The DSM-IV Believed Women Didn’t Have Paraphilias

Tags

ozy blog post, sex positivity

An interesting fact literally no one believes me about is that until relatively recently it was sexological consensus that women don’t have paraphilias.

When I say this, people are like “okay, Ozy means some weird, fringe sexologist who believes bizarre things that no one else agrees with, obviously they can’t actually mean that within our lifetimes sexologists believed women don’t have kinks.” But, no, really. Here is a quote from page 524 of the DSM-IV, published in 1994 and updated in 2000:

Except for Sexual Masochism, where the sex ratio is estimated to be 20 males for each female, the other Paraphilias are almost never diagnosed in females, although some cases have been reported.

To be clear, “paraphilia” is a term which includes most of what we’d consider to be kinks; there is no requirement that a paraphilia be obligatory for sexual arousal, and in fact it is explicitly mentioned that some paraphiliacs are aroused by sex where their paraphilia is not included. Paraphilias defined in the DSM-IV include:

• Sexual Masochism: “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving the act (real, not simulated) of being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer”
• Sexual Sadism: “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving acts (real, not simulated) in which the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim is sexually exciting to the person.”
• Fetishism: “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving the use of nonliving objects (e.g., female undergarments).”

Special shoutout to transvestic fetishism which literally could not be diagnosed in a woman or a queer man.

The DSM-IV defined ‘paraphilia’ as a diagnosis by inclusion: paraphilias were a set of specific sexual interests, examples given above. The DSM-5 defines ‘paraphilia’ as follows (pg. 685):

The term paraphilia denotes any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners.

(“Phenotypically normal” is intended to exclude visibly physically disabled and transgender people, as well as perhaps members of some other groups. Please note that “paraphilia” and “paraphiliac disorder” are distinguished; a paraphiliac disorder causes mental distress or is a threat to the psychological or physical wellbeing of others. It is possible that what the DSM-5 intends is that, for example, female crossdressers are all unusually well-adjusted.)

This is what the DSM-5 has to say about the prevalence of paraphilias:

• “The highest possible lifetime prevalence for voyeuristic disorder is approximately 12% in males and 4% in females.”
• “The prevalence of exhibitionistic disorder in females is even more uncertain but is generally believed to be much lower than in males.”
• “It has been estimated that 2.2% of males and 1.3% of females had been involved in bondage and discipline, sadomasochism, or dominance and submission in the past 12 months” [about masochistic disorder]
• “Fetishistic disorder has not been systematically reported to occur in females. In clinical samples, fetishistic disorder is nearly exclusively reported in males.”
• “Transvestic disorder is rare in males and extremely rare in females.”
• Silence about the prevalence of sexual sadism in women.

This is definitely an improvement on the insistence that women essentially never have paraphilias other than masochism, which has twenty men for every woman (!); still, there is an insistence that the paraphilias are extraordinarily rare in women.

—

Why was this a sexological consensus? I present a few hypotheses.

First, most research on paraphilias is conducted on a sex-offender population. For various reasons, women are less likely to be sex offenders. Sexual crimes by women may be underreported and underprosecuted; women may also be legitimately less likely to engage in many sex offenses.

Second, the definition of ‘paraphilia’ is androcentric. Consider omegaverse. “I get off on a man going into heat and then getting knocked up by another man with a dog dick” is certainly a sexual interest in something other than genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners. However, it does not fit in any of the current paraphilias. Conversely, there are paraphilias for sexual interests that are more typically male, such as an interest in jerking off into a shoe. This is likely to be a self-perpetuating problem; since paraphilias are defined androcentrically, paraphilias are underdiagnosed in women, and there is no way for psychiatrists to discover that they should correct the definitions.

Third, there is a lot of stigma on women admitting their sexuality, and many women would feel reluctant admitting their sexual interests to a psychiatrist or even on an anonymous survey. (As a very obvious example, studies consistently report heterosexual men having a higher mean number of sexual partners than heterosexual women.)

Fourth and most importantly, women are less likely than men to be aware of what their kinks are, especially before the present day. There are both biological and cultural reasons for this. Biologically, if one has a penis, arousal is more obvious and the mechanics of masturbation are more intuitive. Having a male-typical level of testosterone also usually gives you more interest in sex than having a female-typical level of testosterone does. Culturally, women’s sexuality tends to be shamed and stigmatized as “slutty.” Female sexual exploration and curiosity tends not to be encouraged as much as male sexual exploration and curiosity, particularly historically.

Among all age groups, women are both less likely to have ever masturbated and less likely to have masturbated in the past year. It is likely that many women who have never masturbated or who masturbate rarely also don’t sexually fantasize or fantasize rarely. They may have completely failed to notice what their kinks are.

The self-hating man with a paraphilia might go to a psychiatrist for help fixing himself. The self-hating female woman with a paraphilia might very well never realize she has a paraphilia and instead conclude that she just doesn’t like sex that much.

How did this change? Why, in the past thirty years, have we gone from “women don’t have paraphilias” to “don’t be ridiculous, Ozy, of course it wasn’t sexological consensus that women don’t have paraphilias”?

I believe the answer is our friend the Internet.

Perhaps due to sexual stigma, women seem particularly averse to buying porn. In 1970, if a woman wished to purchase erotic literature, she would have to go to a literal physical store and buy it from an actual shop clerk and then maybe display it on her actual shelves where people could see it and judge her. Today, all she has to do is search on Amazon and download The Devil: Devil’s Playground Duet #1 to her Kindle and literally no one will have any idea.

We’ve seen an explosion in the past twenty years of art, erotica and porn aimed at women. I talk about fandom a lot, but I think it’s equally obvious in the romance novel world: since the development of the Kindle, there have been a lot more erotic romance novels with more and filthier sex that caters more directly to common female interests. This is a self-perpetuating cycle. If you have porn that’s catering to you– porn with sexy men in it rather than sexy women, for example– you’re more likely to notice the sorts of things you get off on.

Cards on the table: I suspect that, while men might be more likely to have certain paraphilias and women might be more likely to have certain other paraphilias, women and men are equally likely to have intense, persistent interests in sexual activities other than genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners. I believe, in the next few decades as the number of people who had access to porn as teenagers increases, we will see more and more women with paraphilias, and this fact will become obvious.

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Further Objections To Three Sentences In An Interview With Ray Blanchard (They’re A Really Bad Three Sentences)

Tags

csa tw, ozy blog post, rape tw, ray blanchard callout post, speshul snowflake trans

On Monday, I wrote a post about my most important objection to this answer of Ray Blanchard’s in an interview from 2013:

[Interviewer:] Do you think autoandrophilia, where a woman is aroused by the thought of herself as a man, is a real paraphilia?

[Blanchard:] No, I proposed it simply in order not to be accused of sexism, because there are all these women who want to say, “women can rape too, women can be pedophiles too, women can be exhibitionists too.” It’s a perverse expression of feminism, and so, I thought, let me jump the gun on this. I don’t think the phenomenon even exists.

I wanted to stick to the most important issue in the first post. However, I could not in good conscience refrain from objecting to everything else objectionable about those three sentences.

First: autoandrophilia obviously exists. Autoandrophilia obviously existed in 2013. Archive of Our Own had existed for four years at the time. AO3 hosts an enormous quantity of porn written by women about men having sex with each other; many (although of course not all) of the readers insert themselves as one of the characters in the pairing. The phenomenon of women imagining themselves as men in slash fanfiction dates back to 1966, when the TV show Star Trek began and women began shipping Kirk/Spock. There is honestly no excuse for a person who considers himself a world expert in sexuality related to gender deviance to be unaware that autoandrophiles exist.

