Philosophy 0575: Schedule

Corinna uses a story to draw out the way in which women's sexual desire is often omitted from standard heterosexual scripts. (The related paper by Fine discusses this in detail.) Sex—and intercourse, in particular—is typically presented as something that men want (or, in worse cases, demand) and to which women either consent or do not: something men do to women and women do for men. Of course, that is not how things always are, but it does seem to be how things often are, and these shared 'scripts' shape our understanding of heterosex even when we do not endorse them. (How obvious was it to you what was missing from Corinna's story?)

Consent, Corinna suggests, is of course important, but she wants to insist that it is "ground zero", a minimal baseline, not something for which anyone should have to settle. In a way, she is arguing for a sexual ideal, or an ethical standard, that involves what is sometimes called 'affirmative' or 'enthusiastic' consent. But what's most significant about how Corinna imagines sex might be has less to do with how it starts (though she does have something to say about that) than with what happens within a sexual interaction, with how things might be if there wasn't a pre-defined script for the parnters to follow once they got into bed. She does not go into a lot of detail, but there are many indications of what she has in mind, e.g., "No one moment in sex has been privileged as the apex..." (p. 190). She seems to mean orgasm, but she might equally have meant something else. (What?)

The blog posts by Prickett and Gattuso continue this theme. Prickett's piece artciulates the nature of her own desire for casual sex (sex for sex's own sake, as it were). How does the sexual double standard identified by Corinna surface in her experience? and her desire for something different? Gattuso's article, by contrast, starts to discuss some of the dangers inherent in the standard sexual script. How so?

Although Nagel's paper is ostensibly concerned with the notion of sexual 'perversion', the real topic of the paper is the nature of sexual desire. That said, it is important to appreciate that, while the term "perversion" often has moral connotations, Nagel does not mean to use it in that sense but rather in the sense of 'contrary to the nature or purpose of'. (There's a discussion about the relation between perversion and morality at the end of the paper.) It's easiest to understand this notion from the point of view of a traditional understanding of sex as being for the purpose of reproduction: Any sexual act that does not have reproduction as among its goals would, on such a view, be 'perverse'. That need not imply that there is anything wrong with such acts (though of course there might be, and Catholic sexual teaching at one time regarded all such acts as sinful). But Nagel dismisses the view that reproduction should be understood as the primary goal or purpose of human sexual interaction.

Nagel does nonetheless think that 'perverse' is an evaluative term, in particular, remarking that "the judgment that a person or practice or desire is perverted will constitute a sexual evaluation, implying that better sex, or a better specimen of sex, is possible" (p. 16). And he describes himself as offering a picture of what an ideal sexual interaction would be like.

Nagel begins by considering an argument that there is no such thing as 'sexual perversion'. This argument depends upon what is known as a hedonistic conception of sexuality: Sex, on this view, is to be understood in terms of sexual pleasure; a desire is sexual in so far as it is directed toward the creation of sexual pleasure. And if that is all there is to something's being sexual, Nagel's interloctutor suggests, then no sexual desire is, in and of itself, perverse, though of course some sexual desires might be criticized on other grounds. (As Nagel formulates the view, it involves the claim that sexual desire is an 'appetite', "like hunger or thirst", which seems to suggest that it is a need. It is unclear to me how much of a role that is meant to play, however.)

In response, Nagel claims that even forms of eating might reasonably be described as 'perverse'. (The comparison between eating and sex, hunger and arousal, is quite common.) This, he suggests, is because eating, although it begins (as it were) as a biological necessity, is also imbued with cultural and personal meanings. Nagel insists that hunger is not just an unpleasant feeling that is relieved by eating but "an attitude towards edible portions of the external world..." (p.7). (Put so baldly, that seems wrong: Probably what we should say here is that hunger is part of a larger psychological complex that also involves such atittudes.)

Many of Nagel's suggestions regarding gastronomical perversions are pretty sketchy. Can you fill some of them out for him?

Similarly—and this is a theme to which we'll return time and again—sex begins, as it were, as a biological function, but it too is imbued with cultural and personal meanings. It is precisely what those meanings are or should be that is so contested. And while there is a sexual 'appetite' comparable to hunger (i.e., horniness), it too is bound up with attitudes that are outwardly directed, typically towards other people. Nagel denies, however, that sex should be understood as the expression of some sort of attitude, such as love, towards others. (Solomon, in one of the related readings, develops a view close to that one.) Nagel wants us to think, rather, in terms of what we might call a 'primitively sexual' form of attraction or desire. And he thinks it is important that "the object of sexual attraction" is ordinarily a particular person, and not just certain features of that person. (This is a point often made about love: One might love someone because of certain of their features, but it is the person one loves, not just anyone with those features; one would not be happy with a perfect duplicate of one's beloved rather than the beloved themselves.)

Borrowing from Jean-Paul Sartre, Nagel suggests that the 'natural' development of sexual desire involves a complex interplay between embodied agents. At the first stage, the potential lovers experience just their own sexual attraction to the other. But then they become aware of the other's attraction to them, and of their own effect on the other person. This awareness of one's own capacity to evoke sexual desire in someone else is then itself a source of further sexual arousal. "Sex", Nagel tells us, "involves a desire that one's partner be aroused by the recognition of one's desire that [they] be aroused" (p.12).

Nagel suggests that this same sort of pattern will repeat as we move from the visual to the tactile realm, but he does not develop the idea. Can you?

I often find myself unsure whether Nagel means to be offering us an account of what sex is or one of what sex should ideally be. Which is his concern?

