The Ethics of Sexual Desire
Plus our upcoming café on the problem of other minds, a contribution from co-moderator Jules Sheldon, suggested readings and resources, and more.
Introduction
By Adrian Ma
Contemporary attitudes toward sexual desire often display a curious duality. On the one hand, we tend to portray these desires as innate and largely immutable facts of nature—we are, in Lady Gaga’s words, just “born this way.” On the other hand, many of us seem to believe there are sexual desires we should or shouldn’t have, and it seems hard to deny that our sociocultural context plays a role in deciding what we put in either box. At our Curiosity Café last Tuesday, moderated by philosophy PhD student Jules Sheldon and our very own Sophia Whicher, we discussed and masterfully debated the ethics (and politics) of our sexual desires, exploring where they come from, whether they can change, and their relationship to social and political injustice. But first:
Featured Content:
Curiosity Café Recap: The Ethics of Sexual Desire
Community Survey
“Dirty Sex and Messy Politics” by Jules Sheldon
Upcoming Events
Toronto Events
Readings & Resources
Curiosity Café Recap: The Ethics of Sexual Desire
By Adrian Ma
Our Curiosity Café last Tuesday, moderated by Jules Sheldon and Sophia Whicher, began with a collaborative exploration of the malleability of our sexual desires. Are these desires simply innate, or are they at least somewhat shaped by experience, society, and culture? Can they change over time, and if so, how much? Can we ever intentionally change our sexual desires, and can there be cases in which we are obligated to try?
As our moderators clarified in their introduction, our sexual desires encompass both:
1. Our type, including what gender(s) we’re attracted to and what qualities in a person we do (or do not) find attractive.
2. What kind of sex we like to have, including specific sexual acts and practices.
With that in mind, here’s a small and likely unrepresentative sample of your ideas, inquiries, and objections:
Our sexual desires are like a fossil we uncover over time, but that remains largely unchanged for most of our lives. What we discover as we “dig” (say, by becoming more sexually experienced) are desires that were already present from the start.
Although learning about my sexual desires is indeed a gradual process of discovery, those desires themselves are still subject to change. For example, my “shovelling away” societal expectations concerning the kind of person I ought to love can pave the way for desires I didn’t have before.
Do our sexual desires ever become fixed—if not at birth, then at some other point? Can external influences, such as childhood trauma, have a permanent effect on what we do and don’t find attractive? (This question suggests that the desires we call “unchanging” may not always be the ones we are born with.)
Even if our sexual desires are to some degree shaped by society and culture, there are limits to how deep that influence can extend; those desires can exist, and persist, even if they are neither dignified by the law nor reflected in our sociocultural landscape. Queer people existed long before the legalization of same-sex marriage, or their growing representation in mainstream culture.
Sex isn’t as taboo as it’s often made out to be—it is shown and talked about everywhere. What seems even rarer and more taboo than sex is intimacy.
It seems that intimacy and sex have been decoupled. We are being constantly bombarded with sex—as on TV and social media—wherever we go, and few areas of our lives are free from sex altogether. This ubiquity allows us to go straight to sexual arousal while skipping over the rigmarole of intimacy, but there is something perverse about this process—it’s like forcing yourself awake with a dose of caffeine instead of waking up organically after a night of good sleep.
Porn plays a major role in shaping our sexual desires and our attitudes toward sex more broadly. It influences our beauty standards and what we find attractive; it also shapes—perhaps distorts—our sense of what’s normal, such as by making acts like choking and anal sex appear to be more common and vanilla than they really are.
It can be disturbing to fantasize sexually about a person we deeply love. This may have less to do with the nature of sexual fantasy per se than with the fact that such fantasies are often influenced by porn, which often embodies degrading and objectifying attitudes—particularly toward women.
By influencing our sexual practices in real life, media representations of sex create a kind of feedback loop: Our sex lives mimic what we see in the media, and the media, in turn, is more likely to represent the practices we mimic.
