Satyr and Girl
by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1615

There are some who believe that “You are what you eat.” Differing from those people, I believe that “You are what you think.” And about The Big Subject, what philosophers think and write about sex can trickle down to the assumptions and rationales that affect attitudes and actions in the wider population. With such concerns in mind, I return to The Philosophy of Sex that we looked at last week, to consider three more essays.

The opening essay is by Greta Christina and bears the title, “Are We Having Sex or What?” Christina begins by recalling the bygone time when she “used to like to count” each new partner, it having been “a source of pride” for her to keep this tally. Eventually that practice grew harder to maintain as the numbers began to mount up. At the same time, it was getting to be less clear to her whether or not to include those who’d “almost” become sex partners. Her reckonings got blurrier still when the class of eligible partners widened to include women. All of which has led her finally to ask a question concerning definitions: 

“What counts as having sex with someone?”

She’s a freelance writer, not an academic philosopher, so it may be that this conceptual question is what explains the inclusion of Christina’s essay in the present volume.

That there must be some reality to define or demarcate is evident to her since she’s believed (rightly or wrongly) that sex changes a relationship. Rape can be excluded since, “if there’s no consent, it ain’t sex.” On the other hand, it counts as sex, in her view, even if you didn’t really want it. So there’s a pretty wide territory that wants defining.

The territory gets wider still, and its edges blurrier when she includes an “all-girl sex party” where, as she recalls, many varieties and gradations of interactions were enjoyed all round. Yet, despite all the differences in degree and kind, she reports feeling that she’d “been sexual with all the women there.”

As her essay draws to a close, we get treated to a parting (how shall I put this?), uh, shockeroo. It seems our essayist has been employed “as a nude dancer at a peep show.” Permit me to draw a veil over her interactions with a particular customer whom she perceived through a “dingy black box” – a box like an old-fashioned telephone booth – but furnished with a viewing window. 

Finally, her essay concludes with the question, Was it sex, or not? to which the writer admits to having no answer.

I’ve got a different question. Was this an essay that belongs in a philosophical collection? She references no philosophic text nor uses any of the philosophic ways of framing a question. Or is the very topic of sex so weird – so far out – for Anglo-American philosophers, that anybody with sexual experience can be deemed eligible to get a foot in the door and to shoulder in thereafter?

I have a second sort of puzzlement. It’s prompted by her remarkably tall tally of intimate partners – none marred by the fear of pregnancy, abortions legal or illegal, sexually-transmitted diseases, getting hurt physically or wounded psychologically or by getting branded by others in unflattering ways – all those invulnerabilities rendering her, so far as I know, atypical for a woman. Am I to understand that Christina has never found herself disillusioned, scorned, disgusted, offended or threatened?

I can testify that I personally have never met a woman like this essayist. I don’t know that any part of her story is fabricated – or else misleadingly described – in whole or in part. But I am sure that she is far from being a typical woman. So her placement in the opening chapter, as scene-setter for this collection, has the effect of disorienting the reader. Henceforth, we are being urged to go forward – to read on – all the while suspending disbelief!

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We turn now to the essay by Micah Newman. He is an independent scholar whose essay, “A Realist Sexual Ethics,” is here reproduced with permission from Ratio 28:2. His essay lies at the other end of the spectrum from Christina’s. Newman defends what he terms a traditional view as the norm. His aim is to defend such a view on philosophical rather than religious grounds. To do that, he will draw on the evidence of evolution. 

Seen from an evolutionary standpoint, Newman finds that sex must be a biologically-grounded activity with reproduction as its defining essence. Although not every sexual act has this baby-making effect, any other effects (such as felt pleasure or expressed love) would be derivative and – where consistent with sex’s essence and therefore allowable – no more than contributory.

Since human babies need continuous care, their parents ought to be in an exclusive and committal relationship “inviolate for a lifetime … .” So the parents ought to be married. Although romantic love is desirable from the evolutionary standpoint, feelings such as “the subjective high” cannot be “themselves foundational.” 

