Sex Parties or what happens when “youth” actually votes

  Back in high school I ran for vice-president. It was a grand affair - posters, buttons, giveaways, debates, hallway commercials, polling-station goons, the whole shebang.  Leaving aside the rather intoxicating experience of seeing my name plastered everywhere, the happiest memory of all was being accused by my opponent (an eminently better qualified, and far more serious student, than I) of cheap Hollywood theatrics. It was an outrageous accusation for sure but she was dead on – I did employ as many cheap Hollywood theatrics as I could. And for the record, the only reason they were cheap was because I couldn’t afford more expensive ones.

When it comes to the adolescent world of school politics, most elections tend to favor the popular or the populist. Football stars win and so too do amoral hucksters willing to promise the moon (a reality so clearly divorced from adult politics…sigh). Soda in the water fountains, more spares, better cafeteria food, universal health care, naked day, whatever it takes to get the votes. And every vote mattered. Thanks to our school’s Marxist-lite method of enforced voting and mandatory debate attendance, every moron’s ridiculous want had to be catered to. No wonder we never had any power. No one in their right mind would purposely allow a bunch of sex-obsessed, junk-food addled teenagers a free vote. Can you even imagine?   

Well leave it to those former penal colony residents to lead the way backwards. In 2008 the Australian Sex Party was formed with plans to stand for the Australian Senate in the (at the time) upcoming federal election. The new party was launched at the Melbourne Sex-po and was officially registered as a political party by August 2009. They claim a membership of nearly 2,000 and actually contested elections for the first time back in November of 2009. They gained over three percent of the vote in two seats, managing to come forth out of ten in one and third out of twenty-two in the other.

To continue their march toward legitimacy, the brain trust at the Sex Party has an all new photo ad (“that went viral” they are inordinately pleased to announce) featuring an uncomfortably young gal in nothing but knickers and fishnet stockings cupping her breasts and announcing “I’m Legal, how about you?” The rest of the ad is boilerplate, encouraging voter registration and making the right representational choice. Vote Sex Party! Well, why not then? 

Look, I like sex and I like parties but I still don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad that was so easily offensive on multiple levels. The first and most obvious is using a barely legal nude woman to front an ad campaign for a party claiming to have a platform plank against sexual exploitation. Campaign literature is exempt I suppose? Look, I get the whole “she’s legal” thing but the idea of some mid-forties perv grabbing copies of this poster for his basement is beyond creepy. Add in that their campaign is likely not even SFW and their exposure (pun intended) is limited to the office porn ghoul willing to risk detection whilst deep in his cubicle. Lastly, the blatantly naked (yes, another one…) attempt at targeting party-loving Peter Pans shows just how dangerous it is to encourage voting amongst those better suited for beer pong at campus mixers. Without a doubt, if it takes an ad like this to get you registered to vote I think we’d all be better off if you just stayed home and masturbated. It would have the dual effect of protecting society at large from your ill-considered opinions while simultaneously ensuring a guaranteed lack of progeny from your seed. Good news for all.

I get single issue parties. They see something that pisses them off and even though they know full well they’ll never get full power they work hard to get their issue heard and discussed. As a bonus they might even pick up a career that doesn’t involve any heavy lifting and gets them on a chat show or two. Go for it, but don’t actually try to run things – that’s just asking for trouble.

The take away from all this is that not only should we not be in any hurry to “get out the youth vote” but that ads like the Sex Party’s prove it’s too easy to vote already. Encouraging disinterested lightweights to weigh in on the political process before they possess the requisite sobriety to make an informed decision does nothing for the forward momentum of society. When you don’t take voting seriously, bad choices are made. And I know what I’m talking about. When the votes were counted way back when, I won.