This sort of 'reciprocal arousal', however, doesn't yet seem sexual, unless what makes it so is the fact that the arousal one experiences and intends is sexual arousal. But then, of course, we would need to say what sexual arousal is. One thought might be to do that in terms, again, of some notion of sexual pleasure. But Nagel does not seem to go quite that route. Rather, he emphasizes the bodily nature of the arousal involved, suggesting that "All stages of sexual perception are varieties of identification of a person with [their] body" (p.12). It is not entirely clear to me what that is supposed to mean, but Nagel goes on to suggest that sexual arousal and desire involve "submission to spontaneous impulses" and "domination of the person by [their] body". Indeed, he goes so far as to say that, "not only one's pulse and secretions but one's actions are taken over by the body; ideally, deliberate control is needed only to guide the expression of those impulses" (p.13). What does he mean by that? How attractive is that as an ideal? (And, to raise a question we shall discuss later: Is there something gendered about it?)

In one of the related readings, Janice Moulton complains that Nagel has said quite a lot about fliration and seduction, but not much about sex. Is that a fair complaint? How should we think about what sex is, on Nagel's view? One approach to this question might be to ask how Nagel would have us understand the passage he quotes from Sartre on p. 10.

Nagel says at one point that "...sexual desire leads to spontaneous interactions with other persons, whose bodies are...producing involuntary and spontaneous impulses in them. ...[A]t each step the domination of the person by [their] body is reinforced, and the sexual partner becomes more possessible by physical contact, penetration, and envelopment" (p.13). Or again: Sexual "experience is felt as an assault on oneself by the view (or touch, or whatever) of the sexual object" (p.11). How attractive is that as a picture of what sex is?

Here, then, is Nagel's picture of what an ideal sexual interaction would be like: It is one in which the partners are engaged in a complex form of mutual awareness and arousal. Sexual perversions are then forms of sexual expression that do not have this kind of mutuality. Nagel discusses a number of specific perversions on pp. 14-5. I'll leave it to you to consider how plausible his accounts of these are. But one large question is what, according to Nagel, makes these so-called perversions sexual. What does?

In some ways, Nagel seems to be responding to a tension that we'll spend a good deal of time discussing later. The 'appetite' view can make it seem as if, in sex, we make use of other people to relieve our own sexual unease. But that looks morally objectionable, and it does not look much better just because we're both using each other; nor does it obviously help if I've consented to being used by you. Are there aspects of Nagel's view that might be thought to help with this problem?

It seems as if Nagel has to regard masturbation as a perversion. (I take it that is what he means by "narcissistic practices", on p. 14.) Why? Is that a bug or a feature of his view? (Historically, masturbation very often has been regarded as a perversion. The standard euphemism, for a long time, was "self abuse".)

Goldman's central goal is to offer an account of what sex is that "neither understates its animal pleasure nor overstates its importance within a theory or system of value" but still accounts for both elements (p. 267). His main target is what he calls `means-end analysis' or what Priest, in one of the related readings, calls a `teleological view'. Such views characterize sex as a means to some independent (or "extraneous") end: reproduction, say, or the kind of mutual reflective awareness of which Nagel speaks. Goldman's preferred view "is that sexual desire is desire for contact with another person's body and for the pleasure which such contact produces; sexual activity is activity which tends to fulfill such desire of the agent" (p. 268).

Goldman refers on the first page to "reflective equilibrium". The term is taken from John Rawls's Theory of Justice. It means establishing agreement between one's considered but everyday judgements about something and some set of principles that characterize that thing. So, in Rawls's case, he seeks agreement between principles that tell us what is or isn't just and our considered but everyday judgements about what is just and what is not. So, for Goldman, the idea is that we want a balance between our ordinary judgements of what is sexual and some set of principles that characterize the sexual.

One objection here is that a desire for physical contact is not in itself sexual. How good is Goldman's response to that objection (see pp. 269-70)? Might we say that a desire for such contact is only sexual if it is accompanied by a desire for "the pleasure which such contact produces"? What might be meant by the latter phrase? (Goldman explicitly says that he does not mean to limit this to orgasm (p. 268). But see also p. 283, on which Goldman says that "the satisfaction of desire and the pleasure this brings [are] the central psychological function of the sex act for the individual".)

Goldman emphasizes "physical contact" as an essential element of sex. Should he? Could that aspect simply be eliminated? Or would that lead to other problems?

Section II briefly argues against any conceptual connection between sex and reproduction. The principled objection is that such accounts "fail[] to generate a consistent sexual ethic" (p. 272). (The related paper by Gray discusses such views in more detail.)

Section III discusses the view that sex is an expression of a certain kind of love. There are several objections Goldman makes:

1. This is at best a necessary and not a sufficient condition. I.e., that some activity expresses romantic love doesn't make it sexual.
2. Moreover, it isn't necessary: Sex can express other emotions or none at all (although the argument for this, in so far as Goldman gives one, is the argument for his view).
3. The sort of love involved (romantic love) is relatively permanent, whereas sexual desire can be fleeting.
4. The view does not lead to a consistent sexual ethic.

To emphasize: Most of these objections target the view that what sex is (or what sexual desire is) should be characterized in terms of the expression of romantic love. (The exception is the last.) It does not target the view that sex ought to be an expression of romantic love (or, relatedly, ought to occur in the context of a loving relationship). Nor does it imply "that [sex] it is not a more significant and valuable activity when it is" connected with love (p. 274).

