The Fifty Shades effect: why sex talking 'clubs' are the new book clubs
It’s a cold winter's Wednesday night in Hoxton, east London, but things are heating up in one softly-lit apartment, filled with chocolate parquet floors and Moroccan lanterns.
Trays of virgin mojitos and canapés are neatly arranged in one corner, and perched on red velvet cushions around the others are some 20 professional women, ranging in age from 25 to 45. All, at first glance, look like the kind of nice, normal people you might share an escalator with at Peter Jones.
All are also members of Scarlet Ladies, a new all-female club that models itself on the book club formula – drinks, nibbles, gossip, no men – only the chosen theme is not books, but sex.
The club reflects a wider change in social attitudes. Most of us talk about the sexual revolution taking place in the 1960s and 1970s - as if it both started and ended then, but, in truth, changes in sexual behaviour are still going on. New boundaries are constantly being crossed.
Tomorrow night, psychotherapist Philippa Perry will present Channel 4’s Great British Sex Survey, a taboo-breaking show based on a nationwide survey that quizzed more than 2,000 Brits on the most intimate area of their lives, and posits that 'kinky sex' has become much more widespread - if not quite the new norm - across all demographics.
Back in 2011, before Fifty Shades fever properly took hold, the results of an earlier Channel 4 survey revealed that it was the over-45's who were the most likely to use certain outré items such as nipple clamps - and Waitrose shoppers, a category synonymous surely with the most demure and conservative of British values, the most likely to have had sex on the beach.
In the context of this brave new world, it is perhaps little wonder that there is a growing appetite for clubs such as these, where women of all ages have the opportunity to bring their sex lives out from under the covers, without fear of judgement.
The Hoxton sex club was founded just six months ago by Jannette Davies, 28, a bubbly British Sierra Leonean blogger, and Sarah Beilfuss, a 34, a German ‘burnout and fatigue’ health coach. The pair are friends though not obvious kindred spirits. “Our reasons for starting the club are very different,” says Sarah. “Jannette is sexually quite liberated, but I have a lot of hang-ups.”
Together they are determined to transform the way women navigate sex. “One of our goals is to normalise sexuality,” says Sarah, the more thoughtful and serious of the two. “Sex is a major part of who we are. There should be sex talks in every neighbourhood.”
The evening kicks off with short introductions from a panel representing the more risqué end of the spectrum. Joining us tonight is a leather-trousered blonde called Emma (posh, athletic and boarding school-educated) who organises ‘tasteful’ sex parties, a leggy, scantily-clad brunette called Catherine who specialises in ‘authentic tantra’ (her female lover is sitting among us) and a voluptuous Polish sex blogger called Natalie, who teaches workshops on the female orgasm.
Intriguingly a fourth panellist, a Good Housekeeping journalist, has failed to turn up. Did she get caught up testing the vol-au-vents in the Good Housekeeping Institute - or cold feet?
This week’s special topic – ‘orgasm assertiveness’ – has attracted even more fortysomethings than usual. “As they get older, women realise they can’t blame their partners for their dissatisfaction,” says Sarah. “They start to understand that they have to take things into their own hands. At 19, very few women have that sense of responsibility.”
As a member of the older crowd who have paid £15 to attend tonight’s event, Hastings mother, Clare, 41, says it’s important to “make time” for this side of life: “Here I can have frank and funny conversations and nobody bats an eyelid.”
So what of tonight’s hot topic? Sarah reels off a few figures. “Only 25 per cent of women reliably experience orgasm,” she says, solemn-faced. “Five per cent never have one.” For men it’s a different story: ‘Seventy-five per cent orgasm every single time through penetrative sex,” she says. “And if they don’t, they get a medical diagnosis.”
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