Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage

186 Sex a dancer is really aroused and when she is faking it, realizes that the dancer before him is actually enjoying herself. He masturbates himself into a frenzy. Is not what occurred between them a sexual act for which John paid money? If John did the same thing with his wife—glass partition and all—as a form of role-playing, would this not be a sexual act? The point is that on the one hand, it is not clear that actual physical contact is necessary for someone to be a prostitute as opposed to a mere sex worker; on the other, phone-sex workers don’t seem to count as prostitutes. The reason why I insisted that John and the woman at the peep show engage in a sex act is to emphasize that what might differentiate a phone sex worker from, say, a call girl as far as being a prostitute is concerned is not so much actual physical contact as the occurrence of a sex act. It may be that our reluctance to think of a phone-sex worker as a prostitute is not because there is no physical contact between her and the caller but because we doubt whether what occurs between them is a sexual act (she says to the caller, “Oh, yes, Kevin, I would love it if you went down on me; I’m coming just at the idea!”; but she’s faking it, ironing clothes or solving a jigsaw puzzle as she says these words). So it might be that although engaging in physical contact in exchange for money is not necessary for somebody to be a prostitute, engaging in a sex act is. However, Primoratz’s defi nition includes another type of sex worker that Primoratz, sensibly, wishes to exclude: pornography actors. They, too, provide sexual services with full physical contact for money. And they, too, are indiscriminate as long as the money is right (if one thinks that pornography actors are not that indiscriminate, that’s fi ne; but then we should remember that many prostitutes are also not that indiscriminate). Yet they are not—or we tend not to think of them as—prostitutes (although many do engage in prostitution on the side). It is not clear why, however, they are not or should not be thought of as prostitutes. The main difference that I can see is that pornography actors do not engage in sexual activities with clients, but with each other. At this point, perhaps we can amend Primoratz’s defi nition as follows. “Prostitution” is “engaging in sexual acts, many of which involve physical contact, with anyone who is willing to pay the price.” I omitted “indiscriminately” because “anyone who is willing to pay the price” serves its purpose. Using “sexual acts” allows us to include only those sex workers about whom it makes sense to refer to as prostitutes. The word “with” rules out pornography actors, since they don’t have sex with the one who pays the money (unless whoever is paying the money is in the scene, having sex). Finally, the word “anyone” rules out gold diggers and economic spouses, a welcome result. There are two more issues with which to contend. Suppose that Jackie likes to have a lot of casual sex with many men. She picks up guys wherever she happens to be, in bars, coffee shops, supermarkets, at Macy’s. She is so good in bed that guys often like to leave her some money as a token of gratitude or appreciation, and Jackie does not mind. Is Jackie a prostitute? If she is, she is one by default, not by design, because she does not intend to make her sexual services conditional on receiving money for them. This raises the issue

What Is Sex? 187 of whether the intention to receive money for sexual acts is necessary for prostitution. Note that our amended defi nition is silent on intentions, and is compatible with both their presence and their lack. If we insist on intentions, we can further amend the defi nition as follows. “Prostitution” is “engaging in sexual acts, many of which involve physical contact, only with those who are willing to pay the price.” The word “only” implies that engaging in sex is intentional: the prostitute targets only those who are willing to pay. The second issue is whether prostitution can be defi ned at all. The philosopher Laurie Shrage states that “there is no single thing as ‘prostitution’ that can be evaluated apart from a cultural framework. Instead there are many particular prostitutions that have varying social origins and social consequences” ( 1994 , 119). Shrage gives examples of different types of “prostitutions” from across cultures and ages, including ancient Babylon, Kenya during colonial times, West Nepal, and medieval southern France. She argues that they differ from each other in important ways. For example, prostitutes in medieval southern France were “not socially marginal” and “were active participant[s] in public life” ( 1994 , 114). They were also “legally free and socially eligible for marriage” ( 1994 , 115). Similarly, “in colonial Kenya it was not uncommon for prostitutes to be recruited by their clients to be their full-time, legal wives, and thus some prostitutes eventually entered legal, monogamous marriage” ( 1994 , 109). The prostitutes served the social function of supporting their families ( 1994 , 107–108). Compare now both these types to that of ancient Babylon: being a religious form of prostitution, it celebrated the sexual powers of Mylitta, the fertility goddess, by having women have sex with strangers in return for silver coins. This was necessary for the land and the people to be fertile ( 1994 , 100–101). Thus we reach the suspicion that “prostitution” as such cannot be defi ned because there is no core or shared essence to the various types of prostitution across cultures and ages. 13 If Shrage means that any thorough discussion of prostitution must take into account prostitution’s various incarnations in different cultures and ages, she is correct. No proper discussion of any phenomenon can be complete if it reduces that phenomenon to a few aspects. However, if Shrage means that “prostitution” as such cannot be defi ned because there is no single core or essence to prostitution given its different types, her argument fails, because from the fact that a concept has multiple, different instances or examples it does not follow that it cannot be defi ned. Indeed, those philosophers who attempt to defi ne concepts know full well that concepts usually have multiple instances but realize that to defi ne them is (partly) to go beyond these variations to fi nd a common core. Tigers, for example, come in different types, colors, and sizes, but this does not mean that the concept of “tiger” cannot be defi ned. The concept of “art” is similar but closer to prostitution because art, unlike tigers, is a cultural phenomenon. So granted that prostitution (and pornography, casual sex, adultery, and so on) has many variations, has been understood differently in different cultures, and has served different functions, it does not follow that it cannot be defi ned. 14 Indeed, by Shrage’s reasoning no cultural practice or product can be defi ned.

188 Sex Summary and Conclusion Let us, at this point, survey the main issues that have come up in our attempt to defi ne “casual sex,” “adultery,” and “prostitution.” Intentions and other mental states : we need to decide in a convincing manner whether intentions or other types of mental states should fi gure in the defi nitions of “casual sex,” “adultery,” and “prostitution.” Behavior : we need to decide whether any behavioral criteria should be used in these defi nitions. Sexual acts : in the cases of both adultery and prostitution, fi guring out what a sexual act is, is crucial. One view regarding adultery considers adulterous any type of extramarital sexual act, but we need to know what a sexual act is. Moreover, if prostitution is to include only sexual acts, we also need to know what they are. (This is not likely to be an issue with casual sex since we know that it is a sexual act; we just need to fi gure out what kind of a sexual act it is.) Particular sexual practices : masturbation, rape, bestiality, necrophilia, and others are all particular sexual practices that we have to look out for when defi ning other sexual practices (and vice versa), because, for example, if we don’t think of rape as a form of casual sex, we should not defi ne “casual sex” in such a way to imply that rape is casual sex. If we think that solitary masturbation is not a form of adultery, we need to defi ne “adultery” in such a way to not imply that solitary masturbation is adultery. Particular issues : there are specifi c issues that come up for each specifi c sexual practice we are trying to defi ne. For example, deciding what we mean by “marriage” is crucial for a defi nition of “adultery” (also for “prostitution”), and deciding on the role of sexual pleasure is crucial for defi ning “casual sex.” Study Questions 1. Think of the expressions “to have sex” (or “having sex”), “sexual act,” and “sexual activity.” Do they mean different things? Can you give examples that fi t one or two of them but not the third? That is, can you give cases of sexual activity that are not also of having sex or of sexual acts? 2. Think about the relationships between the concepts of “sexual activity,” “sexual acts,” “sexual desire,” and “sexual pleasure” (or the relationships between the phenomena to which these concepts refer). Which is the primary one—which is the one that is basic and in terms of which the other two should be understood or defi ned? 3. Can you develop a view similar to that of Seiriol Morgan, to the effect that even if we agree that Goldman gives a defi nition of “sexual desire” and not a theory of sexual desire, the defi nition is still anemic or too thin to be of much help in understanding even the core of sexual desire?

What Is Sex? 189 4. Evaluate whether Seiriol Morgan’s criticisms of Goldman’s view apply with equal force to those of Primoratz. Does the account by Primoratz, that is, under-describe what sexual desire, sexual activity, and sexual pleasure are? 5. What differences do you see between a state of sexual arousal and a state of sexual desire? Might these differences help support Jacobsen’s account? 6. Should an adequate defi nition of “casual sex” include or exclude rape, sex with children, sex with animals, and sex with human corpses? Which ones and why? 7. Try to fi x the problems that I raised with (and in) defi ning “adultery.” Might you fi nd a defi nition that does not face counterexamples? 8. Does “having sex with oneself” mean the same thing as “engaging in solitary masturbation”? Do they refer to the same thing? Are there cases of one that are not cases of the other? 9. Should a good defi nition of “prostitution” or “sex work” include the intentions of the sex worker? Why or why not? And can you provide a good defi nition of “sex work” or “sex worker”? It would have to include all types of sex workers, from prostitutes to pornography performers to phone sex workers to strippers, but exclude sex performance artists and people who marry others because they need the money provided by their spouses. 10. In evaluating Laurie Shrage’s view that “prostitution” cannot be defi ned, I wrote that “by Shrage’s reasoning no cultural practice or product can be defi ned.” I meant this as a criticism of her view. But is it a criticism? That is, might cultural practices, as opposed to natural kinds such as tigers, not be defi nable? Why or why not? 11. Try to come up with defi nitions of the following concepts (and keep in mind the types of diffi culties that the defi nitions we looked at face): “Cyber-sex,” “masturbation,” and “promiscuity.” 12. Throughout this chapter I assumed that being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer (in general) does not affect the reasoning that I investigated. Is this a true assumption? Might keeping in mind variations in gender identity, in sex (by which I refer to biological sex), and in sexual orientation affect how we arrive at some or all of the above defi nitions? Why and how? 13. In addition to being a tough philosophical exercise, try to come up with at least four more reasons as to why defi ning the above concepts of sex (and additional ones not defi ned in this chapter) is important. Further Reading Soble’s (2006b ) encyclopedia of the philosophy of sex is an indispensable tool and resource for all the issues discussed in this and later chapters. For more on defi ning sexual concepts, see Berkowitz (1997 ); Gray (1978 ); Harding (1998 ); Primoratz (1999 , ch. 5); Richards (2015 ); Shaffer (1978 ); Soble (2008 , ch. 3); Soble (2006a ); and Vannoy (1980 , 97–101). For some skepticism about

190 Sex whether we can defi ne certain central concepts in sex, see Hamilton (2008 ). LeMoncheck (1997 ) attempts to defi ne a number of sexual practices, including promiscuity and prostitution. On prostitution, see Shrage (2016b ). On adultery, see Martin (2006 ) and Piper (2016a ). On casual sex and promiscuity, see Ellis (1986 ); Elliston (1998 ); Halwani (2006a , 2007b , 2008 , 2017a ); and Kristjansson (1998 ). Notes 1. This section has benefi ted much from Alan Soble’s discussion ( 1996 , ch. 3). 2. Someone might ejaculate or orgasm at the mere sight of something or at the very point of starting a sexual act. But such cases, though sexual, do not seem to be of sexual acts or activity, insofar as they are completely involuntary. 3. See below for discussion of a related defi nition. 4. I do not discuss the “tends to” part of Goldman’s defi nition (which poses problems for it; see Soble [2013a , 83–85] for discussion). I use instead “fulfi lls” or “satisfi es” instead of “tends to fulfi ll” or “tends to satisfy.” 5. There are actually two sets of four combinations: the fi rst set uses “and” to combine the three together and two of each three; the second set uses “or” to combine all three and two of each. The reader should evaluate whether any succeeds. 6. I thank Alan Soble for alerting me to discuss this point. 7. Goldman says that desires for only looking or touching items of clothing are abnormal or perverted ( 2013 , 71). He also says parenthetically in the quotation I offered: “(otherwise a deviation from the norm as expressed in our defi nition).” Perhaps Goldman—he is unclear on this—intends his defi nition to be really of “normal sexual desire,” by which he would have to mean “normal in the statistical sense,” given that he is opposed to moralizing analyses of sex. However, given that masturbation falters on his defi nition and that masturbation is statistically normal, the defi nition still won’t do. 8. For a defi nition of “sexual desire” that attempts to encompass the varieties of sexual desire, see Jacobsen (1993 ). I discuss Jacobsen’s view in this chapter. 9. For a defense of the view that such chatting is not adultery, see Portmann (2013 ). 10. Many philosophers in discussing adultery implicitly assume that it takes the form of an affair. See, for example, Steinbock (1991 ) and Martin (1998 ). 11. But we need to be careful: A defender of the view might reply that even if adultery is identifi ed with betrayal of love, this does not necessarily make adultery wrong by defi nition, because some instances of betrayal are morally justifi ed. 12. This example is from Christina (2013 , 30). 13. This type of argument can be made about any form of sexual activity (and, indeed, about any cultural practice whatsoever), because they all differ from one culture to another, including pornography, casual sex, and adultery (Shrage applies a similar argument to adultery [ 1994 , ch. 2]). My replies to Shrage’s argument regarding prostitution apply in principle to other forms of sexual practices. 14. Compare the discussion here to the one above regarding Morgan and Goldman over defi ning “sexual desire.”

6 Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism Outline of the Chapter In this chapter, we fi rst examine some philosophical issues that the notion of sexual pleasure raises. We then move to the moral theory of consequentialism to see how it evaluates sexual actions. Because consequentialism assesses actions by their consequences, especially by their tendency to produce pleasure on the utilitarian version of consequentialism (which is the most famous version of consequentialism), consequentialism is apt in this respect. Sexual Pleasure and Other Values of Sex Acts One way to evaluate sexual activity is by relying on values such as pleasure, excitement, being rewarding, and satisfaction. Before we delve into these values, a short detour is necessary. The philosopher Janice Moulton claims that that there are at least two models of sexual behavior. The fi rst is sexual anticipation, which includes fl irtation and seduction, and the second is sexual satisfaction. The fi rst is not about “physical contact” (or sexual acts), but about what occurs before: Flirtation, seduction, and traditional courtship involve sexual feelings that are quite independent of physical contact. These feelings are increased by anticipation of success, winning, or conquest. Because what is anticipated is the opportunity for sexual intimacy and satisfaction, the feelings of sexual satisfaction are usually not distinguished from those of sexual anticipation. ( Moulton 2008 , 46) The second model of sexual behavior, satisfaction, “involves sexual feelings which are increased by the other person’s knowledge of one’s preferences and sensitivities, the familiarity of their touch or smell or way of moving, and not by the novelty of their sexual interest” ( Moulton 2008 , 46). The idea is that although sexual anticipation may be present when a person knows she is going to have sex with a familiar partner, anticipation is defi nitely heightened by

