9 November

Watching 4Corners about the blokey, sexist culture amongst federal LNP ministers last night, made me think again that we’re maybe looking at the relations between the sexes in the wrong way. The deeper problem to me isn’t that people desire one another or flirt or even have affairs, it’s that this behaviour has spilled over into the practical everyday world of work. And it’s done that because we no longer have a sphere of social life dedicated to courting, to flirtation, where the sexes can explore the desires they feel in controlled ways. Animals have it, humans used to have it. While those old Regency dances look a bit quaint to us, they were highly sophisticated negotiations between the sexes, there were implicit and explicit rules to courting. Humans have always had dedicated rituals to control desire and flirtation and courting. We don’t now. Flirtation was seen as exploring the dimensions of another person, without necessarily meaning anything about breaking existing bonds (what we call ‘cheating’). If we keep ignoring that humans are essentially desiring creatures, like all creatures, and try to regulate all this through bland contractual arrangements of prohibition, we’ll keep ignoring our most essential natures. Humans desire one another, they don’t stop desiring other people when they’re in relationships, though our modern mores seem to suggest they should. We must recognise this again, as we used to, and stop seeing it as a violation. These desires just lack structure and controls, that’s what we’re seeing.