Hour two of the café built upon our earlier discussion of how our sexual desires are shaped and molded, but zeroed in on their connection to social and political injustice. Our moderators kicked things off by introducing two major feminist debates. The first concerned the notion of “compulsory heterosexuality,” or “comphet,” which refers to the assumption of heterosexuality and its sociocultural imposition; consider, for example, how representations of sexual relationships in the media overwhelmingly revolve around heterosexual couples, which may shape—perhaps distort—our understanding of what a “normal” sexual relationship looks like. Given this, can it be that heterosexuality is not simply innate, but is—as the feminist poet and theorist Adrienne Rich argues—“maintained by force”? To go further, might heterosexuality itself reflect and perpetuate existing gender inequalities?
The theme of inequality also figured in the second feminist debate we examined, which concerned the gendered patterns in our sexual desires. For example, in BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism) relationships, the dominant role is overwhelmingly played by men, and the submissive role by women. (Another example: In a New York Times column earlier this year, the writer Peggy Orenstein highlights a pattern she observed among straight young couples—that the sexual trends that “involve basic physical gratification—like receiving oral sex in hookups—tend to favor men,” whereas “[t]hose that might entail pain or submission, like choking, are generally more for women.”) The ethics surrounding the disproportionate rates at which women adopt degrading or submissive roles in sexual relationships has been the subject of much feminist debate. On one side, some feminists maintain (as our moderators write) that “women who desire their own degradation have been brainwashed by the patriarchy.” In contrast, others contend that we have no reason to worry—or to intervene—as long as these activities are freely consented to. Still others have adopted various middle-ground positions between these two ends of the spectrum.
Using these debates as starting points, we were tasked with examining the following set of questions:
Does it make sense to say that social narratives, including unjust ones, shape our sexual desires? Does this resonate with your personal experience?
Is there anything you disagree with or worry about with the arguments we’ve discussed? Are there risks to critiquing desires in this way?
Are our sexual desires ever problematic? Do we ever have an obligation to change our desires?
Here’s what some of you had to say:
The fact that we have been “brainwashed” into having certain sexual desires isn’t problematic in itself. We have all to some degree been “brainwashed”—that is, led to believe things we did not independently verify. For example, we believe that the acceleration of gravity is 9.8 m/s^2, not because we have done the math or conducted the experiments ourselves, but because that is simply what we have been taught.
Even if there is nothing wrong with brainwashing (in this sense) per se, there is something wrong with being brainwashed by morally bad sources—like the patriarchy!
To what extent can beliefs or desires that originate from problematic sources be made “okay”? For example, if I interrogate my desire for self-degradation, and conclude that this is, indeed, what I freely desire and want to desire, is that enough? Can such reflection suffice to cleanse my desire of the residue of its patriarchal origins?
But perhaps it isn’t that simple—the very structures and sociocultural influences that underpin the desires we reflect on might also limit the responses we feel are available.
We should clarify what is and is not entailed by the criticism of people’s sexual desires and practices. One might worry that such criticism will create a slippery slope that eventuates in our policing what people do in the bedroom—a measure few people would endorse. However, the fact that a desire should, perhaps, be subject to criticism does not necessarily entail that it should be punished or policed. We can point out what is wrong with these desires without seeking the use of force or coercion, or the intervention of the state.
Our sexual desires are susceptible to sociocultural influence—but society and culture are also susceptible to us. Take the example of countries that eventually decriminalized or legalized gay marriage in response to evolving attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights. Such cases demonstrate that the influence flows bottom-up as well as top-down.
For various reasons, the idea that we might be obligated to change our sexual desires is deeply uncomfortable. Some believe our desires simply can’t be changed—or at least, that they aren’t sufficiently responsive to voluntary control—or that they are solely a matter of individual preference.
Whether one is or is not perceived as sexually desirable is to a great extent determined by one’s identity markers, which are generally out of one’s control. Black women and Asian men, for example, are overwhelmingly likely to be filtered out on dating apps. It seems unfair to tell entire groups of people that they just aren’t desirable because of something they can’t do much about. But whose responsibility is it to solve this problem? Should we be required to go out of our way to “swipe right” on someone from a disadvantaged group?
The things we like in the bedroom don’t always map neatly onto gender expectations; many men, for example, like to adopt the submissive role and be dominated in BDSM relationships. We may find such arrangements appealing because they invert the roles we typically play or are expected to play; however, this means the appeal also relies on a preexisting commitment to the very dynamics we seek to invert.
