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Disability and Sex
One of the stranger episodes of Hot Girls: Turned On recounts the bizarre relationship between a cam girl named ‘Alice Frost’ and an Australian man named ‘Tom.’ That Tom has problems is apparent almost immediately. A self-confessed nerd, Tom admits that he has turned to camming because his social awkwardness has made it difficult for him to form intimate relationships in real life. Compounding Tom’s problems are his slovenly appearance, unhealthy body size, and low self-esteem.
One does not need to be a psychologist to figure out that Tom is probably suffering from an undiagnosed condition that makes it difficult for him to socialise with others. And one certainly doesn’t need to be a psychologist to guess that Tom may be suffering from an undiagnosed case of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Non-Verbal Learning Disorder (NVLD)
Both ASD and NVLD are neurodevelopmental disorders. Those who suffer from these disorders tend to be tremendously gifted in one area whilst remaining developmentally delayed in others. This dichotomy causes something of a dilemma, especially when such individuals develop a sense of sexual awareness. The traditional answer to this problem has been to ignore it entirely. A sufferer of ASD or NVLD is presumed to be either asexual or incapable of forming healthy sexual identities. Such attitudes regard sufferers as less human than everybody else.
Furthermore, such attitudes create more problems than it solves. Human sexuality is a broad topic with individual, sociocultural, and ecological dimensions. It is hard enough for a normal person to contend with all of these factors, let alone someone who suffers from a disability. Sufferers of ASD or NVLD must also contend with the limitations their disabilities place upon them. Like all adolescents, a teenage sufferer must undergo the changes of puberty, develop their own sexual identity, and form intimate relationships. They are certainly not helped by a society that regards their sexuality as something that needs to be purged.
There are three views on the sexualities of sufferers of ASD and NVLD. The first is that sufferers have no desire for sexual relations whatsoever. The second is that they are childlike and therefore dependent. And the third is that they have difficulty in controlling their urges. Aside from being wrong, these attitudes have very real consequences. One is that sufferers are often ignorant of much of human sexuality because they have received inadequate sex education. Their difficulties in socialising with others, compounded by awkward social situations, means that sufferers often fail to develop the skills that would help them form intimate relationships. More darkly, such attitudes also mean that suffers are also more vulnerable to becoming victims of manipulation, exploitation, and sexual abuse. A 2012 study by Shandra and Chowdhurry found that girls suffering from mild disabilities were more likely to lose their virginity to a stranger than to a regular partner. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that much of their vulnerabilities arise from a lack of education on human sexuality.
The biggest hurdle sufferers of ASD and NVLD must overcome when trying to form intimate relationships is a lack of social grace. This deficiency hinders sufferers on three fronts. First, many of the features of ASD and NVLD can make it difficult for sufferers to initiate dates, remembers plans, and maintain relationships. Sufferers can be inflexible, self-centred, and emotionally dysregulated – hardly a recipe for a good relationship. Second, many sufferers have received negative social judgement from others because of their social awkwardness. Sufferers often fail to grasp to subtle intricacies that govern social interactions. This can lead to odd behaviour. A sufferer may attempt to overcompensate for their social grace by staring too long, speaking on unrelated or inappropriate topics, or by avoiding social situations altogether. Third, many sufferers lack the experience necessary to discover their own sexuality. Sufferers often find themselves socially isolated. Under such circumstances, it is unlikely that they will be granted the opportunity to explore and develop their sexuality like other people.
Attitudes on the sexualities of sufferers of neurodevelopmental disorders need to change. Our current attitude makes sufferers of disorders like ASD and NVLD more vulnerable to victimisation, hinders their sexual development, and prevents them from forming meaningful, intimate relationships. Sex education needs to be broadened to include all aspects of human sexuality, sufferers need to be taught how to recognise potentially dangerous situations, and better educational and therapeutic services need to be provided.
The Loss of Civility
Society has a problem with politically-motivated violence. At a protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, a man with Nazi sympathies drove his car into a crowd of protestors, killing one and injuring many others.
Likewise, the so-called anti-fascists, Antifa (they are, of course, nothing of the sort) has resorted to using violent and intimidatory tactics at numerous protests and rallies.
Needless to say, such occurrences raise serious questions about the consequences of political polarisation and the lack of community sentiment and incivility that it brings.
One of the features of the 2010s has been the increase in political polarisation. As people become more willing to identify themselves by their political ideology, the tendency to view one’s political opponents as extremists have, likewise, increased. Consequentially, it has become easier and easier for people to demonise others because they don’t hold the same political views that they do.