As I said in the previous post, Blanchard has recently admitted to the existence of autohomoeroticism, a sexual fetish in which people assigned female at birth are sexually attracted to the idea of being a gay man. He considers this to be extraordinarily rare. (Out of curiosity, I did a small survey on a fandom Discord I frequent and found that 60% of the respondents assigned female at birth were autoandrophiles, although I suppose it is possible that every autohomoerotic person in the world frequents this particular Discord.) It is unclear to me how the hell autohomoeroticism is supposed to be different from autoandrophilia, except that it would be embarrassing to Blanchard to admit he’s wrong because of something as minor as “the facts.”

Second: Blanchard implicitly equates pedophiles, rapists, and exhibitionists with autoandrophiles. Pedophiles and rapists either perform nonconsensual sex acts or are tempted to do so; while people who have sex in front of consenting people are also considered exhibitionists, presumably Blanchard is referring to people who want to show their genitals to or have sex in front of nonconsenting people. Cisgender autoandrophiles might strap on a dildo and get a blowjob from another consenting adult, but they don’t do anything nonconsensual nor are they tempted to do so.

I am glossing over the complicated issue of transgender autoandrophiles, in part due to the disagreement about whether they exist. I have met the occasional self-identified non-dysphoric autoandrophile who has transitioned. In general, they have tried to be indistinguishable from dysphoric trans people and to pass as their preferred gender. This is very unlike rape, pedophilia, or nonconsensual exhibitionism, where the victims know they’re involved in a sex act. It seems rather more like a person getting off on the reactions they get when they wear sexy clothes, or on secretly wearing sexy underwear, or on receiving a hair massage, or whatever: perfectly fine as long as it is not obvious to other people what they’re doing. Whatever you may think of the wisdom of their transitions, it does not seem to be a nonconsensual sex act. Blanchard’s inability to distinguish between consensual and nonconsensual sex acts is appalling.

Third: Blanchard has an openly contemptuous attitude towards the idea that women commit sexual violence. However, women uncontroversially commit sexual violence. In a study conducted in 2010, it was found that 4.8% of men had been, over the course of their lives, forced to penetrate someone through violence, threat of violence, or use of drugs/alcohol, and 6% were coerced into sex. 79.2% of male forced-to-penetrate victims had only female perpetrators, while 83.6% of male sexual coercion victims had only female perpetrators. By comparison, 98.1% of female rape victims had only male perpetrators, and 92.5% of female sexual coercion victims had only male perpetrators, and women are more likely to experience both rape and sexual coercion than men are.

Female child molesters are understudied. However, victimization surveys suggest that somewhere between 14% and 26% of children molested are molested by a woman. Official crime statistics suggest that as few as 1% of children molested are molested by a woman; it is probable that female child molesters are undercounted.

It’s true that men are more likely than women to commit sexual violence. However, a significant minority of victims of sexual violence have female perpetrators. The idea that pointing this out is laughable is rape apologism and morally wrong.

Fourth: Blanchard appears to believe the only reason one would write paragraphs like the above is some sort of bizarre “women can do anything men can do” ethos. It does not seem to occur to him that people would care about supporting the victims of female rapists. I have drafted several sentences in response to this and had an extraordinary difficulty ending them with anything other than “fuck off.”

People– men, women, and nonbinary– are sometimes raped by women. I’ve gotten anguished emails from victims of rape by women thanking me because I am the only blogger they’ve found who will even say they exist. I’ve listened to people– blog readers and friends– talk about bracing themselves when they say the gender of their rapist, because people will laugh at them, or tell them they wanted it, or question them to see if there was some sort of horrible misunderstanding, or immediately derail the conversation to talk about how Men Commit Most Rapes Though, or assume they’re anti-feminist men’s rights activists and call them misogynists, or ask intrusive details about how it could happen mechanically, or assume that they’re the perpetrator and their rapist was the victim. Our society is awful to rape victims of all stripes, but there are unique ways in which it is awful to victims of female perpetrators, and it needs to stop. Pointing out that female rapists and child molesters exist is the first step.

Het-Partnered Bisexual People Can Experience Homophobia

Tags

gay stuff, ozy blog post

[content warning for slurs]

I have sometimes seen arguments that imply that bisexual people partnered to heterosexual people do not experience homophobia.

It makes sense that people might think this is the case. There are a lot of concrete ways that being in a heterosexual relationship makes your life easier. Het-partnered bisexual people can walk down the street holding hands with their partner without having someone yell slurs at them. They can get married in every country. Their parents are unlikely to reject their partner purely because of their gender. I certainly don’t mean this post to erase these advantages or to imply that het-partnered bisexual people who consider themselves to not experience homophobia are wrong.

When a lot of bisexuals talk about our experiences of oppression, the word that comes up a lot is invisibility. This can seem like, well, a pretty privileged complaint. “People think I’m straight” is often not a problem that the visibly queer have much sympathy for. And while that’s invalidating of your experiences, it can be hard to think what material harm being taken as straight causes.

But I think het-partnered bisexual people do have a very particular experience of homophobia, and I hope I can explain the material harm it causes in a way that makes sense.

First, and most obviously, being het-partnered now does not erase the homophobia you experienced in the past. Familial rejection, job discrimination, and inadequate health care — to name just three examples– can have effects that last a long time after your same-sex relationship ends.

Second, many (perhaps most) het-partnered bisexual people are partnered to straight people. And straight people are very often homophobic. Thus, het-partnered bisexual people are often in a position of being in a committed relationship with someone who hates a fundamental aspect of their identity. This particularly affects younger or more vulnerable bisexuals, who may not have a lot of options or may not know how to filter for kinds of homophobia more subtle than waving around a GOD HATES FAGS sign.

The effects of heterosexual partners’ homophobia can be very severe. 61% of bisexual women and 37% of bisexual men have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking from an intimate partner, compared to 44% of lesbians, 35% of straight women, 26% of gay men, and 29% of straight men. 90% of bisexual female survivors report only male perpetrators; 79% of bisexual male survivors report only female perpetrators. The stark conclusion here is that, for queer people, being in an intimate relationship with a straight person is dangerous. The danger, I believe, is directly tied to the homophobia of many straight people.

Even bisexuals who are not abused can face harm from their partners’ homophobia. (I am mostly familiar with female bisexual experiences; I appreciate input from male bisexuals.) Some bisexuals are closeted to their partners, which means they have to self-monitor to avoid giving any sign that they might not be straight, even in their closest and most intimate relationship. Other bisexual women face extreme jealousy from their partners, who believe that they are “slutty” or will inevitably cheat because they’re bi. I myself have dated several men who treated my interest in women, not as if it were an important part of my sexuality, but as if it were a performance for them, a trivial thing that only mattered because they got off on it. They were confused when I discussed my bisexuality in a context other than dirty talk.

Third, the closet itself is a deeply traumatizing experience. As an excellent article about gay men’s experiences of the closet puts it:

“The trauma for gay men is the prolonged nature of it,” says William Elder, a sexual trauma researcher and psychologist. “If you experience one traumatic event, you have the kind of PTSD that can be resolved in four to six months of therapy. But if you experience years and years of small stressors—little things where you think, Was that because of my sexuality?—that can be even worse.”