Even if his evolutionary starting point sufficiently accounted for the above exclusions, it does not explain how Newman can proceed at one bound to his announced goal of human “flourishing.” To bring about that flourishing, he adds moral and cultural refinements that don’t appear to follow with any necessity from his evolutionary starting point, and might even be inconsistent with it. 

For instance, among the cultural refinements that assist flourishing he includes the Kantian requirement that we treat others as ends, never solely as a means. But doesn’t the continuous baby-making function previously assigned to women treat them precisely as the means to a biological end? Also, why choose Kant to illustrate moral refinement rather than say Aristotle? The classical philosopher would seem better able than Kant to offer guidelines about how appropriately to treat people in different contexts. So Newman’s examples of “flourishing” seem to be offered without backing other than his personal preferences.

The examples he approves get hedged about with exclusions that (he claims) go back to his evolutionary starting point. On that basis, the following are ruled out: homosexual practices (though not inclinations), masturbation, in vitro fertilization – as an “attempt to change the nature of reproduction to make it not sexual” – and even contraception! What’s wrong with contraception? It carries on “as if sex had no essential connection to reproduction.” 

I imagine that Newman would feel quite different about his account of human flourishing were he suddenly transformed into a woman. In addition to the prima facie unfairness of the society he advocates, his argument is marred by an account of what is authorized and disallowed by evolution that appears empty of the requisite biological evidence. From what I understand, species other than our own have mores and preferences considerably more nuanced and complex than can be explained by Newman’s bare bones account of the reproductive requirement. We are much more than the creatures he describes and so for that matter are the rest of the living things on planet earth. And if we are more, wouldn’t our sexuality have more going for it than can be sufficiently encompassed by so reductive a justification?

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Perhaps our third essay, David Benatar’s “Two Views of Sexual Ethics: Promiscuity, Pedophilia, and Rape,” can provide a dialectical synthesis between the extremes of the first two. As he sees it, because of the sexual revolution, more acts are permitted and fewer condemned than used to be the case. However, the landscape of sexual permissions and exclusions is really more differentiated than at first it seems to be.

If sexual acts are thought of as significant, and justified by loving attachment, the permissions and exclusions fall one way. If on the contrary sexual connections are deemed casual, exclusions will take a different route.

The “loving significance” outlook can’t make a place for promiscuity. In his view, that’s a defect. The “casual” view does make a place for promiscuity but somehow can’t confine it to consenting adults. Therefore he can’t exclude pedophilia (sex with children) and also fails to explain the harm of rape. 

Benatar believes that each of the two approaches has some part of the truth but believes too that they are mutually contradictory. And with this impasse, he leaves the whole question – of which option is better – ultimately unresolved. In fact, he also sees nothing against just ending one’s life!

Let me step in and help out here. The least harm and the most fulfillment seems to lie with viewing sex (at its best) as having loving significance. But what about the rights of the promiscuous? Are they to be disrespected? 

Personally, I have never known a promiscuous person who claimed that pursuing nonstop sex made him happy. At most, the claim was that this was an addiction against which all resistance had been unavailing. Without here specifying what treatments are available for addictions, I can agree with Benatar that the promiscuous ought not to be shunned or socially penalized for their condition. But isn’t it sad to regard the promiscuous as people whose condition is regrettable? Yes, it’s sad. In my experience, and despite the testimony of Christina, the promiscuous do tend to be rather sad. (Their sadness can also be put to work by them as a seductive operator in social life.) So the somewhat manipulative sadness abides, but still seems morally better than allowing child molestation or rape, both of which Benatar finds to be logical extensions of the casual view.

What conclusion can we draw from these three essays? The first is unbelievable, the second is unlivable, and the third fails to draw the conclusion that obviously follows from the evidence it has been at pains to gather.

So the first doesn’t know why we live. The second doesn’t know how to live. And the third can’t seem to step forward and start living!

Okay guys.

Thank you for sharing.