192 Sex the knowledge or expectation of having sex with someone new (that’s why it includes courtship, fl irtation, and seduction). On my fi rst sex date with Mario Lopez, my sexual expectations and anticipation will be quite high, though the sex might or might not be satisfying, depending on how it goes. If he and I have been having sex for years, I may no longer be thrilled by the idea of having sex with him, but the sex might be satisfying since we know each other’s bodies and what sexually pleases us. However, the two models of anticipation and satisfaction are often in tension with one another, according to Moulton: A strong feeling of sexual anticipation is produced by the uncertainty, challenge or secrecy of novel sexual experiences, but the tension and excitement that increase anticipation often interfere with sexual satisfaction. The comfort and trust and experience with familiar partners may increase sexual satisfaction, but decrease the uncertainty and challenge that heighten sexual anticipation. ( Moulton 2008 , 47) The more one knows one’s sexual partner, the more one can count on satisfaction but the less one can count on excitement and anticipation. The less one knows one’s sexual partner, the more one can count on anticipation and excitement, but the less one can count on satisfaction. Note that, strictly speaking, while sexual satisfaction occurs during the sexual act, sexual anticipation occurs prior to it (though this depends on how broadly or narrowly we defi ne “sexual act”). Might anticipation and excitement then not be part of the evaluation of sexual acts since they occur prior to them? Not necessarily, because they can also occur during the act. Beginning a sexual act with kissing, necking, and oral stimulation but knowing that, say, intercourse is to follow, one gets sexually more excited and anticipatory of the action to come (if one is into intercourse). Sexual acts could, and often do, include sexual excitement and anticipation. So the tension of which Moulton speaks between anticipation and satisfaction sometimes exists, but sometimes it doesn’t, during the sexual act. For example, a couple who have been having the same type of sex for years would probably have little or no anticipation even if they know that the sex is satisfactory. Their knowledge of the ensuing satisfaction is not the same as anticipation, because expecting the orgasm is not the same as anticipating or being excited by it. Of course, the sex between them can sometimes fail in both respects: it is routine so lacks excitement, and, because of some quirk that day, they also fail to be satisfi ed by it. Indeed, knowing that sex will be routine might decrease satisfaction. Moreover, if the partners know each other but the sex between them has not lost its magic, they will feel both anticipation and satisfaction. If the partners don’t know each other, they will feel anticipation and may or may not feel satisfaction, depending on whether they sexually click. That is why Moulton’s claim that anticipation often “interferes” with satisfaction is puzzling. For anticipation need not adversely interfere with

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 193 satisfaction (though I think it helps motivate the partners to please each other); what does interfere—for better or worse—is the partners’ knowledge or ignorance of each other’s sexual proclivities and bodies. We can now evaluate a sexual act on the basis of at least two dimensions: satisfaction and excitement (or heightened anticipation). Because the two can come apart during a single sexual act, one and the same sexual act can be sexually good in that it is exciting (or satisfactory) but sexually bad in that it is unsatisfactory (or unexciting). Of course, a sexual act can also be good in both ways. Where is pleasure in all this? “Pleasure” can mean different things. One is “sensation”: to feel pleasure is to feel a particular sensation in some body part. Under this meaning, some obvious examples of sexual pleasure are orgasm, the pleasures of nipple massaging, the pleasures of ear licking, and so on. I suppose that by “satisfaction” Moulton means (given her emphasis on physical contact) pleasure-as-sensation. The two partners to a sexual act who know each other can rely on each other to provide the right kinds of touching, rhythm in sex, and so on, thus achieving satisfaction by providing each other with pleasure-as-sensation. But the feelings of anticipation and excitement that people can feel during sex are also pleasurable, though they are not pleasures-assensations. There are no particular regions of the body where one experiences these feelings and are “felt” throughout the whole body. The upshot is that we cannot, in a discussion of the “pleasures” of sex, use the word “pleasure” in an indiscriminate and vague way. Suppose that (for now) we use “satisfaction” to mean pleasure-as-sensation. Then every satisfactory sexual act is a pleasurable one. But there are degrees of pleasure. A routine sexual act may be satisfactory, producing the expected pleasures, but it may not be very pleasurable. Note how the more pleasurable a sex act is, the less inclined we are to call it “satisfactory,” a term that usually denotes a moderate or even minimal amount of pleasure. To avoid confusion, I suggest we drop the term “satisfaction” and use instead “pleasure.” We can then speak of somewhat pleasurable, moderately pleasurable, and highly pleasurable sexual acts. We can also use “enjoyable” to refer to those pleasures that are not sensations but pleasures of excitement and anticipation occurring during sex. Again, sex acts can then be minimally, somewhat, moderately, or highly enjoyable. Are there ways to evaluate sexual acts other than pleasure and enjoyment? A sex act can be enriching (or rewarding), impoverishing, or neither enriching nor impoverishing (it can be anywhere on this spectrum) in ways that go beyond being pleasurable (painful) or enjoyable (unenjoyable). Sexual acts can be rewarding in a number of ways. They can be sexually instructive in that they teach the participant(s) new sexual techniques or positions; they can leave the participant(s) with wonderful memories about the act itself; they can result in a baby; they can result in acquiring money (if one participant is a sex worker); they can lead to new friendships; and they can cement a new or current love. Sexual acts can also be impoverishing. Although participants cannot “de-learn” sexual techniques or positions, they can leave with lousy memories of a sexual act—a bad taste in their mouth. Sex acts can lead to diseases, to

194 Sex breaking up a good friendship, or, perhaps most importantly, they can fracture the participant(s)’ moral integrity: “I can’t believe I just had sex with . . . ” and then fi ll in the blank with the inappropriate person, animal, thing, or method (“my best friend’s wife,” “a 10-year-old child,” “a dog,” “Hannah but only because I lied to her,” “Sarah by raping her,” “John by allowing him to tie me up,” “with José by drinking his urine”). All are examples of how sexual acts can leave one or more participants feeling shame and disbelief about what they are capable of. Depending on the act, its effects might be long-lasting. However, these all seem to be consequences of sexual acts. If our concern is with evaluating sex acts as sex acts, not in terms of their results, it’s hard to make sense of the idea of a sex act being rewarding or impoverishing apart from its being pleasurable (non-pleasurable) or enjoyable (non-enjoyable). Any additional suggestion is bound to be a consequence of the sex act. So it seems that there are only these two ways of evaluating sex acts as sex acts (in addition to evaluating them as natural or perverted, and as moral or immoral in this chapter, as we will see below). One crucial question is: Who or what decides whether a sexual act is pleasurable, frustrating, or enjoyable? Is it the participants themselves and their sexual tastes? Or is it something more objective? For example, it’s silly to claim that chocolate is “objectively” better tasting than vanilla; the decision is left to individual taste. Not so, however, with morality—whether murder or stealing is right or wrong is not up to the tastes of individual people. That is why we debate such issues as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and eating non-human animals; if we believe that they should be decided by individual tastes, we wouldn’t debate them. So is whether sex pleasurable like eating ice cream or like morality? There’s a deceptive answer to this question that goes like this: it depends on the type of evaluation of sex. If it’s moral evaluation or an evaluation of whether the sex is perverted, it’s not up to the participants. But if it’s whether the sex is pleasurable, then it is up to the individuals. After all, we are talking about pleasure , which is a matter of individual taste: what pleases one person, another might view with indifference, and a third might fi nd painful or disgusting. If John likes anal sex, good for John. If Katie likes the doggie-style position, good for Katie. End of story. This might be the end of the story but for two considerations. First, many philosophers believe that some pleasures are superior to others. John Stuart Mill, for example, claims that there are higher and lower pleasures, the second of which includes sexual pleasures ( Mill 1987 , ch. 2). Moreover, even though sexual pleasures have been typically lumped together in the category of lower pleasures, once we accept or even entertain the idea that there are higher and lower pleasures, it is possible that within types of pleasures there are also higher and lower types. This is easily seen in connection to art. Although we may agree that there is such a thing as artistic pleasure (pleasure derived from, in, or by interacting with art), if there is a distinction between low art and high art, we can distinguish between higher and lower pleasures within the category

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 195 of artistic pleasures (in terms of quality of pleasure, not quantity): the pleasures derived from reading Nathaniel Hawthorne or listening to Beethoven are higher than the pleasures derived from reading romantic novels or listening to Hannah Montana. If we can make this distinction with respect to art, why not also with respect to sex? Why not say that heterosexual intercourse is more pleasurable than anal homosexual intercourse? Why not also say that sex after a good night’s sleep is more pleasurable than sex after a long day at work? Connected to this point is a second consideration: suppose that Randy has tried to read literature but just could not enjoy it; he prefers reading teenage romance novels to Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. He has tried listening to Beethoven and Bartok, but he prefers Abba and the soundtrack from Cats . He has tried watching Matthew Barney fi lms, but he prefers Resident Evil 5 and High School Musical 3 . Randy just does not enjoy high art and enjoys low art. Is this the end of the story? Not quite. Once we distinguish between higher and lower pleasures, we can claim that Randy is missing out on a higher type of pleasure, even though he cannot attain it. And he is, indeed, missing out on reading Austen and Tolstoy, because we have agreed that they are higher pleasures. 1 Can something similar be said about sexual pleasure? Yes, but only if there is a distinction to be made between higher and lower sexual pleasures. This distinction usually refers to the quality of pleasures, not their quantity : pleasures derived from reading Tolstoy are better or qualitatively higher than those derived from reading Twilight . We can make a similar distinction in sex, but it will have to be one about quantity , specifi cally its intensity and duration. There are sexual techniques that could help in making a sexual act last longer, in sexually exploring new areas of the human body, in intensifying the intensity and duration of an orgasm. 2 So one way of cashing in on the idea of higher and lower sexual pleasures is that one and the same type of sexual act can be more pleasurable or enjoyable if the participants know what to do. But note that making the distinction this way cuts across all types of sexual acts; heterosexual and homosexual sex, including oral sex and intercourse, can be more or less pleasurable (or enjoyable) depending on how good the participants are; ditto for any type of sexual act, natural or perverted, moral or immoral, involving or not involving fetishes. So not only does the “higher” versus “lower” distinction have to do with the quantities, not qualities, of pleasures, it is also not confi ned to any type of sexual activity. There’s another way of making the distinction, also along quantitative lines. As is well known, due to various infl uences, people internalize taboos against some sexual proclivities. Examples include obvious ones such as repressed homosexuality and acts that someone might be ashamed of, thinks are wrong, or even does not know about. A foot fetishist may be too shy to ask his sexual partner to indulge him. A woman who likes to be tied up may think it politically unacceptable to do so (out of, say, feminist considerations). A pedophile may not have sex with minors because he knows it is wrong. A well-bred woman may be too genteel to have sex doggie-style. A man may be excited by smelling dirty underwear yet not know this about himself. These people

196 Sex do enjoy sexual acts not involving their sexual preferences, but were they to act on their preferences they would enjoy sex a lot more. Thus, sex tends to be more pleasurable the more it involves acting on one’s favored acts, positions, fantasies, and fetishes, and the less it is accompanied by negative emotions such as guilt and shame. So we have two ways by which to distinguish between higher and lower sexual pleasures, neither of which corresponds or is confi ned to a type of sexual activity, such as heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, oral sex, natural sex, and sex involving fetishes. This is not surprising. A type of sexual activity is not, because it is that type, more sexually pleasurable than another type of activity. Oral sex is not, because it is oral sex, more pleasurable or painful than another type of sexual activity. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, depending on all sorts of factors. We also all have similar biological bodies and points of pleasure. Where we differ is in our sexual tastes. So if Joan prefers intercourse to oral sex, it doesn’t make sense to say that she is missing out on a superior type of pleasure (oral sex). After all, she prefers intercourse—by what criteria is oral sex more pleasurable? Nor would it make sense to say that a gay man is missing out on a superior type of sexual pleasure (heterosexual sex). After all, he prefers homosexual sex—by what criteria is heterosexual sex more pleasurable? Evolutionary biology won’t be of much help here. Even if we have evolved in such a way that nature made sex pleasurable to get us to procreate (which sounds plausible), nature need not have made heterosexual intercourse the most pleasurable or pleasurable in the highest quality to attain its purposes. Making it pleasurable enough to get people to enjoy it would have been suffi cient. Furthermore, we now know that women derive the greatest sexual pleasure from the clitoris. But the clitoris’s evolutionary function as far as procreation is concerned is controversial. 3 In any case, we are both biological and cultural creatures. Our sexual and nonsexual tastes and proclivities are as much the product of nature as they are the product of culture. Neither nature nor biology should be the arbiter about which sexual pleasures are higher in quality. There is another (tentative) reason why there is no qualitative distinction between higher and lower sexual pleasures. Usually, this distinction is made (and makes sense, perhaps) in connection to complex objects that require sophisticated responses to yield the requisite higher pleasures. For example, the reason why reading Tolstoy yields higher pleasures than reading Twilight is that Tolstoy’s literary works are more sophisticated. To enjoy them fully (and so attain the higher pleasures), the reader must engage with their complexity. Twilight books, by contrast, contain no such complexity, so their pleasures are not that sophisticated. Similar things may be said about music, painting, food, and any culturally produced object or event that admits of higher and lower kinds (e.g., artistic paintings vs. hotel room paintings, classical music vs. pop music). But sex may not be like this. Although there are techniques in sex and a wide variety of positions and acts, sexual activity may not require complex mental and emotional responses to be appreciated. Our bodies may also not be complex when it comes to sexual activity. We know roughly what the

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 197 pleasure zones are and we can explore a few more, but none requires the kind of mental engagement that, say, appreciating a Caravaggio painting does. At most, it requires some techniques (some of which require in turn certain bodily regimens). However, even if no type of sexual activity is superior in pleasure to another, it is often claimed that sex with love is more pleasurable than sex without love. Russell Vannoy presents a number of arguments for this view (all of which he rejects). Let us look at some of the crucial ones (the second is mine, not Vannoy’s). 4 One argument is that sex with love is “deeply personal. One forms a unity not only with the body, but also with all the other aspects of what constitute a complete experience: the mental, emotional, spiritual” ( Vannoy 1980 , 13). Sex without love can be at most only pleasurable. Sex with love, however, has meaning or signifi cance ( Vannoy 1980 , 14). Evaluating this argument requires making a distinction. “Sex with love” can mean (1) “sex with someone with whom you are in love or have a love relationship,” or (2) “expressing your love during sex with the person you love.” Under the fi rst meaning, there is no reason to believe that sex with love is necessarily meaningful or has these unifying aspects. Think of all the routine sex that couples have with each other after years of being together. It might be minimally pleasurable in that they rely on the “tested and tried” methods that the couples have used over the years (Moulton’s “satisfaction model”), but it need not be powerful in the ways that the argument claims. If “sex with love” means “expressing your love during sex with the person you love,” the argument is on to something, because some of the body gestures might be meant to show the love and emotion the lovers have for each other. However, as Vannoy points out, if the sex is good, the lovers are bound at some point to surrender themselves to lust, and when they do, they are no different from two strangers surrendering to their lust ( 1980 , 14). Vannoy’s point, I think, is that it is easier said than done to unite sex with love. For while the lovers, as lovers, communicate their passions to each other at some points during the sex act, at other points the sex takes over. Although well taken, Vannoy’s point does not defeat the argument, because if it is the entire sex act being evaluated, then a sex act that alternates between lust and tender emotions might be, on the whole, more pleasurable than one that is merely lustful. The main problem with the argument is that it presents a false dilemma: we are asked to choose between sex with love and sex without love, meaning, “cold, mechanical fucking,” without any tender emotions. These are not the only options. Two strangers can have (even rough) sex with each other while at the same time kissing, hugging, relishing each other’s bodies, and being attentive to each other’s needs. The presence of these emotions can make sex much more pleasurable and exciting. So if the argument in favor of sex with love includes the range of emotions that lovers often exhibit to each other during sex, sex between strangers can come close to that in many ways.

