It links the mark of such thinkers as Aquinas, Shelley, Sartre, DH Lawrence and Milton's epic theme in Paradise Lost, where Satan perverted Eve, and Adam and Eve's innocent pleasure in each other is turned into lasciviousness. To pervert, meaning to turn something from its right course, from truth, to ruin, lead astray, could be applied to much of this material. In the struggle against the prejudices that crippled us, and for the implementation of laws upholding racial and sexual equality, ours has become a more liberal society. As politicians search for an overall plan, a Third Way, there is a recognition by many people of the confusion they feel when it comes to the ethical basis of their life. Just as we seem to lack confidence in our values, so little of the material about sex on television shows any confidence in dealing positively with the significance of sex in our lives.
Sex is, surely, simply good or bad.
It overcomes embarrassment and inhibition through love, humour and respect. Bad Sex is brutalising exploitative, coarsening, fetishistic, corrosive of self-esteem, harmful, sad and sick. What we see on television and read in magazines and newspapers falls largely into the Bad-Sex category. There are exceptions, but not many. The use of the word 'documentary' to describe some of these programmes is a pathetic attempt to make them sound respectable, but they do not begin to help us understand more clearly the emotional paucity of the men's changing-room culture we still inhabit.