All these objections really need more elaboration. Which seems strongest to you? Can you develop it a bit further? In the case of the third, I think Goldman has in mind that the view leads to an implausible account of what sexual desire is. How might one develop that thought? Regarding the last objection, Goldman's criticism is quite different from the one he makes of the reproductive view. How so? Could that criticism be strengthened?

Section IV discusses the views of Nagel (whom we read) and Solomon (whom we did not), which are more complex forms of the view that sex is a communicative activity. Goldman's discussion focuses mostly on Solomon (and he does a good enough job explaining Solomon's view). He notes that other acts can communicate the same sorts of things that Solomon thinks sex does. But Goldman's deeper criticism is that such views over-intellectualize sex and fail to ackowledge that it is "a physical activity intensely pleasurable in itself" that can be desired and enjoyed simply as such (p. 276). He makes a similar objection to Nagel, suggesting that the "desire that one's partner be aroused by one's own desire" is "egotistical" and not "a primary element of the sexual urge" (p. 277). In section V, Goldman tries to diagnose the root mistake behind these views, suggesting that it is a discomfort with anything "purely physical".

What place does 'casual sex' have in Goldman's analysis? How is that similar to or different from the place it has in Nagel's account or in the other teleological accounts that Goldman discusses?

As we've seen, one criticism Goldman makes of several other views is that they 'do not lead to a consistent sexual ethic'. In Section VI, then, he discusses the moral implications of his view, which are, as he sees it, none. He claims that "There is no morality intrinsic to sex..." (p. 280), i.e., that sexual acts should be judged in the same terms, and on the same sorts of grounds, as other acts. E.g., Goldman claims that "...the fact that an act is sexual in itself never renders it wrong or adds to its wrongness if it is wrong on other grounds..." (p. 280).

Does that seem right? A possible counter-example might be found in sexual assault. Many people do think that sexual assault is worse than other sorts of assault precisely because of the sexual element. Is that a counter-example? How do Goldman's remarks about rape (on p. 281) apply to this worry?

At the end of the section, Goldman considers a broadly Kantian worry that sex often involves using one's partner as a means towards one's own sexual pleasure. He responds that an appropriate sort of reciprocity is enough to address this worry. Thus, he writes: "Even in an act which by its nature 'objectifies' the other, one recognizes a partner as a subject with demands and desires [of their own] by yielding to those desires, by allowing oneself to be a sexual object as well, by giving pleasure or ensuring that the pleasures of the acts are mutual" (p. 283). Does that seem enough to overcome the worry? (We'll spend a fair bit of time discussing this issue later, but it is good to start thinking about it now.)

In Section VII, Goldman insists that sex, though pleasurable and fun, should not be over-valued. In particular, it does not have "the lasting kind of value which enhances one's whole life" (p. 283). It is "essentially self-regarding" and has no connection to deeper values such as love (p. 284). Yes or no? And is this a straightforward consequence of Goldman's view or an optional add-on?

In section VIII, Goldman sketches the concept of sexual 'perversion' that emerges from his analysis. These are cases in which there is a desire that has "the typical physical sexual effects upon the individual" but is not a "desire for contact with another person's body and for the pleasure which such contact produces..." (p. 268). Voyeurism, sado-masochism, and shoe fetishes are gestured at as examples. Goldman says, confusingly, that these are perversions only because they are statistically unusual. That seems wrong, even on his own view, since he has given us an account of what makes a desire sexual, and these desires are supposed not to fit that model. Indeed, it's not clear why Goldman should think that voyeurism is sexual at all (see the bottom of p. 284). So I am a bit puzzled here. If anyone has any ideas about how to interpret these remarks, please do say so.

One other obvious perversion, on Goldman's account, is masturbation (though it is hardly statistically unusual but is, in all likelihood, the most common form of sexual activity). He regards it as "an imaginative substitute for the real thing" (p. 270) or "a release or relief from physical desire through a substitute imaginative outlet" (p. 277)? Is that right? Is masturbation a perversion in the very literal sense of a 'turning away' from the proper object of sexual desire (which, on Goldman's view, involves contact with another's body)?

The central question of Ruddick's paper is whether some sexual acts are 'morally better' than others. There are three main parameters she considers: pleasure, "completeness", and "naturalness".

What's most distinctive of this paper is Ruddick's discussion of what she calls the "completeness" of sexual acts. (She borrows the term from Nagel. It is not well chosen, so see below for what it means.) You should focus, therefore, on what she has to say about that and can probably skim the parts on naturalness and perversion (pp. 91-2 and 95-6), though she does make some important points there.

Ruddick herself confesses that it is not entirely clear what she means by 'moral' value. But I think we can understand her, for now, as talking about what we ought to care about. If some sexual acts are 'morally better' than others, then those will be ones we ought to prefer, at least all other things being equal. See also the top of p. 86 for two characterizations she gives of what makes a sexual act morally preferable to another. Still, the details of Ruddick's general moral views are not what are of interest to us here.

Note that the next three sections of the paper attempt to get clearer about what pleasure, completeness, and naturalness are. It's only in three sections that follow them that Ruddick will consider whether these three aspects of sexual acts are morally significant.