Or, as Elder puts it, being in the closet is like someone having someone punch you lightly on the arm, over and over. At first, it’s annoying. After a while, it’s infuriating. Eventually, it’s all you can think about.

Closeted bisexual people have some advantages over closeted gay people: they can form relationships with people they love and have them socially recognized. These advantages can make it easier to be closeted. Het-partnered bisexual people can also find themselves de facto forced into the closet, particularly if they have an unsympathetic partner; being out as bisexual can feel like it’s oversharing or bringing up private information, even if mentioning your heterosexuality in the same context would be fine.

But many of the ways the closet can be traumatizing are the same. You hear what straight people really think about faggots and dykes when they don’t think any of us are around; in some contexts, that can be pretty horrifying. (My dad used to explain that he was fine with gay people as long as they didn’t flaunt it “like this,” that last accompanied by a mincing limp-wristed high-voiced caricature of a gay man.) You may have to self-monitor: avoid overly gay dress or body language, don’t look too long at someone you find attractive, hide your crushes, don’t mention people you find attractive when it comes up. While the studies are methodologically limited, research suggests that LGB people have higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse, and that concealing one’s LGB identity makes the psychological distress associated with being LGB worse.

Of course, the closet is different for different people. Some people find it easy to hide their LGB identity; they can either shrug off homophobic comments from straight people or don’t experience it. But I think a strong “het-partnered bisexual people don’t face homophobia” position requires you to believe that the closet is a privilege. We recognize that a twelve-year-old gay kid who can’t come out to his parents because they’ll reject him is facing homophobia, even if he’s not ready to date; the same can be true of the monogamously and heterosexually married thirty-year-old bisexual man.

Sexual Attraction and Tide Pods

Tags

asexuality, ozy blog post

Sometimes people define “sexual attraction” as “wanting to have sex with someone.” This can be really confusing when we talk about the asexuality spectrum. If we define “demisexual” as “only wants to have sex in a committed and emotionally intimate relationship,” it’s extraordinarily common, perhaps normal. A huge number of people– perhaps most women– are demisexual.

But I think it’s important to distinguish two kinds of wanting.

Think about tide pods. (Or fake fruit, or dice, or those really fancy cakes that are actually made out of cardboard.) Every time I do laundry, some part of my brain insists that the tide pod is CANDY and would make a DELICIOUS SNACK and I have the impulse to eat one.

I don’t actually want to eat a tide pod. If you put some tide pods in front of me for dinner, I would not experience the slightest internal conflict. I am perfectly aware that tide pods are gross and would make me feel disgusting if I chewed one.

But there’s still that part of me that says “tide pods are a snack.”

Sexual attraction is similar. I don’t want to have sex with that hot person I see in the coffeeshop. I would have to talk to them first. We might not be sexually compatible. I am somewhat frightened of strangers. If you presented Hot Coffeeshop Person to me naked and were like “okay, have sex now” I would not experience the slightest temptation to have sex with them.

But some part of my brain is like “probably appropriate to have sex with?” the same way some part of my brain is like “probably a snack?”

It is normal for allosexual people to have very few people– often, less than a dozen or only one person– in their I Would Experience Any Temptation At All To Have Sex With This Person If They Tried To Have Sex With Me category. It is not normal for allosexual people to have that few people in their Part Of My Brain Thinks Sex With This Person Is Appetizing The Same Way Tide Pods Would Make A Good Snack category. People who have very few people in their Want To Have Sex With The Same Way I Want To Eat A Tide Pod category may be graysexual or demisexual.

Graysexuality

Tags

asexuality, ozy blog post

[This is a prompted Patreon post from Jared.]

Graysexuality is fascinating because we get to watch the process of a new orientation being constructed in real time.

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network defines graysexuality as the following:

Sexuality is not black and white; some people identify in the gray (spelled “grey” in some countries) area between asexual and sexual. People who identify as gray-A can include, but are not limited to those who:

• • do not normally experience sexual attraction, but do experience it sometimes

  • experience sexual attraction, but a low sex drive

  • experience sexual attraction and drive, but not strongly enough to want to act on them

  • people who can enjoy and desire sex, but only under very limited and specific circumstances

Graysexuality can be a very broad term, and it’s easy to misinterpret what people mean about it from a definition. Here are some examples of graysexual experiences people I’ve talked to have had:

• Never experiencing sexual attraction or the desire to have sex, but suspecting they would be sexually attracted to someone in the context of a committed lifelong relationship.
• Two or three brief experiences of sexual attraction over the course of their entire lives.
• Attraction to fictional characters, but no attraction to real-life people.
• An interest in masturbation, but a sense of disgust and repulsion about sex with other people.
• A desire for sex about once or twice a year.
• An interest in sex, but only if it involves a specific complicated fetish that is impractical to do particularly often.
• Thinking they were asexual for decades and then experiencing sexual attraction for the first time in their thirties and being like “…what.”
• Confusion about whether or not they experience sexual attraction.

A common critique of graysexual identity is that graysexual people are “just normal.” In one sense, this is inaccurate: graysexual experiences are not very common. Most people want sex reasonably often and are attracted to a number of people you couldn’t count on one hand with fingers left over. Graysexual experiences are legitimately far from the norm.

But in another sense this is an accurate criticism. Graysexual experiences, outside certain communities relatively recently, are viewed as part of the spectrum of normal sexual behavior. They aren’t distinguished from ordinary heterosexuals, gay people, or bisexuals. A person who has graysexual experiences may characterize himself as “low libido” or “just not that interested in sex”, but he’s unlikely to consider it an aspect of his identity.

Indeed, we can see this with people whose experiences are equally far from the norm on the other side. A person with hundreds of sexual partners who’s had anonymous sex and who prefers to have sex two or three times a day might call himself “horny” or “slutty” or say he really enjoys sex; he will not characterize himself as having a sexual orientation related to being really really into sex.

Of course, this is very similar to the experience of gender-based attraction before the invention of heterosexuality. An ancient Roman man who is exclusively attracted to men might call himself a boy lover or say he doesn’t like women; he will not call himself “gay” and consider himself to be part of a group with all other gay men, opposed to all heterosexuals.

What we’re observing here is the process of a sexual orientation being constructed.

Humans are, in many ways, different from chairs. One way in which humans and chairs are different is that chairs do not respond to how you categorize them. If you categorize a chair as “an armchair” or “upholstered” or “environmentally friendly,” the chair does not change its behavior, because chairs do not speak English and do not have any concept of categorization. If a person is categorized as a Communist or an introvert or a bisexual, in many cases, the person may change their behavior. They might get defensive of other communists; they might feel justified in their decision not to go to parties; they might go to the Bisexual March to hang out with other bisexuals; they might create a niche meme page for memes relevant to people in the intersection of the three groups.

This means that, among humans, defining a category can create the category. People who are attracted to solely people of the same gender exist no matter whether a word for them exists or not. But rainbow flags and pride marches, gay undercuts and Grindr, coming out and familial rejection, the movies and books and music that make up the canon of gay culture, gay history and gay humor and specialty sex shops– these things exist because we have the category “gay” and that we decided it was a socially important category, one that matters for how we classify people.

Graysexuality is, in some sense, borrowing importance and salience from the more popular sexual orientations. Classifying it as a sexual orientation implies that it is an important category, something that matters a lot for understanding yourself and other people.

I think most of the effects of creating this category are positive. People– both graysexual and not graysexual– can find compatible romantic partners more easily. Graysexuals are less likely to feel broken or alone. They are less likely to have sex they don’t particularly want or find interesting, because everyone enjoys sex, don’t they? Their experiences feel valid. They can find other people who are similar to them and form a culture.

