My sister-in-law was on the telephone the other night. "By the way," she said laconically, "I've just switched on the television and some woman is setting fire to her boobs."
Momentarily nonplussed, I realised she was watching Alan Gilsenan's documentary on lap-dancing, Private Dancer, which featured a woman combining a fire-eating routine with erotic dancing. Some surprise has been expressed that lap-dancing is now part of the social scene in Dublin.
But why should anyone be surprised? Lap-dancing fits perfectly into the new moral code, which has basically one component. Thou shalt not judge. If young women choose to make money by stripping and dancing for clients, and there is no element of force involved, there is no option except to shrug. Whatever they are into, and if no one is getting hurt . . . We are too cool now to be caught moralising. We are allowed to be judgmental of those who are judgmental, but in almost every other case, judgmentalism is a no-no.
Which leaves people in some rather uncomfortable spaces when something is genuinely shocking. Take the case of Eminem. It's a matter of fact that his lyrics are misogynist, violent and homophobic. While some feel that he is a misunderstood genius who specialises in the blackest of black humour, many others feel that he is a foul-mouthed rapper who advocates violence. In the culture of the shrug, what do you do? Any suggestion of censorship causes people to recoil in horror. So our children have to be exposed to him in the interests of freedom of expression.
Any amount of rubbish is talked about the similarity between Elvis and Eminem, and how every generation needs to rebel and shock their parents. Yet somehow Elvis never got around to recording "You ain't nuthin' but a mother-rapist."
What is ignored is that the boundaries are pushed further and further. So what does the next generation get to admire? Someone who actually kills his wife and packs her in the boot of the car, or rapes his mother, instead of just singing about it? Not that I am a particular advocate of curtailing what children listen to. Parents talking and listening to their children about Eminem is far more valuable. Except that there are two flaws in this proposal. The first is that a kid who comes from a family which is aware of current popular culture and discusses it, is also the kid least likely to be damaged by it in the first place. It is the child in a lonelier space, already cut off from positive role models, who is most likely to absorb the negative, misogynistic messages.
The second flaw is that in order to discuss it, children have to have heard it. All right perhaps, for a mature 16-year-old, but what about a nine- or 10-year-old? Parents end up explaining concepts to children in a way and at a time which they would never normally choose to do.
Anyway, Eminem is in some ways a red herring. He is the archetypal bad boy, revelling in the notoriety which his mastery of four-letter words and four-letter concepts brings him. He grabs the attention, and he likes it that way.
The whole music business of which Eminem is only a somewhat nastier manifestation deserves critical examination. Seemingly innocuous manufactured boy-and girl-bands ruthlessly target the very young, and their main function is to part these children as efficiently as possible from their abundant disposable income.
The whole idea is to create a culture for children which is different to that of their parents, and to cocoon them in it and persuade them that they need to spend more and more money to be part of that culture. The net effect of both targeted advertising and the world of pop pap is that childhood becomes shorter and shorter. Children are getting older younger, and those squeaky clean boy bands are as much a part of that phenomenon as nasty ol' Eminem.
We live in a culture saturated by sex, but we seem paralysed in the face of it. No judgment can be made on whether it is right or wrong that lap-dancing is now an acceptable "career" for a young woman, because sexuality has become a matter of private choice. No implications for the wider society are allowed enter the debate.
In a study published this week by Women's Aid, we learnt that many teenage young men routinely access pornography on the Internet, and that some of them at least feel that this is representative of how sexual relations should be. Some young people, though it should be stressed by no means all, are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages, and many of them feel pressurised into doing so and are not particularly happy with the consequences. None of this is new. Those working with young people have been saying it for years.
In a culture where sexuality is a matter of personal expression and of choice, all we can offer young people in that situation is an injunction to be careful and to develop the assertiveness necessary in order not to be pressurised. We could not possibly suggest that it is wrong that sexual intercourse should be the equivalent of what a hug was two decades ago. That would be desperately fogey-ish and, heaven forbid, judgmental. Anyway, we shrug, they are going to do it anyway.
Never mind that our unease at being judgmental exposes young people to emotional and physical danger. Another study indicated this week that we have the highest levels of teenage binge-drinking in Europe. This study unleashed demands to tackle teenage drinking. In spite of awareness of the degree of sexual experimentation among teenagers, there is no equivalent demand to tackle the problem. Why the double standard? The consumption of alcohol is inextricably linked to sexual activity, yet while binge-drinking is considered to be worth challenging, the level of indiscriminate sexual activity inspires only helplessness.
Sexually transmitted diseases have once again become an epidemic, and committed relationships are increasingly difficult to sustain. Surely our young people need some judgment and guidance from us, rather than helpless shrugs?