Ruddick first considers the import of sexual pleasure (including, but not limited to, orgasm). Ruddick emphasizes that, while some views emphasize "relief of tension" (see the related paper by Gray), that is quite different from the experience of pleasure. (Pooping relieves tension but isn't typically pleasurable in itself.) Ruddick also wants us to think of sexual desire not as aimed at sexual pleasure but as part of it. (I.e., the experience of sexual desire is supposed itself to be pleasurable. I think.) So sex is, in that way, supposed to be unlike eating: Eating doesn't just relieve hunger but "result[s] in satiety", so that one doesn't want more food; but sexual pleasure is supposed to be "addictive", leading one (except very temporarily) only to want more.

Ruddick struggles a bit to explain what she means by "completeness". As with Nagel, it is supposed crucially to involve "embodiment". Ruddick also echoes Nagel in speaking of sexual desire as something to which we "submit" and which "take[s] over consciousness and action" (p. 88). It is also meant to be reciprocal: "...[I]n complete sex two persons embodied by sexual desire actively desire and respond to each other's active desire" (p. 90).

I struggle myself to understand quite what is meant by "embodiment" here. I'd be curious to hear what others think of the notion.

Ruddick identifies a number of ways in which sexual acts can be 'incomplete'. Fantasizing during sex with a partner is meant to be one way (since, I take it, the partners are not responding to each other in the right way). Masturbation is another since, in that case, there isn't even another person with whom to interact but only, Ruddick seems to suggest (quoting from Sartre), the illusion of one.

Ruddick takes a sexual act to be 'natural' to the extent that it "serve[s] or could serve the evolutionary and biological function of sexuality—namely, reproduction" (p. 91). Natural acts are thus always heterosexual, and heterosexual intercourse is always the aim of 'natural' sexual desire. But Ruddick recognizes that pervese desires are every bit as common as 'natural' ones so that "natural sex is an achievement, partly biological, partly conventional...", i.e., to some extent a result of socialization (p. 91). This kind of view is familiar from Freud, especially, but 'naturalness' is also central to many religious doctrines about sex.

Ruddick then turns to the question what the moral significance of pleasure, completeness, and naturalness might be. (She sets aside questions about their social consequences.) First up is pleasure. Ruddick regards it as obvious that pleasure is a good. One might worry, however, that sexual pleasure is "not serious" (compare Goldman), or that the pursuit of sexual pleasure tends to distract us from what is important, be that "God, social justice, children, or intellectual endeavor" (p. 94). But, she suggests, that worry is over-stated. For most people, sex is an enjoyable form of recreation (or play), and there is nothing wrong with recreation: with taking a break, once is a while, from life's "business".

It's important to remember that Ruddick is here concerned just with the pleasurable aspect of sex, which is more or less 'private', not with any inter-personal aspects of it. One might nonetheless wonder whether it is right to class the experience of sexual pleasure as simply a diversion. How else might one want to think of it? (To look ahead a bit, there are some things Gayle Rubin says in "Thinking Sex" that are relevant here.)

Ruddick then turns to perversion, arguing that 'naturalness' is morally irrelevant. (She does suggest that 'natural' sexual acts are more 'mature', again echoing Freud, but regards that, again, as morally irrelevant.) In some cases, perverted sexual acts might be less complete and then, if completeness is important, they will be inferior. And some perverted acts "are immoral on independent grounds" (p. 96). But naturalness, by itself, Ruddick argues, is without moral significance.

As we'll see when we read Koedt for the next class, there are questions to be raised about some of what Ruddick says here about sexual 'maturity'. But we can hold such questions until then.

The idea that sexual relations ought to be 'natural' in this sense is traditional and very common in Christian doctrine about sexuality. For another example, here is Immanuel Kant on homosexuality:

Second among the crimina camis contra naturam [sexual crimes against nature] is intercourse sexus homogenii, where the object of sexual inclination continues, indeed, to be human, but is changed since the sexual congress is not heterogeneous but homogeneous, i.e., when a woman satisfies her impulse on a woman, or a man on a man. This also runs counter to the ends of humanity, for the end of humanity in regard to this impulse is to preserve the species...; but by this practice I by no means preserve the species..., and so degrade myself below the beasts, and dishonour humanity. (Lectures on Ethics, 27:391)

Finally, then, Ruddick turns to completeness. She notes that mutual responsiveness has collateral benefits for us: When our desire "makes a difference" to how someone else acts, our desire has been recognized as important, and so we have been recognized as important. But she also thinks there is a benefit to our expressing and acting on our desires, rather than being merely responsive to someone else's desire. These are ways in which 'complete' sex is "instrumentally beneficial". But the more important question is whether 'complete' sexual acts are morally better than 'incomplete' ones. Ruddick thinks there are three ways that they are.

First, complete sexual acts "tend to resolve tensions fundamental to moral life". This is discussed on p. 98. The key thought seems to be this one: "Mutally responding partners confirm each others' desires and declare them good." I think what Ruddick has in mind is that we are, elsewhere in our 'moral' lives, often required to treat what we want as not of terribly great importance (not, for example, of any more importance than what anyone else wants). In 'complete' sex, though, when our partners respond to our desires, they affirm them as important. But that sounds like the 'instrumental benefit' that was already discussed. If so, then it is unclear what it's moral import might be.

Second, complete sexual acts "are conducive to emotions that...are in turn conducive to the virtue of loving". This is discussed on pp. 98-9. The idea is that the experience of sexual pleasure, in the sort of reciprocal relationship that is characteristic of complete sexual acts, elicits emotions that "are conducive to love", whose value she takes to be self-evident.