The power dynamics of a sexual relationship, and of a BDSM relationship in particular, are not always apparent on the surface. For example, some enjoy playing the role of the “sub” because it involves wielding its own kind of power—the dominant partner must operate within their boundaries, take measures to ensure their safety and protection, and assume various responsibilities tailored to their physical and psychological needs.
That’s it for the recap. If you found this topic stimulating (perhaps in more than one sense), be sure to read Jules’s contribution, “Dirty Sex and Messy Politics,” below. After that, don’t forget to check out our “Upcoming Events” section, where you can find details about the special (Halloween-themed) café we have planned for October 22nd.
But first, if you have a few minutes to spare:
Community Survey
For those who’ve attended our Curiosity Cafés, please consider taking our brief community survey. We are conducting this survey to gather feedback on our events, and it should only take a few minutes to complete. Your responses are completely anonymous and will be invaluable in helping us improve our offerings. Thank you in advance!
Dirty Sex and Messy Politics
By Jules Sheldon
We don’t argue much about pornography anymore. A few decades ago, we fought over porn viciously, from the streets to the courts. For feminist critics of porn, the objection was not simply that women were harmed in its production (although they were), but rather that porn depicted the degradation of women, and in doing so, it taught men and women alike to desire this. As such, the attempt to ban pornography was in part an attempt to intervene in our sexual desires: to declare that some sexual desires are wrong and those who hold them ought to change.
Today, the pendulum has swung the other way. Sex-positive feminism has arisen out of a recognition of the very real dangers of moralising to others about their sexual desires. Sex work is not shameful; sex work is work, and women can freely choose to engage in it. BDSM is not simply, as anti-porn activist Andrea Dworkin put it, “woman-hating violence”; when a woman tells us she likes it, we ought to trust her. By the sex-positive view, so long as the sex is genuinely consensual, then we should let people fuck who, and how, they want.
In an age of sex-positivity, it feels absurd to pose the question: “has sexual freedom gone too far?” But if we reduce the ethics of sex to an ethics of consent—if sex is consensual then it’s ethical—we leave ourselves unable to question where our sexual desires come from, how they are distributed, and how they affect us. When white men struck by “yellow fever” obsess over and objectify East Asian women, is this really as innocuous as a preference for hair colour? Or, should we avoid shaming the harmless kinks and desires of others? But is it really just coincidence that men tend to take on dominant roles in both the boardroom and the bedroom? As Amia Srinivasan puts it, we need to interrogate the grounds of desire; we need to consider “the supreme fuckability of “hot blonde sluts” and East Asian women, the comparative unfuckability of black women and Asian men, the fetishisation and fear of black male sexuality, the sexual disgust expressed towards disabled, trans and fat bodies.”
But how should we question sexual desires? Should we argue, as some feminists in the 1970s did, that women who partake in BDSM, or even in heterosexuality, are betraying feminism? Should we shame the man who likes rough sex as a misogynist, or the cis lesbian who doesn’t sleep with trans women as a transphobe? Here’s one possible way forward: instead of criticising or shaming anyone, we might simply prompt ourselves and each other to critically reflect on our own desires, as we did in our Curiosity Café. But when confronted by those who are consistently sexually devalued or fetishised in our society, it feels inadequate to reply: “don’t worry, we’ll think about it!”
I’ve oscillated back and forth in this essay, raising many questions and giving few answers. I wish I could attribute this to pedagogy, but in truth, I find myself tied in knots, wanting to somehow criticise desires without criticising desires. But this is just what it means to treat sex as political: to recognise that our sexual desires shape, and are shaped by, our shared social world. Of course, confronting this is messy and fraught with danger. But why wouldn’t good sex be worth the risk?
Upcoming Events
Curiosity Café: Bi-weekly on Tuesdays, tickets below!
About: For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: Every two weeks, we invite members of our community (that includes you, dear reader!) to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about. After our scheduled programming, we encourage attendees to stay and mingle over food and drinks.
We will be hosting our next Curiosity Café on Tuesday, October 22nd, from 6:00 - 8:30 pm at the Madison Avenue Pub (14 Madison Ave, Toronto, ON M5R 2S1). Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6:00 - 6:30 pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30 - 8:30 pm with a 10 minute break in the middle!
