would you like sighs with that?

Sex is so cheap these days. Anyway anywho as long as it's consenting adults. The Whitlams said it well: `Ain't sex funny/ Something to be done/ Occasionally with someone you don't hate' (in `You'll Find a Way'). The marks of a student, according to the last issue of Housetalk, are going to the chemist to buy condoms and pregnancy tests and waking up next to people you don't know. Too true too often. I don't like this McDonalds understanding of sex. I think sex should be saved for life-long relationships of total commitment.

If I see another guy with dyed blonde hair, three quarter shorts and an orange `Porn Star' t-shirt, I swear I'll punch him. He is glorifying exploitation of people -especially women - as sex objects, and trivialising sex. If another student village quiz night has a `fake orgasm' contest, I'm going to walk out (again). We reduce sex to the trivial, to swear words, to advertisements for flavoured milks (`You're working under me tomorrow Steve'), to the covers of Anorexia magazines (`We talk to Mr Big'; `Sex with your ex'); to crude jokes and dirty pictures. We use each other's bodies as if they're amusement parlours.

Firstly, sex is closely tied up to who we are. I don't accept any of this dualistic crap that separate the body from the spirit etc, claiming sex affects us no more than dancing. Sex reflects and affects the way we treat others - selfishly? thoughtfully? - and the way we feel about ourselves - cheap? abusive?.

Secondly, sex is meant to be an act of giving and affirming, not self-gratification. Ideally, it is an act of physical communion between two people who already have spiritual and emotional communion. In this context it is the ultimate expression of love and commitment - it is meant to say, `Because I have given you my whole life, here is my body also.' It's meant to be a time of trust and intimacy, not concerns about `performance' and `size' and STDs and pregnancy. It should be an act of giving and affirming, not self-gratification.

From what I've seen, sex in the wrong context can lead to feelings of betrayal, cheapness, constant dissatisfaction, selfishness and general all round misery. (And yeah of course I mean that everyone who practices it in the right context suddenly has a perfect life, doesn't get cancer and falls into great wealth. Not.)

I don't expect you to believe me - what I'm saying is not self evident (nothing is!). It's a view tied to my understanding as a Christian that God created sex as something special and sacred. I'm not a Victorian prude who hates sex - quite the opposite; I think it should be one of the most meaningful aspects of our lives. I only want to see it acknowledged as something special.

I also know that there's a spectrum of sexual practice and understanding. For example, I have a friend who finds one night stands disgusting but thinks sexual expression is appropriate in long term relationships. I respect that and I think it affords sex a lot (though not all) of the `specialness' it deserves - so I'm not simply lumping everyone who has a different understanding to me in the same boat.

I'm not throwing stones from some high horse - I despise these tendencies and attitudes in myself as much as anyone, and I am tempted toward them as much as most people.

What I do expect is this: that we don't take a `liberal' cheap view of sex for granted, particularly in the student village context. It's fascist to plan activities and language and publications such that to participate fully a person has to take sex lightly and (as another example) enjoy getting absolutely pissed off their brain. I'm sick of this cheap tolerance that assumes everyone's basically the same (get pissed, sleep around, earn lots of money to buy a good car and a nice house) with just some cosmetic differences (usually: `Well I'm a Muslim' or `I'm a Christian' by which people mean they go to church or the mosque a couple of times a year and spend the rest of their lives living as selfish hypocrites). Real tolerance starts with the assumptions that there's real difference, and that other people don't necessarily take for granted anything you do, including your view of sex.