In defence of fairy tales

One by one, life’s harmless little pleasures are outlawed by an overweening, repressive government. The Online Safety Bill has been doctored by MPs to stop people making use of ‘deep fakes’. This means that my enjoyable pursuit of Photoshopping the heads of politicians I dislike onto the naked, writhing bodies of Russian porn stars and sending the resultant images, anonymously, on Christmas cards to members of the local clergy is now illegal. In future I will have to get the consent of each politician before I send them off to the vicar. I had a great one recently of Liz Truss going at it like the clappers with Mark Drakeford, the First Minister for Wales. It seems to me harmless fun and if discovered could surely only improve Mr Drake-ford’s image and poll ratings, although he does not seem to me the kind of chap who could take a joke. Anyway – all gone. I wonder what they will ban next?

Quite possibly it will be fairy stories. A recent opinion poll has revealed that they terrify people under the age of 30, who consider them horribly inappropriate for children. Some 77 per cent of those surveyed believed  – with a crushing inevitability – that they were ‘sexist’. Nine in ten said they are old-fashioned and outdated.

I suppose it is hard to argue against the allegation that many fairy stories are indeed what would be called ‘sexist’ now, in that they portray men and women in a slightly different manner and often occupying what we might call ‘traditional’ roles. (It rather reminds of that old joke. Why are children’s storybook adventure heroes always men? Answer: to make them more believable.)

I do find it all a little depressing, though, for it is simply more evidence that millennials and even Generation Zers wish to abolish everything from history and everything we have learned from it.