Such polarisation, of course, has been fuelled by a biased and segregated news media system. The online video and podcast revolution, combined with a mainstream media that heavily slants towards the left, has meant that people are often only exposed to those views that match their own. As such, the right has been manipulated into believing that all on the left are social justice warriors, protestors, and radical feminists, whilst those on the left have been manipulated into seeing all on the right as Nazis, race baiters, white supremacists, and alt-righters.
To a large degree, political polarisation has come as a consequence of the loss of a sense of community. People no longer associate with their neighbours, and, as a result, they have come to see each other as potential enemies rather than potential friends. And, under such conditions, it becomes very easy to see another person as evil when their political views do not compliment your own.
The loss of community has occurred for three major reasons. First, the advent of social media, online shopping, video subscription services, and smartphones has meant that people are no longer required to venture out into society and interact with others. It is no longer necessary for a consumer to interact with shop staff, for instance, because they can shop in the solitude of their own living room. Modern technology, for all its benefits, has provided us with a faux sense of sociability. A kind of sociability that allows us to communicate with others but does not require genuine human interaction.
Second, past-times that were once considered neutral have been co-opted to spread politically-charged messages. People can no longer go to a football game, watch a movie, or listen to music without having political ideology preached to them. As a consequence, society lacks the entities that once allowed people to bond with one another despite differences in their political beliefs.
Third, engagement with the community has declined. People are no longer engaged with the community in the same way that their grandparents were. In the past, social clubs, community groups, sports clubs, and religious institutions provided a space where people of diverse beliefs, values, and opinions could come together. As a consequence, such entities promoted a degree of social unity and social cohesion. Today, however, people are becoming more and more willing to self-segregate. They isolate themselves, choosing only to socialise with friends and family.
What all this has amounted to is a loss of civility. It is very easy to justify all manner of bad behaviour when one sees their opponent as a threat to their very existence. Our modern society shuns manners and dismisses common courtesy and is surprised to find self-centredness and vulgarity in its wake.
Conservatives Don’t Care About Culture, Maybe It’s Time They Started To
Culture is more important than politics. However, in the hierarchy of priorities, many conservatives rank it somewhere between checking their privilege and meeting diversity and inclusion quotas. They simply do see it as being of any importance.
Conservatives mistakenly believe that the culture is less important than politics and economics. In their mind, culture is akin to leisure, something that is relegated to times to relaxation. However, as the late Andrew Breitbart (1969 – 2012), was fond of pointing out: politics is downstream of culture. It is culture – art, film, theatre, literature, sports, video games, news media, and comic books, among other things – that informs public opinion long before policy is announced to the public or even made.
The left has realised this. They have made it a key aspect of their long-term strategy to dominate the culture and exclude conservatives. It has spent decades infiltrating the halls of culture, politics, and academia with little to no opposition from conservatives who, much to their detriment, have failed to realise the importance of these institutions.
To understand the importance of culture it is necessary to understand what culture is. Culture communicates ideas through art, literature, literature, film, and so forth. It is from culture that ideas and beliefs are popularised or dismissed. And it is from culture that our worldview is formed.
The difference between left-wing culture and right-wing culture is that left-wing culture expresses false ideas, whilst the ideas expressed by right-wing culture tend to be truthful.
Just take a look at conservative art compared with left-wing art. Left-wing art champions communism: a political ideology that has killed and enslaved tens-of-millions of people, Conservative art champions Christian values, honour, patriotism, love, and freedom. The Brady Bunch featured a two-parent family (admittedly blended, but that doesn’t really matter) and espoused the virtues of duty, honour, and responsibility whereas a show like Gilmore Girls glorified single motherhood and self-centredness.
If conservatives wish to promote good and truthful ideas, they must be prepared to invest more in the culture. They must be prepared to create businesses, establish grants, and more in order to finance and distribute conservative art. In doing so, they can prevent left-wing censorship and can ensure that good, truthful ideas continue to be promoted.
THE DECLINE OF VIRTUE
It is a great pity that the Latin language is now considered dead. Through its death, we have lost many of the Latin words, expressions, and maxims that provided us with great wisdom and poetry. Among these is the phrase, “Panem et circenses”, or, in English, “bread and circuses.”
Panem et circenses refers to a society that uses food and mindless entertainment to keep control of its people. Such a culture does not encourage deep thought, nor does it encourage any search for meaningful or consequential in life.
What an excellent way to describe modern society and the culture that it has produced. No longer does our culture celebrate those with intelligence, moral piety, or depth of character. Instead, society has chosen to celebrate exhibitionism and licentiousness as the height of moral fortitude.
