A lucky escape

Having read the flood of reports about sexual misconduct in Parliament, in the film industry, at the BBC, and in workplaces generally, I thank my lucky stars I've never been immersed in any group of men who are devoted to the masculine sex culture and all it involves. If I had been, I would probably have picked up some of the disgusting attitudes they display.

I've never seen women as sex objects, as toys for male pleasure, as a nice pair of tits, as a nice bit of skirt, as attractive bodies to be groped and fondled, as tempting pussy and all the rest of it. I find all that deeply repulsive.

My life has been strangely devoid of all that masculine depravity. I guess most men have been thrown into that sort of misogynistic culture at some time or another, but I've managed to escape it.

My public school was remarkably sex-free. There was no discussion whatever of sex, never mind sexual attitudes to women. There was no homosexuality and no furtively circulated porn magazines. My fellow pupils were far more interested in rock music than levels of libido.

In my workplaces likewise there has always been a noticeable absence of the sex-object culture. Men like that were pretty rare in the bookshops, charities and local newspapers I've worked for. And the women I worked with were always tough characters who wouldn't tolerate a lascivious male for long.

I've never been keen on pubs or heavy drinking, so I've never encountered those pub-frequenting men who enjoy sizing up the female customers and speculating on what they'd be like in bed.

So I've managed to dodge the whole phallocentric sickness. I'm miraculously uncorrupted.

Love and peace

People still think fondly of the sixties as a time of personal liberation, progressive politics, supportive communities, the crumbling of the "old guard", and new directions in art, music, books, movies and theatre. Suddenly all the stuffy old social rules were being torn up and everyone was doing their thing.

To a degree, this was true. Homosexuality was decriminalised, abortion was legalised, there was a resurgence of feminism, the American civil rights movement was fighting racism, CND was pressing for nuclear disarmament, and so on. It was a period of enormous optimism, hope and creativity.

But this was only one side of the picture, because in other ways the sixties were very negative. I know people who found these years frustrating, damaging, hurtful.

The idea of "free love" that just meant women were treated even more blatantly as sex objects. The reckless drug-taking that led to overdoses and death. The squats that turned into disorganised, hedonistic squalor. The fashionable political causes that couldn't be challenged - the IRA, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Marxism, the Soviet Union. Men still undervaluing and belittling women. Trendy cults and therapies run by money-grubbing, womanising charlatans.

Because people loved the image of freedom, of progress, of cultural flowering, they overlooked the unsavoury aspects and pretended they weren't happening. Or they saw them as the actions of a few bad apples who were latching on to the "counter-culture" for their own selfish ends, spoiling it for everyone else.

Personally I found the sixties (and early seventies) far more positive than negative, maybe because I was too sceptical and too self-protecting to get involved in the seedier and crazier fringes. But I didn't always escape the chaotic squats, mind-bending drugs, dotty cults and political dogma. It was hard to avoid the wilder excesses entirely.

It was certainly a more optimistic time than the present, with its relentless austerity and elitism. Love and peace, man. Just do your thing, man.