The other night i caught, on the telly, an advert which scared the bejesus out of me. It first grabbed me when what seemed to be happening was a couple were having sex, or rather, about to have sex in some ally. Then came apparent sounds of protestation from the young lady. Horrifyingly, these were ignored by the guy. 'What the hell kind of advert is this?' i thought.
The drink driving adverts are fairly intrusive and direct; and there's the new sexual health adverts which also go for a heavy handed approach (and i'm not critical of either, the more hard-hitting the better when it comes to addressing issues like those), but this advert i was watching wouldn't assimilate to either of those categories, so i remained intrigued.
Then the first slogan appeared on screen: "If there's no consent, it's not sex!" cut back to the young man being put in a police holding cell, and then the second and final slogan: "Rape: short word, long sentence."
Talk about mixed feelings... Firstly, that slogan used to be a gag about marriage (it's not a word, it's a sentence) only that's not funny now. Then there's the thought that if this advert has an impact on however few potential rapists then it's worth it. The feeling that hit me the strongest, and remains with me most though, is 'What the heck kind of world is this i'm living in, that we have to have "rape's bad, kids, don't do it!" adverts on TV?'. And i'm not even prone to coming over all 'Daily Mail'.
I suppose that this is what we have to resort to when the last great pillar of sexual morality is reduced to simply 'consent' ie. as long as everyone agrees, it's ok.
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