There are two worries one might have here. First, Ruddick does not really give much evidence that sex is conducive to love in this way. Maybe, though, that is just meant to be obvious enough. Second, however, and more imporantly, one might wonder whether it is a good thing that sex is conducive to love, if it is. Here, one might want to reflect upon Goldman's discussion of the view that sex is (or should be) an expression of love. Perhaps what sex encourages is not love but an juvenile approximation to it.

Third, complete sexual acts "involve a preeminently moral virtue—respect for persons." This is discussed on pp. 99-101. There is always a danger in sex, Ruddick suggests (following many, including, as we shall see later, Kant), that our partner should become merely a means to the satisfaction of our own desire. Mutual responsiveness is meant to be a solution to that problem: "In complete sex acts, instrumentality vanishes only because it is mutual and mutually desired" (p. 100). I.e., it's suppose to be all right for us to use our partners to satisfy our desires because we both do it, and we both want the other to do it. It follows, however, that using someone else for one's own pleasure without being responsive to their desires as well would make for sex that is morally worse, the limit case being rape.

There may well be a kind of sexual relation that is properly characterized as involving a mutual desire to use and be used. But is that how we should think of 'ideal' sex?

Perhaps a better way to approach the question whether completeness is important would be to ask what, if anything, is or might be wrong with incomplete partnered sex. So what is? or might be? (Focusing on partnered sex sets aside the case of masturbation. Ruddick does not have much to say about it. But there are, again, some questions to be raised about solo sex and whether it should be regarded as inferior to partnered sex.)

Ruddick's main goal here, recall, is to argue that some sexual experiences are 'objectively better' than others. One way is by being more pleasurable. While that is, obviously, in one sense subjective, it is so only in the sense that it is subject-relative. (What I find pleasurable, you may not.) The value of pleasure is meant to be objective, so that more pleasurable acts are objectively more valuable. Completeness was meant to be another such way, but completeness itself seems a mix of two things, embodiment and reciprocality (or responsiveness), and the first is quite hard to pin down. Probably we would do better to separate these. But then we might also want to ask whether there are other axes along which we might compare the value of sexual experiences. Are there?

Fortunata charges that much of what we have been reading has a distinct male bias. She is also particularly concerned about the way most theories denigrate masturbation—an issue to which I've drawn attention in the questions about the previous readings. Fortunata claims that such theories "implicitly devalue women's sexuality" (p. 390). She offers several reasons, most of which involve opposition to normative heterosexuality, especially the way in which intercourse is regarded as the 'real thing' and other forms of sexual interaction are regarded as 'foreplay'. Many of these points are backed up by empirical work, such as that done by Shere Hite in the optional reading. The central observation here is that intercourse is not a particularly good way to arouse most women to orgasm.

The main point of pp. 390-1 is to explain why Fortunata thinks it is important to distinguish solitary sexual activity, for which she will use the word "masturbation", from partnered sex, even when the latter involves manual stimulation of oneself or one's partner.

Fortunata wants to develop an understanding of sexuality will "help us organize, interpret and evaluate the experience of sex" (p. 392). She begins by mentioning two types of such theories. The first describes sex as having a typical narrative structure, beginning (say) with kissing and undressing, then progressing through 'foreplay' to intercourse, and ending with male orgasm and, ideally, with the woman simultaneously having a 'vaginal' orgasm. Fortunata charges that this theory is sexist and heterosexist, not just because male orgasm is taken as the goal, but because orgasm is taken as the goal (and end-point). She also notes that this theory regards masturbation as a mere imitation of the 'real thing'.

Many people would want to reject this picture of what sex is. But it seems to me that it still informs our cultural understanding of sexuality. In what ways might it do so?

A second theory regards sex as a kind of competition and has similar problems. (Sex here is seen as a kind of commodity: something women have and men need to get from women.)

In what ways is this 'folk theory' manifest in our sexual culture? It seems potentially dangerous. How so?

By contrast, Fortunata proposes that we regard sexual acts, ideally, as a form of aesthetic inquiry into bodies and their responses, especially their capacities for pleasure. She insists, though this seems to be a separable point, that such activites should be respectful of the rights and desires of all involved, and she does not focus on that issue. Rather, she attempts to articulate what it would be like to be an "artistic inquirer" sexually. Such a person's focus, Fortunata claims, would be on the sexual activity itself and on the people involved in it, as unique individuals with their own unique responses.

Fortunata notes, importantly for her purposes, that masturbation can have the same sort of structure: It can be an inquiry into and exploration of one's own body; "I can be an attentive, inventive lover of myself" (p. 395). In partnered sex, however, there is more to explore and to learn: "Making love modifies my knowledge of my lover and myself" (p. 396). She also notes that this conception does not require there to be any 'closure' of the sort that male orgasm typically signifies and that it suggests no determinate or preferred narrative structure.

Fortunata remarks that her theory regards 'one-night stands' as "minimal sex" (that is, as falling short of the ideal) "because there is, generally, no importance in these situations attached to coming to know the other person, who is likely to be treated as a sex object" (p. 397). Does that seem right? How is this part of her view related to Ruddick's view of 'completeness'?

First and foremost, Fortunata seems to be offering us an account of what an 'ideal' sexual episode is like: a form of aesthetic inquiry, etc. But is there also in her paper (perhaps implicitly) an answer to the question what sex, or sexual desire, is? If so, what is that answer? How good is it?

Koedt's paper is a classic of second-wave feminism. (It also has many of the short-comings of second-wave feminism.) Her concern is to debunk the idea that so-called 'vaginal' orgasms (orgasms achieved purely through intercourse) are somehow superior to 'clitoral' orgasms. In this form, the idea derives from Freud. The paper is a clear reflection of the anger many women have felt about their inability to live up to cultural expectations about how their bodies should function sexually. Many of the themes of this paper are reflected in Fortunata's, though she does not cite it (and may not have been aware of it).

