those who view online porn, and become addicted to it.

As author Philip Pullman said, in support of Blackman, books such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover – once the subject of a legendary obscenity trial – actually supply the ‘mutual respect and tenderness that seems to be absent from the internet’.

It would be brilliant if the page could revert to being the main, if not only, portal for the younger generation's sexual odyssey

Indeed. On the page, the sexual act may have been cloaked in mystifying coyness at times, but we always knew why the characters were doing it – why Rupert Campbell-Black jumped Taggie in the stable in Riders – and most importantly, what they both felt.

So I echo Pullman and Blackman and the prize-winning writer Melvin Burgess, and agree it would be brilliant if the page could revert to being the main, if not only, portal for the younger generation’s sexual odyssey.

But the curious thing is, as visual culture has become more pornified, the literary scene has become less so – largely thanks to the annual wooden spoon of the Bad Sex Prize. I’ve won it myself for writing a scene that had the phrase ‘mounting Wagnerian crescendos’ and a goat in it.

Maybe authors should put their money where their mouth is and think of England more and the carping critics a bit less, and jazz it up a bit themselves?

If there were more exciting, new books children really wanted to read – or just ONE book they all wanted to read – they wouldn’t be on their laptops so much anyway, exposed to retch-making depravity and worse.

What’s needed at the very least is another – well I was going to say ‘Fifty Shades for a less grey audience’, but stopped myself. FSOG is a lowering work of no literary merit whatsoever that depicts women as ‘submissive’, that normalises abuse, and that Sam Taylor-Wood should not consider, for one second, directing for mainstream cinema, as was announced last week – but that’s another rant entirely.

If you're so ace Pippa, I'll see you in court

Annoyingly, the London Mayor broadcast to the nation, during a court-side interview at Queen’s, that he beat me at tennis. I did lose when we last played. I’m not having a successful summer of sport altogether.



Pippa has been made official society tennis correspondent instead of me. And I’ve just been beaten not just by my brother but also by two 70-year-olds.



Rachel Johnson thinks she could take down Miss Middleton, or at least get a set off her, as she's far younger

At least neither trumpeted their victory live on BBC2 to a keen audience of Pimmed-up tennis-lovers in navy blazers.



The only thing keeping me going is the thought that if I can be beaten by septuagenarians, then I could take down Miss Middleton, or at least get a set off her, as she’s far younger than me.



She’s already challenged my nemesis Boris to ping-pong. So is it game on for singles, then? Come on, Pippa!

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Did you do the How To Tell You’re Old Quiz? I ticked loads of boxes: knowing what an Opal Fruit is, losing things, being too longsighted to see people who loom up in the gloaming at parties . . .



And while we’re on the subject: we know French women don’t get fat and French children don’t throw food, but now a book plops on my mat called French Women Don’t Get Facelifts.



Sadly, I’ve put my reading glasses down somewhere so I cannot impart the Gallic secret of eternal wrinkle-free youth. I think it was avocados, though.

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These are dangerous waters to wade into, but after sex pest Stuart Hall received only a light sentence and Charles Saatchi accepted a police caution, here’s my advice to all those who have fallen into the trap of thinking one brand of violence is more acceptable than another (you know who they are).