Opinion & Commentary
The AFL’s DVD on sexual manners shows that society is in trouble
Worried about the bad press some footballers have been getting of late, the AFL has created an interactive DVD designed to teach players some sexual manners.
One of the questions the players have to answer is whether it’s OK to watch when one of their mates starts having sex with his girlfriend. This is a dilemma we’ve all encountered. There you are at a dinner party, and two of the guests start fornicating in between courses. Do you watch, or do you politely leave the table and make small talk until they’ve finished? The traditional etiquette books offer no guidance on this – you’re on your own.
Other questions raised on the DVD are even more challenging. Your mate’s girlfriend calls you into her bed, mistaking you for her boyfriend (presumably she’s extremely short-sighted, or she’s been pickling her brain again – the circumstances aren’t spelled out). The dilemma is: do you ‘hop into bed and pretend to be him’, or do you walk away?
This one’s a real minefield, because you not only have to work out the right thing to do with the girl, but also the right thing to do regarding your mate. Suppose you ‘hop in’ and then she puts her glasses on half way through? And if you do hop in, should you tell her boyfriend afterwards, or is it sometimes OK to lie to a ‘mate’?
Clearly sexual manners have changed a bit since the 1950s when angst-ridden teenagers would write letters to agony aunts asking if ‘heavy petting’ was OK before marriage. Back then we knew roughly what the rules were. Now it seems we’re all at sea. Thank heaven for the experts.
Melanie Heenan has been an ‘expert’ in this area for 15 years. She put the AFL’s DVD together. She says the scenarios depict ‘situations that young people tell us more broadly in the community are difficult situations for them to negotiate.’ I think what she means is that footballers are not alone. All ‘young people’ are confused about whether to watch their friends having sex, or if it’s OK to get into bed with someone who mistakes you for somebody else.
Is this really true? Are people really ‘confused’ about what the rules are, or is it just that some choose in practice to disregard them?
The thing about multiple choice tests is we do not respond by saying how we actually behave in these situations. Rather, we say what we think others want to hear. Take the driving test. It asks what you should do if you miss your exit on a freeway. Should you (a) do a U-turn against the oncoming traffic, (b) reverse back up to the exit, or (c) continue to the next exit? And if you are driving behind a horse and rider, should you (a) speed up past them, (b) blast your horn or (c) slow down and give them plenty of room as you pass?
The answers to questions like these should be obvious (if they’re not, then you probably shouldn’t be allowed out of the house, still less behind the wheel of a car). Even really bad drivers can intuit what the correct answer must be, even if they don’t follow it in practice.
Does anybody ever get these sorts of questions wrong? Are there really any people out there who think you should put your foot flat on the accelerator when approaching a pedestrian crossing?
Now come back to the AFL sexual etiquette test. Are there really any footballers who do not know how they are expected to answer these questions? Sucking on their pencils and scratching their heads, are they genuinely perplexed about what the socially-appropriate behaviour is in each of these cases? If so, our society has major problems.
Last week my wife boarded a crowded commuter train in Sydney to find a young man playing his music loudly and disturbing the whole carriage. Many passengers tutted, but no-one said anything. My question is this: Did he realize he was being boorish? Did he sense the disapproval of those around him?
If he did, there’s still hope, for he knows deep down that what he’s doing is wrong. We can therefore appeal to his inner conscience (what Adam Smith called ‘the spectator in the breast’). We can make him feel ashamed and correct his actions through social or legal sanctions.
But what if he really didn’t know he was giving offence? This is the terrifying thought, that there might be people out there who genuinely don’t know that you shouldn’t blast others with your music, or put your feet on the seats, or have sex in public, or deceive people into going to bed with you.
If this is the case, we are in deep trouble, for it means the basic socialization processes have broken down. These are the sort of rules you take in with your mother’s milk. We don’t have to learn them from interactive DVDs – we know them instinctively. If it really is true that large numbers of young people have failed to internalize these basic rules, we’re going to need more than a few experts to save us.
Professor Peter Saunders is the Director of Social Research and the Centre for Independent Studies.
