Again I think context plays a part in understanding his remarks. He’s gone on about ‘sexualisation’ before now – the subject that time was all the preteenage girls in what you might call ‘hooker clothes’ – a creepy eyesore, for sure, but I’m not sure how to feel about it being taken up by right-wing politicians. (More context: clothes and stationary bearing the Playboy logo are aggressively marketed at preteenagers in the UK, something I’ve gathered doesn’t happen in the USA). Given that he’s used the word in that sense before, I’m drawing the conclusion that his use of it now is connected somehow. Hence talk of moral malaise, etc.

But in Western culture, “sexuality” means “female bodies” (which it shouldn’t). And so to say that “sexualization” is the problem implies that female bodies are the problem.

I 100% agree with that comment, but I live in a world where an exposed female body is being used to symbolise sexuality, used to market absolutely everything (as if heterosexual women are all blind, or never buy anything…), and is regularly presented in ways that support the idea that men are entitled to sex. I think I can be glad that a right-wing leader has got far enough to talk about challenging this symbol in schools – I’m not overly bothered if he’s using the wrong word, and I’m not expecting him to reconfigure sex and power overnight so a female body can be a subject and a male body can be an object. I don’t even think that’s his job, to be honest – his job is making law, and it sounds like he’s thought up a really good one. If he starts bringing slut-shaming later into policy later, I’ll bash him then.

Maybe he is. The problem, of course, is that we don’t know. Objectification and sexualization are two totally different things, but I’d say that the problem is that most people don’t understand the difference. This comment thread shows some good evidence of that, I think. But in Western culture, “sexuality” means “female bodies” (which it shouldn’t). And so to say that “sexualization” is the problem implies that female bodies are the problem. If we had an accurate definition of sexualization in our culture, though, I’d still say that’s not the problem, because there’s nothing wrong with sexuality. Sex is good. Objectification is the problem, the idea that men deserve constant access to women’s bodies is the problem, the representation of every girl in a short skirt automatically “wanting it” is the problem.

So, I’d in fact say that not only is objectification the problem — the social conflation of objectification and sexuality is the problem.

I’ve been thinking about this sexualisation business, and I’m wondering if the problem we have with that word is, from Cameron’s POV, largely semantic. He says sexualisation, we say objectification – do we mean different things? Or is he just wildly ignorant of gender theory and using the wrong word because he doesn’t know any better?

I also feel you can’t necessarily equate feminism with the left in the UK – remember that the Conservatives are the only party to have ever produced a female leader (Thatcher), that Labour and the political left still have a base in the trade unions (not hotbeds of women’s representation or feminist thought, would you believe) and that unlike in the US religion rarely defines party lines….so, for instance, the (Labour) minister for Communities and Equality is currently a female Catholic extremist who hates women and gays, and who withdrew her disabled son from public education because she thought it was good enough for all the other disabled children but not for hers. (The new Labour PM, Gordon Brown, is also a homophobe and has abstained from every one of the 14 LGBT rights bills introduced since 1997).

Mapping of politics aside, I feel very encouraged by this idea partly because it has come from the right. As with Cameron’s green makeover, he can probably shove this through his right-wing party because they’re too used to ignoring this sort of thing to bother arguing. Context is also an issue; recently Labour have responded to Tory ideas by stealing them (inheritance tax being a tragic case of that) and this is such a powerful one that it’s likely Brown will have to pick it up just to defuse it. So I’m at least hoping that it will be a cross-party effort, and that it will start coming into schools without us having to wait two or three years for an election first. I’m going to write to my Labour MP about that, and I hope other women do that too.

I’m also hoping that sex ed could not just study consent, but also cover the devastating effects of rape and abuse. Not only could that sort of thing prevent future rapes, it could even make it easier for victims of ongoing abuse to find support.

Wow that’s an understatement. you certainly have no clue whatsoever about UK politics, but it seems you don’t know a friggin thing about US politics either, except some cheap slogans.

I would like to make two points. Firstly, Cameron is a true blue Tory, but he is also a liberal progressive. In many circles membership of the modern Conservative Party means no more that anti-socialist and pro-devolution. I’m speaking as someone who was born four years after Thatcher was first made Prime Minster. The Conservative Party currently contains some influential libertarians who are not necessarily right-wing.

The second point is that Cameron simply borrowed the phrase “over-sexualised culture” from the media. Almost every paper, including the broadsheets, seems to carry daily articles on our “over-sexualised culture”. Yes, it’s pretty lazy to piggy-back on such a phrase in order to be noticed, but it’s a reflection of what is currently making headlines.

(As for the one-legged comment, it was most out of order. At risk of being prejudiced, I blame Eton: good for rhetoric, bad for common sense.)

Thanks for pointing out that 1 in 20 statistic. i was so pleased to see him talking about under-reporting (rather than, say false rape charges) that it breezed right by me. The F-Word’s story was happy with the statistic,, so I did some looking, wondering if maybe the UK was just loads better than the US. It seems to come from here:http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hors237.pdf, a home office survey that says 1 in 20 women have been raped afetr the age of 16. So it doesn’t include rape of minors, and it doesn’t include attempted rape. And the study admits that it’s probably an under-estimate. We get a much higher UK statistic here (indeed we get the 1 in 4 statistic for rape or attempted rape), but it’s older: http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/stats.html.