Sex fixated society is the sickest joke
THE sickest joke I ever heard was from a 14-year-old schoolboy and it was about Aberfan, the Welsh mining town then in the news because a slag heap had buried a primary school and a large number of children had died. Running it a close second, some years later, was one from a slightly younger schoolboy about starving Biafrans. In both cases the grown-ups protested in horror but the kids thought it funny.
Both those boys grew up to be perfectly kind people. For some reason schoolboys like to outdo each other in saying truly awful things and then giggling nervously.
If tales I have heard are true, young medical students can make highly disrespectful comments when cutting up their first cadaver. It simply reflects nerves.As for troops, their bawdiness and gallows humour on going into battle is legendary, again a device against taut nerves.
If anything is going to make a group of schoolboys nervous, it is being involved in discussions about women and sex. Sadly therefore it is perhaps unsurprising that some, including pupils from the prestigious King’s School at Grantham, made horrendous remarks, including flippant references to gang rape, on an Instagram broadcast.
IT IS not remotely acceptable and both the school and their parents should come down on them like a ton of bricks but, unless there was any suggestion of an actual incident, calling in the police must surely be over the top. A lot of boys mature late and these will eventually grow up, as will their sick idea of humour. Indeed, in a few years’ time, they will probably be rebuking others for such jokes. Yet there is still an increasing threat to women, for we have created a society fixated on sex.
Sexting is widespread within schools and pornography rife, available on any computer where once it could only be found in seedy shops, while trying to find a film or book without an explicit sex scene is more challenging than the search for the Holy Grail.