198 Sex A third and fi nal thought: there is no doubt that sex with love (in the second sense) or sex between strangers accompanied by tenderness and attention is quite enjoyable, but some people may always prefer emotionless sex, while others may like it only sometimes. If their preferences are for the type of sex without love, it is hard to see how sex with love is more pleasurable, period, regardless of the preferences involved, especially if there is no reason to qualitatively distinguish between higher and lower types of sexual pleasure. A second argument is that lovers know how to please each other sexually better than sex between strangers. This means that sex with love, as sex, is more pleasurable than sex with someone who is not one’s lover. This may be true. But as we have seen with the above distinctions, it might mean that the sex is pleasurable in that it is satisfactory, but not pleasurable in that it is enjoyable, since it is routine, expected, and so on. Sex without love might score higher points by the anticipation and excitement criteria. Sometimes, also, strangers sexually click: they know how to please each other, especially if they’re assertive about it, telling each other (nicely?) what to do and how to do it. Remember also that sexually knowing someone is not confi ned to lovers, but includes any two people who have only a sexual relationship: they, too, know each other’s bodies and pleasures and should be able to know how to satisfy each other. A third argument is that lovers go to greater lengths to sexually please each other than strangers or non-lovers do ( Vannoy 1980 , 15). This means that sex with love has a higher chance of being pleasurable than sex without love, since lovers wouldn’t give up so easily on pleasing each other. This may be correct, but again, it depends on a few factors. If the lovers have been together for a while, they might rely on routine sex. Moreover, think of all the husbands, as the cliché goes, who come home tired and just want to have quick sex with their wives. Whether lovers make such efforts depends on how new they are as lovers and how they are as individuals: “the key factors depend more on the partner’s sexual sophistication and innate generosity than it does on whether that person happens to be one’s beloved” ( Vannoy 1980 , 15). Keep in mind also that sometimes trying to please the other too much can be frustrating to both parties, to the point that the sexual act becomes painful and onerous. Moreover, if it is generally true that people enjoy sex more when they sense that their sexual partners are aroused and enjoying the sex, then people have an incentive to be attentive to each other’s sexual needs during the sex act, simply (and selfi shly, I suppose) because this heightens their own arousal. This is true, by the way, regardless of whether the sexual partners are lovers or non-lovers. A fourth argument is that the superiority of sex with love shows why we don’t just masturbate: if all we wanted were just sex for the sake of sex, we would just masturbate. So we desire another person when we want very pleasurable sex “because we want to unite with, relate to, communicate with another human being” ( Vannoy 1980 , 15–16). Although people might generally prefer sex with another person to masturbation because they desire to

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 199 relate to someone, clearly, the other person does not have to be a lover. It could be a total stranger. Moreover, “relate to” is ambiguous. It could refer to the partners’ desire for an emotional exchange during the sexual act, in which case it is not obvious that all sexual partners want this. Instead, they could desire a sexual partner, rather than masturbate, because they want to just be with someone else or to experience, literally, the touch of someone other than themselves ( Soble 1996 , 86–87). A fi nal argument is that “sex with a lover is . . . more likely to lead to future emotional security; men and women don’t have to worry constantly about whether or not they will fi nd a new ‘one-night’ stand” ( Vannoy 1980 , 14). This may be true, but it does not show that sex with love is more pleasurable than sex without love. All it shows is that people are often willing to agree to a sure-thing and forgo the ups and downs of fi nding new sexual partners, even though, if successful, such one-night stands might be highly pleasurable or enjoyable. So there seems to be no good reason to think that sex with love is generally more pleasurable or enjoyable than sex without love. 5 This should not be surprising. For one thing, and as I hinted above, there is no reason to believe that there is a single answer to the question as to which is better, sex with or sex without love. It is more plausible to claim that it depends on the preferences of the individual (even the same individual might sometimes prefer one, sometimes the other). Moreover, as I argue below (in Chapter 9) in connection with Scruton’s views), sex and love are very different, and it is thus not surprising that sex with love is generally not more pleasurable than sex without love. Let us now turn to the moral evaluation of sex by using the theory of consequentialism as our guide. Sex and Morality The nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer writes the following about sexual desire: It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort; it has an unfavorable infl uence on the most important affairs, interrupts every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds. It does not hesitate to intrude with its trash, and to interfere with the negotiations of statesmen and the investigations of the learned. It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts. Every day it brews and hatches the worst and most perplexing quarrels and disputes, destroys the most valuable relationships, and breaks the strongest bonds. It demands sometimes the sacrifi ce of life or health, sometimes of wealth, position, and happiness. Indeed, it robs of all conscience those who were previously honorable and upright, and makes traitors of those who have hitherto been loyal and faithful. ( Schopenhauer 1958 , 533–534)

200 Sex And Soble, explaining Kant’s worries about sexual desire (which I discuss in the next chapter), writes, Sexual desire is inelastic, relentless, the passion most likely to challenge reason and make us succumb to akrasia [weakness of will], compelling us to seek satisfaction even when doing so involves the risks of dark-alley gropings, microbiologically fi lthy acts, slinking around the White House, or getting married impetuously. Sexually motivated behavior easily destroys our self-respect. ( Soble 2013b , 303) If the above thoughts are on the right track, then sexual desire is a powerful desire that is able to bend the will of the person to its own ends. And since its goal is the attainment of pleasure (even if it has other goals), this can leave in its wake many victims, including the parties to the sexual act. Put less prosaically, the strength and promise of sexual desire are such that resisting it is very diffi cult. This means that it is especially in need of moral scrutiny. But how are we to think of it in moral terms? We will begin by looking into what some moral theories have to say about sexual desire and activity. We will start with consequentialism in this chapter. Consequentialism Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the modern moral theory of utilitarianism sometime in the 1780s, wrote an essay on homosexuality that was published after his death. “An Essay on ‘Paederasty’” ( 1984 ) tackled the morality of homosexual sex by looking at its consequences, specifi cally the pleasure and pain it tends to produce. He surveyed and rejected every argument known to him that tried to show that homosexuality leads to bad consequences. For example, addressing the objection that homosexuality, if widely practiced, leads to the demise of the human race, Bentham makes the following points. First, this result would follow only if those who engaged in homosexual sex did so exclusively ( 1984 , 360). Second, not much effort and time are needed to impregnate a woman; the probability that men would be so disinclined to have sex with women to the point of not even being willing to impregnate them is close to zero ( 1984 , 360). Third, historically speaking, there is no evidence that in societies where homosexuality was practiced the population decreased ( 1984 , 360). Fourth, for the sake of consistency, celibacy should be criticized more vehemently than homosexuality: “If then merely out of regard to population it were right that paederasts should be burnt alive monks ought to be roasted alive by a slow fi re” ( 1984 , 360–361). I would add that perhaps the demise of the human race is not a bad thing, maybe even a good thing, and if homosexuality leads to it then so much the better for homosexuality. Not only does Bentham fi nd no bad consequences to homosexuality, he fi nds good ones: It is evident that it produces no pain in anyone. On the contrary it produces pleasure, and that a pleasure which, by their perverted taste, is by

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 201 this supposition preferred to that pleasure which is in general reputed the greatest. The partners are both willing. If either of them be unwilling, the act is not that which we have here in view: . . . it is a personal injury; it is a kind of rape. ( Bentham 1984 , 355) Homosexual sex generally produces pleasure, not pain, since its practitioners prefer it and are willing to engage in it. If one of them is unwilling, it is no longer homosexual sex but rape. Consequentialism evaluates homosexual sex based on its consequences. Roughly speaking, actions are morally right if they produce good consequences. If an action produces both good and bad consequences (as any action is likely to do), the good consequences have to outweigh the bad ones for the action to be right. Moreover, if there are a number of actions each of which produces more good than bad consequences, the right (or best) action is the one that produces the most net good consequences. If each action produces good and only good consequences, the right one is that which produces the best consequences. If each produces more bad than good consequences, the right one is that with the least net bad consequences. If each produces only bad consequences, the right action is that with the least bad consequences. Both Bentham and Mill were utilitarians: the consequences that mattered were pleasure and pain. And although Mill accepted the idea that higher-level pleasures carry more weight in the moral evaluation of actions, Bentham did not; an action is better than another only if it yielded more net pleasure, no matter the quality. Thus, to Mill the decision as to which action is better than another is more complicated than to Bentham, because the assessment of actions is not simply a matter of whether there is more pleasure or pain. Consider an act of contemplating a scene in nature that yields, say, 50 units of net pleasure and a sexual act that yields 75 units of net pleasure. Whereas Bentham would claim that the latter is the preferred one, with Mill it is not so clear. In any case, most consequentialists today do not consider pleasure and pain to be the only relevant consequences. The following discussion relies on the general theory of consequentialism rather than utilitarianism in particular. Preliminary Points There are a few points that must be kept in mind for a better understanding of how consequentialism works. Let us discuss them specifi cally in connection with sexual practices and actions. Notion of Consequences What is meant by “good” and “bad” consequences? Classical utilitarians like Bentham and Mill understood them to mean pleasure and pain. Other consequentialists understand the consequences differently, such as in terms of

202 Sex “desire satisfaction” (not every pleasure takes the form of satisfying desires, and not every satisfi ed desire takes the form of a pleasure, so the two are not the same). I do not adopt any specifi c view of consequences (e.g., pleasure vs. desire satisfaction). Instead, I assess sexual acts in terms of their tendency to lead to having children, foster love and friendship, and maintain or promote the well-functioning of society in general (good consequences), and their tendency to lead to diseases, the breakup of marriages or friendships, the enhancement of patriarchy, and offense to the public (bad consequences). So I rely on a commonsense list of what good and bad consequences are, leaving it to consequentialist theorists to decide how their goodness and badness are to be understood. Whom Do the Consequences Affect? We need to also ask about whom the consequences affect: The immediate parties to the sex act? Their friends and family members also? Their colleagues at work? Society at large? All humanity? Future humanity? Other sentient creatures (e.g., animals)? It is often diffi cult to trace the consequences of singular acts to humanity at large, let alone future generations (it is easier when we talk about universal, scientifi c phenomena, such as global warming). Consequentialists do not normally put limits on how far and wide the consequences should matter, and for good reason: if someone does something today that has horrendous effects on the future of humanity, these consequences obviously matter, even if we do not know what the consequences are or how far into the future and how widely across people they extend. Of course, and unlike, say, the actions of high-level politicians, the consequences of our regular daily actions do not normally extend far and wide. But the point is that how far into the future and across people the consequences extend likely depends on the nature of the action or practice itself. When we cannot know the full extent of the consequences of an action or practice, we must nonetheless make as accurate a prediction as possible about them for purposes of the moral evaluation of the action or practice. Indeed, making accurate predictions is necessary not only for actions whose consequences are far-fl ung but for any action whatsoever, because we are never in a position to know (with certainty) what an action’s consequences are. We have to consider each sexual action or practice on its own merits and make as accurate as possible a prediction about its effects. Which Sexual Acts? Consequentialists usually distinguish between actions and practices (practices can be thought of as a series of actions), and this distinction applies to sexual activity: there are sexual acts (a client having sex with a prostitute), and there are sexual practices (prostitution). The consequences of John paying Jill to have sex with her might be confi ned to a handful of people, but the consequences of having prostitution in society are extensive (whether the consequences are

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 203 overall good or bad is not yet the issue). Indeed, most moral discussions of sex address practices, not individual actions: heterosexual intercourse, masturbation, prostitution, pornography, homosexual sex, and all sorts of practices often considered perversions, such as bestiality, incest, and pedophilia. 6 Private vs. Public, Secretive vs. Public Sexual activity is usually private, not public, and its details are usually secret, not public knowledge. Still, what is private and what is secretive are not the same. Many of the things we do in private, and which would be embarrassing to do in public, such as bathing, using the toilet, being ourselves at home, and having sex, are not secret: It is not a secret that Mary got pregnant by having had sex with her partner Martin, but the details of their sexual acts are. 7 The two dimensions of privacy and secrecy are crucial in evaluating the morality of sexual acts. Sex in public has very different consequences from sex in private, whether we are assessing individual sexual acts or social practices, and the consequences of the public disclosure of the details of people’s sexual acts are very different from their non-disclosure. Offense Sex, in some way or another, is always offensive to someone or some group of people. This raises the question of how we are to weight the reactions of the public to sexual acts and practices. If the public were to be offended or shocked by the knowledge of the sexual shenanigans of two famous people, should we give any moral weight to this offense and shock? If yes, how much? If the public is dismayed by the mere knowledge that homosexual sex goes on in its midst, how much weight, if any, should we give this dismay? Similar questions may be asked about all sorts of sexual practices that are likely to offend or dismay one segment of the public or other. Act vs. Rule Consequentialism Act and rule consequentialism are two important versions of consequentialism. Act consequentialism evaluates the morality of actions by considering each act itself; it asks whether this act is right or wrong by looking at the consequences of the act in question . By contrast, rule consequentialism evaluates an action by considering whether it violates some moral rule or other, whereby the moral rule is justifi ed consequentially: it is a rule that, if conformed to by everyone or almost everyone, would lead to good results. For example, an act consequentialist would check whether a particular act of adultery is right or wrong by looking at the consequences of that act: Whom does it benefi t? Whom does it harm? A rule consequentialist would (roughly) claim that this adulterous act is wrong because it violates the rule, “Do not commit adultery,” a rule that, if followed by most or all people, would have good results.

