If I read about another sexual harassment case, I will consider resigning from the human race. ‘He touched me on the knee thirty years ago’. ‘He lay on top of me thirty-five years ago’. ‘He put his hand on my buttocks at a party’. Shock! Horror! The world, amidst terrorism, war, hunger, killings, genocide and a hundred other terrible (and redeemable) things, gasps in disbelief. The results of these sometimes baseless or exaggerated accusations are that careers and reputations are destroyed, or you are elected as President of the USA.

We rarely read of men complaining that ‘She touched me on the knee thirty years ago’. ‘She lay on top of me thirty-five years ago’. ‘She put his hand on my crotch’: unless we are reading depositions to the courts in relation to pedophilia involving institutional figures. It happens, but it is rarely an issue.

Take another view: male to male. I could, if I wanted to, point my finger at my scout master, a priest, my music teacher, a fellow theologian, an applicant for a position in Jakarta, a war lord in Pakistan (offering safety in his bailiwick in return), and men on trains and buses across the world.

Did I respond? No. Would I jump on the bandwagon? No. If I was pressed to? No. If he were rich? Hmmm. That makes you think.

If every ‘improper’ advance was catalogued, there would not be enough paper in the world on which to record them. Sex is a biological function inadequately contained by social and moral laws. For every star, MP or priest brought down, there are trillions more who are never charged or accused. What makes the difference? Fame and perhaps the possibility of fortune. Or maybe ‘success’ makes us jealous? Tall poppies?

I am not trivialising sexual advances, but an advance is not of itself a physical, sexual act. It might hope to end up as one, hut that is another issue entirely. We might just as well consider shooting a dog who sniffs a bitch on heat. The bitch might accept the advance or reject it. It is her decision that is as much an essential component of the action as the advance.

Morals set constraints on Nature. That creates tension. By nature, we are human. If we behaved according to the considered dictates of our joint brain and our heart, then our world would be far more wonderful. We do not.

Our rationality as part of our interdependence in the cosmos, demands rules: morality. We have the seventh commandment. Most agree with its intent. The same is true of the Q’uran: Do not go near adultery, surely it is an indecency, and an evil way (of fulfilling sexual urge]. Our agreement is largely in principle only. When it comes to ‘lust’, we can readily suppress our decency.

Infidelity? If you truly love your partner, regardless of your type of relationship, you stay true to them, if for no other reason than, if you were to do otherwise, the relationship gets complicated.

However, when our vagina or our penis rules, our moral judgement dissipates. This applies to all humans. Physical attraction is biologically normal, If we were to give in to every physical desire that naturally and regularly occurs, chaos would and does result, be it eating, killing, hatred in its various interactive forms, sex and so on. When our desires override out social and moral sensibilities, we resile from the essential reason we have to exist: respect for others and for ourselves

Sadly, we seem to prefer to operate on our baser drives. We abhor the result amongst our leaders and those we respect. We bring them down.

We largely ignore what the neighbours—even we ourselves—get up to.

Double standards perhaps?