A heated conversation on Facebook the other day got me thinking about
sexual ethics. It seems to me that
there’s been growing concern with the topic.
I am specifically referring to such things as slut shaming, consent and
the definition of rape. The problem, I
think, is that the prevailing wisdom is misguided, and dangerously so, due to
the unqualified reliance on consent as the foundation for sexual ethics. This is compounded by the emphasis on
personal choice in sexual relationships so that there is no model of what one
should strive for.
In the online discussions, consent is heralded as the champion of modern
sexual ethics. It has a lot to commend
to itself. It eliminates all the bad sex
that people want to fence out while leaving all the freedoms that people want
to keep in. It’s a simple and easy ethic
and best of all it is exactly congruent with Postmodernism’s concern for
individual choice and its scepticism with institutionally mandated ethics. Although it is a simple idea, we’re still in the
midst of figuring out details about what is meant by consent. For example, it was recently announced that in Californian universities, consent no longer is entailed by
“no means no” but rather the much stricter “yes means yes”. All in all, there seems to be an optimism
about the project’s success and these little changes represent the final
touches before its completion. Although I once would have been unable to find fault with the idea I now think it’s rather like a builder touching up the paint on the
foundation when the reality is that it is about to be crushed under the weight
of the building.
I should state that I am in complete agreement with the necessity of
consent. It is the sine qua non of healthy sexual
relationships. However, it is nowhere
near robust enough to protect people from damaging sexual relationships. This should be obvious from the simple fact
that people regularly consent to all sorts of damaging behaviours. People consent to try crystal meth for the
first time, some consent to gamble away the rent check, others consent to eat
cheeseburgers until their heart gives out, some risk their jobs checking
facebook at work, many text and drive and some consent to play video games all
night instead of studying for the big exam.
Most people make bad personal choices on a regular basis, or at least I
do. It should be incontestable that many
are going to consent to sex when it is definitely not in their best interests.
Granted freedom is important and an entailment of freedom is the freedom
to choose badly. The difference with sex
is that there are two people involved.
While I would defend a friend’s right, for example, to abuse alcohol I
would feel morally culpable if I were to offer that alcoholic friend beer or
invite them down to the pub for drinks.
If I thought it would help, I would go so far as to intervene in their
life trying to prevent them from consenting to actions that I know to be
harmful. Should one not take some thought towards whether their partner’s best interests
are met by having sex, even if they consent to it?
I strongly believe that in addition to consent, all healthy sexual
relationships require that one has the interests of the partner at an equal to
or higher priority as one’s own. On the
one hand this seems like it should be uncontroversial, but on the other it opens a whole host of
difficulties, chief of them being that the agency of choice no longer remains
entirely with the individual. If you
have a moral obligation to disregard your partner’s consent and refrain from
sex if you think that it would not be in her best interests, then you have
effectively usurped her ability to make her own decision. This is inconsistent with
the ethic of consent.
The problem is that consent fails to deal with some important
questions. If a partner consents to sex
but you know that she uses sex as a means of validation can you in good
conscience sleep with her? If he
consents to sex in the moment but you know that he will regret it in the
morning can you sleep with him without guilt?
If a partner consents to sex but you know that sleeping with him or her
is not in their best interests, can you claim that their consent gave you moral
license to do so? There are all kinds of
bad reasons that motivate people to have sex, to deal with self-worth issues,
due to peer pressure, loneliness or out of depression. In these cases there is consent but sex will
likely only serve to compound the issue that motivated sex in the first
place.
It is easy enough to think of a situation where the conditions of consent
are met but engaging in sex would not be appropriate. Here’s an example: Two people are in a
relationship. He is deeply in love but
she is not. She knows this but likes his
company and is currently content. He
suggests sex thinking it will be a meaningful way of taking their relationship
to a deeper level. She agrees to it, for
somewhat baser motivations, fully aware that she has no long term plans with
him and also aware that the pain of the breakup for him will be considerably
more severe after having sex than before.
She tells herself that he is capable of making his own decisions and
living with the consequences. Perhaps
she feels it would be patronizing to question his consent.
The easy reply is that they should have had an honest discussion about
expectations. Had they done so he would
have realized that he shouldn’t sleep with her and made a better decision to
withhold consent. One might want to say
that healthy sexual relationships entail good communication and especially
discussions about expectations. I’d
agree that’s true but that conclusion cannot be reached using the standard of
consent. To get to that conclusion
requires a previously held ideal of sexuality.
Our definition of healthy sexuality is that it is consensual, which
is the case in this instance. If consent
is the only criterion, the woman has no guilt for sleeping with him even
knowing the consequences her actions would cause when she walked out his door in
the morning, never to return.