But I think there are negative consequences to forming the category as well. The way we construct sexual orientation in general makes claims about what is important to people’s experiences of their sexuality, but to many people in what ways their attraction is gendered is not actually a very important aspect of sexuality. (This seems like less of an issue for graysexuality– not particularly liking or wanting sex seems like it would be very relevant to nearly everyone’s experiences of sexuality.)

Labels can create a pressure to put your experiences in a box, sanding off the rough edges and the weirdnesses that make up every human experience of sexuality, instead of allowing things to be complicated. The pressure to know whether you are Really X can create a lot of angst and anxiety. People can stick with an identity that no longer serves them or describes their experiences, because they have a lot of their understanding of who they are as a person bound up with it.

Some experiences on the graysexual spectrum can be caused by medications, trauma, dissociation or simply not knowing what your sexual interests are. “I don’t need to be fixed, this is my orientation, it’s just the way I am, I can’t change” can be a double-edged sword. It frees some graysexuals from the futile search to fix a natural part of their sexuality, and allows others to explain what’s going on with their sexuality without giving a medical history or explaining trauma they’d like to keep private. But for some people sexuality is an important part of their flourishing, and a medication adjustment or a process of sexual exploration would improve their lives. (Fortunately, in my experience, graysexual communities are very friendly to people who switch to new identities.)

Certainly, however, the social construction of the graysexual identity is sociologically interesting, even as an outsider. Some person who studies the sociology of sexuality should consider writing a book on it; it’s an interesting case study in something we don’t get to see very often, the formation of a new sexual orientation.

Five Kinds of Relationship Problems

Tags

ozy blog post, sex positivity

In my opinion, there are approximately five kinds of persistent relationship problems. I’m going to be using the word “partner”, but none of this is limited to romantic relationships.

First, there are stupid problems. A stupid problem is a problem with some sort of no-shit obvious fix that, for some reason, neither you nor your partner seem to have come up with. Every relationship can be expected to have some quantity of stupid problems in it, because no one is perfect at relationships and everyone is missing some relationship skills.

Here are some examples of fixes to stupid problems:

• When you and your partner are having a fight over nothing for no reason, notice this and stop doing that.
• When you are angry, go someplace else to calm down until you can talk about it like adults.
• Talk about what you want instead of trying to send your needs to your partner telepathically.
• Think about what’s really important to you and what you can compromise on.
• Ask whether your partner wants support or problem-solving.
• Ask your partner questions about how their day went.
• Schedule regular time together.
• Try out things your partner likes instead of dismissing them out of hand.
• Say ‘thank you’ when your partner does something you like.
• Do things that make your partner feel loved instead of things that make you feel loved.

Second, there are basic incompatibilities. A basic incompatibility is when one person has a need, desire, preference, or want, and the other person is for whatever reason basically incapable of fulfilling it. One of you is monogamous, the other one is polyamorous. One of you wants sex all the time, the other one never wants sex. One of you needs a tidy house, the other one has ADHD and can never put things back in the same place. One of you has expensive tastes, the other one wants to save money. One of you wants kids, the other one doesn’t. One of you wants to live in a big city, the other one wants to live in a small town. One of you loves movies, the other one doesn’t. One of you craves adventure, the other one is a homebody.

There are basically three approaches for dealing with basic incompatibilities. First, one of you sucks it up. You accept that you’re just going to live in a messy house forever or do an unfair share of the chores. Second, you manage the problem. For example, you might hire a house cleaner. Third, you break up. Next time, you know that this is important to you and you will find someone who will keep the house in the state that you prefer.

Every relationship has certain basic incompatibilities, because no two people ever mesh perfectly together. You’re never going to find anyone who satisfies every single desire you have in a relationship. So you have to figure out what’s most important to you and what you’re willing to compromise on.

Third, there are problems that are actually a different kind of problem. Your cat died. You’re stressed at work. You’re sleep-deprived. You have a newborn baby. You have depression. You have cancer. Any of these things is instead true of your partner. In any of these situations, you can wind up persistently unhappy in your relationship. This has nothing to do with your relationship, it has to do with the rest of your life circumstances.

To fix this sort of problem, you can fix the underlying issue– such as by getting enough sleep. You can also try to both be aware and understanding of the situation and approach it as a team. A reframe from “I’m sleep-deprived and also my relationship is a mess” to “I’m sleep-deprived and that’s stressful, but my partner and I are approaching it together” can help.

Fourth, there are horrifying soul-sucking messes. A problem of one of the previous three types was badly managed, perhaps for years. Now, every time you have a minor argument, you bring in everything wrong that happened for your entire relationship. You don’t feel like you can trust your partner. All the quirks you used to find charming drive you up the wall. You hate even your partner’s most innocuous actions. You avoid every topic that leads to a fight, and rapidly find that you can’t discuss anything except Marvel movies and the weather. You’re defensive whenever your partner says anything that sounds like even a minor criticism. You’re sarcastic and you call them names. Somehow, when you remember good things about the past– the time you saw Hamilton together or your birthday present or being the best man at their wedding– all you can remember is the long lines at intermission, the poor wrapping job, and their incredibly rude drunk aunt. If asked to name a good trait of theirs, you draw a blank, but you can go on for hours about their flaws.

I guess it might be in theory possible to fix a horrifying soul-sucking mess with a lot of hard work, but to be honest every time I’ve seen a person in one of those relationships they were a lot better and happier and stronger as people as soon as they ended it.

Fifth, there are terrible people. One or both of you just sucks. This category includes abuse, but it certainly isn’t limited to it. This is the category from which advice columnists get all their pageviews: we love viewing a train wreck. Your partner has had a suicidal crisis every night at 3am for the last month, and you’re up all night comforting them, and they refuse to find anyone else to talk to or ride out their suicidal crisis on their own. Your partner cheats on you constantly. Your baby is eighteen months old and your partner has never changed a single diaper. Your partner has demanded that you keep your relationship secret from everyone. You asked your partner to clean up dog poo from the floor, and it is three days later, and the dog poo is still there.

If you have found yourself in a committed relationship with a terrible person, you should DUMP THEM. If you regularly are in committed relationships with terrible people, you should think about why you do that, and do appropriate countermeasures (such as talking to a wise friend). If your relationship is one where you can scale back the relationship until the terribleness stops affecting you, you can decide whether to do that or to dump them, depending on your values. (Setting boundaries will be an important skill, if you try this.)

If you are concerned that you yourself might be a terrible person, the solution is probably a long and difficult and painful process of personal growth.

PSA: HIV PrEP

Tags

ozy blog post, sex positivity

Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a way of preventing HIV. If you’re HIV-negative, you can take certain HIV medications before coming into contact with HIV, and it reduces the likelihood that you will contract HIV.

PrEP is very very effective. If you take 7 pills a week, your risk of contracting HIV goes down by 99%. That is, if you receive unprotected anal sex from an HIV-positive partner, you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting HIV. If you are on PrEP, you instead have a 1 in 10000 chance of getting HIV. If you use condoms, you have a 1 in 50000 chance of getting HIV. [ETA: numbers fixed; thank you Keller.]

Even if you miss a pill sometimes, PrEP can be very effective. If you take four pills a week, your risk goes down by 96%, and if you take only two pills a week, your risk goes down by 76%.

You have to take PrEP for a week for it to start working for anal sex, and three weeks for it to start working for vaginal sex. When you stop taking PrEP, you should continue taking it for at least four weeks after your last possible exposure to HIV.