204 Sex Both act and rule consequentialism evaluate actions, fi rst and foremost, though the former does so directly and the latter indirectly through rules. But both can apply to practices as well, in which case they would have to evaluate the practice directly by asking what its overall benefi ts and harms are. With act consequentialism, the answer is not to be inferred directly from the evaluation of an action (and instance) of the practice: if an act of prostitution is benefi cial it does not follow that prostitution as a practice is. However, rule consequentialism applies directly to practices, because in asking about the consequences of an action were that action to be performed widely, it is in a way asking about the results of a practice. Keeping these points in mind, let us delve into a consequentialist discussion of the morality of sex. Consequentialism and Sex Generally speaking, sexual activity gets (or should get) two thumbs-up from consequentialism. It gives pleasure to the participants (and causes little or no pain to its participants and others), including sensual pleasure, the pleasures of passion, and those of emotional intimacy. Heterosexual intercourse is the usual way by which children are conceived, and since by having children we continue the species, having children then is a good thing. 8 Sexual activity often also leads to new friendships or loves, or to cementing old ones—another good consequence. However, once we move away from the general level, things become complicated. Sometimes, heterosexual sex has bad consequences: literal pain (e.g., the man’s penis is too big for the woman’s vagina), transmission of sexual diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and the break-up of good friendships. So just because a type of sexual act generally has good consequences does not mean that every instance of it has good consequences. The opposite is also true: some types of sexual acts generally have bad consequences (e.g., adultery, bestiality, necrophilia), but some of their instances have good ones. Let’s begin with rule consequentialism. When it comes to sex (and other areas perhaps), rule consequentialism (and other rule-reliant theories) would have strange and unacceptable results if it were to formulate moral rules that require sexual actions, such as “Have homosexual sex!” Unlike rules such as “Be honest,” “Be kind,” and “Be charitable,” no one is required to have any type of sex at all during his or her life, not even heterosexual sex. 9 This means that rule consequentialism will have to issue mostly negative rules, such as “Do not have gay sex,” “No sex with animals,” and “Adultery is prohibited.” Bearing these points in mind, let us address the evaluation of singular sexual acts. Suppose that Bob and Bonnie have sex. An act consequentialist would evaluate their action on its own merits, tracing its consequences to Bob, Bonnie, and other relevant parties. A rule consequentialist would have to see whether the sex between them violates a rule that, if followed, is conducive to good consequences. However, we won’t know whether the sex violates this rule until

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 205 we know more about the sex between Bob and Bonnie: Are they strangers and is the sex between them casual? If yes, do they use the necessary precautions? Are they married, and to each other? Does the sex involve anything weird, like urine, feces, or an animal? Are they brother and sister or related in other close ways? Do they have oral sex, anal sex, penile—vaginal sex, mutual masturbation, or two or more of these? Do they consent to the act? Do they perform the act in private? The answers to these questions are important because, for example, if Bob and Bonnie are brother and sister, their sex violates the rule prohibiting incestuous sex (a plausible rule given that most incestuous sex leads to some very harmful results). If Bob did not consent to the sex, the sex violates the rule against rape. If there’s a rule against bestiality, and both Bob and Bonnie have sex with their dog, the sex violates the rule, and so is wrong. There are some factors that a rule consequentialist would insist be part of any rule about sexual behavior: consent, the private performance of sex, the use of necessary precautions, and anything else needed to avoid serious harm or damage not covered by the fi rst three factors. Rules prohibiting sexual acts involving lack of consent, that are performed in public, that have a high probability of transmitting serious diseases, or that involve other types of serious harm would be endorsed by the rule consequentialist, because these rules have highly benefi cial consequences (and because the wide practice of these acts would lead to serious damage or harm). For example, nonconsensual sex is likely to lead to harmful consequences for the non-consenting party in the form of physical damage and psychological trauma whose effects can be longlasting. It may even lead to harmful effects to the consenting party in the form of guilt that can be long-lasting. Sex in crowded public places likely leads to major disruptions of daily life, especially since sex always captures people’s attention ( Riley 1998 , 180). Since there is rarely ever a reason to perform sex in public, rule consequentialism is likely to also prohibit it (sex on stage in sex clubs is sex in front of a public, but the space itself is private in that it is not forced upon people who do not wish to see it, so it is not the same as public sex). Sex that does not involve precautions where such precautions should be used (e.g., anal sex) would be prohibited, and sex that has a high risk of transmitting diseases but that could not involve precautions (e.g., sex involving ingesting urine or feces) would also be prohibited, because sexual diseases are obviously bad and, if left unchecked, have a multiplying effect. There are consensual, private sexual activities (incest and some forms of pedophilia) that would also be banned by rule consequentialism for similar reasons. The rules in rule consequentialism can change depending on changes in technology, medicine, and other transformations. For example, if we evolve to the point of developing a natural immunity to any and all sexually transmitted diseases, any rule against having unprotected sex would be dropped, because having unprotected sex would no longer carry the dangers it carries today. A more realistic example is premarital sex: prior to birth control, rules against premarital sex made sense because of the harmful effects on children and on a society containing many children born out of wedlock. With birth control, such

206 Sex rules are no longer needed, at least not as blanket prohibitions (they can be amended to “Do not have heterosexual sexual intercourse without using birth control if you are not married to each other”). Consider a third example: in most societies, sexism has had a strong cultural presence, and most prostitutes have been women. How we evaluate the morality of prostitution on consequentialist grounds depends on these two factors. If prostitution promotes and abets sexism (an issue I discuss below), rule consequentialism might prohibit it. Change one of these two factors and the rule might change also: if most prostitutes are no longer women but men, promoting sexism may no longer be an issue, in which case the rule prohibiting female prostitution would no longer be needed. Or if sexism were to somehow disappear from society, prostitution could no longer promote it, in which case the rule prohibiting it would also no longer be needed. This raises an interesting point about rule consequentialism. I will illustrate it using an example. Suppose that there is a society in which the majority of its members are so dismayed by homosexual sex (or interracial sex) that they have recourse to mob violence whenever they hear that homosexual sexual activity has occurred. Even though such mob action is stupid and silly (not to mention destructive of life and property), rule consequentialism would have to prohibit homosexual sex based on these consequences, because such a rule would be highly benefi - cial to society. This indicates that something strange has happened in this case: a moral theory declaring an action immoral based on the bigoted or wrong reactions of people. No doubt rule consequentialism would also declare the actions of the mob wrong, but this does not change the fact that they are a consequence of homosexual sex. What to do? We have two options: either rule consequentialism goes by the consequences of actions as these consequences are embodied in ideal or decent people (to rule out such bigoted reactions), or we must distinguish between consequences that should morally count and consequences that should not (each option faces diffi culties). This raises another crucial point about consequentialism. Suppose the reactions toward homosexual sex are not extreme but are confi ned to offense: people are offended, even shocked, by the occurrence of privately conducted homosexual sex among them or by any kind of sex that does not fi t their mores (we can even imagine a society of homosexuals that perpetrates itself by conceiving of children in test tubes, and that is horrifi ed, shocked, dismayed, and deeply offended by the knowledge of any heterosexual sex that occurs in its midst). The people are so offended that they feel disgust and nausea. The question is not so much whether such consequences should be factored in any rule (or even act) consequentialist judgment about the morality of such acts, because, obviously, they should be factored in (they are consequences, after all). The question is how much weight they should be given. Although the people seem genuinely bothered by homosexual sex, reactions of offense, shock, and nausea are not detrimental or seriously harmful (they are usually temporary). Moreover, the reactions are often a function of taste and changing social norms: what people yesterday considered offensive and

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 207 disgusting they don’t even think twice about today. There is also the thought that the nausea and disgust are really the fault of the people who feel them: nobody forces them to dwell in their minds on homosexual sex; if this sex is not causing any other type of harm or damage to society, why mentally linger on it? If they insist on doing so, it’s their own fault. Perhaps because of these reasons, the disgust and nausea of the people of this society should not be given much weight when discussing the morality of homosexual sex on consequentialist grounds. Nonetheless, the above discussion underscores the idea that the notion of consequences needs careful handling, because not all types of consequences should have much of a role to play in morally assessing actions. This vigilance is especially needed when it comes to issues like sex that have proven to rub people’s beliefs and sensitivities the wrong way. How much weight we give to these sensitivities could decide whether we have gone down the right or the wrong moral path. Let us turn briefl y to act consequentialism. In Utilitarianism (ch. 2), John Stuart Mill (1987 ) addresses the objection to consequentialism that we often cannot decide what to do because we have no time to calculate the foreseeable consequences of the action we are thinking of doing. There is some truth to this objection. We sometimes have to make quick decisions and have no time to fi gure out the good and bad consequences of our actions before we act. Mill responds to the objection by arguing that the accumulated wisdom of the past has taught us that certain actions are wrong and others are right precisely because we generally know to what effects they lead. If you have to quickly decide whether to lie, chances are that you should not, because, as experience has shown, lying usually has bad consequences that outweigh, at least in the long run, its good ones. Act consequentialism, then, could rely on rules of thumb that are the product of accumulated wisdom. Of course, act consequentialism sometimes counsels to break these rules and to assess the action on its own merits. Thus it is acceptable on act consequentialism to violate these rules of thumb. Given that act consequentialism relies on rules of thumb but allows for exceptions to them, the question arises as to the role, in act consequentialism, of consent, privacy, and precautions against diseases and any serious harm or damage. The reason this question arises is the following: because act consequentialism permits breaking the rules of thumb when an action leads to overall good consequences, it has to consider these factors defeasible were such an action to occur. For example, if somehow x ’s rape of y leads to highly benefi - cial consequences, with minimally bad ones, act consequentialism would have to consider this act of rape right. If having sex with Mario Lopez in public leads to highly benefi cial consequences, the action would be right. And so on. (This rule violation is not confi ned to sex acts, but to any type of act: murder would be deemed right if it leads to overall good consequences.) Many people would balk at this, fi nding it highly disturbing, for example, that an act of rape or pedophilia is morally right simply on the grounds that it can lead to highly benefi cial effects, especially if the recipients of these effects

208 Sex were people who are not party to the sex act. They would claim that no matter how good the results are, rape is wrong. Act consequentialists might reply that we need to be careful in constructing our cases. It is one thing to say in the abstract that there can be a case of rape with highly benefi cial results, but another to provide the details of this case. Details are crucial because they might show that no convincing case can be made of a rape that leads to highly benefi cial results. And even if such cases can be made, they will likely be theoretical, not real. Finally, if such a case does actually occur, and if its benefi ts were really quite high and its bad effects quite low, is it so inconceivable that the act is right? Given the above reply, act consequentialism, does take seriously the factors of consent, privacy, protection against diseases, and other harms. But how seriously it takes them is the issue, given its commitment to the evaluation of acts on an individual basis. There is another, connected issue: we saw that for an act of rape to be justifi ed according to act consequentialism, the benefi ts have to be quite high and the costs quite low. Why “quite high” and “quite low”? Why not say that the overall benefi ts have to be, simply, higher than the costs or harms? After all, act consequentialism (and consequentialism in general) does not place limits on how high or low the benefi ts and costs should be. All it claims, really, is that there should be an overall net amount of benefi ts for an action to be right. So if an act of rape yields slightly more pleasure or benefi ts overall, then it should be right. Why, then, the qualifi cations “high” and “low”? (Of course, I am the one who introduced these qualifi cations, not consequentialists, but I did so because otherwise the case would not be even remotely entertained as justifi ed by the audience to this discussion.) One answer is this: our intuitions tell us that for horrendous acts to be justifi ed at all, their benefi ts must be quite high and their costs quite low. But consequentialism cannot adopt this answer, because it considers these acts wrong to begin with and goes on to claim that if it so happens that they yield such a high amount of benefi ts, maybe they are justifi ed. But for a consequentialist, because the act’s rightness or wrongness is decided by looking solely at its consequences, we cannot assume that the act is wrong to begin with, so this answer is not an option. The consequentialist has another answer: a sexual practice (for lack of a better term), such as rape, pedophilia, and prostitution, is a kind of sexual activity in which many people actually engage. With some sexual practices, the fact that many people engage in them means little as far as harmful consequences are concerned. For example, suppose that foot fetishism is a popular sexual practice. Given that it is usually conducted in private, and that it has virtually no harmful effects on the participants, whether we consider acts of foot fetishism individually (action-by-action) or aggregately (a practice) is of no consequence, literally speaking. If anything, the consequences are good: they bring pleasure to the participants. Not so with other practices such as rape and pedophilia. Perhaps some individual acts of rape or pedophilia could have more good than bad effects, but this

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 209 does not mean that an act consequentialist would not prohibit them, because as an aggregate , acts of rape and pedophilia have very harmful effects. So the reason for prohibiting acts of rape or pedophilia, except perhaps for those that have astronomically good benefi ts and very low costs, is to avoid a slippery slope: allowing some might encourage others and this could lead to a sexual practice in which many members of society engage. Of course, we do prohibit rape and pedophilia, and this has not made them any less of a practice. Nonetheless, not prohibiting them might make them even more widespread. So act consequentialism can prohibit some sexual acts because of their tendency to spread among many members of society. Let us consider the example of prostitution. Consequentialism and Prostitution Even if two (or more) adults consent to a sex act and the other caveats are satisfi ed, it may still be that the sex act, especially as part of a practice, has pernicious results. Prostitution is an apt example here because even if prostitutes and their clients consent to sex, practice safe sex, and so on, female prostitution in general might nonetheless abet and help the bad consequence of entrenching sexism. (Pornography faces a similar charge.) It would then be morally wrong according to consequentialism. Let us consider one attempt at such an argument by the philosopher Laurie Shrage. Shrage argues that because of the way prostitution is understood, practiced, and culturally framed in the United States and similar Western societies, its continued existence leads to pernicious results, namely the perpetuation of “the marginalization of people of color and women in the U.S. and elsewhere” ( 1994 , 125). If prostitution has these effects in US society, and if not offset by benefi cial ones, prostitution would be condemned on consequentialist grounds. In what follows I discuss issues pertaining to women in general, not to women or other people of color in particular. Shrage argues that there are four cultural “principles” (or “beliefs”) that “shape commercial sexual transactions and condition our attitudes to them” ( 1994 , 127). These beliefs, despite being false, support prostitution (and prostitution, in turn, supports them) and imply the lower status of women. Because these beliefs refer to women’s (supposed) lower nature, their symbiotic relationship with prostitution leads to the continued existence of both the beliefs and prostitution. This is a bad consequence for women. Before we proceed with the argument, keep in mind three issues necessary for evaluating Shrage’s argument. The fi rst is whether it is true that our culture has these beliefs and whether, if we have them, they are indeed false (whether it is true that we have false beliefs, basically). The second is how these beliefs help support prostitution and how prostitution helps support them. The third is whether the beliefs are really pernicious to women. 10 The fi rst belief is that of a universal, hard-to-control powerful sex drive, as especially found in men. Shrage argues that this belief is false because other

210 Sex cultures do not experience sexual desire as powerful and hard to control. She gives the example of the Dani people in New Guinea, who, after the birth of a child, forgo sexual activity for a number of years without stressing out about it. She concludes that the Western belief used to rationalize and tolerate prostitution—the belief in a powerful sex drive—is “a purely cultural phenomenon” ( 1994 , 129). Shrage’s argument against the belief in a universal sex drive is inconclusive, because the example of the Dani is singular and not treated in depth. We need additional examples of peoples who don’t experience the sex drive as Westerners supposedly do (or think they do); after all, the Dani could have a powerful sex drive but, for cultural and other reasons, control or repress it better than Westerners do (Shrage acknowledges this; 1994 , 129). Moreover, that the Dani do not fuss about their lengthy postpartum sexual abstinence tells us little about what they feel on the inside. Perhaps, like Westerners, many masturbate privately and do not brag about it. After all, masturbation helps many men and women survive for years without sex with another person. True or false, the belief in a universal, powerful sex drive, according to Shrage, is held by people in the Western world, and it helps rationalize the existence of prostitution: given men’s powerful libido, prostitution provides an outlet for it. We might even think that this is a good thing, because without prostitutes all the horny men would be ravishing honest and chaste women. As the English author Bernard Mandeville noted in his famous The Fable of the Bees , “There is a Necessity of sacrifi cing one part of Womankind to preserve the other, and prevent a Filthiness of a more heinous Nature” (quoted in Primoratz 1999 , 97). In turn, prostitution helps prop up the belief itself: its continued presence leads us to think that prostitution exists because of a powerful sex drive continuously seeking an outlet. Shrage is correct that if we believe that it is mostly men who possess this powerful sex drive, society is likely to treat men and women unequally when it comes to sex. Other serious consequences include the socialization of women into devaluing their sexual desires and preferences and depriving them of sexual power. But the question is this: Is the best—or even good—way to combat these beliefs by prohibiting prostitution? Shrage does not argue that prostitution should be banned or prohibited but that it should be deterred by regulation ( 1994 , 158–161). Nonetheless, if prostitution does lead to these bad effects, it is, according to consequentialism, wrong (setting aside the possibility of having good effects that offset the bad ones). If this means that it should be prohibited, we face obvious diffi culties. In the US, it is already illegal in most parts of the country, but this has not stopped it from fl ourishing. Cracking down on it even more is likely to be much costlier and to make it go further underground. In the past, this didn’t seem to work: King Louis IX of France [1214–1270; known as Saint Louis] tried . . . exile. By banishing large numbers of ladies of the night from the Kingdom he did manage to empty the brothels for a month or so, that is until they