It is worth emphasizing that the clitoris should not be confused with the glans clitoris, the latter being the 'tip' or 'nub' that protrudes from the clitoral hood. (This was not widely known when Koedt was writing.) The clitoris itself, as the Wikipedia article on it explains, is a much larger structure, most of which is internal (not unlike an iceberg). It is, therefore, possible to stimulate the clitoris without stimulating the glans clitoris, and this may be responsible for some women's ability to orgasm from intercourse.

Gattuso brings many of these same concerns very much down to earth.

This paper is primarily concerned with the nature of sexual desire and sets out to argue against, and offer an alternative to, Goldman's 'hedonistic' or "reductionist" account, which takes the central focus of sexual desire to be sexual pleasure. A different sort of view, which Morgan calls "intentionalist", and which is represented for us by Nagel, takes sexual desire to involve complex psychological attitudes ("intentional states") that are directed at oneself and one's partners. Morgan's own view is meant to be a synthesis of these.

Before we get into this paper, let me note that one of the things that is so striking about it is the way Morgan describes certain erotic moments. This kind of detail is, it seems to me, important, and the authors we've read so far have not included much of it.

The use of the word "intentional" here is technical. It does not have to do with intention in the sense of something one intends to do. Rather, an 'intentional' state is one that is about something, in the way some of my beliefs are about (say) Miles Davis and some of my desires are about (say) my garden. These 'intentional' states are typically contrasted with 'sensory' states, like pain (i.e., mere sensations or feelings). So views like Nagel's are 'intentionalist' in the sense that they focus on attitudes we have about our sexual partners, including beliefs and desires and, indeed, intentions.

The paper begins with a summary of Goldman's view—quite a good one. As Morgan notes, the view was defended at greater length by Igor Primoratz, who takes it also to support the view "that (genuine) universal participant consent is sufficient for a sexual act to be morally unproblematic" (p. 2). The contrasting view, as Morgan characterizes it, is that, while bodily arousal and pleasure are important, they are "necessarily connected through mutual perception and interaction with the experiences of one's sexual partner" (p. 2).

The central objection to intentionalist views, as Morgan sees it, is that, in at least some cases, people engage (and want to engage) in sexual relations without any desire to communicate, or to express love, or whatever the intentionalist says that sexual desire involves. Thus, any view that takes interpersonal attitudes to be central to sexual desire will have a special difficulty with masturbation and with much casual sex. (There's an interesting discussion, at the end of section 1, of Goldman's charge that intentionalist views implicitly denigrate the bodily, but that will not be our focus.)

Morgan's response, which begins in section 2, is that such objections assume that sexual pleasure itself is a single, uniform phenomenon, consistent across different sexual encounters. Goldman and Primoratz start, Morgan says, with the correct idea that, in some cases, the aim of sexual activity really is just a simple bodily pleasure. They then claim, however, that even in more complex cases—ones that do involve the sort of interpersonal attitudes Nagel identifies—the sexual pleasure we experience is still just simple bodily pleasure. Morgan, by contrast, thinks that the experience of sexual pleasure can be shaped and transformed by the more complex mental states that accompany it—by, that is, 'intentional' mental aspects of the experience.

As Morgan sees it, this is what intentionalist views are trying to get at: the fact that, while pleasure is a crucial element of sexual desire, the desire may not be just for pleasure from any source but e.g. for pleasure from contact with the body of one's life partner, and only with them. That much, it seems, Goldman could readily acknowledge. The deeper point "is that sexual relations can be and frequently are meaningful for their participants, and this significance feeds into and shapes the nature of the pleasure taken in them..." (p. 6). I.e., the pleasure itself that one experiences has (or can have) an 'intentional' element, or at least is shaped by, modified by, the intentional element. The sexual pleasure itself is then no longer 'purely bodily' but is a more complex experience that integrates the bodily and the intentional. ("Sexual pleasure in a great many encounters does not have the uncomplicated physical nature that the reductionists ascribe to it" (p. 6).)

I confess to being a bit puzzled about how Morgan uses the term "reductionist". It mostly seems to function as an insult. But, for the most part, I think one can just understand it as a label for Goldman-like views.

In section 3, Morgan argues that his view is better able to encompass the full range of human sexual experience than alternative views are. First, since he does not make 'meaningfulness' essential, he can happily allow for casual sex. But, on the other hand, he can recognize the ways in which sexual desires can be more complex than Goldman allows, incorporating complex intentional elements. Morgan gives a number of examples to illustrate this point. But perhaps the most interesting is the one on pp. 8-9, about 'anonymous' sex among gay men. (This was much more common before AIDS.) In effect, what Morgan is claiming is that, even in the case of casual sex—the best case for hedonistic views—both sexual desire and sexual pleasure are more complex than they might first appear to be.

It's crucial to Morgan's argument here that anonymity (say) is not just a cause of enhanced sexual pleasure but actually affects the character or nature of the pleasure itself. Goldman can readily allow that intentional states can be involved in causing one to experience (or not to experience) sexual pleasure, or that they will affect the intensity of the pleasure so experienced. (A particularly clear case is the role played by sexual fantasy in masturbation.) These are just 'enabling conditions'. (See the end of footnote 21.)