PrEP has very few side effects and is considerably safer than, for example, the birth control pill. Some people report gastrointestinal issues in the first month of taking it (I personally experienced nausea for one day), but these side effects will go away after the first month. If you take PrEP, you may experience a small increase in serum creatinine, which is filtered by the kidneys. While PrEP has not been linked to loss of kidney function, your doctor will monitor your kidney function, and it might not be a good idea to take it if you have kidney issues. If you’re on PrEP, you will have to go to the doctor more often for blood tests. People have taken PrEP for up to five years without long-term health consequences.

PrEP is usually covered by insurance, and there are medication assistance programs to help high-risk people pay for it.

PrEP only protects against HIV, not other STIs or pregnancy.

You should consider being on PrEP if you have sex that puts you at a high risk of contracting HIV. Here are some people who should consider being on PrEP:

• People who have sex for money, drugs, housing, etc. and their partners.
• People who inject drugs and share needles.
• People who have unprotected sex with people who are HIV-positive or whose status they are not sure of. (“I met him that night and he said he was clean” does not count as “sure of.”)
• People who drink heavily or use drugs in a context where they might wind up having unprotected sex.
• People who have recently contracted an STI.
• People who have anonymous sex with men or trans people who have sex with men or trans people.

It can be easy to overestimate your risk of HIV. For example, if you are polyamorous, have sex within your extended polycule, use condoms reliably, have a gossipy enough polycule that you know the HIV status and condom use habits of random acquaintances*, and know that everyone you’re sleeping with uses condoms reliably and gets tested regularly and doesn’t have HIV, you’re pretty safe from HIV. I don’t think people should rush out and get PrEP without considering how likely it is that they will get HIV.

However, even if you aren’t at high risk of HIV, you may want to consider taking PrEP for peace of mind. If you regularly feel anxious about contracting HIV or are avoiding casual sex that would make you happy and fulfilled because of fear of HIV, PrEP might be a good decision for you even if you’re objectively at fairly low risk.

*This may be redundant with ‘is a polycule.’

Lazy Poly

Tags

ozy blog post, polyamory

[All anecdotes related in this post are composites, and minor details have been changed to protect others’ privacy.]

Hi, I’m Ozy, and I’m a lazy poly person.

Mostly, this is because I’ve had a kid. It turns out babies are kind of time-consuming.

Not only do I have a baby, but all of my secondary partners who live in the same city as me have young children. Scheduling sex around nap times is hard. Scheduling sex around two nap times is impossible.

And, to be honest, when I get some time to myself, the last thing I want to do is go on a date. Mostly, I want to take a nap or write a blog post or spend time with my husband, whom I love, when our interactions will not be interrupted by a baby who totally understands how this whole conversation thing works and wants to make everyone know that his feeling about Donald Trump’s legal woes is “gooo! oooga!”

So what this means is that in the past seven months my extramarital romantic life has consisted of the following:

• Having crushes on people who are unavailable due to being asexual, straight, gay, Catholic, in another country, not interested in me, or most often some combination of the above
• Messaging my partners on Discord
• Cuddling my partners in a tired fashion while our children play with each other, and then interrupting the cuddles because Viktor tried to poke the other child in the eye
• Like one instance of actual sex

Now, if you look at those observations, you might ask “Ozy, why are you bothering to be poly at all? If you’re not going to actually have sex with anyone outside your primary relationship, you might as well just be monogamous.”

And, you know, I’m not the only lazy poly person in the world. Some people work sixty-hour-a-week jobs. Some people have depression or anxiety or another mental illness. Some people spend all their time doing activism or writing books or maintaining a network of intense platonic relationships. Some people just really, really don’t want to put on real pants. (Of course, none of those situations are incompatible with active polyamory, but many people in those situations might end up being Lazy Poly.) Why are any of us bothering to be poly when it seems like we could get identical results just from being monogamous?

The most obvious reason, of course, is that we might be non-lazy poly people sometime in the future. Call me an optimist, but I hope that five years from now I may be able to go on an entire child-free date, perhaps even wearing a shirt without spitup on it at the time. However, there are many people who fully intend to have sixty-hour-a-week jobs or writing careers or an aversion to real pants for the foreseeable future. Why would they stay poly?

The answer is that polyamory can be loadbearing even if you don’t often date outside your relationship.

The amount of extramarital sex and romance a lazy poly person gets up to, although it is objectively not very much, is still enough to cause problems in a monogamous relationship. From a poly perspective, it’s “you only had sex with other people three times this year”; from a monogamous perspective, it’s “YOU HAD SEX WITH OTHER PEOPLE THREE TIMES THIS YEAR?!”

I think some people might think “if you’ve only had sex outside your relationship three times this year, why would it be hard to turn that into zero times?” But that’s not how people’s sexual and romantic interests actually work. For example, I know a polyamorous person who kinks on threesomes. Threesomes being an enormous pain in the butt to arrange, they only have threesomes two or three times a year. But “your kink is an enormous pain in the butt and I only want to do it once every four to six months” is a reasonable request in a way that “you should never indulge your kink ever again” really, really isn’t. If you kink on public sex, group sex, your partner having sex with other people, or casual sex, you might find yourself in a similar situation. 

I’ve met another poly person who barely ever interacts with anyone they’re in theory dating. But they get a lot of emotional comfort from knowing that there exist people who in theory would like to date them if they ever bothered to leave the house long enough to do so. They would feel very unloved and unattractive if no one wanted to date them, but once they know that someone does, they don’t feel that much of a drive to actually go out on dates with them. (Of course, you shouldn’t mislead people into thinking that dating you involves actually interacting with you if it doesn’t.)

Equally commonly, I think there are situations where the fact of being poly itself is loadbearing. For example, I’ve known several poly people who found it very comforting that their partner could, in theory, go have sex with other people. If they were in a monogamous relationship, they would feel guilty about saying ‘no’ to sex when they didn’t want sex, because they would be condemning their partner to sexual frustration. On the other hand, if you’re poly, you don’t have to worry about that as much; if your partner doesn’t have sex with other people, all that means is that they weren’t that sexually dissatisfied after all.

Many poly people I know, including myself, are also frustrated by the rules of monogamy. When I was monogamous, I regularly found myself accidentally upsetting my partners by doing something I didn’t know was against the rules. Asking about what was against the rules also appeared to be against the rules; I was supposed to just know. (To be fair to my younger self, the rules were unnecessarily confusing: for example, I was too autistic to realize that the reason that my boyfriends were fine with hearing about my female crushes was that they viewed my female crushes as nonthreatening sexy things which primarily existed for their sexual fantasies.)

Now that I’m polyamorous, I don’t have to worry about whether cowriting problematic porn with someone is cheating, or whether going to a museum with someone I have a crush on who isn’t into me is cheating, or whether flirting with someone cute without any intentions of hooking up is cheating, or the entire concept of emotional affairs. It’s a tremendous load off my mind.

Also common, I think, is a certain displeasure in having arbitrary rules set about one’s behavior and that of one’s partners. I’m sort of low-key a relationship anarchist. I don’t like the person I am when I try to control people I’m dating so that they don’t do anything that scares me or makes me jealous or upset. I like the person I am when I take responsibility for my own feelings and trust my partners to take my needs and boundaries into account without creating a bunch of rules to regulate their behavior. (I don’t mean, of course, that that is the only way a person can have a healthy relationship; it is what works for me.)

