When authorities officially allowed making love in Vondelpark in the very center of Amsterdam, this was noticed more by global media than by the local newspapers, which are used to everything. 'Why should we forbid what is impossible to forbid?' – thus motivated the decision by the city administration member Paul van Gricken. In his opinion, having sex will not disturb park visitors, and 'some groups of people' will even enjoy it. The only restriction is that it is forbidden to 'do it' during daytime hours, near playgrounds, and in the rose garden.
Previously, the Dutch authorities went to any lengths to spare their citizens from the sight of 'shameless couples.' For example, Elena Hoogdalem-Arkem, mayor of the city of Spaarnwoude, once decided to release a herd of cows into a suburban park so that their melancholic appearance would suppress the libido of nature sex lovers. Why the mayor thought that the sight of cows would cool down excited youth is unknown.
Other countries also made attempts to curb excessive liberalization of morals. As the Daily Mirror reports, in the British county of Cornwall authorities even had to put up signs in parks saying 'Do not copulate!' True, they took this step under pressure not from Puritans but from dissatisfied farmers: they claim that fans of outdoor sex block access to fields with their cars.
Rent Payment in Kind
Of course, Europeans did not start making love on the street yesterday, but until recent years it was considered a peculiar perversion, characteristic mainly of people with non-traditional orientation. This common belief had grounds: homosexuals have long had their meeting places in most large cities, and when many lovers gather together, some of them sometimes forget about passersby and allow themselves unacceptable liberties. Ordinary lovers are not accustomed to gathering in large groups, so public sex among 'straights' was practiced earlier rather for thrills and had the unsavory name 'dogging' – a hint at dogs that do not know the rules of decency. Today 'doggers' are no longer ashamed of this nickname and have their own internet portals with tens of thousands of registered users.
Such 'licentiousness of morals' is explained in different ways. Some say that the older generation, which grew up in the era of the sexual revolution of the 60s, raised their children less strictly. However, today's youth are no longer children but grandchildren of those student revolutionaries, and the 'lost generation' itself, according to surveys of that time, was much more repressed. According to another theory, today's youth are not as scared of AIDS and other diseases as previous generations – they have somehow gotten used to this threat, and medicine and contraception have made the problem less acute. According to a third, quite exotic version, the surge of 'street love' is linked to rising real estate prices: renting an apartment is expensive for young people, so they have to arrange intimate dates in parks and doorways.
Some facts confirm a direct link between real estate prices and liberal morals: this year, first in Paris and then in other major European cities (including Kyiv!), advertisements have become widespread in which intimate services are offered instead of rent for an apartment. This new fashion, of course, cannot be explained solely by rising housing prices. Sociologists are sure that we do not need to invent any complicated explanations; the answer is obvious: young people have become more relaxed about sex.
School Lessons
According to surveys, today no one seriously talks about the 'sinfulness of sex before marriage,' and intimate relationships have become no more than a form of leisure. As Professor Alexander Poleev of the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis (also teaching in Amsterdam) said, people now enter into sexual relationships much earlier than a couple of decades ago: 'Statistics vary greatly by region, but in megacities of different countries the situation is roughly the same: the most common age of first sexual contact in large cities (including Moscow) is about 17, and in Paris, for example, it is as low as 13.5.'
This statistics indicates precisely a light attitude towards sex, not early maturation – our contemporaries are much more infantile than previous generations. They study longer than before, start families later. According to the American Sociological Review, in 1960 the average US woman first married at 20, and a man at 23; in 2005, the 'marriage age' increased to 26 for women and 27 for men.
It is also incorrect to consider the light attitude towards sex as a result of moral decline. At least because it is characteristic to a greater extent precisely of well-educated and successful residents of megacities. But not only because of that. 'The issue of attitude towards sexual contacts does not depend at all on the morality and decency of people,' Alexander Poleev is sure. 'The percentage of marital infidelity, for example, does not change much over time. Some of my female students in Amsterdam work as prostitutes in the evenings but are never late for university in the morning and generally study excellently. And those Parisian women who start having sex in high school remain deeply decent and successful women.'
Let's Do It Discreetly
Experts believe that if we get used to the sight of couples making love on the street, that does not mean we will join them ourselves. 'I do not think that public sex will become the norm in the foreseeable future,' argues Professor Poleev. 'Simply because for most people it is much more comfortable to have sexual relations in an intimate setting. But society is becoming increasingly tolerant of that minority that gets no less, or even more, pleasure from sex in public.'
In the countries of the former USSR, there are still big problems with tolerance towards public sex – as evidenced by a recent performance by Moscow artists at the Biological Museum, during which they organized mass intercourse. The philosophy students from Moscow State University who were present nearly got expelled – only the intervention of the press helped them get off with severe reprimands (though, as reported, they still had to take a year of academic leave until the uproar subsided).
But the capital's youth pay little attention to the antics of avant-garde artists and are quietly beginning to follow European traditions – especially since renting housing in the capital is very difficult. "The other day I was coming home on the subway, it was past midnight, and at the transition at the station a couple was having sex right on the steps," said student Igor Martynov. "I don't think it's terrible if it happens at a time of day when children are already asleep. And if in our country, like in Holland, they allowed 'it' in parks too, I might even take that opportunity myself. So what?"
Roman Dobrokhotov. 