And no other family has demonstrated this fact more than the Kardashian-Jenner family. And modern culture has seen fit to reward them handsomely for it! In 2016, Forbes Magazine listed the Kardashian-Jenner family as the highest earning reality TV Stars. As of 2017, Kendall Jenner had a net worth of approximately US$18 million, Kourtney Kardashian had an approximate net worth of US$35 million, Khloe Kardashian had a net worth of US$40 million, Kylie Jenner, only twenty-years-old, had a net worth of US$50 million, Kris Kenner had a net worth of US$60 million, and Kim Kardashian had a net worth of US$175 million (she made $45.5 million in 2016/2017 alone).
But it’s hardly fair to criticise them. They have merely capitalised on the desire many people have to live a life of glamour and luxury. The Kardashians have been able to make tens-of-millions-of-dollars through their various reality TV shows, various business ventures, modelling, product endorsements, clothing lines, and more.
Of course, all this is not to say that the Kardashian-Jenner family is blameless. Years ago, a family as egotistical, petty, and immoral (what is Kim Kardashian, after all, other than a glorified porn star?) as the Kardashian family would have been treated with absolute disdain.
Not today, though. Today, the Kardashians have been able to build their empire, and it is an empire, upon shameless exploitation, self-aggrandisement, and self-promotion. They are able to reach nearly a billion people through social media and have been frequent guests on television talk shows.
What the Kardashian-Jenner phenomenon reveals is just how shallow our society has become. People have come to treat supermodels, reality TV stars, and sport’s stars as though they are royalty. The problem with this is that it encourages people to do whatever they like for a little bit of attention.
What all this boils down to is a loss of virtue. We have replaced the old heroes, the ones who encouraged courage and chivalry, with new Gods that encourage self-centredness and licentiousness. Self-expression is no longer to be expressed through the sweat of one’s brow, the depth of his character, or the faculties of his reason. Instead, it can be gained, quite easily, by posting a selfie on Instagram or Facebook.
St. Augustine defined virtue as ‘ordo amoris’ (yet another beautiful Latin maxim), or ‘order of love.’ It was his belief that every object and entity was accorded the level of love and affection that was appropriate for it to receive.
What we have today is a society that has gotten that order wrong. When people no longer honour Kings, they worship movie stars, musicians, models, reality TV stars, prostitutes, scoundrels, and gangsters instead. As C.S. Lewis wrote: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
CIVILISATION IN TERMINAL DECLINE
Our society appears to be suffering a terminal decline. At least that’s the conclusion traditionalists and devout Christian believers like myself have been forced to conclude. As the old-world withers and vanishes, a culture of selfishness, moral relativism, and general immorality has been allowed to grow in its place. The culture that produced Vivaldi, Dickens, Shakespeare, and Aristotle has been replaced with one that has as its major ambassadors the likes of Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber.
The first clue that a monumental change had taken place came in the guise of Princess Diana’s farce of a funeral in 1997. An event that was cynically exploited by politicians and celebrities and recorded for public consumption by round-the-clock news coverage (her funeral would be watched by two-and-a-half-billion people). As Gerry Penny of The Conversation noted, Diana’s death marked the beginning of the ‘mediated death.’ A death that is covered by the mass media in such a way that it attracts as much public attention, and therefore revenue, as possible.
Compared to Princess Diana, Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965 was a spectacle of old world pomp and ceremony. After lying in state for three days, Churchill’s small coffin was carried by horse-drawn carriage along the historic streets of London to Saint Paul’s Cathedral. His procession was accompanied by Battle of Britain aircrews, royal marines, lifeguards, three chiefs of staff, Lord Mountbatten, and his own family. The silence that filled the air was broken only by a funerary march and the occasional honorary gunshot.
Much like Diana’s funeral, tens of thousands of people came to witness Churchill’s funeral. But unlike Diana’s mourners, who did everything they could to draw attention to themselves, Churchill’s mourners were silent and respectful. They realised, unlike Diana’s mourners, that the best way to commemorate a great man was to afford him the respect that his legacy deserved.
Cynics would dismiss Churchill’s funeral as nothing more than a ridiculous display of pomp and ceremony. However, these events serve an important cultural purpose by connecting the individual with his community, his culture, and his heritage. In doing so, they bring about order and harmony.
Winston Churchill was the great Briton of the 20th century. Like Horatio Lord Nelson in the early 19th century, it was Churchill’s leadership that saved Britain from Nazi invasion and it was his strength and resolve that gave ordinary Britons that courage to endure the worst periods of the War.
And understandably, many Britons felt something approximating a kind of personal gratitude towards him. A gratitude deep enough that when he died many felt it to be their duty to file reverently pass his body lying in state or stand in respectful silence as his funeral procession passed. What Churchill’s state funeral did was give the ordinary person the opportunity to pay their own respects and feel that they had played a part, if only in a minute way, in the celebration of his life.
