That girl in sex film is somebody's child
Teenagers like to shock but now the whole world can witness it, writes Antonia Leslie
Sunday April 13 2008
There's a video of four teenagers having group sex in a graffiti-scrawled alleyway, supposedly somewhere in Ballymun, doing the rounds on mobile phones at the moment. Naturally it has been causing a bit of a stir.
One newspaper calls it a "deeply shocking indictment to modern Ireland". My own initial reaction is, "Ah come on lads, get over it." The Irish have been having orgies since the druid priests were having group sex with the priestesses on the Hill of Tara. All this to ensure a fruitful harvest and keep the gods (and the priests) satisfied.
I imagine Dougal and Fr Ted waving their little placard, saying 'Down with this sort of thing!' when the blasphemous film, The Passion of St Tibulus, came to Craggy Island. But even as I brush it off with smartass and liberal comments, I still get a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach. I have to ask myself, what would I think if the one girl taking on those three boys in this particular video was my own beloved daughter?
The answer is, I'd be very, very concerned. But not chiefly because of the act of sex itself, more because of the numb and emotionless way that this whole thing seems to have been instigated and unfolded. There is very little evidence of self-respect or self-esteem among any of the four kids involved.
This I would imagine would be what hits a raw nerve with most people when they see this video and the out-of-control teen culture it seems to represent. But I'd still rather they were shagging each other than beating the hell out of each other, which is the other "great" activity that a certain sub-culture of teenagers seems to feel compelled to film. Of course, the teenage culture that this video represents doesn't say much for the society in which we've raised them -- it seems hard, numb and dysfunctional.
"Young people have developed an especially potent culture of their own, they live in a world with very little meaningful contact or engagement with adults," says Professor Richard Layard of the London School of Economics, who has made a study of the causes of happiness.
This youth culture, while feeling alienated from a functioning adult society, will still take aspects of the adult world around them, magnify them and emulate them.
Teenagers have become desensitised by images of gratuitous sex, cruelty and violence in the majority of the video games and action movies that they watch. Where are the examples of tenderness or even basic love in these video games and movies and, in some cases, in their home life or environment?
Looking at it from a pragmatic point of view, down through the years, a small number of teenagers have always been promiscuous but the technology to record this behaviour is a recent development. Now we get the proof of it, as opposed to hearsay or rumour.
Then there's the phenomenon of the teenager itself. The teenager, as a social term, only came into existence in the last century after the Industrial Revolution. Before that, you went from child to adult as soon as you hit puberty. Life-spans were shorter and manpower and reproduction a more urgent necessity, so as soon as you could work, fight and reproduce, off you went and did just that.
However, two teenagers getting carried away after the local disco on a Saturday night is a very different experience to the indiscriminate meaningless sex as seen on the mobile phone video. Whether this behaviour is intended to shock or is attention-seeking, whether it happened in a teenage disco on the southside of Dublin or down an alleyway in broad daylight, it shows a desperate yearning to be noticed. This is what makes me feel sad for these kids. Why else would they look for attention from each other and from the baying crowds in this way? What lonely, sad place lies deep inside these kids' hearts?
Alcohol and drugs have a lot to do with desensitising and loosening inhibitions, but alcohol and drugs exaggerate what's already there.
I remember when I was 14, pretending to be at a sleepover at a friend's house and sneaking out to an all-night party in the house of another friend whose parents were away. There I got drunk on the proverbial two cans of Pils, went upstairs and passed out on a bed. Two girls proceeded to take on guy after guy on the other bed beside mine. I woke up and saw what was going on but I was too drunk to believe my eyes.
I remember the next day going, "Oh, my God! Did that really happen?" My friends told me, yes, these girls were famous for doing this and that's why they had been invited. My rather naive 14-year-old mind just couldn't believe it. I was so incredibly shocked on the inside, yet laughed and joked along with the others as they bitched about and belittled the two girls for days after the party. Making fun of the situation was my coping mechanism; but of course, I was far too young emotionally to understand any of it.
I suppose the reasons these two girls and the various lads did this back in 1977 were no different from those of today. It's just that it seems more prevalent and in a way more gratuitous or pornographic today, as the urge to be noticed is so great that the whole world has to witness the event and to be shocked. Thirty seconds of notoriety captured forever on a mobile phone.
Now I have to ask myself why am I so quick to jump to the conclusions that these kids are distressed, dysfunctional and lacking in self-esteem?
Is it that in my adult world of constraint, I'm jealous of their open sexuality and ability to do it, enjoy it, flaunt it and not get bogged down in guilt, neediness and over-moralisation?
And why is it that in all the media reports of this footage that it's the girl who's vilified as the slapper or the object of utter degradation? The lads are described as more or less happening upon the scene and thinking well if it's going, why not?
Is it that a female capacity to apparently take on multiple sexual partners makes men feel inadequate? They then have to belittle the woman in a much more vicious fashion than the man in order to make themselves feel better.
Many thoughts and questions race through my mind. Then, I dispel all that confusion by asking myself the same question once again. What would I do if it was my own daughter, my own dearly loved child in that video, doing such things?
I get myself back on track, immediately because there is that awful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach again just at the mere thought of it!