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 211 were fi lled by a generation of new recruits. The king’s edict was repealed. There was another attempt to clamp down in 1635. Pimps were to be condemned to the galleys for life; prostitutes were to be whipped, shaved and banished. This didn’t work either. The supply of prostitutes did not diminish, and the laws were manipulated by men wishing to settle scores with their mistresses by accusing them of being prostitutes. The law banning prostitution remained in full force till the eighteenth century—and was, in fact, the means by which the Canadian colonists were supplied with wives from the dregs of Paris. ( Gordon 2004 , 56) Moreover, the cultural belief in a powerful male sex drive is not only fueled by prostitution but by other practices: the popularity of pornography for both straight and gay men, the cosmetic industry for women that encourages them to continuously look good, the fl ourishing of plastic surgery (especially for women), and so on. The existence of all these practices in turn, and going by Shrage’s logic, supports the belief itself. Perhaps, then, a better way to combat this pernicious belief is by combating it directly, either by arguing that there is no such universal sex drive or by showing that the sex drive is indeed universal, in both men and women, but that women have had to repress and control it more, or exhibit it in nonsexual ways. Today’s popular culture indicates that society increasingly believes that the drive is indeed universal: especially the explosion of so-called reality TV shows and the frank portrayal of women’s sexuality seems to show that women are catching up with men in exhibiting a powerful sex drive. On the off-chance that men do have a more powerful (or more insistent) sex drive, and on the assumption that the existence of such a drive will always create markets for prostitution, one option would be to ensure that the practice of prostitution is fair, genuinely consensual, and healthy. This would sidestep the consequentialist argument that prostitution is bad because it abets sexism— more on this below. Continuing with Shrage’s argument, the second belief is that men are naturally dominant. That is, because men are often the consumers of sexual services (women are rarely clients of male or female prostitutes), this refl ects and supports this belief, especially since the role of consumer usually carries with it a type of authority. Women, even as consumers, are usually not thought to have this authority, since sales people prefer to deal with women’s male companions in business transactions (especially for traditionally non-women-related products such as cars and building tools). This gets worse when women buy sexual services, because they are not supposed to have sexual knowledge even about their own sexual needs and desires ( Shrage 1994 , 129–130). Shrage adds, “The role of sex consumer is an especially awkward role for women, since the transaction they assume the right to lead is a sexual one—an activity where women are socialized to follow their partners, not lead” ( 1994 , 130). She concludes that if we hope to see more equality between sexual partners, we need to abolish the roles of sex provider and sex consumer ( 1994 , 130).

212 Sex But the belief in the natural dominance of men is not as widely accepted anymore, certainly not outside some highly conservative religious circles. It is also a mistake to discuss this belief in general terms and about culture at large. For example, there may still be a large segment of the US population, conservative and non-conservative, that thinks that a woman is not fi t for direct military combat or for construction work (both areas involve physical stress). But few people today believe that women cannot be excellent lawyers, doctors, artists, college teachers, even US presidents (Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the last election), and virtually any other profession considered in the past to be a man’s domain. Nor do sales people prefer to talk to a man if it is a woman who is making a purchase, including when the woman is buying a product traditionally marketed for men, such as cars and power tools. And although women still rarely purchase sexual services compared to men, it is unclear what this shows about the belief in the natural dominance of men, especially given the changes in our beliefs about the other areas just mentioned. Again, a glimpse at popular culture indicates that women are almost taking as much charge as men are when it comes to sexual encounters, so the belief in men’s dominance in this area is also changing, and quite rapidly. Even if the belief about the dominance of men is still in cultural circulation, we need to see how it helps prop up prostitution and vice versa (Shrage is unclear on this point). I think that her reasoning is that being a buyer of sexual services refl ects the view that the buyer is in charge. Since it is mostly men who purchase sexual activities, this refl ects that view that they are in charge. Thus, prostitution is kept alive because men continue to buy it. In turn, prostitution feeds our belief that men are naturally dominant (at least in sexual transactions) because of the background belief that the purchaser is the powerful party (he has, after all, the money). This abets sexism. But we have to be careful. This reasoning, even if true, does not show that we have the belief that men are naturally dominant. All it shows is that we believe they are dominant, because they have the economic, political, or social power. So it is unclear what “natural” means in this argument. Thus, at most, prostitution abets the idea that men are socially, politically, and economically dominant, but this belief is not a normative one: it does not say this is how things should be (note how the word “naturally,” in Shrage’s formulation of the belief, helps give the impression that the belief is natural and thus normal); it is a descriptive one, saying that this is how things are. But a descriptive belief does not abet sexism. Indeed, it might provide a motive for changing the ways things are. The third belief is that sex pollutes women. This is the old idea that the more a woman has sex with different men, the more people think of her as a “slut” or a “whore.” Our culture prizes the sexual innocence of women ( Shrage 1994 , 134). Perhaps because we connect moral concerns too closely with sexual ones, a woman who has too much sex is seen as loose and immoral. In this way, too much sexual contact “pollutes” women ( 1994 , 135). Shrage sees this belief refl ected in the way we talk: women are “fucked,” “banged,” and “screwed,”

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 213 whereas it is the men who do the fucking, banging, and screwing. The idea is that women “are ‘had’ sexually, suggesting that they can be used up; women are ‘screwed,’ suggesting that they can be twisted on their threads; and women are ‘banged,’ suggesting that, in intercourse, they can be bumped and bruised” ( 1994 , 135–136). Prostitutes, of course, are the most “polluted” because they have sexual contact with a large number of men. I do not doubt that many people believe these connections between sex and women’s purity to be true. I can imagine sexual conservatives who hold such beliefs and maybe many teenage boys and men who think this (“Yeah, man, that Susan is a total slut; she fucked all the guys in the neighborhood”—note here the ease with which people today use terms like “fuck,” “bang,” and “screw” to refer to women as active, as they are doing the fucking, indicating that how we use these terms is changing; see Primoratz 1999 , 108). But note two points. This belief may not be as widespread as it used to be. Once again, popular culture provides evidence: many women are sexually aggressive or at least not sexually demure, yet pass uncensored by the people who watch such popular shows (do not confuse this with people lamenting the lower standards of television shows). Interesting here is that few men today (in the Western world, at least, Shrage’s object of discussion) consider a woman’s active sexual history to be an obstacle to her being eligible for marriage—with the general exception, that is, of female prostitutes. This brings me to the second point. It may not be that we believe that too much sexual contact as such pollutes women but that too much sexual contact with many men pollutes them, or, more pertinently, that the kind of sex that women have pollutes them (Shrage acknowledges this point; 1994 , note 24, 207–208). That is, Jane can have lots of sex with John, her husband, without our thinking any less of her. But if Jane has sex with John, Jim, Jerome, and so on, we might change our minds. Or, if we fi nd out that when she has sex with her husband she is into some kinky stuff, this may also make us think less of her. It may be our belief that prostitutes are willing to do just about anything sexually for the right price that makes them fallen human beings. In other words, the (false) image of the prostitute as a fallen woman is an exemplary paradigm of the belief connecting sex with pollution. No wonder Sigmund Freud (1912 ) claimed that the more a man respects a woman, the less he will enjoy sex with her. Whether we continue to believe that sex pollutes women, who the “we” is who believes this, and what the content of the belief is are complicated matters. Sweeping claims about this “culture believing this” and that “culture believing that” are not helpful, let alone true. More important, perhaps, is the issue of how the belief that sex pollutes women props up prostitution and vice versa. I think that Shrage’s reasoning is this: combined with the fi rst two beliefs about the powerful sex drive in men and their natural dominance, is that men, alas, are just going to have a lot of sex; it is part of who they are, and they have the means to do it. So let’s allow prostitution because, if women are going to be polluted by sex, it is better to have one segment of them (the prostitutes) polluted rather than all of them.

214 Sex We accept (or tolerate) prostitution as a necessary evil. In its turn, prostitution props up the belief that sex pollutes women by sending the cultural message that there are special women who are willing to do this “sort of thing.” Of course, the belief that sex pollutes women, coupled with the lack of a corresponding belief about men (if anything, sexual experience in men is often considered a good thing, though conservatives don’t think this) spells trouble for women, because it leads to all sorts of social oppression of women’s sexuality and sexual desires. Moreover, it may very well be that as it exists in America, prostitution lends support to this belief. It thus abets sexism. The fourth and fi nal cultural belief is that our society reifi es sexual practices. This means that we place people into sexual categories: heterosexual, homosexual, pervert, prostitute, pedophile, rapist. We also “mark women in terms of the number of partners with whom they have sex, for example, virgins, harlots, sluts, and whores . . . When we identify someone in one of these ways, we often think we have learned something important about them” ( Shrage 1994 , 137). Shrage notes that such categories are often hollow because they smooth over complexities, such as that many lesbians have slept with men, many straight people are actually confused about their sexuality, and many women successfully undertake male roles ( 1994 , 137–138). Shrage is right that we categorize people sexually and believe they fall into different sexual and gender types, but how does this belief help maintain prostitution and vice versa? These sexual categories do not function scientifi cally, as, say, taxonomies in science, but socially: belonging to a certain category gets you associated with other beliefs and roles about who you are. Being a prostitute means that you have a certain (low) status in society, and not being a prostitute might mean that you have a (higher) status (it depends under which other categories you fall). “Prostitute” and other categories function partly to divide women between bad and good ones. This is an irrelevant, so pernicious division: as people, some women are bad and some are good depending not on whether they are prostitutes, but on their moral characters. So the category “prostitute” partly serves to maintain a false view about who good and bad women are, thus perpetuating erroneous views about women ( Shrage 1994 , 140; cf. Garry 1984 ; Halperin 1990 , chs. 1–2). Despite its many twists and turns, Shrage’s argument against prostitution is simple in essence: prostitution is wrong because it abets and entrenches sexism, and it does so by entrenching the beliefs that support sexism. I have so far been criticizing the argument on the basis that some of the beliefs that Shrage mentions are no longer as strong or as present as they used to be, so prostitution cannot be as wrong as it was because it no longer supports these beliefs as much as it used to. Still, in the fi nal analysis, the strength of Shrage’s argument depends on whether the core reasoning it contains is generally correct. Using a simple analogy, I will argue that it is not. Consider a society that has a number of anti-gay beliefs in cultural circulation (let’s focus on gay men to not complicate things with concerns relating to sexism that arise from discussing gay women): (1) gay men have a powerful

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 215 sex drive, given all the promiscuous sex they engage in; (2) gay men are economically dominant, given all the disposable income that they have (no children means extra money, and being in a relationship[s] means double [triple, quadruple, . . . ] income); (3) sexual contact with gay men is polluting (straight men might turn gay); and (4) people are divided into categories, some with lower status than others. Given these beliefs, society then decides to isolate gay men to special places in the cities so that their sexual practices can be done “in their proper places.” No doubt, the maintenance of such special places for gay men helps maintain the four cultural beliefs about gay men: If gay men were not so bad, why keep them in ghetto-like neighborhoods? Why accord them such special places? Thus, using Shrage’s reasoning, we can arrive at the conclusion that gay sex is wrong because it helps abet these pernicious anti-gay beliefs. But something is wrong with this conclusion and the reasoning that supports it. Consider: There is a gay-friendly way in which it is perfectly plausible to point to the gay neighborhoods and the activities within them and declare that they ought to be stopped because they entrench those bad beliefs, because such gay activities entrench these beliefs by their very isolation , not because they themselves are wrong. That is, it is the stigma of the isolation of the gay activities that entrench the above cultural beliefs. We then need to be careful when claiming that these gay activities are “wrong.” What we ought to mean by it is not that they are wrong as gay sex or activities, but wrong in being isolated. The moral culprit here is not the gay men or their activities, but their social isolation. The same point applies to Shrage’s argument: yes, prostitution is wrong because it abets sexism, but that is because of the way we socially look at prostitution, not because it is prostitution. Of course, female prostitutes would not have the low status that they have were it not for sexism, and the fact that prostitution has existed and continues to exist in a sexist society means that it will have to conduct itself in such a way as to thrive in society. So it has to adopt the mantle of its social environment, which means that it will adopt many sexist views and modes of behavior, and cater to male sexual desires (e.g., women have to dress in specifi c ways that appeal to common male desires), which often come garbed in sexist beliefs. However, this does not mean that prostitution as such is wrong. It is not even wrong in our society, much like ghettoized gay sex in our imagined society is not wrong. What is wrong is the treatment of prostitution in our society. Put differently, because practices, including sexual practices, are enmeshed in the social context in which they exist, we cannot accuse them of being wrong in themselves because they help perpetuate certain cultural beliefs. We need to try to extract them (conceptually) from their social enmeshment to morally evaluate them in a fair way. Moreover, the low status of prostitution in certain societies does not merely refl ect sexist views, but views about sex in general. If, somehow, sexism disappears entirely from society, prostitution would not be greeted with welcoming arms and prostitutes’ lives would not much improve. Male prostitutes—who

216 Sex cater to mostly male clients—also don’t have high social status, certainly not outside the gay male community. (The fact that the gay male community largely views them with indifference, perhaps even acceptance, is mostly a function of the highly liberal views about sex among the community’s members, not its lack of sexism; gay men, more often than not, display highly misogynist attitudes.) So whether female prostitution becomes accepted is not only a matter of sexism, but also of our views about sex. Of course, our attitudes towards sex and towards women are intertwined, and no actual separation between them is easy. But a conceptual one is feasible: as long as, for example, we think that sex should not be sold, should only be with love, or, in short, should be confi ned in certain ways, prostitution will continue to occupy a low status in society. While Shrage’s argument is a consequentialist one based in a feminist framework, there are other anti-prostitution consequentialist arguments. For example, it may be argued that prostitution is bad because it leads to rampant sexual diseases, to unwanted children, to abusing drugs, to crowding jails, to cheapening sexual experiences, to rendering the sexual lives of prostitutes numb and cheap, or to the breakup of good families. Like Shrage’s, these arguments depend on contingent factors. If there were better protection of prostitutes and their rights and better regulation of their work conditions, they might not contract and spread sexual diseases; they might not have to abuse drugs to make more money; they might not crowd already crowded jails; and they might have more control (and charge more) over whom they will have sex with, thus not ruining their sex lives. Moreover, for the above arguments to succeed, we must factor in three things. First, we should not criticize prostitution by abstractly claiming that it leads to this and that bad consequence. We must do our homework and offer a more or less accurate picture of these consequences: To what extent does prostitution break up homes, spread sexual diseases, lead to unwanted children? These cannot simply be asserted but must be shown, and it is not enough to produce one or two cases of hapless men who caught syphilis by sleeping with prostitutes. If the case against prostitution is to be convincingly made, the extent of these consequences has to be deep and far-reaching. Second, consequentialists must tabulate the bad consequences of prostitution under conditions that approximate as much as possible ideal ones: of fair legal and health regulations, of economic fairness, of social and political equality, and so on. Only then can we better trace prostitution’s consequences. Third, consequentialists must also trace prostitution’s good consequences, because what matters are the overall net consequences. And prostitution does have potentially good consequences. These include: (1) pleasure for clients and income for prostitutes, income often higher than what they would earn as cashiers at Walmart or McDonald’s; the lower income is not, by the way, compensated for by a much higher work status (let alone a higher work status that does not depend on society’s prejudice against sex work); (2) sexual outlets for people who have a hard, if not impossible, time fi nding sexual partners (the old, the ugly, the severely disabled, the sick); (3) sexual outlets for people with