Winston Churchill’s funeral and Princess Diana’s funeral represent eras that are as foreign to one another as Scotland is to Nepal. While Churchill’s funeral represented heritage and tradition, Princess Diana’s funeral symbolised mass nihilism and self-centredness.
But why has this happened? I believe the answer lies in the dual decline of Western culture and Christianity.
The French philosopher, Chantal Delsol described modern Western culture as being akin to Icarus had he survived the fall. (Icarus, of course, being the figure in Greek mythology whose wax wings melted when he flew too close to the sun). Where once it had been strong, resolute, and proud, it has now become weak, dejected, disappointed, and disillusioned. We have lost confidence in our own traditions and ideals.
Of course, the decline of Western culture has a direct correlation with the more consequential decline of Christianity. It is faith that informs culture and creates civilisation, and the faith that has informed the West has been Christianity. It is the moral ideals rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition – that I love my neighbour, that my behaviour in this life will determine my fate in the next, that I should forgive my enemies – that form the axiomatic principles that undergird Western civilisation.
This faith has been replaced by an almost reverent belief in globalism, feminism, environmentalism, diversity, equality, and human rights. Our secularism has made us believe that those who came before us were ignorant, superstitious, and conformist. And what has the result of this loss of mass religiosity been? Mass nihilism and a decline in moral values.
But when faith falls so too does culture and civilisation. If we are to revive our civilisation, we must be prepared to acknowledge that tradition, heritage, and religion are not only integral, but vital.
THE LADY VANISHES
This week for our cultural article, we will be examining Alfred Hitchcock’s (1899 – 1980) 1938 film, The Lady Vanishes. Set primarily on a train bound for England from Central Europe, Hitchcock’s film weaves an intriguing and intense narrative around characters united and divided by their snobbery, self-centredness, complacency, and nationalism.
The Lady Vanishes is one-part comedy, one-part murder mystery, and one-part thriller. The film’s first act is rather comedic in nature. A recent avalanche has blocked the train lines, forcing most of the residents to remain at the hotel overnight. The hotel in question becomes so overbooked and so strained in its resources, that two of its guests are forced to sleep in the maid’s quarters. This first act draws the audience in with its lighthearted attitude and its mixture of verbal and physical humour. Not even the murder of a folk singer outside the hotel is enough to distract us from the revelry.
The first act ends with the disappearance of the film’s titular character, Miss Froy (May Whitty, 1865 – 1948). From this point, the film becomes a murder mystery with Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood, 1916 – 1990), a wealthy socialite, and her helper, the musicologist Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave, 1908 – 1985), searching for her. Here Hitcock begins to play subtle tricks on our minds. We, like Iris Henderson, know Miss Froy exists, but the other characters deny ever having seen her. Simultaneously, Hitchcock plays with our curiosity and our frustration. Eventually, Miss Froy is found and the film then climaxes with a thrilling and action-packed third-act.
Eventually, Miss Froy is found and the film then climaxes with a thrilling and action-packed third-act. This act becomes a fight for survival as the film’s British characters are forced to fight against unnamed foreign forced outside.
Throughout the Lady Vanishes, themes of nationalism and class-snobbery pop-up. The film’s British characters and arrogant and insular in their attitudes. When it appears that they are about to be killed by foreign police officers, one Brit rather proudly exclaims: “They can’t do anything to us. We’re British subjects.” This is juxtaposed by the subtle undercurrent of politics, exemplified by the film’s antagonists, who may or may not be in league with Fascist Italy.
Then there’s the notion of social class and the snobbery and divisiveness that goes with it. (A reality Hitchcock, as the son of a trader, was quite familiar with). Hitchcock cynically links money and title together by having Iris return to England to marry Lord Charles Forthingale for no other reason than to appease her father, who is reportedly “aching to have a coat of arms on the jam label.” Then there’s the cricket-obsessed Charters (Naunton Wayne, 1901 – 1970) and Caldicott (Basil Radford, 1897 – 1952) representing the idle upper-class. (These two would become popular stock characters in numerous films, radio plays, and television shows). And then there’s the travelling lawyer (Cecil Parker, 1897 – 1971) and his mistress (Linden Travers, 1913 – 2001) who avoid contact with those they deem beneath them, and who are perfectly prepared to lie to protect their precious social status.
The Lady Vanishes has frequently been credited as Hitchcock’s last great British film. Hitchcock masterfully weaves elements of mystery, suspense, humour, international politics, class-snobbery, and nationalism together to form an intriguing story. The Lady Vanishes is still as intriguing today as it was nearly eighty years ago.