Of course, some monogamous people have similar beliefs, and many poly people don’t. But for me personally, cultivating that sort of trust and responsibility means not creating a rule against my partners having sex with other people, even if I expect (for example) that my coparent will share the parenting equally with me and thus will not have a lot of time to go on dates. While the extramarital sex might not be particularly important, trusting my partner enough to let him have extramarital sex is.

Critique of Just Love, Part Two

Tags

ozy blog post, rape tw, sex postivity

[Previously.]
[Content warning for discussion of the ethics of rape, pedophilia and sex with teenagers.]

Free Consent

Consent: Affirmative, Verbal, or Enthusiastic?

Consent is necessary for ethical sex. But what does “consent” mean? (As always throughout this series, I am discussing the ethics of sex, not the legalities.)

Many feminists have argued for an enthusiastic consent standard: that is, you shouldn’t have sex with someone unless they are enthusiastic about having sex with you. As the saying goes, “if it’s not a fuck yes, it’s a fuck no.” However, I ask the reader to consider the following vignettes:

1. A couple struggling with infertility is trying to conceive a child. Their fertility monitor has shown that today is ovulation day. They’re both tired and neither of them is really feeling it, but they have a quickie to maximize their chance of conceiving.
2. A man notices his boyfriend is horny today. Since he’s not in the mood, he cuddles his boyfriend while the boyfriend jerks off and whispers to him all of the nasty things he’ll do to him tomorrow.
3. A woman and her girlfriend want to keep the spark alive. Every Friday, they schedule sex. They usually both end up getting incredibly turned on, but even if they don’t, making sure to have sex once a week makes them feel like sexual beings and increases their satisfaction with their sex life.

All three vignettes involve unenthusiastic consent. All three vignettes seem to me to be completely and utterly morally unproblematic. Certainly, some people might decide that it is wrong for them to have sex when they’re unenthusiastic about sex. But it seems to me to be perfectly normal and ordinary for some people to sometimes consent to sex when they aren’t enthusiastic about it, and have that as part of their flourishing as human beings.

You might try to save the enthusiastic consent metric by saying “the first couple is enthusiastically consenting to sex because they enthusiastically want a baby!” By this logic, if you hold a gun to my head and force me to have sex with you, I’m enthusiastically consenting because I enthusiastically want not to be dead.

So I think unenthusiastic consent is sometimes a part of ethical sex. I will now consider no-means-no consent, affirmative consent and verbal consent. (I am informed that everyone else uses “affirmative consent” and “verbal consent” interchangeably. This is stupid and I refuse to bow to common usage.)

No-means-no consent is beloved of consent rules lawyers everywhere. The basic idea is that if your partner says “no” or “stop” or “safeword” or “red,” then you should stop, and otherwise it is open season and you can do whatever you want.

The nice thing about no-means-no consent is that there is a bright line. If your partner has said “no” or “stop” or “safeword” or “red,” and you continued, then clearly you are doing something wrong. The problem with no-means-no consent is that, taken literally, it says that there is nothing wrong with getting as close as humanly possible to raping someone as long as you don’t technically rape them. In fact, it’s a good thing to do that! Hey, man, you got laid!

No-means-no consent implies that there is nothing wrong with having sex with a man if he is lying there, silent, unmoving, staring at the ceiling, with a blank expression on his face. After all, he didn’t say ‘no.’ Would you like a sticker that says Technically I Didn’t Commit A Felony on it?

I think we need a fundamental shift in our understanding of consent. We need affirmative consent.

As I use the term, seeking affirmative consent means only having sex with people if you have sufficient evidence to believe that they want, at that moment, to have sex with you. Explicit verbal consent, such as dirty talk, can be a form of affirmative consent, but it is only one form. Perhaps the most common form of affirmative consent is active participation, such as touching, moving, and kissing. Sounds like moaning or grunting can also be affirmative consent.

In general, I’d argue, affirmative consent should be given throughout the sex act. If your partner stops affirmatively consenting, you should pause and say something like “hey, you okay?”

Of course, this is a rule that admits of many exceptions. For example, some people become quiet and still and meditative during sex, which can be hard to distinguish from a person who isn’t enjoying sex. Some people enjoy roleplaying nonconsensual sex. Some people want to have sex when affirmative consent cannot possibly be given– most commonly, they want to be woken up during sex.

I think all these cases should be addressed through pre-sex negotiation. For example, you can say “I get really quiet when I’m turned on, but nothing’s wrong,” or “if I don’t call ‘red’, you should keep going,” or “you can wake me up with sex whenever you want,” or “you can wake me up with sex but only when I’ve said you can the night before.” (You might say that that is an unreasonable level of negotiation to have about sex while the other person is sleeping, which most people are fine with. This is because you have never dated a sleep-deprived person who has finally gotten a chance to sleep in, and it would be totally justified for them to throw an alarm clock at your head.)

I do not think explicit verbal consent is necessary for affirmative consent. Verbal consent means saying something like “I want to have sex with you,” or “let’s fuck,” or “do you want to have sex?”, or “down on your knees, slut,” or “your slave has prepared himself for you, master,” or otherwise communicating with your words that you want to have sex with someone.

The problem with saying “verbal consent is necessary for ethical sex” is that observably lots of people have sex without saying anything. My experiences with sex-without-saying-anything have mostly been that it was extremely awkward, not that my consent was disrespected or that people had difficulties reading my signals. I see no reason to believe that nonverbal communication is any less effective at conveying “I want this” than verbal communication. (Of course, verbal consent seems superior for complicated negotiations, such as kink or fetish negotiations, which probably explains its popularity in those communities.)

Verbal consent is also difficult to maintain continually throughout sex. It is not actually ethically mandatory to chant “yes! yes! yes! yes! yes!”, although many people may find it enjoyable. Therefore, verbal consent ends up being a form of no-means-no consent– once a person says “yes”, it is assumed they mean “yes” until they say “no” again. Affirmative consent, however, is possible to maintain all the time.

I suspect all these niceties, however, are rarely relevant in the bedrooms of the nonrapists of the world. In fact, I myself have had the experience of forgetting to establish a safeword before I began noncon play with someone. Don’t do this, it’s a terrible idea. And yet when I actually had to say no to sex, “no! I mean, really, no! This is not part of the scene, stop right now! RED! SAFEWORD!” conveyed the message very well and nothing bad happened.

I suspect the reason is that I was having sex with someone who actually cared about whether I wanted the sex. Naturally, they paid attention to information that suggested that I might not be interested in sex and paused to check in when they thought that might be the case. I think this is actually the normal way for sex to go among the non-rapists of the world.

Problematic Consent: Sex With Teenagers

Midway through writing this section, I noticed this old blog post of mine about age of consent, which I still agree with. Go read that.

Problematic Consent: Intoxicated Sex

The problem with ‘intoxicated sex’ as a category is that it refers to several different things.

First, sometimes when people say ‘intoxicated sex’ what they mean is ‘having sex with someone who has said that they don’t want to have sex with you when they are too intoxicated to meaningfully resist.’ That is technically called ‘rape’ and it’s a violent felony. Don’t do it.

Second, ‘intoxicated sex’ sometimes refers to sex with someone who is incapable of giving informed consent because they are too intoxicated to understand what they’re consenting to. If a person is confused about who they are, where they are, what time it is, or what’s going on, they are incapable of providing consent to sex, and having sex with them counts as rape morally and, in most jurisdictions, legally. (Exception: if a person has prearranged ahead of time that they consent to sex while intoxicated, I think that’s morally fine, although you’re on your own on the legalities.)