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 217 specifi c sexual needs (e.g., fetishes); (4) sexual outlets for those who are too busy to have sexual or love relationships or for those who just prefer anonymous, quick sex; (5) keeping spouses sexually happy by providing them with a sexual outlet with a professional; they don’t have to worry about three-way sex with someone who will favor one more than the other, who will go “fatal attraction” on them, or who will blab about it to others (cf. Califi a 1994 ). Summary and Conclusion Consequentialism, in relying on the results of sexual acts and practices, necessitates a careful examination of data so that we can have a well-founded idea of what these results are. Its evaluation of sex is likely to be inconclusive insofar as we need data that are, due to temporal and geographical distances, inaccessible to us. Moreover, in using consequentialism to evaluate sexual practices and actions, we have to be careful how we select the relevant consequences (people’s reactions?) and how much weight to give them. But the use of consequentialism is a good reminder that when it comes to the moral evaluation of sex based on its consequences, its pleasures and enjoyments are not the only factors in question, despite initial appearances to the contrary. Sex is serious business, with even more serious consequences. Study Questions 1. Think about the pleasures one experiences during sexual activity, and try to classify them into as many types as possible, not just into physical and non-physical. 2. Suppose that there were such a thing as higher and lower pleasures. How is it decided which are the higher pleasures and which are the lower ones? How can we know which is which? 3. Is there a way to defend the distinction between higher and lower sexual pleasures in terms of quality and not quantity? 4. Are there other arguments that show the pleasurable superiority of sex with love to sex without love? Are there arguments that show the pleasurable superiority of sex without love to that of sex with love? 5. Other than pleasure and pain, what types of consequences can or should we take into account in order to assess the morality of actions? 6. Explain how rule consequentialism would evaluate individual acts of adultery and how it would evaluate adultery as a practice. Is there a difference between these two types of evaluations? 7. Give an example of a generally bad practice (because of its bad consequences) and an example of a good instance of it (because of its good consequences). Then give an example of the opposite—of a generally good practice and of a bad instance of it. 8. Given consequentialism and what it claims, should it accept a rule that states, “Have as much consensual, protected, and non-adulterous sex as

218 Sex possible?” Why would it not accept such a rule given that sex usually leads to pleasure? Would such a rule be problematic given that it morally obliges people to have sex? How can a rule consequentialist avoid this rule? 9. How much weight should rule consequentialism give to people’s reactions to a sexual practice? If rule consequentialism is supposed to tell us whether a practice is right or wrong, and if it does so by deciding on its consequences, how can it decide whether to take into account people’s reactions, let alone which ones? 10. Given that act consequentialism accepts rules, albeit rules of thumb, explain the differences between rule consequentialism’s use of rules and act consequentialism’s use of them. Which is more plausible? Why? 11. I argued in this chapter that in using consequentialism to assess sexual practices, we have to be careful how we use people’s bigoted or prejudiced views about the sexual practice when assessing it. Does Shrage’s argument against prostitution rely on people’s prejudice against prostitution? If yes, how? If no, why not? 12. Are there other arguments that conclude that prostitution is wrong on consequentialist grounds? What about arguments that conclude that it is morally right, even obligatory? 13. When evaluating prostitution through the lens of consequentialism, should we use act or rule consequentialism? Why? And should we evaluate prostitution on an act-by-act basis or as a practice? Why? Further Reading For more on pleasure and sex, see Goldman (2016 ) and Singer (2001b , esp. ch. 4). On higher and lower pleasures, Plato is a good start, especially Philebus (1997c). Michael Levin is one philosopher who tries to argue that the pleasures of heterosexual sex are more intrinsically rewarding than homosexual sex; see Thomas and Levin (1999 , 112–132). On the evolutionary function of the clitoris, see Lloyd (2005 ) and Gudorf (1994). On morality in general, two fairly easy introductions are Gensler (1998 ) and Rachels (1986 ). Two more involved but highly readable works are Darwall (1998 ) and Kagan (1998 ). A general introduction to the three moral theories is Baron, Pettit, and Slote (1997 ). On utilitarianism and consequentialism, see Darwall (2003 ) and Driver (2012 ). On consequentialism and sex, see Odell (2006 ). On separating issues of sexism from other issues, see Calhoun (1994 ). A good discussion of the moral status of offense is Feinberg (1985 ). Two crucial treatments of consent are Archard (1998 ) and Wertheimer (2003 ); see also West (2013 ). The literature on prostitution is vast. Some classics include Pateman (1983 , 1988 , esp. ch. 7); Ericsson (1980 ); and Shrage (1989 , 1999 ). See also Anderson (2002 ); Dempsey (2012 ); Estes (2008 ); LeMoncheck (1997 , ch. 4); Nussbaum (1999 , ch. 11); O’Connell Davidson (2002 ); Primoratz (1999 , ch. 8, 2006 ); Shrage (2016b ); and Stewart (2006 ). Bullough and Bullough (1987 ) provide a good history of prostitution, while Delacoste and Alexander (1987 ) and Nagle (1997 ) provide essays on sex work by both sex and nonsex workers.

Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 219 Notes 1. This discussion assumes that there is such a distinction between high and low pleasures, but this is not so clear. 2. The “East” is famous for such books on the subject. India gave us the Kama Sutra and Persia gave us The Perfumed Garden , for example. 3. There is a “natural law” variation on these arguments that attempts to infer what God wants us to do with our bodies and body parts by looking at nature. But the Christian theologian Christine Gudorf says, the “majority [of women] require direct stimulation of the clitoris . . . If the placement of the clitoris in the female body refl ects the divine will, then God wills that sex is not just oriented to procreation, but is at least as, if not more, oriented to pleasure as to procreation” ( 1994 , 65). 4. Of course, sex with marijuana might be more pleasurable than sex without marijuana, so why not discuss that? The reason is that love is special, in so far as it is thought to be a companion to sex. 5. Vannoy himself argues that sex without love is better than sex with love ( 1980 , 23–28). 6. I discuss prostitution below as an example once we have dealt with these preliminary points. 7. The issue is complicated because there is also normative privacy and secrecy: many of the things we do in secret we have no right to do them in secret because we have no right to do them, period, such as taking someone’s life without a justifi catory reason to do so. It is public knowledge that two spouses have sex with each other, but they have the right to have sex in private and to keep the details secret. 8. This is actually a hefty assumption to make as there are very plausible anti-natalist views. See for example David Benatar (1997 , 2006 ). 9. Possible exceptions are rules requiring sex with people to whom we have sexual obligations, but this is not a type of sexual activity. 10. Note that Shrage’s reasoning about the connections between the four beliefs and prostitution is brief; I am supplying what I think are the connections.

Outline of the Chapter In this chapter, we start by looking at the general features of virtue ethics. We then look at how virtue ethics evaluates character, and then at how virtue ethics evaluates actions. We fi nish the chapter with a discussion of virtue and sexual desires for members of a particular race or ethnic group to see whether such desires speak for or against the person’s moral character. Virtue Ethics and Sex Virtue Ethics Virtue ethics is a moral theory that emphasizes the character traits of the person, specifi cally, the virtues—such as courage, wisdom, temperance, justice, kindness, and generosity—and the vices—such as cowardice, ignorance, greed, injustice, cruelty, and stinginess. This is because virtue ethics is interested in the evaluation of persons: who the good and bad people are and the types in between. The theory has many versions, but perhaps its most famous one is neo-Aristotelian—the version that relies on Aristotle’s view, but with amendments and additions. According to Aristotle, virtues and vices are character traits that embody the way that a morally good person desires, feels, believes, and decides in a specifi c area of life about which the virtue is. For example, the sphere of life of the virtue of courage regards the things worth preserving and fi ghting for (e.g., human and, I would say, animal life), and the virtue of courage moderates the emotions of fear and confi dence in the face of danger (the danger that arises in the course of fi ghting for these valuable things). Thus, the courageous person feels the right degree and kind of fear and confi dence as she, for example, speaks up in a hostile crowd in defense of the rights of a hated or oppressed group of people. The coward is either overwhelmed with fear or lacks the needed confi dence to stand his ground. To give another example, the sphere of life for the virtue of kindness is the suffering of human and non-human animals. The kind person feels the right amount of sympathy for the right objects, 7 Sex and Virtue

Sex and Virtue 221 and acts on them appropriately. The person with the vice of cruelty is indifferent to or enjoys the suffering of others, and (perhaps) believes that it is okay to be indifferent to or to enjoy such suffering. A crucial virtue to Aristotle is that of practical wisdom ( 1999 , bk IV). It is the virtue that pervades all the other virtues (it is the connecting thread of all them). This virtue plays two crucial functions. The fi rst is to enable the virtuous person to assess a particular situation and respond correctly. This includes understanding what is going on and deciding what to do. The correct assessment of a situation, when coupled with the presence of the other virtues, triggers in the virtuous person the right emotional response (should the situation require an emotional response at all). For example, the person with the virtue of generosity knows that paying for John’s lunch (again) would not be a generous action given that John is a leech. A person with no wisdom but who has an open-handed nature might continue to pay for John’s lunches because he does not realize that he is being used. The second function of the virtue of wisdom is more general: it enables its possessor to understand what is generally worthy about life and what is not. It is the virtue that allows us to see, for example, the importance of money but to not overvalue it. It allows us to be the kind of person who, for example, laughs off a botched haircut instead of fuming over it for days on end, or who refuses to use companies such as Uber and Lyft because they drive taxi drivers out of business and cause tremendous traffi c jams, even though using them is convenient. Thus, the virtue of wisdom is a crucial one. It orients a person’s character towards the right values and enables her to correctly evaluate particular situations and decide what to do about them. A morally excellent person, then, is someone who is virtuous (who has the virtues), and a morally bad person is someone who has the vices. Aristotle added two types of characters in between the virtuous and the vicious ( 1999 , bk VII). Right below the virtuous person is the continent person. Continent people are good people who do what is right but against their base desires that pull them to do the opposite. Next come the incontinent, people who fail to do what is right because of weakness of will even though they know what the right thing to do is. What sets the vicious apart from the rest is that vicious people, somehow, do not believe that what they do is wrong, which includes believing that what they do is right. For example, Kwame refuses to eat a hamburger at a barbeque because he knows that eating meat is wrong. He does so with no internal friction at all. He displays virtue. Dana refuses to eat a hamburger knowing that it is wrong to do so, but she has to struggle against her desire to eat it in order to act correctly. She is continent. Ito knows that he should not eat the hamburger because it is wrong to do so, but he cannot resist his desire to eat, so, out of weakness of will, he succumbs and eats the hamburger. Akbar does not believe that animals are worthy of much moral consideration, so he thinks it is perfectly okay to eat meat. He eats the hamburger. He is thus vicious. 1 In real life, people might display a mixture of these four types. The same person, for example, does what is fair effortlessly (virtue), does what is

222 Sex compassionate with some effort (continence), always succumbs to temptation when it comes to sex (incontinence), and is uncharitable to poor people thinking that they are lazy and deserve no help (vice). Depending on how we understand the vices, it might be that the large majority of people are vicious in some aspect or other (the example of eating meat is one evidence for this). It is crucial to not confuse virtues and vices with other traits that people have. Individuals have many traits, such as skills (e.g., the ability to easily learn languages), personality traits (e.g., being talkative), tastes (e.g., liking opera), and character traits, which are the virtues and vices. How to distinguish among them is often diffi cult, but think of character traits as moral and of the others as non-moral. Someone who plays the piano well, someone who is cheery, and someone who enjoys good music are not, because of having these traits, morally good people. A cheery person can be unkind, cruel, unjust. A good pianist can be completely self-centered. But the courageous and the kind are (morally) good people. In short, having good non-moral traits does not tell for or against someone’s goodness ( Annas 2011 , ch. 2; McAleer 2015 ). It is important to mention, even though we do not need to elaborate it, that Aristotle and contemporary philosophers who accept his ethics believe also that the virtues are generally necessary for someone to live a good life ( Hursthouse 1999 , ch. 8). That is, for someone to lead a good or fl ourishing life, he or she would have to have the virtues. No person’s life can be good if the person him- or herself were not good. Temperance and Intemperance A crucial virtue that appears on any list of virtues is that of temperance. The vice is intemperance. They are the virtue and vice concerned with bodily appetites, including the sexual appetite. Thus, temperance and intemperance are the virtue and the vice when it comes to sex and sexual activity because they hit at the core of the issue of sex, namely sexual desire itself. Temperance is the virtue that moderates our desires for food, drink, and sex. Traditionally understood, it is about amounts : a temperate person is someone who consumes neither too much nor too little food and drink, for example, whereas the intemperate person eats and drinks too much (the glutton) or eats and drinks too little (there is no common term for this). This understanding of temperance as being about amounts might make sense for food and drink, but it’s mostly nonsensical when it comes to sex, because, fi rst, it is diffi cult to fi gure out what constitutes too much sex and too little sex. Not counting solitary masturbation, is having sex once every day too much? What about sex twice daily? And is having sex only once a week or once a month too little? Of course, someone who desires to and actually has sex fi ve times a day every day might be an obvious case of too much, and someone who never desires sex and never has it (or has it once every two or three years) might be a case of too little. But there’s a gray area between them that is too large to be tolerable.

Sex and Virtue 223 Second, even if we can agree on the amounts, it is not clear why they matter . They matter with food and drink, because the amount of food and drink one consumes have a direct effect on one’s health, no matter what one eats or drinks (one cannot take “precautions” by eating only vegetables, for example, if one eats large quantities of them on a daily basis). But what is wrong with having sex fi fteen times a day if the person takes precautions (e.g., uses condoms)? Any wrongness with such actions is not evident merely by considering the amount of sex engaged in. Below, I will defend the importance of amounts, but in a non-literal way, as referring to the value of sex to the person. For now, we can take it that to be temperate with regard to sex refers to something other than amounts. But what? Although Aristotle discusses temperance in terms of amounts ( 1999 , 1119a15–1119a20), he also states that the temperate person does not desire the wrong things or those that deviate from the fi ne or noble ( 1999 , 1119a15– 1119a19), and that the intemperate person enjoys things to excess (too much) because he enjoys wrong or hateful things ( 1999 , 1118b25). So the temperate person enjoys the right things , whereas the intemperate person enjoys the wrong or hateful things . Aristotle is thus also saying that temperance and intemperance are about the wrong and right objects to consume, not (only) about amounts. To illustrate: To rape someone because of sexual desire (as opposed to, say, assertion of power, in which case the rape would be wrong for other reasons) is to commit an intemperate act, even if the person committing the rape did it only once (a small amount). If someone can only (or prefers to) attain sexual gratifi cation through rape, he would be intemperate, even if he actually raped only once or a few times a year (or never, actually). To have sex with children is wrong. If one desired this type of sexual activity, one is intemperate—not because one desired it all the time or because one acted on it frequently, but because the kind of thing desired —sex with children—is wrong or “hateful.” But if someone who likes “traditional,” non-kinky sex has it with her boyfriend twice a day daily, she has too much sex, but it doesn’t seem to be wrong sex. She is not intemperate ( Halwani 2003 , ch. 3). What sex acts or objects are hateful or the wrong things to desire? They fall into two kinds. The fi rst consists of sexual activities that are, in their “nature,” wrong, such as bestiality and necrophilia. The second consists of sexual activities that are not by their “nature” wrong, but that can be wrong in particular instances. For example, heterosexual and homosexual sexual intercourse and oral sex are not wrong, but some instances or types of them are wrong, such as rape, pedophilia, incest, and (some cases of) adultery. People who sexually prefer or desire these activities are not temperate. Note that we might agree that temperance and intemperance are about right and wrong things to sexually desire, but disagree on what these things are. A religious conservative and a liberal might agree with the fi rst point, yet disagree on the morality of, say, casual sex. They will have different lists of what constitutes hateful and not hateful things to desire.

