Held at the Barbican in London on 22nd & 23rd October, experts in the field will be debating the effects that older generations have had on millennials’ attitudes towards sex and intimacy.
The organisers of the debate, the Institute of Ideas, said: “The festival will explore if fashionable policies such as mandatory sexual-consent classes for students imply young adults are incapable of conducting their intimate lives without expert guidance and adult interference.”
The debaters will include Professor Frank Furedi, the curator of the term “Culture of Fear”, who is expected to discuss the effects of university trends on millennials’ view of the topic.
Furedi will argue: “Freshers’ week at university was about drinking, dancing and making new friends. This year, it increasingly resembles an induction course into a seminary or a convent.
“This micro-management of students’ personal lives, which starts at home and is now being continued by our universities, is inhibiting their ability to acquire the habit of independence and make the transition to forms of behaviour associated with the exercise of autonomy.”
He will be joined by the likes of American social critic Camille Paglia, who is expected to touch on some of the pointers raised in her upcoming book “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism.”
Festival director Claire Fox said: “These are timely and much-needed discussions. With recent headlines such as “Scale of sexual abuse in UK universities likened to Savile and Catholic scandals”, we seem to be creating our own Project Fear for Millennials, with young women encouraged to see potentially dangerous predators in every encounter and young men demonised as a threat.
“We are doing young adults no favours by warning them that they cannot trust themselves to experiment, take risks, and learn how to negotiate spontaneous relationships and learn about intimacy and sex from each other without the help of intervention from their elders.
“Not only does this rob them of one of the joys of life and being a young adult; it means they are not allowed to grow up. Perhaps we should back off from sticking out noses and policies into the personal lives of Millennials.”
To find out more about this interesting event please click here.