Third, ‘intoxicated sex’ sometimes refers to sex with a person who has consented to sex and understands what is going on but has poor judgment due to being intoxicated. I don’t think this counts as rape morally, and my understanding is that in nearly all jurisdictions it does not count as rape legally. (Unfortunately, sex education classes– even “feminist” sex education classes– often lie to people about this fact.) I think there are three cases worthy of consideration here.

The simplest case is when you’re having sex with someone who agreed while sober to sex while intoxicated, or with a person you know very very well (such as a long-term romantic partner) whom you sincerely believe would like to have intoxicated sex with you. In that case, I think you should go ahead and have sex, as long as you respect their drunken preferences (you don’t get to rape people even if their sober self said it was okay).

If a person has said while sober that they don’t want to have sex with you, or if you have reason to believe that they wouldn’t want to have sex with you while sober (e.g. they are married to someone else), then you should not have sex with them when they’re drunk no matter how enthusiastic they appear to be. You would be taking advantage of their poor judgment in order to get them to do something that they wouldn’t do sober; that is skeezy as fuck and shows a deep disrespect for the person’s ability to make informed choices about what happens to their own body.

A complicating factor is that some people get drunk in order to feel able to express preferences they can’t express sober. I feel sorry for these people and the way that our sex-negative culture has messed up their ability to communicate their sexual needs; they are victims, not wrongdoers. However, I do not think it is too much to ask that they at least maintain an ambiguous silence about their sexual desires while sober, so that people who know they make poor decisions while drunk can say “I do not want to have sex with you” and trust that that will be respected.

Finally, sometimes you don’t know whether someone would want something while sober: perhaps they’ve maintained an ambiguous silence, or perhaps you met them while they were intoxicated. I would not want to entirely ban drunken hookups with strangers. I understand this is a very common kink which many people enjoy greatly and find deeply fulfilling. However, I would suggest that if there is any uncertainty about whether your partner will regret it in the morning, you should suggest waiting until they sober up.

Obviously, quite often, people who are intoxicated enough that they have poor judgment are having sex with other people who are intoxicated enough that they have poor judgment. Being intoxicated is not an excuse for committing rape; if being intoxicated might cause you to commit violent felonies, then you should not become intoxicated. However, having sex with someone who might regret it in the morning is more of a puking-in-front-of-someone-else’s-door-and-not-cleaning-it-up offense, which is wrong but for which “I was really drunk and not in control of my actions” is an excuse.

Finally, if you are less intoxicated than the person you’re having sex with, it is your job to ensure that you have sex responsibly, including taking all safer-sex precautions.

Fourth, ‘intoxicated sex’ sometimes refers to sex with a person who is slightly intoxicated but still capable of making good decisions, such as a person who had a glass of wine with dinner. This sort of intoxicated sex is morally unproblematic.

[Coming up next post: power dynamics, sex work, safewords, emotional pressure, and suicidality.]

 

Critique of Just Love, Part One

Tags

god bothering, ozy blog post, rape tw, sex positivity

[Content note: this post discusses, without explicit detail, many forms of unethical sex, including rape, sexual harassment, and child molestation.]

A reader commissioned me to write a blog post about the book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, by Margaret Farley, a Catholic nun and former professor at Yale University Divinity School. (It’s “Just Love” as in “love that follows principles of justice,” not as in “only love.”) Just Love was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church for endorsing masturbation, gay marriage, gay sex, divorce in some situations, and remarriage after divorce.

I will begin by discussing why we should have sexual ethics other than “don’t rape people” at all, then explain Farley’s view of sexual ethics, then I will critique each of her proposed norms in turn. I have a lot to say about this book, so I’m splitting the post up over several days in order to save everyone from having to read a ten-thousand-word monstrosity.

A Justification of Sexual Ethics Beyond Rape

Many people adopt what I consider to be an extraordinarily deontologist view of sex. They consider sexual ethics to consist solely of not having sex with people without their consent. Everything else is strictly supererogatory. You might decide to care about your partner’s sexual pleasure, or indulge your partners’ fetishes, or avoid sex that makes you feel sick and empty and degraded inside, but these are all personal choices with no moral valence. The actual ethics is in the consent.

I admit this is a model I am continuously tempted to use. It is so simple and so elegant. A free agent in the sphere of sexuality and romance can set their boundaries and express their needs to other people. They search until they find a partner who has a compatible set of needs and boundaries. Throughout the relationship, they renegotiate as their boundaries and needs change; when their boundaries and needs no longer mesh, the relationship ends. No set of needs and boundaries is “wrong”, although with certain sets of needs and boundaries it may be hard to find a compatible partner. The only unethical action is violating someone else’s boundaries.

But it is unsatisfying in many ways. It is all very well for deontologists to have a model where as long as you follow the rules you’re okay. But utilitarians ought to object that there are many instances of consensual sex which do not produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Egoists should remark that there is no reason to assume that all consensual sex is pursuing the individual’s enlightened self-interest. Virtue ethicists might point out that it would be very odd if sex were the only sphere of human interaction in which we cannot cultivate wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Even many formulations of deontology object: sex can be consensual and still involve treating a person as a thing or following a rule that you would not will everyone else abide by.

The “only nonconsensual sex is unethical” is equally odd from the perspective of intuitive morality. Sometimes consensual sex is disloyal, harmful, or unfair. Certainly it would be very strange if sex were the only area of human life in which the sum and total of ethical human behavior is “don’t commit literal felonies.”

I think how unsatisfying the only-nonconsensual-sex-is-bad ethic is can be shown through how many other aspects of sexual morality people insist on attempting to smuggle into it. For instance, some people argue that cheating is wrong because it violates your spouse’s consent. It seems extraordinarily puzzling to me that people get to consent to sex that they are not involved in and may not even be aware of, and very unprincipled that only spouses have this capacity. (Why can’t parents revoke consent for their teenagers to have sex? Why can’t governments revoke consent for sodomy to happen between its borders?) You might argue that the difference is that you have sex with your spouse and you do not generally have sex with your government. But in that case a spouse would have no room to object if their partner had sex with someone else and then conscientiously never had sex with them again. Most people, I believe, would consider the latter decision to compound the harm, not to erase it.

I think the only logical conclusion is that the harm from cheating has nothing to do with consent; instead, the harm from cheating comes from breaking a promise. It is possible for sex to be completely and 100% consensual and also be wrong.

A lot of people have a flinch reaction to that conclusion, which makes sense. As completely reasonable sentences that are usually followed by horrible bullshit go, “it is possible for sex to be completely consensual and also be wrong” is right up there with “I’m not racist” and “think of the children.” Traditionally, of course, “it is possible for sex to be completely consensual and also be wrong” is followed with some thoughts on the evils of premarital sex, pornography, homosexuality, polyamory, birth control, feminism, sex toys, oral sex, sex outside of the missionary position, and literally everything else that’s fun. In our more modern era, it is also used by various Tumblr users who want you to know that BDSM is violence and violence is still wrong when everyone is consenting, which is presumably why they make a habit of protesting boxing matches and karate dojos.

That is what you might call act-based sexual morality. In addition to sex without consent being wrong, people put certain sexual acts on the “no” list, because those acts are considered to be inherently violent or misogynistic, objectifying or going against God’s will, disrespectful or a violation of the proper end of the human body, regardless of context or how the participants feel about it.