224 Sex Virtue ethics emphasizes also the issue of the evaluation of character. This goes beyond the obvious claim that someone who is virtuous is good and someone who is vicious is bad and into some interesting issues in moral psychology. First, note the following important point: consider a young, lonely shepherd somewhere who has to tend to his sheep every day. On occasion, he has sexual thoughts that he has a hard time getting rid of, so once or twice every year he has sex with one of his sheep. Assuming that all cases of zoophilia are wrong, this is a wrong act. We might even call it an intemperate one, if it stemmed from sexual desire for the sheep. However, is the young man himself an intemperate person? It depends. We can say “yes” if he generally desires sheep or if he desired the sheep in those specifi c instances. This is because in both types of case he desires the wrong object. However, if he neither desires sheep in general nor in those particular cases, then he is not intemperate (though he has committed wrong or even intemperate actions). How is it possible for him to have sex with sheep and not desire them? It is possible that he desires the sensations of rubbing his penis back and forth into a warm object. If this is his desire, then he is not desiring the sheep as such, but only the sheep as a vehicle for the sensations. Any other object that yields the same result would have suffi ced. However, things are more complicated. Suppose that Buck, Chuck, and Huck’s sexual preference is to masturbate while watching their unsuspecting neighbors (or whoever) undress, have sex (including engaging in solitary masturbation), shower, use the bathroom, or whatever excites Buck, Chuck, and Huck. Buck has no problem indulging his preference: every day at 7:00 p.m. he sits by his living room window, peeping at the apartments in the highrise building across from his own, searching for good-looking women who are doing whatever turns him on. Chuck is slightly different. He is able to resist the temptation to act on his preference, so he never actually peeps at anyone. However, he spends quite a lot of time fantasizing about peeping at this or that person, and he spends quite a lot of time planning all sorts of peeping schemes. Although he goes to all this trouble, he can never bring himself to actually peep because he knows that it is wrong and this knowledge is enough to deter him from undertaking the fi nal step. Finally, not only does Huck not actually peep at people, he also does not fantasize about it or plan it. He simply does not want to be that kind of person and has been able to train himself to not dwell on his preference, to not cultivate it. Occasionally, when it crosses his mind to peep at someone he fi nds especially good-looking, he thinks about it, but he does not give it a second thought. Are there moral differences between these three people? According to virtue ethics, yes. Buck is the worst: he is a full-fl edged intemperate person (if he regrets his actions, however, he would be merely incontinent, according to Aristotle, someone who does what is wrong but also feels bad about it). Chuck is what Aristotle would call a continent person: he has the desires but is able to resist acting on them. It is Huck who is the temperate one among them, because he is able not only to not act on his desires (continence), but to more or less

Sex and Virtue 225 exorcise them from his character: they play no role in how he conducts his life in general or his sexual life in particular. Someone might object that Huck is not really temperate because he, somewhere in his character, still has this preference. However, sexual desires are often deeply ingrained in us (possibly since childhood) by processes over which we have little control, and they tend to be diffi cult and even impossible to expunge completely. Thus, the most we can ask for if we are to be realistic and if we are to make temperance within our reach is someone like Huck— someone who has these desires and preferences but who does not allow them to play any role in his psychic or practical life. Of course, if someone does not have these bad desires and has normal sexual desires, he or she would also be temperate ( Halwani 2003 , ch. 3). But there is more to temperance, and it has to do with the role of sex in human life. No doubt, sex is important. It is the way we procreate and bring new human life into the world. Having sex often means that we decide whether to bring a new person into existence, and, regardless of what you think about the nature of existence, such a decision is very important—for you and for the new person. However, from what we know about the history of humanity, sex has always been pursued for another crucial end: pleasure. Sexual pleasures are in many ways unique and the way they feel is unlike other pleasures. There is something so seductive and powerful about sexual pleasure that succumbing to it is very easy, whether in cases in which it is right to yield to it or in cases in which it is wrong to do so. The fact that it is harder to obtain than, say, a meal, especially through moral means, makes experiencing it rarer and hence more enticing or desirable. Yet sexual pleasure, though important, is not so important as to come at the expense of other things in life, such as maintaining one’s dignity, maintaining friendships and proper relationships with others (especially signifi cant others and friends), and taking adequate care and guarding the interests of those who are weak and in need of our help (which includes not exploiting them). Thus, it seems that someone who pursues sexual pleasures at the expense of these things pursues sex “too much,” even if his objects of sexual desire are “right.” 2 For example, someone who tries to have sex every day with a new person seems intemperate. Even if this is not done at the practical expense of other things—that is, even if the person does not actually neglect, say, his friendships to pursue sexual activity because, say, he has no friends or his friends are far away from him—he still wastes his time. Much like someone who spends his life collecting bottle caps or counting blades of grass (not as part of a work of performance art) wastes his life, someone who spends his life chasing after sexual pleasures also wastes his life. Of course, such cases do not usually exist (if they do then we would promptly declare the person mentally or emotionally off in serious ways), but they illustrate and help us think about the point about the value that sex and sexual pleasure should have in life. Why believe that the relentless pursuit of sexual pleasure is a waste? Why is it worse than, say, pursuing aesthetic pleasure by going museum-hopping all

226 Sex the time? The pleasures of sex tend to be brief—they last as long as the sexual act lasts (under normal circumstances). They are also not deep—they do not leave a lasting impact on us (do not confuse the constant craving for sex with the depth of the impact of its pleasures). The pleasures of sex are also attained at a moral price, that of objectifi cation (as I will argue in the next chapter). They are also attained at a rational price, insofar as they overpower our reason. For these four reasons, it is wise to not endow them with much value. It is instructive here to compare the value of sex with that of food. We also tend to believe that a life spent on the pursuit of eating pleasures (and do not confuse such a life with that of a food critic’s) is a wasted life, for reasons similar to those that apply to sex. The pursuit of the pleasures of eating is considered worthwhile to the extent that it does not come at the expense of other things and to the extent that we need it to survive. Thus far, the pleasures of sex and of eating are similar. The pleasures of eating are also considered fl eeting and do not leave much impact on us (except for craving more). The pleasures of (non-vegan) eating also involve serious objectifi cation (much more serious than that involved in sexual desire). Thus, similar reasons apply to both cases. Because a virtuous person is someone with wisdom, and because wisdom includes the ability to discern what is important in life and to distinguish it from what is not, no virtuous person can pursue sexual pleasure by desiring the wrong sexual acts or objects, or by pursuing sexual pleasure at the expense of important things. Thus, Aristotle was right that temperance is, in a way, about amounts (though not only about amounts), except that we must understand the notion of “amount” in terms of what is worthwhile in life to pursue. A temperate person is someone who sexually desires the right objects and has sex in such a way that does not overvalue sexual pleasure. Does this mean that sex workers cannot be temperate? One might object that if sex plays a crucial, pivotal role in their lives, then they are not temperate given the above reasoning, for they seem to overvalue sex and sexual pleasure. Though many conservative people are happy to fi nd any fl imsy excuse on which to condemn sex workers, we should avoid this conclusion because being a sex worker does not in itself tell us one way or the other about her or his virtue and moral character. Indeed, once we remember that sex work is basically a type of work, we can see that it need not involve the overvaluation of sex and sexual pleasure. People in the sex industry are not usually in it because they love sex so much that they choose this line of work (although that helps, especially in the case of people in the pornography industry). They are in it because of the money and a few other reasons. ( Halwani 2003 , ch. 3) Not all lines of work are, of course, morally neutral in this way. One can pretty much kiss virtue good-bye if one works as, say, part of the security detail for a dictator (or any horrible person in a position of power), in an animal slaughter house, as a political torturer, or as an assassin, to name a few examples, even if one had little choice but to work in such morally compromising jobs. But sex work does not seem like this. In general, it is not the kind of work that directly or immediately compromises one’s virtue.

Sex and Virtue 227 No doubt many objections remain: (1) Is this position anti-sex? Why cannot sexual pleasure be as valuable as other pleasures? Why can it not be as valuable as intellectual pleasures? If Raja Halwani spends his life pursuing intellectual pleasures, why cannot someone else pursue sexual pleasures or, more generally, pleasures of the body? (2) What about people who do enter the sex industry because they like sex a lot? Have they wasted their lives (or half of their lives, given that the sex industry leaves virtually no room for older people)? (3) Is there room for someone to spend his life pursuing sexual pleasures but not waste it? Consider someone who pursues gustatory pleasures as a food critic, or someone who is simply curious about the complex pleasures of the palate. Might there not be a sexual counterpart to him? I (cowardly) leave the answers to these questions to the reader to tackle, especially because they are not about virtue and vice as such, but brief answers might help guide thinking. I gave the answer to (1) in the preceding six paragraphs. Regarding (2), people who enter the sex industry because they like sex a lot need not waste their lives insofar as working in the industry is generally benefi cial in the ways that work usually is: putting food on the table, enjoying one’s work, allowing one some leisure time to pursue other non-work projects, yielding benefi ts to others, and so on. That is, becoming a sex worker is not necessarily a manifestation of the over-valuation of sex. Regarding (3), if there is indeed a sexual counterpart to the food critic, that would not be wasted life by any means, though it remains to be seen what a sex critic “looks like” (remember that food critics have to taste the food they are critiquing, and art critics have to watch or otherwise engage the artworks they are critiquing). I now turn to how virtue ethics evaluates sexual actions. Virtue Ethics and Sexual Acts Aristotle lists a number of factors that make an action virtuous. He tells us that the virtuous person is someone who knows what the right thing to do is (she does not do the right thing by accident, so to speak), chooses to do it (she is not coerced to do it), does it easily, effortlessly, or willingly (she does not have to struggle with herself to do the right thing), does it from the right motives (not from bad ones), takes pleasure in doing it (does not feel pain in or regret doing it), and does it from a stable character (the action is not out of character for her). Aristotle seems to have in mind a picture of the virtuous person as someone who is as close to being morally perfect as possible ( 1999 , bk II). Call these conditions Set B (“B” for “basic”). Some of the above conditions are doubtful. Suppose that a virtuous person has to tell someone a diffi cult truth: Valerie has to tell Aidan the truth (after he confronted her with the question) that, yes, his wife has been cheating on him for the last fi ve years, like he suspected. Although Valerie knows that telling Aidan the truth is the right thing to do, although she decides to tell him the truth (chooses the action), and although she tells him the truth from the right motive ( because it is the right thing to do), she does it neither effortlessly nor takes

228 Sex pleasure in doing so. She struggles to tell him, knowing how painful this will be to him, and she feels horrible for causing him so much pain. (Indeed, if she enjoys telling him this information, we would think that she is not virtuous.) Aristotle himself admits that when it comes to acting courageously, the virtuous person takes no pleasure in it, given that it involves doing fearful things, such as facing death ( 1999 , 1117a30–1117b20). Still, Set B provides us with a generally plausible set of conditions of what a virtuous action is. Note that a virtuous action is not the same as a right action: while every virtuous action is a right one, not every right action is virtuous because it might have or lack something that the virtuous action does not. Valerie’s telling Aidan the truth is the right action, but if she takes pleasure in relaying it, it would not be virtuous; or if she does it for the sake of destroying Aidan’s self-confi dence, it lacks the right motive. Things, however, are more complicated because Aristotle also lays down a set of conditions different from Set B for what a virtuous action is, namely, that a virtuous person does the right thing, at the right time, with the right person, for the right reasons, in the right way, and so on ( 1999 , 1109a25–1109a30). That is, the virtuous person nails the action on the head with respect to all the relevant factors. Having sex with your boyfriend is fi ne, but if you do it at a funeral, then no, because that is the wrong time and place. Giving your friend a present for his latest accomplishment is right, but giving it to him hurriedly because you are in a rush is not the right way (it is better to wait for another day). So all the factors that go into making an action right need to be accounted for by the virtuous person. Call them “Set F” (“F” for “factors”). Fortunately, since one of the virtues, according to Aristotle, is wisdom, the virtuous person would get these factors right (remember that according to Aristotle one main function of practical wisdom is to allow the virtuous person to understand a situation correctly and know what to do). By contrast, of course, a non-virtuous person can get any or all these factors wrong. What is interesting, however, is that a non-virtuous person can also get all of them right: a non-virtuous person can, on occasion, do the right action for the right reason, at the right time, towards the right person, and so on. Such cases can be accidental but need not be. The person might say, “Mike would really appreciate this present as a token of my affection so I will buy it for him,” and this has all the hallmarks of a well thought out action. But since a non-virtuous person would also not get all the actions right on many occasions, this raises the question of the connection between Set B and Set F: How are the conditions in each related to other? Aristotle does not make the connection explicit, but a reasonable way to do so is to claim that the conditions in Set B constitute the framework or background conditions for those in Set F. That is to say, the difference between a virtuous person and a non-virtuous person who on occasion gets these factors correctly lies in the idea that that the conditions in Set B are always fulfi lled when the virtuous person gets right the conditions in Set F. That is, the reason why the virtuous person is always able to do the right thing, for the right reason, at the right time, towards the right person, and

Sex and Virtue 229 so on is because she acts from a stable character, with knowledge of what she is doing, out of choice, and from the right motives. These are the framework conditions that ensure that the action is correctly done in all these ways. In the case of the non-virtuous person, no such assurance that conditions of Set B are fulfi lled. Above I noted the distinction between a virtuous action and a right one. We can now see the difference between them better: A right action is one that satisfi es all the conditions in Set F. But a virtuous action is one that that also satisfi es all the conditions in Set B. 3 Let’s turn to sex: What would be examples of virtuous and vicious sexual acts? And what would be examples of right but not virtuous acts, and of wrong but not vicious acts? The following are a few examples to illustrate the differences. (1) Ahmad meets William in a gay bar. They have a nice conversation and Ahmad invites William to have sex at his place. William agrees. They go to Ahmad’s home and have sex. Ahmad has sex with William knowingly and freely. He does it from the right motive, which is sexual pleasure. He does it with the right person (there’s no reason why he should not have sex with William), at the right time, in the right place, in the right way, and so on. Also, Ahmad is a sexually temperate person: he always has sex with the right person, for the right reasons, in the right way, and so on. He also does not overvalue the role of sexual encounters in his life, thereby not allowing sexual activity to rule and design his life. This is who he is. All the conditions are fulfi lled. This is an example of a virtuous, and therefore also, right action. (2) The second example is the same as the one above, except for one difference. Ahmad is not temperate. He sometimes has sex with the wrong people or for the wrong reasons and sometimes he has sex at the expense of other important things in his life. Although on this occasion he got all these factors correctly, the action is merely right and not virtuous. Why? Because he is not temperate—he does not do the action from a stable and permanent character, as Aristotle would put it. (3) The third example is the same as the fi rst except for one difference. In addition to being temperate, Ahmad is also deeply kind. As he talks to William, he can sense how much William is attracted to him, and, even though Ahmad had promised himself to go to bed early that evening, not wanting to disappoint William, he has sex with him. He does sexually desire William, but his motive for the sex is generosity and kindness. This action is virtuous and therefore right, but its motive is nonsexual. The example illustrates the crucial point that the evaluation of sexual acts under virtue ethics need not always involve temperance and intemperance. (4) The fourth example is the same as the fi rst except for one difference. Although Ahmad is temperate, he is also arrogant. As he talks to William, he realizes that he is not particularly attracted to him. But, sensing

