"Three Girls" and a 'sexual health worker'

The first of three episodes of the BBC series "Three Girls" was shown last night and it was very disturbing viewing indeed, in fact some scenes were literally unwatchable. So while this blog entry is not made on the basis of my having seen every minute of the episode I think the general principle remains. And the general principle, in my view, is that it's not only the police and other law enforcement officials who failed the many, many girls of Rochdale (and Oxford etc): it's also feminism. Specifically, these countless young teens have been failed by feminism's war against 'the patriarchy'. It is simply not the case that you can shame and remove the guardianship of men over their daughters, and young girls in general, and usher in an age of benevolence and freedom. What you get instead is a different kind of 'patriarchy', one that moves in swiftly to exploit the free-ranging, unprotected girls who have been to made to think by feminism that they are empowered. You remove one constraint which you make believe is a horror and you get a real horror in its place. A horror so new, moreover, that you have no weapon or recourse against it for far too long. By warring against western 'patriarchy' feminism also begat family break-down on a disastrous scale. This in turn allowed for the shocking excuse - expressed by one social worker in yesterday's episode - that it's impossible to find a way of dealing with the abused girls because their domestic lives are so "chaotic". The father at house number 141, slunk in apathy on the sofa while his sons held an endless party around him, suggested the negative impact the abolition of proper fatherhood has had on boys too.  The destruction of fatherly guardianship has also allowed a society where underage sex is a commonplace, and nobody can do anything about it except dole out condoms. So we have Sara Rowbotham, who is obviously going to emerge as the heroine of the story. And who is Sara? She is a 'sexual health worker'. She is first seen providing free condoms to nerdy youths, no questions asked except for what size. She admonishes them however not to use the condoms simply for water-filled pranks. She wants them to be genuinely used for sex. That's it. Think of those words: sexual health worker. They're really not far enough away from 'sex worker' for comfort, are they? And 'health'? Making sure young people have access to condoms is not the same thing as sexual health. Sexual health is an invented term which is meaningless in the case of underage sex which by definition should not be happening at all. And yet here are the nice sexual health workers to manage the chaos of sexual free-for-all with a few boxes of rubbers. It's wonderful that the real Sara Rowbotham stood up for the Rochdale girls. It's just that the fact that it was a 'sexual health worker' who made a difference is in itself part of the ongoing problem.