Please get a ticket using the button below the event description. If tickets are sold out, please contact us, either on Instagram @beingnbecomingorg or over email at sophia@beingnbecoming.org, and we will let you know if we are able to accommodate you.
The topic of our next café is: The Problem of Other Minds and Phenomenological Zombies
We commonly assume that our friends, family members, and unknown passersby have minds that are similar to our own. This is a reasonable assumption, given that most folks will use the same words to describe the same experiences we do, laugh at the same jokes we do, and react with the same emotions at similar states of affairs that we would. Nevertheless, despite all of this seemingly strong perceptual evidence that others have minds like our own, can we really know this—as a matter of fact? Especially when there is so much evidence of perceptual disagreement, such as the infamous “dress”. If we can’t know that others have minds from perceptual evidence alone, then what’s missing? That is, what additional evidence would one need to have certainty of the minds of others? Further, and perhaps more disturbingly, is there a possibility that our loved ones could—in fact—be “phenomenological zombies” (i.e., individuals with no conscious mental life at all)? At our next Curiosity Café, moderated by Alexandra Gustafson and Marybel Menzies, we will engage in a collaborative (and creepy!) exploration of our own first personal conscious experiences and how these experiences compare to those of others.
Both the “Pay-What-You-Can” and “free” tickets serve as a ticket to our café! We ask that you consider making a donation by purchasing a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket to help us make our work and growth as an organization possible. If you have accessibility-related concerns, please visit our Eventbrite Page—in the event description you will find some accessibility-related information about the venue and the event.
Toronto Events
Chris’s Toronto Event Calendar
If you want more opportunities to connect, inquire and mingle with like-minded people, check out Chris’s calendar on Notion. Chris curates this calendar with events happening in Toronto. Events include thought-provoking lectures, group discussions, and workshops.
makeworld’s Calendar of Toronto Events
makeworld’s curated list of recurrent events in Toronto, which include tech meetups, lectures, unconventional comedy shows, and discussion-based events (like ours!).
More than your regular Substack. Run by Misha Glouberman and friends, the Toronto Event Generator supports events through microgrants, finding venues, and promotion, and by creating listings of events they like.
Readings & Resources
Sophia’s Recommendations:
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the 21st Century by Amia Srinivasan. This collection of essays critically interrogates some of the most pressing feminist debates of the 21st century, including the ethics of pornography and sex work, whether consensual sex is always ethical, and the politics of desire. Two of the essays in this book, “The Right to Sex” and “Coda: The Politics of Desire” explore the ways in which our desires are shaped by our environments. Srinivasan concludes: “The question, then, is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obliged to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question often answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.” If the book isn’t accessible for you, or reading longer essays isn’t really your thing, can also get a sneak peek of these ideas in the following articles:
“Does the Heart Simply Want What the Heart Wants?” A Conversation with Amia Srinivasan
Desire Can Pierce Politics: Amia Srinivasan on Sex, Consent, and Feminism — Public Books
My interview with the American Philosophical Association. Would you believe it if I told you that getting served a martini in a snifter glass was part of what inspired me to moderate the most recent café? Scroll down to the final question I responded to, “What’s your drink of choice?” to learn more ;)
Adrian’s Recommendation:
“Sexual Perversion” by Graham Priest. In this paper, Priest examines, then picks apart, various philosophical accounts of sexual perversion—which, he points out, is not a merely descriptive concept but a morally evaluative one (calling someone a pervert implies a negative moral judgment that calling them a lawyer or a waiter does not). Priest takes special aim at the idea that “perverted acts are those that are unnatural,” and concludes that such accounts of sexual perversion depend on a mistaken and outmoded presupposition—namely, that acts that fail to perform their “natural” function are, for that very reason, morally bad. The notion of sexual perversion, he proceeds to argue, should therefore “be assigned to the scrap-heap of the history of ideas.” Ouch.
Featured Quote
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. For the demands of our released expectations lead us inevitably into actions which will help bring our lives into accordance with our needs, our knowledge, our desires. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for or accept many facets of our oppression as women.
— Audre Lorde
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