230 Sex William’s desire for him, Ahmad takes pity on him and decides to have sex with him to let William know what “Heaven feels like.” This action is vicious because it is done from arrogance. It is therefore also wrong, though its wrongness is not severe. 4 (5) The fi fth example is the same as the fi rst except that Ahmad is supposed to be in a monogamous relationship with his boyfriend Miguel. Ahmad believes that monogamous relationships are silly, so he does not live up to them, and he does not bother to be honest about this with Miguel because he believes that Miguel does not fathom deep philosophical thinking about these issues. He thus justifi es cheating on him, and Ahmad has sex with William. This action is vicious because intemperate and deceptive, and therefore also wrong. (6) The sixth example is similar to the fi fth in that Ahmad does have a boyfriend (Miguel) and they are monogamous. Ahmad does not want to cheat on Miguel and knows that it is deceptive. Out of weakness of will, however, he succumbs and has sex with William. Since, according to Aristotle, intemperance involves the belief that what one does is right, the action is not intemperate and thus not vicious (see note 1). It is still a wrong action however. Note four points by way of summary. First, in discussions of virtue ethics and the evaluation of sexual acts (and other acts), we must always keep in mind the distinction between right actions and virtuous actions. Second, given that many sexual actions can have a nonsexual primary motive—vengeance, kindness, compassion, cruelty, and so on—sexual acts can be right or wrong, virtuous or vicious for reasons not related to temperance and intemperance. That is, the evaluation is based on whichever virtues and vices play the crucial motivating role, which are not always temperance and intemperance. Third, and although the role of consent is crucial in virtue ethics—no action can be right or virtuous if it is nonconsensual—consent is not suffi cient for an action’s rightness or virtuousness: if the action is vengeful or done to cause harm, the fact that the parties consent to it is not enough for the action to be right. It is still a harmful or vengeful action. Suppose, for example, that Sadie hates Allison and desires nothing more than to humiliate her. Suppose that Allison enjoys sexual humiliation and being called names as she is having sex. Sadie proposes to Allison to have sex with her and to severely humiliate her during the sexual act. Sadie is clear with Allison that the humiliation will be real in that it stems from her hatred towards Allison. Allison, tempted by the prospect of sexual pleasure, and attracted to Sadie, agrees to the act, even though she feels shame at agreeing to be humiliated by someone who genuinely dislikes her. This act has the universal consent of all the relevant parties, yet is vicious given the motives of both women— Allison’s allowing herself to be degraded and Sadie’s genuine humiliation of Sadie.

Sex and Virtue 231 Fourth, we have seen in Set F that one of the conditions is that the action be done for the right end or goal. What right end? Sexual actions admit of many such ends: people have sex to attain pleasure, to give pleasure, to express love or affection, to procreate, to make someone fall in love with them, and so on. They also have sex to humiliate someone, to use them for their selfi sh pleasure, to make them emotionally vulnerable, and so on. Some of these ends are right while others are not. And even among the right ends, some might be wrong in particular circumstances: the end of procreation might not be right when the couple already has many children. 5 The end of expressing love might not be right if it is to the wrong person or to an animal. The idea of “right end” makes sexual acts interesting in comparison to nonsexual actions. Consider a case of acting courageously: You are walking down the street and see a woman being harassed by a man who seems drunk and belligerent. The woman seems uncomfortable and at a loss as to what to do. Interfering and helping the woman is the right thing to do. Indeed, it is not optional : once you make an accurate assessment of the situation, there is only one thing to do, which is to help the woman; failure to help the woman is an abrogation of moral duty. 6 In other words, once we discern what the right end is, we realize that what needs to be done is obligatory. This, however, raises the question of whether there are any sexual ends that are obligatory, not merely permissible. Perhaps we have sexual obligations to people with whom we are in relationships that include sex, such as marriage and love relationships in general. One is not obliged to have sex every time one’s partner asks for or demands it, but one is obliged to “put out” every so often. Think of it this way: if the other partner says, “Have sex with me or I will break up with you,” the threat of breaking up would be perfectly acceptable. The tough question is whether we have sexual obligations outside relationships with sexual dimensions. Is there a situation parallel to the one above, in which you realize that you need to help the woman, that includes a sexual obligation? Is there a situation in which offering to have sex with someone is the right thing to do? What would an example of this be? (See Soble 2017 ). In the case of every virtue (courage, kindness, justice, generosity) there are situations in which the virtuous person must do something—that is, he or she must act in a way other than refraining from doing anything—a situation in which the right thing to do is obligatory. But it is not easy to fi nd situations when it comes to temperance and sex (by which I mean generally normal situations, not ones in which, say, the fate of the world depends on x fellating y to orgasm). The Diffi culty of Being Virtuous Generally speaking, being virtuous is diffi cult. First, becoming virtuous is diffi cult. It requires the right upbringing and the development of the virtues; to be virtuous is not simply to do the right thing against one’s desires and emotions and bad judgment. It requires a long and diffi cult process of training one’s desires, emotions, and reason to cultivate a character that allows one to “see”

232 Sex what the right action is and what the wrong action is, and to feel or desire exactly what should be felt and desired, given the occasion. Saying no to a third slice of pizza while dying on the inside is not virtuous. Saying no while not feeling internal friction is. Being virtuous thus requires the development of wisdom to have proper judgment and to discern in general what is valuable in life and what takes priority over what. Second, acting virtuously is also hard: getting all these factors in Set F just right is daunting, given that getting only one wrong is suffi cient to make the action defi cient in some respect. This is why it is much easier to act wrongly. Adding to the above diffi culties is the fact that, among the virtues, temperance is an especially hard virtue to attain. Because sexual pleasure is very tempting and powerful, and because sexual desire is rooted in our biology, being someone who is able to put sexual pleasure in its proper place, to see it in the right perspective, to say no to it when necessary without dying a little bit on the inside (let alone say no effortlessly), and to act on it in just the right way is thus quite an achievement. Saying “no” with much internal struggle to the hot guy or gal who wants to have sex with you is human. But saying “no” effortlessly, without internal friction, is divine. This is why being temperate is virtually impossible. But the danger is not simply psychological. It is not just that it is hard for people to pull temperance off because of the nature of sexual desire and our weak psychology. If, as I will argue in the next chapter, sexual desire objectifi es by its very nature, then being temperate becomes conceptually impossible. Racial Desires and Virtue Obviously, people have sexual preferences. These are not the usual sexual orientations, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality, but sexual preferences within them. 7 For example, a straight man with a preference for blonde women, a gay woman with a preference for older women, and a gay man with a foot fetish. All these are examples of sexual preferences—types of people, activities, positions, and so on that people sexually desire. It is rare that someone (who is not asexual) has no sexual preferences. However, some of these preferences are sometimes denounced or considered morally problematic. In addition to what is denounced on the basis of sexual perversion (such as coprophilia, necrophilia, and pedophilia), some claim that having, or not having, preferences for members of a particular racial or ethnic group is problematic ( Zheng 2016 and Coleman, unpublished paper.) Before we understand what the problems might be, let’s understand what racial sexual preferences (as I call them) are (see Halwani 2017b ). Consider Will, Bill, Jill, and Pill, all of whom are white. Will sexually prefers black women. Bill sexually prefers Asian men. Jill sexually prefers Latino men. Pill sexually desires all God’s children—except for black people. “Sexually prefers” here means a few things, such as that, given the choice between a Latino guy and a white guy, and everything else being equal, Jill would prefer

Sex and Virtue 233 to have sex with the Latino guy. It also means that given the opportunity and the right conditions, Jill would have sex with the Latino guy whereas she would not with a white guy (“he’s not worth a whole hour”). “Sexual preference” does not refer to exclusive preferences—Jill does desire white and black guys, but she prefers Latino guys. “Does not desire” means that the person— Pill, on our list—would not have sex with a black person were the opportunity to arise. Pill does not fi nd them sexually attractive (though she need not be sexually repulsed by them). To have sexual preferences for members of a particular group does not mean that one sexually desires every member of that group. If one sexually prefers blond men, this does not mean that every blond man is good-looking to the person with that preference, because such preferences are selective. The opposite can also be true: Pill might still fi nd a few black people sexually attractive. Moreover, such preferences often operate on physical appearance: one is attracted to Latino people because of the way they tend to look—dark skin, dark eyes, and so on. Of course, one can also be attracted to Latino people because of non-physical traits, such as the belief that they are dynamic sexual lovers. Those who claim that people with racial preferences are ethically problematic seem to have a couple of things in mind. They often accuse them of exoticization or racism or both. The idea goes as follows: If x sexually prefers members of group G, then x does so because x has stereotypes about them. Stereotypes are bad, and having stereotypes indicates racism. Therefore, x is racist. Therefore, x has a morally bad character. 8 The argument can apply equally, by the way, to those who have no preferences for members of a particular group: because of stereotypes about members of B, y does not sexually desire them. Thus, y is also racist. The implication is that one cannot be virtuous if one were to have such racial sexual preferences. How so? How would having such preferences go against virtue? Let us assume that people with such sexual preferences have them because they have stereotypes about the racial or ethnic groups that are the objects of their desires, and let us assume that having the stereotypes is not a morally good thing. Moreover, let’s assume that stereotypes are false generalizations. Generalizations can be true while admitting of exceptions (e.g., “Indians have dark skin”), but stereotypes are not even that: “Asians are good at math” is not a true generalization with exceptions; it is just false. Ditto for “Arabs are terrorists.” Let us also assume that all stereotypes have bad content. This isolates the problem to the idea that the issue with stereotypes is not their content, but having them. Someone who believes in them is a bad person for that. 9 This seems to go against virtue in a number of ways. First, because stereotypes are false generalizations, the person with stereotypes has no real wisdom, which is a crucial virtue. For one cannot act rightly if one has crass beliefs about the world, especially ones about the world’s social and political aspects, including groups of people (otherwise, one would have to know all things scientifi c and mathematical to be virtuous, which is implausible). If one

234 Sex does not have the wisdom to know that certain beliefs (e.g., Asian men have hairless bodies, black men have big penises, black women are sexually wild, and Latino men are passionate lovers) are ridiculous, one cannot act sexually correctly in regards to members of such groups. Moreover, if one is motivated to sexually act because of these stereotypes, then one acts from the wrong motive. Getting the motive wrong means getting one aspect (and a crucial one at that) of an action wrong, which means that one does not act correctly. If Jill is motivated to have sex with a Latino man because of her belief that he is a passionate lover, simply because he is Latino, her motivation is wrong (this conclusion would not change if he happens to be a passionate lover!). Ditto for Will if he is motivated to have sex with a black woman because he believes that she is wild in bed. In addition, having sex with members of racial groups merely on the basis of such stereotypes might contravene some crucial virtues, such as that of justice, which enjoins us to treat individuals (and non-individuals) on their own individual terms. Having sex with someone simply because he is black is not to have sex with him because of his individual traits, and this might be unfair to him. I say “might” because it is controversial whether when attracted to others we must be attracted to them on the basis of their individual characteristics. (Of course, this is what normally happens; the attraction is usually on the basis of individual traits, but the issue is whether this is what we should do.) Still, even if this does not go against the virtue of justice, it might go against that of temperance, because desiring someone simply as a black person or as a Latina woman might be desiring the person in the wrong way , whereas they should be desired on bases broader than their racial or ethnic belonging. And getting the way correctly is one of the conditions of right and virtuous actions. Thus, there is a strong case to be made that people with such racial preferences are not virtuous. However, the above arguments face problems. First, we should ask how exactly stereotypes motivate someone to desire a particular individual from the racial or ethnic group in question. We need an account, an explanation, of how these stereotypes work to motivate the person to desire someone. Consider the following example. Jill is in a bar checking out guys. She sees a guy that looks Latino and whom she fi nds sexually attractive. How does her stereotype that Latino men are passionate lovers motivate her to desire this particular man? Does she fi nd him sexy because she thinks that he is a passionate lover? How can she possibly know that? If you claim that she believes this precisely because this is what it means to have a stereotype, then we should expect Jill to desire every Latino man she encounters (not to mention that this point neglects the fact that stereotypes are rarely believed to be true of every member of the group). Yet sexual preferences never behave in this way. Racial attractions do not just mirror the stereotypes which they allegedly accompany or are shaped by. If Jill’s friend tells her, “I’ve had him. He’s really dull in bed” would we expect Jill’s attraction to him to just fi zzle away? It might, but it also might not. Jill might continue to fi nd him sexually attractive despite her knowledge

Sex and Virtue 235 that he is dull in bed. The point is that it is a tall order and quite unclear how stereotypes motivate their possessor to desire particular members of the racial or ethnic group whose members the person sexually desires. Second, the above problem also indicates why the argument that people with racial desires desire the person in the wrong way is also fl awed. This is because racial desires do not normally work by desiring someone simply as a member of the preferred group. Given that racial preferences can be, and often are, highly selective—Jill does not desire every Latino man, much like someone who prefers tall women does not desire every tall woman—people with racial desires do not desire another simply as a Latino, as a black woman, or as an Asian man. The person is desired because of the particular looks or traits that he or she has. The racial preference might act as a fi lter to keep out those individuals who are not perceived to be members of the preferred group. Put differently, the preference targets individuals perceived to be members of the group and who are desirable because of their individual traits. In this respect, there is no obvious difference between someone who desires tall women and someone who desires Asian men. Thus, it is not clear that or how stereotypes motivate someone to desire a particular other person, and it is not clear that the desirer desires this other person merely as a member of the preferred group. It might be true (but who knows, really?) that stereotypes have, during a person’s history, caused him or her to prefer members of a particular group. But if they have, they eventually detach themselves from how the preference targets individual members of that group. Finally, the above arguments against racial preferences rely on two crucial assumptions that are nonetheless implausible. The fi rst is that people with racial desires have stereotypes. This assumption is implausible because it is not obvious that they do (or why all or the majority of them do). Consider a straight man who sexually prefers tall women. When we hear of his preference, we do not think, “Aha! He has stereotypes about tall people (or tall women)!” We just chalk it up to its simply being a preference. Why then insist on stereotypes when the preference is racial or ethnic? No doubt, the subject of race is charged in most parts of the world. No doubt, many races and ethnic groups have troubled histories between them (though not all do). Still, such histories do not tell us much by way of how people come to have the sexual preferences that they do. Some whites during American slavery desired blacks and some did not. Some Arabs desire East Asians (and vice versa) even though there is no bad blood between them. Thus, we cannot argue that these tastes are caused by all sorts of political and social factors in the society where the person with the racial preferences grows up, because this is simply not true; if it is, the causal history is likely to be far too complex than the argument suggests. The second assumption is that the mere having of stereotypes is enough to make one lack virtue. This assumption is also implausible because having stereotypes does not mean that one believes them, let alone that one accepts or endorses them. A person might have stereotypes but not think much of them,