But Morgan does not seem to tell us much about this diffence. And one might well wonder whether there really is a difference between "the physical sensation of a moving penis penetrating [one's] anus [and the] sensation of the moving penis of a stranger penetrating [one's] anus" (p. 9)? (There is a similar question to be asked about the "Victory" example discussed on p. 8. Can you elaborate?) But then it's not clear that these are really counterexamples to hedonistic views. (Why not?) How might we try to disentangle these two features and figure out whether certain factors are making merely a causal or a more robust constitutive contribution? Or is there perhaps some other way of understanding Morgan's view so that we don't need to do that?

There are really two kinds of claims Morgan seems to make. One is that sexual desire is often more complicated than simply a desire for the 'uncomplicated bodily pleasure' of arousal and orgasm. The other concerns the nature of sexual pleasure, that this can itself be shaped and transformed by intentional states. Does one of these claims seem more plausible than the other? The latter is clearly a real threat to Goldman's view. But is the former? (Might it help to distinguish pleasure from something like enjoyment?)

Section 4 strengthens the argument by noting, first, that many of our sexual desires involve "contingent products of human culture" and so cannot possibly be regarded as 'purely animal' (p. 9). But Morgan suggests that intentionalists have also tended to go wrong by trying to find some single, common element besides a desire for sexual pleasure in all of the desires we call 'sexual', which seem to be endlessly variable—though each of the many proposals does serve to identify something that "can play the meaningful role that transforms [animal desire] into something more complicated" (p. 10).

Morgan also addresses here the sort of question I asked above. He considers an example in which one has sex with an old flame. In this case, he claims, their smell and taste might be especially erotic. But Morgan himself says that one "finds the sensation [smell or taste] pleasurable because it is the scent of that particular person" (p. 10, my emphasis). Is that enough?

Section 5 raises some initial questions about the moral significance of this analysis of sexual desire. We'll explore this topic later, in the unit on sexual fantasy. But for now, it is worth noting just this much: Since Morgan's paper characterizes sexual desire in terms of pleasure (contrary to what Morgan says in footnote 3, then, I think his view probably has more in common with the hedonistic views), there's no guarantee that the 'intentionalist' elements shaping this pleasure will be in any way good. So we might wonder whether a form of an objection that Ketchum brings against Goldman might not apply here: Can there, on Morgan's view, be sex that is good qua sex but not, in fact, at all good?

Jacobsen explicitly sets out to explain what makes certain sorts of desires sexual. As he notes, and as we have seen, there are a bewildering variety of options here, in part because so many different activities can count as sexual.

Jacobsen begins by discussing Goldman's hedonistic view: sexual desire is a desire for a distinctive sort of sensation (sexual pleasure). He recalls Nagel's criticism that such a view has no place for the concept of perversion. But Goldman simply agrees with this. I am all the more puzzled when Jacobsen says that Goldman's view has trouble accommodating "sexual surprises and delights, originality, novelty, and experimentation" (p. 618). What is Jacobsen thinking here? Is his idea that, if all we wanted sexually was a certain sensation, then there'd be no reason to do anything different? But that isn't true (why not?), and Goldman is (as we've said many times) quite happy to allow that other desires often accompany sexual desires.

Does Jacobsen misunderstand Nagel's criticism of hedonism? As Jacobsen reads it, the criticism is that hedonism can't tell us why sexual perversions are sexual. But wasn't the criticism instead that it can't tell us why they're perverse?

A deeper criticism of Goldman's view is that it seems to make it obscure why sexual interaction should be any better, qua sex, than "sexual turn taking". Yet worse, it seems to make our sexual partners mere "instruments for our own pleasure" (p. 619). But Jacobsen does think there's something right about Goldman's focus on sexual feeling.

While Goldman himself does seem fixated on the desire that one experience sexual pleasure oneself, might his view not be amended so that the desire to help someone else experience sexual pleasure was also counted as sexual? What problems might such an amendment pose?

Jacobsen's strategy is going to be to deny that what makes a desire sexual is something about the object of the desire: Any activity that one might desire sexually one could also desire non-sexually, and conversely. It's easy to see how some types of desire can be individuated in terms of their objects: A desire for pizza is a desire for a specific kind of thing. Note how the views we have been considering fit into this scheme: A sexual desire is a desire for sexual pleasure, or for a certain kind of communication, or for a certain kind of reciprocal recognition, or whatever. Jacobsen thinks that all such views are doomed. But how else might we classify types of desires?

To begin outlining his alternative, Jacobsen recalls some basic features of desires: Desires are always desires for something; the object of desire has (or is thought to have) some features that make it desirable to the agent. Desires might differ not because their object is different, but rather because of the features of the object that make it desirable: I might want to drink a glass of water because it is cool or because it is wet. So perhaps sexual desires should be characterized not in terms of their object, but in terms of what features of such objects make them sexually desirable. If we adopt this strategy, then, "The task of saying what makes a desire sexual...becomes the task of saying what that feature is in virtue of which sexually desirous agents desire" (p. 624). That is: Sexual desires will be characterized not in terms of what they are desires for but in terms of what it is about the things so desired that makes them (sexually) desirable.

What follows is a technical sort of question, a kind of philosophical exercise. On pp. 623-4, Jacobsen discusses the objection that, if you want some water because it is wet, then what you really want is wetness; so the claim would be that a desire 'in virtue of a feature' is always really a desire for the feature. He argues in response that (D2) will then lead to an infinite regress. Hence, to avoid the regress, one would have to deny that "there [were ever] be any features of any objects of our desire in virtue of which they [a]re desirable to us...". I claim that's a logical fallacy. Why? (Jacobsen almost immediately says that "there must be at least some things we desire in virtue of features they possess even though those features are not themselves the objects of our desires". That's correct, but it at least leaves open the possiblity that, in any given case, it's the feature that's desired and not the object in virtue of the feature.)

