In her recent article Lament for the Victorian World-View (published in Cherwell as ‘Sex, Drugs, and Taboo’, Millie McLuskie champions a retrogressive and inane social moralism, regaling us with how she transported her personal, entitled sense of propriety with her to a foreign country over the vacation.
Prior to her departure, Amsterdam had seemed to McLuskie as India must have seemed to the young Victorian gentleman just out of public-school; she was “looking forward to passing… a weekend of intoxicated hedonism – a spiffing jaunt on the continent!
Alas, we are soon to learn that “Amsterdam did not quite meet [her] expectations”, failing to live up to her upstanding British values. “Whilst it might be safer over there”, McLuskie acknowledges, she simply “did not feel at ease with everything being so shamelessly public”. Indeed, we ought to be on our guard that these European whims for public ‘safety’ – for open and progressive social attitudes towards sex and drugs – don’t infringe on our British decorum! For shame indeed!
Exuding all the moral dualism of a Jekyll and Hyde figure, McLuskie seems abhorred of those “people who… project lewd and misguided ideas onto the women in the windows”, noting how they “suffer the stigma of prostitution”, yet, just lines later, goes on to write “Some taboos are there for a reason: to deter people from engaging in sordid and degrading behaviour. In my view, [prostitution is] illegal for a good reason”. It seems clear to me who is projecting “misguided ideas”; where that ‘stigma’ is coming from.
Indeed, why can’t those sordid women – indeed, the whole degraded Dutch nation – just follow McLuskie’s example and be more refined and duplicitous – more British – in their hedonism? They could at least have the decency to pretend some sort of double standard, if only out of courtesy to their British visitors.
For a moment, McLuskie appears to betray a vestige of self-awareness – “Maybe I am just painfully British…” she ponders, tantalising her reader with the possibility of some kind of absolution – maybe with a reconsideration of the nuances of national identity, or through a realisation of the need for measured cultural relativism in a post-colonial world. However, with a cliché reference to her “stiff upper lip”, she plants herself firmly back in the 19th century, and, straining the boundaries of her desire for Victorian repressiveness, postulates that there might be “a place for taboo in our society”.
But where is that place? Can taboo really serve as an admissible instrument of moral direction or instruction in the modern day and age? These are questions which McLuskie might have raised or addressed in her article about taboo, but instead, crossing the sensibilities of a Jane Austen novel with what reads like a vapid Holden Caulfield, McLuskie is seemingly incapable of consideration beyond her sheltered adolescent longing for “the thrill [of] the possibility of getting caught”. Who even cares about the realities of pressing social issues? So what if we continue to waste millions of pounds on failed policy? But I guess it’s not really a waste, is it? Because, as McLuskie eruditely and definitively concludes, “illegality just makes for a more thrilling high”…
It is of course this very principle which has long formed the cornerstone of British policy and legislation. In a country so desperately lacking excitement – where cricket was invented, and where articles like ‘Sex, Drugs, and Taboo’ find publication – measures have to be taken to ensure citizens have sufficient opportunity for the “thrills of illegality” that are the sole reason we don’t all throw ourselves from Dover’s cliffs.
Indeed, in light of the upcoming general election, the Conservatives have come under heavy fire for their stance on drugs; it seems there is a growing consensus among the general public that Britain’s drugs laws simply aren’t thrilling enough. A 2014 study found that only one in five people who had received cautions from the police for possession of cannabis would describe the experience as “thrilling”, and that as many as seven out of ten inmates incarcerated for two years or more were now only receiving “mild amusement” from their imprisonment.
In a recent interview, Ed Miliband was quoted as saying – “Clearly things aren’t working as they are. I think it’s high time we extend prohibition to consumer goods. Tea and coffee, for instance – the working people of Britain are bored of purchasing their hot beverages legally from “simple, convenient, safe” commercial outlets. Why not ban them, and create a whole new criminal market? Think of the untapped thrills!”. David Cameron dismissed the proposal as “impractical”.
Despite being divided over such issues as drugs, tea, and coffee, all the major parties are in agreement that more needs to be done to interest voters in political issues, especially young people. The Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats have all therefore pledged to ensure that politics is made illegal before the next general election, in an attempt to up the ‘thrill factor’ of engaging with the democratic system.
