I’m fascinated by our censorious fascination with other people’s sex lives. And I sense something shifting

I liked the generic title ‘Another Voice’ that The Spectator used to give this column, because it seemed to loosen the shackles imposed by more rigorous classification. The sort of journalism I tend to go in for is usually classified as ‘comment’ or ‘opinion’; but all too often these days my strong interest in what’s going on is not matched by any strong opinion about it, while my commentary amounts more to curiosity than comment.

For a few years now I’ve felt like this about our era’s weirdly censorious fascination with other people’s — and especially famous people’s — sexual behaviour. Those who consider their attitudes to be broadly liberal or progressive would doubtless bridle at the word ‘Victorian’, but there has been something distinctly Victorian about the fascination/repulsion displayed by the modern media whenever stories about harassment, rape, assault, paedophilia, or even (a new phrase I’ve yet properly to define for myself) ‘sexual touching’ surface.

The phenomenon that fascinates me is the fascination itself: our western fascination with the whole subject. I study it. And, though I may well be wrong, I half-sense that some kind of a sea-change is occurring. Sailors, apparently, talk about an ‘uncertain sea’ in conditions when the wind has swung around and the waves are trying to go both ways. Listening to the BBC and reading the popular press in recent weeks, I’ve seemed to sense just such an uncertain sea. Is ‘the public’ (whatever that entity may be) (a) shocked by the stories (or allegations) about past and present celebrities’ and politicians’ alleged sexual misdoings, and determined that no stone should be left unturned until justice is done; or (b) baffled and alarmed by the ‘witch-hunt’ that seems to be going on and scornful at the Mother Grundys in full cry against the supposed iniquities of famous people?