I recently read this blog post by Wesley Fenza. I agree substantially with two of his points. While monogamy is a valid relationship style, I think monogamous culture has some pretty awful norms that polyamorous people have been shy about criticizing for fear of coming off as nonjudgmental. And I agree that collectively, as a culture, we all need to calm down about STIs. However, I disagree with his middle point about not enabling cheaters.
I don’t think it’s obligatory to investigate thoroughly whether someone is cheating on a monogamous partner before you hook up with them casually. If someone at a party who is wearing a wedding ring is flirting with me, I will naturally assume that they are polyamorous and that their spouse is okay with it; I do not think I am required to go find their spouse and check that the spouse is okay with it before I flirt back. And there are some limited circumstances in which I think cheating is– not ideal, but the best way to deal with an awful situation. Obviously, it is not unethical to help someone cheat in cases where it’s not unethical to cheat.
I also think that commercial sex has different ethics from non-commercial sex. Frankly, if all sex workers adopted an attitude of “I won’t help people cheat”, then most of them would have to get second jobs shortly afterward. In the vast majority of cases, it is not the job of a person selling a service to check whether the service is being used ethically. Just as the restaurant owner does not inquire about whether I’m spending money in his restaurant that I should be saving for my children’s college education, the GameStop manager does not inquire about whether I am planning to give Chainsaw Death Mayhem III to my two-year-old, and the Home Depot employee does not inquire about whether I’m planning on using the Drano to poison my mother, the sex worker does not inquire whether I’m married and, if so, whether I have a justifiable reason for cheating.
Caveats aside: Fenza argues that the harm is in the proposition of infidelity; once infidelity has been proposed, there is no harm in committing it. This does not seem to be true to me. I am not monogamous, but my partners have made other promises to me. For instance, my fiance Topher has promised that he will not lie to me, even little white lies. It seems clear to me that, while Topher planning to lie to me is a violation of that promise, him actually lying to me is an even bigger violation– just as a lie that lasts ten minutes is less of a violation than a lie that lasts ten years. And while the violation is fairly severe if he intended to lie to me and was stopped by external circumstances– perhaps I already knew the truth before he could lie to me– it’s even worse if he actually does.
Partially, this is because many monogamous people are monogamous for reasons other than valuing their partner not desiring to have sex with other people. Many monogamous people are extremely averse to STIs or afraid that their partner will have a child with someone other than them. Other monogamous people fear their partner enjoying sex with someone else more than sex with them. Others do not want their partner to expend their emotional and romantic energy on another person. Still others feel a gut-level, arational revulsion at the idea of their partner having sex with someone else– a revulsion that cannot be explained or justified. (Of course, many monogamous people have more than one of those reasons, or a reason not listed, or have not introspected enough to know why it is valuable to them.) For all those people, actually having extra-relationship sex is a harm above and beyond the harm of taking steps to have extra-relationship sex.
I disagree as well with Fenza’s idea that we do not hold people responsible for enabling others to break promises. My friends do, in fact, hold me to my commitments. For instance, they have a commendable habit of frowning at me when I am tempted by egg-filled baked goods. Naturally, some of my friends don’t support animal rights, so they’re unlikely to take it much farther than a frown (by extension, there is no reason for someone who holds that it is perfectly fine to lie to your partners and break your promises to not aid in cheating– but this is an uncommon enough moral belief that I will skip over it). And I do think it would be a bit much for even my vegan friends to absolutely forbid me to eat egg-filled baked goods; they don’t get that much say in my life.
But if a vegan friend is treating me to dinner and I am dithering over whether I will order the deliciously egg-filled brownie, I think they’re well within their rights to say “I’m not paying for that.” They are causally involved in the obtaining-a-brownie process, and they have a right to prevent a thing they consider immoral from occurring. It’s not completely preventing the thing from occurring either way– I can pay for my own brownie, and the cheater can find someone more amenable– but people have a right not to involve themselves in situations they deem harmful.
Of course, one of the most important reasons not to help someone cheat is not that it’s unethical– just that it’s unwise. Fenza does agree with me here, but I’m talking about it anyway because it’ll be brought up in the comment section otherwise. Under most circumstances, a person who cheats on their partner shows that they are of poor character in a way that directly impacts such key relationship skills as “not lying”, “doing what you say you are going to do”, and “caring about whether you hurt your partner”. Cheating also means you will probably have to hide your relationship and that the cheated-upon spouse will probably be extremely angry at you.
belobog131071 said:
“it is not the job of a person selling a service to check whether the service is being used ethically.” So we should remove all laws that require gun sellers to perform background checks and the like on their customers?
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Murphy said:
Many would say yes since to a large extent the current laws are an attempt at a death by a thousand cuts to part of the US constitution.
The UK takes it further and you’ll find yourself getting carded if you try to buy sharp things, eggs, spray paint or spoons. (that last one I believe to be due to an over-zelous automatic system in the shop which flagged up all cutlery rather than just knives)
Mostly though we leave ethical considerations to the individuals. The prostitute made no commitment to you, if your partner cheats on you with them then it’s entirely on your partners head.
My moral intuition does somewhat hint that knowing, focused, sustained attempts to make individuals break their commitments are somewhat morally wrong such as someone who gets off on convincing married people to cheat or convincing people who’ve promised not to lie to lie.
