Like it or loathe it, we are living in the age of woke. Personally, I am all for it. I am a fully signed up, lefty lovey who respects pronouns, voted Remain and campaigns to save the bees. I am a dainty, woke snowflake, and very happy to be so.
Yes, there are the madder moments when you find yourself in Homebase, wondering if you have accidentally misgendered a pot plant to the cashier, but for me it’s a small price to pay for trying to create a more inclusive and tolerant society.
We have done some truly fantastic work in this arena. There is still a long way to go, but we have never been more tolerant of sexuality and its manifold kinks, quirks and squirts than we are right now. Whether you fancy theys, gays or greys, there is a community and a march for you. And thank goodness.
So imagine my liberal shock when I was alerted to a form of sexual discrimination that is not only widespread and deeply entrenched but has now become socially acceptable, laudable even, within leftist communities. That’s right: no one wants to shag a Tory.
I first became aware of this sexual embargo last year when I briefly rejoined the world of dating apps. Having scrolled past myriad men holding fish and standing by their cars, and having checked in on all the familiar faces I see every time I do this (I think of them as dating colleagues now), I noticed something new reoccurring in people’s bios: “No Tories.”
“No Tories” isn’t an official category you can ask for on these apps. When you fill out your details, you can specify where your political leanings are, and the kind of person you are interested in, but there is no “would you ever f**k a Tory” question to complete. No, people were adding this information to their dating bios, along with their idea of a good night out and how many pets they have. “I like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. NO TORIES.” That kind of thing.
This is an interesting development in the dating world. It would never have occurred to me to put “No Tories” on my dating profile. In the interest of full disclosure, as well as running the risk of my parents disowning me entirely, some of the best sex I ever had was with a Tory I met on a dating app. At least, I think he was a Tory. It wasn’t long after the referendum and he had voted for Brexit. We had a very heated argument about the Irish border before ending up in the sack. It was amazing. We were just so angry with each other. There was no way I was letting someone who thought so little of European fishing policy be on top.
Presumably, he felt the same way about being sat on by a vegetarian who couldn’t see the benefits of a points-based immigration system, because the result was some seriously energetic sex. It turns out that hooking up is a hell of a way to work through your political differences.
Neither of us changed our minds about Brexit as a result, but after your third orgasm, it is hard to care that much about revoking the EU ban on imperial measurements. If nothing else, we had both worked off some anger and came away from the experience with a renewed respect for one another.
I mentioned the “No Tories” dating trend to a good friend of mine who views Grindr as a multiplayer game that he has completed several times. Not only did he know all about it, but he had a similar statement on his profile, and genuinely, seriously would not even consider the notion of having casual sex with someone who voted Conservative.
He views the Tory party as fundamentally at odds with his moral values, and frankly, would rather knock boots with the Child Snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In fact, he told me he had once kicked a guy out of bed when he mentioned “backing Boris” (not a euphemism).
“But weren’t you enjoying it?” I asked.
“Didn’t matter.” He replied. “I couldn’t carry on after that.”
I started to feel like a class traitor. “Is this pretty common on Grindr?” I asked. He opened the app and together we scrolled through a buffet of bottoms, and there it was: “No Tories”, over and over.
It was the same on hookup apps Feeld and Fetlife. No Tories. No Tories. No Tories. For the uninitiated, Fetlife is a BDSM dating site that caters for a wide range of sexual proclivities. It was surreal. There were people asking to be defecated on but drawing the line at it being done by a Tory.
Of course, boundaries are important when it comes to sex, and if you don’t want to f**k a Tory, don’t’ f**k a Tory. I was however fascinated by this new boundary in the online hookup world.
It did make me wonder where Conservatives are going to date. I assume that I don’t see right-wing dating profiles because I have specified my own political bent and the algorithm keeps us apart. Maybe they have their own dating apps? Bumbling or Elitist Singles, perhaps? Do they also have political embargos on their profiles?
If you are going to start ruling out sex based on political leanings, surely there are more immediate and obvious groups than the Conservative Party to rule out first?
Whenever I am confused by a new online trend, I ask the university students I teach about it. They weren’t fazed about a “No Tories” policy in a dating profile in the slightest. For them, it was simply about the type of person they wanted to date. This is interesting because, to me, being a Conservative is about your political affiliations, but to this group of 21-year-olds it is a personality type. More than this, it is a person’s entire identity to them, and it’s not one they wanted to date.
“Urgh! I would never date a Tory!” and “How could you date someone with those values?” were just two of the comments they made. They didn’t expound upon what they thought “those values” were, but they definitely didn’t consider them to be attractive ones. If there were any Tories present to say whether this feeling was mutual, they kept very quiet.
This all got me thinking about the recent Conservative Party conference, which had some truly odd moments. Like when the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Claire Coutinho, claimed Labour wanted to tax meat (they don’t). Or when Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, said it was wrong that “local councils can decide how often you can go to the shops” (they can’t). The sight of Nigel Farage singing Frank Sinatra’s “I Love You Baby” with Priti Patel is a trauma I could have done without, but what really caught my attention were the interviews with “young Conservatives”, who lamented how deeply unpopular (and by extension, unf**kable) being a Tory made them.
One young fella spoke about how he had been dumped by both friends and lovers once they “found out” he was a Conservative. He was quite convinced he had been abandoned because of his politics. Meanwhile, TikTok had an absolute field day with the silly sod who compared not wanting to kiss a Tory with refusing to kiss gay people – and rightly so. You can’t choose who you are attracted to, you can choose who you vote for. And you can certainly choose who you sleep with.
I feel deeply conflicted about this because I don’t even think of the Tory party as competent, let alone attractive. The mere thought of Jacob Rees-Mogg is enough to desiccate my Jeremy Hunt. So, when people say they don’t want to date a Tory, I get it. But I do wonder if it is a stance that is more divisive than incisive. Identity politics is about more than race, class, gender, or sexuality – it is also about the literal identity of politics.
If we on the left assume that every single person who votes Tory is a horrible person, and vice versa, that doesn’t help anyone much. There are plenty of Conservatives I dislike, but I don’t think my opinion of them would change all that much if they suddenly signed up to the Green Party. Being a Conservative certainly doesn’t make them undateable; they did that all by themselves. I also know people who voted for the Tories who I do like. They tend to keep very quiet about it but there are moderate conservatives out there – Day Walkers, if you will – who vote Blue but don’t necessarily agree with every Tory policy going.
Ultimately, we are not going to get very far together if we cannot work together. Bertrand Russell once wrote that “the only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation”. So maybe consider going on a date with a Tory? (Or a lefty, if you are Conservative.) Talk about your differences – you might even find some shared ground. If you’re really lucky, you might even wind up being pounded in a Travelodge while shouting about the merits of a free market. All I am saying is, don’t rule it out.