This essay is the third in a four-part series. Click here to read parts one and two.
The strategy Nathan Schlueter takes in his essay is to address my four reasons for thinking that intercourse is morally bad, rejecting each of them in turn. This leaves the ground clear for him to argue that sex is, or can be, morally good—which he does in a qualified way by saying that sex can be morally good inside marriage, but not outside of it.
I’ll first explain why I think his responses to each of my reasons miss the mark, before turning to the substance of his sex-positive view.
Before I do that, let me make one brief correction. In the setup for his essay, Schlueter identifies me as a critic of the sexual revolution, which would put me in broad agreement with contemporary commentators like Louise Perry and Mary Harrington. But my critique of sex is not a response to the sexual revolution. It applies just as much to sex before the sexual revolution. Indeed, it is unclear to me whether things are better or worse now. I am not making a case against the sexual revolution, but a case against sex itself. Both Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon did the same.
Intercourse as Male-Centered
I said in my essay that male-centeredness is one marker of a patriarchal society, and that sex is male-centered in being defined around the man’s pleasure. Schlueter’s response was that this is false because sex is about reproduction. The unstated point is that conception requires the male orgasm, but not the female.
This response confuses proximate with ultimate explanations. The ultimate explanation of why I am writing this essay is that eight years ago I abruptly pivoted my research to feminism and began public writing, but the proximate explanation is that my editor sent me Schlueter’s essay and asked for a response. The ultimate explanation of sex, reaching far back into evolutionary history, makes male orgasm crucial. But the proximate explanation is something very different.
Humans are a culturally sophisticated species, and we both make meaning of our biology and depart—sometimes dramatically—from it. No element of the ultimate explanation of sex need feature in the proximate explanation of our current social practices around sex, most of which is non-reproductive. My concerns were limited to the proximate: our societies (Australia, the United States) are patriarchal in the sense described in my essay, and the male-centeredness of sex is one example of that.
Intercourse as Unequal Between Men and Women
I noted several asymmetries between men and women when it comes to sexual activity: time spent on each partner’s pleasure; the orgasm gap; and the ubiquity of intercourse, which is more conducive to male pleasure. Schlueter’s response was that “sex improves with commitment” (a corollary of my noting that these inequalities are worse in hookup culture), which “points to the possibility of good sex with perfect commitment, which we call marriage.” It is not obvious to me that perfect commitment (marriage) will end up correlating with morally good sex. It’s true that the prospects for it seem better than in some other types of relationships. But without a public conversation about what is bad about sex as we know it, many couples may simply replicate what they think is normal sex (and what is represented in mainstream culture as normal sex).
Schlueter mentions in this section of his essay the directive of a previous pope that married couples ought to strive for simultaneous orgasm. This would certainly solve some of the issues of asymmetry. But I take it this is a model of ideal sex, rather than morally permissible sex. Thus, there may yet end up being many married couples having sex that is morally permissible in Schlueter’s view and morally bad in mine.
Intercourse as Instrumentalizing
When discussing the way that sex is unequal between men and women, I mentioned that even when sex is asymmetrically physically pleasurable, it may yet be symmetrically psychologically pleasurable. Schlueter reintroduces this point in relation to instrumentalization, suggesting that an exchange of male physical pleasure for female psychological pleasure may yet be a fair one (and therefore not instrumentalizing). This misses my earlier point, however, which was that the sex is unequal because both get psychological pleasure, but only the man also gets physical pleasure.
I will also take this opportunity to note that Schlueter says that I suggest women who “keep having non-pleasurable sex” “have… some kind of neo-Marxist false consciousness.” I suggest no such thing. People make rational decisions based on the features of the situations they’re in. That doesn’t mean we can’t critique those situations. A woman might decide to get Botox and fillers in order to preserve her physical beauty—whether for personal or professional reasons. This is a perfectly rational response to the fact that our society rewards beauty in women. It doesn’t mean feminists are wrong to criticize female beauty standards, and their criticizing of those standards doesn’t mean such feminists believe that any woman who conforms to the standards has “false consciousness.”
Likewise for sex. Some women simply might not have given the situation much thought. Others might have come to the view that the deck is stacked against them and simply decided to make the best of the situation.
Intercourse as a Violation of Women’s Negative Freedom
I say men’s sex-pestery frequently violates women’s negative freedom (in a weaker sense than that idea is usually understood). Schlueter repeats the point from above that an exchange of physical for psychological pleasure can be fair, and thus not a violation of negative freedom. He adds the further point that “if sex is no more meaningful than a pleasant back scratch, it is difficult to appreciate why women (or anyone) would say no to it.”
I have already explained that I don’t think sex is an exchange of physical for psychological pleasure, but an asymmetric exchange of total pleasure. I would add that I’m unsure as to why Schlueter thinks that I believe sex to be “no more meaningful than a… back scratch.” I did not express any view in my essay about the inherent meaningfulness or meaninglessness of sex, I simply noted some ways that our current social practice of it is morally bad. In the lecture on which my essay was based, I had more to say about sex in the feminist future. Here, I’ll limit myself to the comment that even if sex were not meaningful, it is the very male-centeredness of sex that supports the view that it is like a “pleasant back scratch,” rather than, for example, painful, uncomfortable, disruptive, or tedious. Those are just some of the reasons “why women… would say no to it.”
Let me turn now to Schlueter’s positive proposal, which he calls “sex-positive personalism.” The label is not explained, but I take it to be at once a denial of the feminism in my view (where “humanism” might be the more common alternative) and a reference to the “whole persons” steps in his own view.
On Schlueter’s view, we may never use another person as a mere means to our ends; it is impossible to separate sex from the whole person; and sex is about reproduction even if it does not always result in reproduction, because it is the act “in which sex organs of a man and woman function and coordinate as parts of a single reproductive whole.” From these steps, Schlueter arrives at the view that “Sex is a coordinated good, like an orchestra, where the good of the parts is found precisely in their contribution to the whole.” Presumably the whole is the married couple, and sex contributes to the strength and longevity of their bond. I am not sure whether it is crucial to the view that this bond eventually transforms the couple into a family unit.
I agree with Schlueter, who is following Kant, about the first step, that we shouldn’t use other people as mere means to our ends. (For those who are interested, there’s more discussion of one contemporary iteration of Kant’s idea applied to sex in my lecture). But I disagree that it is impossible to separate sex from the whole person. For many people, they are intertwined, but not for everyone. Bonnie Blue, mentioned in my essay, is a case in point. And I disagree that sex is about reproduction, for the reasons I already gave in explaining the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations.
The idea that sex is about reproduction makes sense for people whose faith assigns complementary roles to men and women and designates sex as sacred and for the purpose of reproduction within a heterosexual family. In his essay, Schlueter is endorsing a view of sex put forward by Pope John Paul II. But it doesn’t have much to offer atheists who don’t share this view of men and women, marriage, or sex.
As a feminist, my concern is primarily with the subordinate social status of women and the role sex plays in the maintenance of that status. That includes expectations about sex inside and outside of relationships, the cultural representation of sex in film and television, and the possibility of exchanging sex for money, in prostitution and for pornography. I invite Schlueter to tell us more, in his final essay, about why his vision of sex is one that atheists, feminists, lesbian and gay couples, and those who feel no need to have their relationships recognized by the church or the state, have reason to accept.