I would think that most people would fault the woman for her
actions. I am certain her partner
would. But we cannot fault her unless we
also provide some justification for why. Herein is the problem. Consensual sex
is the definition for healthy sex. We
are told we should only consent to healthy sex but healthy sex is defined as
anything that is consensual, an unhelpfully circular logic. Our culture’s only message concerning healthy
sex is that it’s the individual’s choice to decide what works for them. The obvious result is that each person is
sentenced to their own individual trial and error process. Maybe the man will learn from the experience
to seek out better communication in future relationships. Or maybe he will mistakenly chalk things up
to his poor sexual performance and he will seek out ways to improve his
technique so one day a woman will be willing to commit herself to him. Or maybe his self-esteem won’t recover and he
won’t date again. He’s on his own; we
can wish him luck but we can’t tell him where he went wrong.
I have to believe that people consent to bad sex all the time out of
ignorance. Let’s use polyamory as an
example. I recently read an article
advocating its merits but there was an interesting quotation. The woman in the relationship told her
partner, the author, that she’d rather he sleep with five women one time than
one woman five times. That doesn’t sound
like a glowing testimonial of polyamory, it sounds like a testimonial of monogamy but with a low view of the intimacy of sex.
What is needed is an honest assessment of where sexual satisfaction is
best met. This is entirely my opinion,
but too many people consent to sex when their view of sex is almost solely
based upon media portrayals of sex, or worse yet from pornography, which are
misleading at best. For prudent
decisions, wisdom is required and the courage to denounce certain practices as
harmful. To continue with the polyamory
example, I have read accounts of people proclaiming the happiness and
satisfaction that they have found having multiple partners. Even if that is the case, and I’m doubtful, is that actually
a reasonable endorsement for the practice?
Finding a 98 year old pack a day smoker doesn’t disprove the danger of
cigarettes.
Promiscuity is another timely example.
Anyone who criticizes it runs the strong risk of being accused of
slut-shaming because people should be allowed to do what they want with their own
bodies. Be that as it may but it’s probably worth investigating to see what
sort of long-term satisfaction promiscuity tends to bring. Just like cigarette manufacturers need to
market the dangers so that consumers don’t unknowingly consent to risks, the
associated emotional risks of various practices ought to be taught, not just
the physical risks. It’s not a matter of
restricting freedom, but rather of offering people the freedom to make informed
decisions. Furthermore, I think we have
to recognize that by only teaching consent as the determining factor of sexual
ethics we are teaching a dishonest, harmful and selfish ethic. One must have their potential partner’s
interests in mind but that is meaningless and indeed impossible if consent is
our only guide.
To return to the smoking analogy, one could, in good conscience I feel,
either ban smoking completely while leaving the education of smoking's dangers unstated
or one could permit smoking while providing excellent education about the
associated risks. However, it would be
the height of irresponsibility to permit and even encourage smoking while
denying anyone the right to offer warnings of possible harms. In a remarkable example of unfortunate
timing, enormous freedom is given at the same time that guides are being
silenced. Because our culture is
championing personal freedom of choice, dissenting voices are criticized. “What is right for you might not be right for
other people.” The responsibility of
making wise choices is left up to the individual at precisely the same time
that the relevant information is withheld.
By moving towards consent based sexual ethics we have effectively
divorced commitment and love from sex.
It should be no surprise when the result is casual and loveless
sex.
Or maybe I’m wrong and most people are in fact employing their freedom
to good effect, managing to find, without guidance and with minimal missteps
and emotional harm, the sorts of fulfilling sexual relationships that provide
deep satisfaction. Maybe we can just
trust that our partner’s consent is unquestionably the best personal decision
for them and we shouldn’t insult them by taking anymore thought on the
matter. In any case, feel free to ignore
my opinion if you don’t like it. We’re
all entitled to live our own lives!
But personally, I continually grow fonder of Mr. Chesterton’s
perspective on the matter.
I could never mix in the common
murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on
sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion,
to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons
in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar
anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one
woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that
I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement
of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but
a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot
enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex;
it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind.
And from his masterful A
Defense of Rash Vows:
The revolt against vows has been
carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of
marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this
subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke
mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a
yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a
phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words —
‘free-love’ — as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the
nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the
average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the
lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest
irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him;
they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest
moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which
is the only one that he wants.
It is exactly this backdoor, this
sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterilizing
spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane
attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern
Jingoes practically say, ‘Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the
pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.’ Thus, in religion
and morals, the decadent mystics say: ‘Let us have the fragrance of sacred
purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to
the Virgin and Priapus.’ Thus in love the free-lovers say: ‘Let us have the
splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let
us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.’
Emphatically it will not work.
There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the
aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights
for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own
illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this
transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must
have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know
that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would
hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All
around us is the city of small sins, abounding in back ways and retreats, but
surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour
announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his
ships.