I think that consent-only sexual morality is right but doesn’t go far enough. However, act-based sexual morality is totally and completely wrong. After a great deal of thought, I have not been able to identify a single sex act qua act that I would consider conclusively wrong in all circumstances. (As opposed to, say, choice of sexual partner, where there are a number of choices that are wrong in all circumstances– children, your students, people who are in a monogamous relationship with someone else, etc.) Unprotected PIV is wrong if you picked up a stranger at a bar, but beautiful if you’re conceiving a loved and desperately wanted child. Calling your partner a disgusting whore is cruel if you mean it, but extremely hot for some people in a negotiated D/s dynamic. Certain forms of dangerous edgeplay are far too risky for most people, but can be valuable for certain people who are aware of and have accepted the risks.

(Sex in public where people might see is the closest I can get to an “always wrong in all circumstances” thing, but even then if there were enough sex-in-public enthusiasts that they convinced the city to allow them to cordon off a few streets every so often for the purpose, and there were bouncers checking IDs and making sure everyone knew what they were in for, I think that sex in public would be absolutely wonderful.)

The fallacy of act-based sexual morality makes sense once you try to apply it to any other subject. Is it inherently wrong to punch someone? Depends on whether they’re assaulting someone else at the time. Is it inherently wrong to play at a rock concert? Depends on whether you’re doing it in my backyard without my consent. Is it inherently wrong to give away a million dollars? Depends on whether you’re giving it away to the Nazi party. You can’t judge any action outside of its context, so why do people think this is a reasonable way to judge sexual ethics?

Three final notes: First, while I do think sexual ethics should consider issues other than consent, I do not think any form of consensual sex should be illegal. It is wrong to cheat on your partner, but that does not mean that you should go to prison for cheating on your partner.

Second, no person is perfectly ethical. This is true for every area of ethics. It is wrong to yell at your children, but nearly all parents yell sometimes. It is wrong to go on expensive vacations instead of giving that money to the poor, but most people who can afford to go on expensive vacations have gone on at least one. It is wrong to eat products that come from chickens, but I still eat the occasional cookie without inquiring too closely about whether there are eggs in it. Similarly, we would expect all people to have unethical sex sometimes. The question is whether you are doing the best you can, not whether you have reached some unattainable standard of goodness.

In particular, it is very very common for people to do wrong things because they have no other choice: for example, people eat eggs because they’re depressed and if they didn’t eat eggs they wouldn’t eat at all. It is not ever wrong to take care of yourself first. Ethical actions should be healthy, happy, and sustainable.

Third, when I say that sexual ethics must go beyond consent, I don’t mean to imply that consent is not important. In fact, consent is the bedrock of all sexual morality. Unfortunately, our society has caused many people to internalize the idea that you shouldn’t say no to sex if you have a certain relationship with someone, or if they really really want it, or if you don’t have a good reason. All sexual ethics has to come from the fundamental, baseline position that you can always refuse sex with someone for any reason or no reason at all. Even if your reason is really really stupid, you have a right to say no to sex for stupid reasons. Even if they paid for dinner, or you’re married, or it’s the third date, or you’re a man and you think men always want it you have a right to say no to sex. You should absolutely say no to any sex that makes you feel sick or gross or sad or violated.

Farley’s Framework

Farley argues that justice involves treating other humans with respect for who they are as humans: a unique person with a body and a soul, needs for food and clothing and shelter, the capacity for free choice and thoughts and feelings, a history, a social and political and cultural and economic context, a relationship to various systems and institutions, a potential for growth and flourishing, a vulnerability to diminishment and despair, interpersonal needs and capacities, and emotions. Of particular relevance to sexual ethics are a person’s ability to make free choices (autonomy) and their ability to have relationships with other people (relationality).

Farley presents a seven-item framework for sexual ethics. The first two are grounded in human autonomy, while the second five are grounded in relationality.

1. Do no unjust harm

While this is a general principle of ethics, avoidance of harm is particularly important for sexual ethics. Violations of this principle include rape, domestic violence, enslavement, sexual exploitation, unsafe sex, deceit, betrayal, sexual unfulfillment, emotional manipulation, and so on and so forth.

2. Free consent

Free consent is the right of each individual person to determine their own sexual actions and relationships. Violations of this principle include rape, violence, coercion, sex with people who do not have the capacity to give informed consent, sexual harassment, and child molestation. Norms derivative from this norm of free consent include privacy (the right of an individual to keep information about their sex life confidential), telling the truth, and keeping promises.

3. Mutuality

Mutuality is mutual participation in the sexual act. Sex is not a thing that one person does to another person; instead, it is a relationship in which everyone involved is both active and receptive and both gives and receives pleasure. This does not necessarily imply that it is morally wrong to be, for example, a pillow princess or an exclusive top: as just one example, a pillow princess may actively participate through their obvious enjoyment of the sex.

4. Equality

While no two individuals are perfectly equal in power, Farley argues that individuals participating in ethical sex must be sufficiently equal. Severe inequalities, such as when one person is very emotionally immature or those produced by certain patriarchal cultures, may result in one person being vulnerable and dependent and having limited options. Violations of the norm of equality include sexual harassment, emotional and physical abuse, some forms of sex work for some people, and giving up your entire sense of self for the person you love.

5. Commitment

In general, Farley argues, ethical sex requires some form of commitment to your partner, although not necessarily a lifelong marriage.

6. Fruitfulness

The most obvious kind of fruitfulness is procreation. Procreative sex must be conducted in a context that ensures the responsible care of offspring, the creation of a family, and participation in the great project of building the human community. However, for many people, sex is not procreative: they might be gay, infertile, childfree, or simply not ready to have children. However, they can still have fruitful sex. Ethical sex opens you to the wider community. It is not self-involved. Good sex can strengthen you, which lets you move beyond yourself in many ways: you can nourish your other relationships, make art, help people, provide goods and services to others through work, or raise your own or help raise other people’s children.

7. Social justice

Please note that this is “social justice” in the Catholic sense of the term, not in the modern-day sense of the term.

Social justice is an umbrella term covering many different kinds of sexual ethics. It is not sexual ethics construed narrowly, as in whether or not you should have particular kinds of sex; it is sexual ethics construed broadly, as in all the ethical problems which are affected by our sexualities. All people have a right to “freedom from unjust harm, equal protection under the law, an equitable share in the goods and services available to others, and freedom of choice in their sexual lives– within the limits of not harming or infringing on the just claims of… others” (Farley pg. 228); unfortunately, some people are denied these rights due to their sexualities or in the sphere of sexuality.

In a narrow sense, social justice requires that we take responsibility for the effects our actions may have on others, such as public health concerns, procreation, broken promises, and so on. In a broader sense, social justice implies a concern for the many ways in which people are harmed based on sexuality: a brief and incomplete list would include sexism, sexual and domestic violence, racism, global poverty, oppressive religious and cultural traditions, HIV/AIDS, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, lack of contraceptive access, and the harmful use of new reproductive technologies.

Unjust Harm

In general, I endorse Farley’s reasoning. If you are the sort of person who reads a long post about sexual ethics, you probably already know that you should not rape people or sexually harass them or enslave them. It is in general wrong to have sex with people if you know it will cause them more distress than pleasure.

Many utilitarians may object that “no unjust harm” pretty much covers all of sexual ethics and we don’t need any additional sexual ethics. Be that as it may, I think it’s useful to have guidelines about how you can avoid harming people, particularly for those of us who have already mastered “slavery: probably a bad idea.” These sexual ethics I will discuss in the next post.