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Psmith said:
Heh.
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Ben said:
Is that what those background checks are doing? That seems more analogous to checking whether someone has various indicators of being a good person before flirting with them.
Are gun sellers required to ask you what you intend to use a gun for before you buy it? I’m not actually sure of the answer to that. My guess would be that it isn’t mandated but often happens in practice.
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Ann Onora Mynuz said:
>I also think that commercial sex has different ethics from non-commercial sex. Frankly, if all sex workers adopted an attitude of “I won’t help people cheat”, then most of them would have to get second jobs shortly afterward. In the vast majority of cases, it is not the job of a person selling a service to check whether the service is being used ethically. Just as the restaurant owner does not inquire about whether I’m spending money in his restaurant that I should be saving for my children’s college education, the GameStop manager does not inquire about whether I am planning to give Chainsaw Death Mayhem III to my two-year-old, and the Home Depot employee does not inquire about whether I’m planning on using the Drano to poison my mother, the sex worker does not inquire whether I’m married and, if so, whether I have a justifiable reason for cheating.
I’m in general agreement with this, but a lot of people think that there’s some sort of “threshold” past which one is not generally excused by “It’s just business, man”. I can’t really think of an example in which sex-commerce would go past that threshold, but I am generally not great at identifying it for any sort of economic activity.
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Ann Onora Mynuz said:
Feels great to combo-break the blue-green theme that was going on in the “Recent Comments” column.
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blacktrance said:
Regarding the supposed difference between planning to cheat and actually cheating, I think the main difference is that successful cheating is a more credible signal of one’s internal state than mere plans are, and therefore it hits harder emotionally. For example, someone who makes a significant effort to cheat but is unsuccessful seems just as bad as someone who actually cheats, because the two have the same disposition. But from the outside, we usually don’t know the former’s mental state as well as the latter’s.
Also, you don’t really show that we hold people responsible for helping others break their promises. You conclude that they have a right not to help you, which is uncontroverisial, but if your friend chooses to buy you a non-vegan brownie, we really wouldn’t hold it against them.
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SB said:
There’s a key difference between “having an obligation to check whether the service is being used ethically” and “having an obligation not to provide the service if you know it will be used unethically.” Even if we agree that businesses generally do not have the first type of obligation, most people probably agree that they have the second sort under most circumstances. If a customer tells the cashier that they plan on using the Drano to poison someone, is it moral for the cashier to sell it to them?
As concerns the first sort of obligation, I think it depends on how frequently the service is used for illegitimate ends. If you know most of your customers are buying Drano in order to poison others, it seems rather irresponsible to adopt a policy of selling it without asking questions.
I also think the discussion of promises misses the most important reason not to help someone cheat, namely that it imposes a harm on a third party. Analogizing to keeping a promise you made to yourself seems to present a weaker case against cheating than could be made. If A and B agree to feed each other’s cats when they go on vacation, and C (knowing of this obligation) drives A out of town while B is on vacation, preventing A from keeping their side of the bargain, it seems likely that C has done something wrong. Although it may well be wrong that C has caused A to do something that they will regret, the real reason C’s action is wrong seems to be the harm done to B and B’s cat.
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Patrick said:
That’s the most inadvertently damning description of sex work I’ve ever read. You’ve put it in the same category as drug dealers, payday lenders, and possibly 8chan.
1. You have an obligation to ensure that your goods or services are used ethically (which in this context means not causing unjustified harm to a third party)
2. You have an obligation to not provide your good or service to a specific customer if you know it will be used unethically or to cause unjustified harm to a third party, and
3. You have an obligation not to embark on a course of business that you know will only remain solvent because of the unethical behavior and unjustified harm to third parties that your business facilitates, and if you do this anyway you should have a hard time looking in the mirror.
Rejecting (1) does not entail rejecting (2) or (3).
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Lambert said:
Typo: ‘fear of coming off as nonjudgmental’
should probably be ‘fear of coming off as judgemental’
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1angelette said:
I don’t think that sex workers should be held to as high an ethical standard as gun dealers. Guns are able to seriously harm people, often fatally. While infidelity is certainly bad, it’s not on the same level of grievous bodily injury in most situations. A restaurant isn’t obligated to deny reservations for a pair of cheaters out on a dinner date.
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nissetje said:
Other people’s actions aren’t my responsibility, but it IS my responsibility to choose where to spend my time and energy productively. If I get involved with someone who is thereby technically “cheating” on their monogamous partner, on the one hand I feel they’re an adult who can make their own choices. But on the other hand, I prefer not hang around with people who deliberately break their promises to others (exceptional circumstances like abuse aside). Not because of the monogamy aspect, but because of the deception aspect. Like, if I knew Topher was lying to you, I would probably decide they weren’t the kind of person I wanted to spend time with.
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thirqual said:
PhiloBro’s small essay on cheating, which, while it starts with a discussion of naive utilitarianism, makes all kind of important points about third parties, trust, unexpected consequences and webs of lies.
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rash92 said:
Do you see a difference between ‘im not gping to ask them of they’re cheating/ if their SO is ok woth it before I sleep woth them’ and ‘I know for a fact that their SO is not ok with it/ they’re cheating, im still going to sleep with them’.
IMO the second is worse thatn the first. Whether either or both are past the threshold of unethical, I do think theres a significant difference.
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