Why many young women will reject new 'Yes Sex Please, We’re British!' campaign
A new survey found that just 35 per cent of women under 25 have a positive view of men
Westminster has been getting itself into a right tizzy this week over sex. While the fallout over the Iran War rumbled on and revelations about Peter Mandelson’s failed vetting threatened to topple Prime Minister Starmer, elsewhere in the corridors of power, sex was all anyone wanted to talk about.
Campaigners from across the UK, including many from Scotland, travelled to Westminster earlier this week to mark the first anniversary of For Women Scotland’s historic Supreme Court ruling confirming that, legally, the terms “women” and “sex” refer to biological sex. The women, who have spent the last decade of their lives arguing that sex means sex, were in celebratory mood, albeit slightly muted by the Labour government’s reluctance to accept their victory.
The women’s minister, Bridget Phillipson, has still to table the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) updated guidance in parliament, and while she has suggested she will act after the May elections, her dithering means the guidance will not go live until the summer at the earliest. Phillipson has still to give a credible reason for the delay.
Supreme Court ruling being ignored
Meanwhile, on Thursday, research published by policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM) shows that, in the absence of the EHRC’s updated guidance, many UK charities which were set up for women are deliberately ignoring the Supreme Court ruling by continuing to offer services to biological men who identify as women.
MBM’s report tells a damming story of how well-meaning organisations captured by a disputed ideology still believe, in the face of all scientific and medical evidence, that a woman’s sex is negotiable, something she can change at will, or that a man can adopt whenever the mood takes him.
Midweek, some light relief was offered by a relatively unknown Labour MP who announced her “Yes Sex Please, We’re British!” campaign to an astonished public. Samantha Niblett, whose very name is resonant of a 1970s Benny Hill sketch, wants the government to teach us what is “beautiful and normal about real sex”.
She argues that her campaign for lifelong sex education will help prevent sexual violence and abuse. "…if we can't talk about good sex,” she said, “how can we expect people to talk about bad sex and help keep them safe?” She is particularly keen that “old people” should have good sex.
Her hypothesis, which may have some merit, was drowned out by a national fit of giggles at the prospect of a “summer of sex” sanctioned by the Starmer government. And Niblett’s suggestion for an exhibition of sex toys at Westminster was greeted with incredulity. Undeterred, the South Derbyshire MP insisted her campaign was about “taking control of patriotism, our Britishness”. Vibrators with Union Jacks. The mind boggles.
READ MORE: Shocking new poll finding about Gen Z men suggests battle of the sexes is about to get nasty
Young men more likely to want children
There is one particular group of Brits who may not be indulging in sex any time soon, good or bad – young women. A survey by Merlin Strategy for the New Statesman revealed that just 35 per cent of women under 25 have a positive view of men. It seems that, for many young women, men focus too much on sex and not enough on political issues like Gaza and climate change.
The poll also showed that young men are twice as likely to want to children as their female peers, and that women under 25 are terrified of being forced into having babies by a future Reform government. Quite how they think Nigel Farage is going to force women into becoming pregnant is perhaps worthy of further investigation.
Interestingly, it was privileged young women who were the most negative about their future, with those from middle-class backgrounds much less likely to believe they will succeed in life than their working-class counterparts.
It would be easy to dismiss the survey’s findings as the over-wrought fears of indulged middle-class women who grew up online and expected adulthood to be like a carefully curated Instagram feed, only to find it resembled a Saturday night on X (Twitter).
But they are telling us something important, and policy-makers should listen. Just as they should have listened to women when they warned that gender self-ID risked women’s safeguarding and their sex-based rights, instead of dismissing them as bigots. And yes, once they have stopped giggling, they should listen to Niblett’s core message that safe, loving sex between consenting adults is worthy of celebration.
‘Everything goes’ attitude of progressive politics
Sex has become a battlefield – literally. So-called progressives have reduced women to a mere ‘idea’, a state of mind, forcing women to fight for their very identity. Violent pornography, freely available on every schoolboy’s smartphone, has distorted society’s understanding of consensual, respectful sex.
Many young people have largely abandoned the messiness of real life for the ‘safety’ of social media, with algorithms deciding who they interact with, even how they should vote. And the upheaval of the last 20 years, from the great crash of 2008 through to Covid and the climate emergency, and now the very real fear of Armageddon, has left us all, young and old, dazed and confused.
I suspect many of the disillusioned young women personified by the New Statesman survey will eventually swap their keffiyeh scarf for a baby sling, having set up home with the boy next door. But their fear of real life should be a wake-up call.
The ‘everything goes’ attitude of progressive politics doesn’t offer young people freedom – it scares many of them. Algorithms distort their reality. And the populist backlash, led by old men, threatens all of us. The brave new world we all thought we were creating is fast becoming a nightmare.
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