Jacobsen gives as an example of a 'feature-based' grouping desires to swim, eat, and sleep, if what makes them desirable is their health-promoting features. (We might call those 'health-based desires'.) What other examples of this kind might be given?

In section III, Jacobsen argues for a certain way of thinking about the appetites: hunger, thirst, and the analogue in the case of sex (horniness, perhaps). Specifically, he argues that these appetites should not be understood as themselves being desires—e.g., being hungry is not the same as wanting to eat. The argument is that there is a disanalogy between desires and appetitive states. If I want to do X and now have Xd, then I might still want to X if I do not know I have Xd; it's only if I have Xd and know that I have that I will no longer want to X. (In fact, I could falsely believe I had Xd, and the desire would also 'end', but we can probably set that case aside here.) But appetites seem different: My hunger could be satisfied by my being nourished, even if I did not know I had been nourished.

Jacobsen therefore suggests that appetites are "are objectless states of persons" (p. 626). They do not, in themselves, have an object or goal, as desires do—to use Morgan's terminology, they are not intentional states—but appetites act, in effect, as motivators to do the sorts of things that will relieve them. In that way, the appetites give rise to desires, which do have goals. Perhaps we might compare appetites to itches: To feel an itch is not in itself to have a desire, but it might well give rise to a desire (p. 628).

There is lengthy and somewhat convoluted response, on pp. 626-8, to an objection to the foregoing. The basic idea is that, if thirst is a desire to drink, then it has to be a desire to drink the specific amount that would quench one's thirst. But someone who thinks thirst is a desire cannot put it that way, since then the desire is to drink exactly enough to satisfy the desire, and that is circular. Nor does it seem plausible that there is any independent characterization of how much one wants to drink. The solution is to say that thirst is not a desire, though being thirsty does often give rise to a desire: to drink enough to quench one's thirst, and now that is not circular, because the appetite is distinct from the desire. For our purposes, though, we probably do not need to dig into this argument.

Thirst is quenced, hunger is sated, and sexual arousal is "assuaged". What does Jacobsen mean by that? The question is crucial since appetites are defined in terms of what "relieves" them (p. 629).

So, summarizing, Jacobsen is suggesting that there is a 'sexual appetite', a "heightened sensation state[]...which can be taken through processes of change and development, increase or diminishment, and can be brought, via some of the activities which affect [it], to closure or satisfaction" (p. 629). It's with reference to this appetite that Jacobsen will try to say what sexual desire is.

This picture of the sexual appetite seems to owe something to the classic model of human sexual response due to Masters and Johnson: desire → arousal → orgasm → resolution. There are reasons to worry that this model is andro-centric and does not well capture female sexual experience. See the related reading for some empirical work on that.

In section IV, Jacobsen provides his account of sexual desire:

...[A] sexual desire is a desire the object of which is an act or activity of an agent desired in virtue of certain effects which that activity has (or is taken by the agent to have) on her states of sexual arousal; the relevant features of the activity which make it desirable are that it will (or is taken to be an activity which will) initiate, heighten, sustain, or assuage states of sexual arousal. (p. 629)

Note that sexual desires are not supposed to include desires for activities we think will diminish states of sexual arousal (e.g., a cold shower) except, presumably, in so far as "assuaging" such a state will diminish it.

Obvious question: Are there counter-examples to this analysis? That is: Are there cases where one is inclined to say someone has a sexual desire but that is not a desire for some activity that will (positively, so to speak) affect their own states of sexual arousal? Or are there cases where there is a desire for an activity that will affect one's states of sexual arousal but one is not inclined to call the desire sexual?

Jacobsen notes, on p. 630, that this leaves us with the question what sexual arousal is, where that is understood as an aroused (bodily) appetite. His proposal is to understand it in terms of arousal (sensory and physical) of the sexual organs. And he regards it as an advantage that, in this way, sexual arousal is connected to 'sex' in a more basic, reproductive sense. But it remains unclear, as noted above, what is supposed to stand to sexual arousal as drinking does to thirst, and eating to hunger. What is? The obvious response, "having sex", won't do, since one of the questions we're trying to answer here is what 'having sex' is, and Jacobsen himself notes, recall, that any activity, in principle, can be desired sexually.

One might also worry that this definition of sexual arousal reflects a male bias. It's common, in sex research, to make a distinction between physical arousal and psychological arousal. Both men and women experience both, but women tend to experience more of the latter. See again the related readings.

Bringing sexual arousal rather than sexual pleasure to the foreground might well be a good idea. But it would only be a minor modification of Goldman's view to re-cast it as: Sexual desire is a desire for sexual arousal. Now, as Jacobsen notes, this is still different from his view, for the following reason. Suppose that Alex desires to engage in some form of sexual play with Tony. On Goldman's account, that desire is not itself a sexual desire, since (as stated) it's not a desire for sexual arousal (or pleasure). On Jacobsen's account, this desire can be sexual, if Alex's reasons to want to play with Tony are connected to how doing so will "initiate, heighten, sustain, or assuage [Alex's] states of sexual arousal". But can Goldman mimic that move? If so, how? How important are the differences between Goldman's and Jacobsen's views, then, in the end?

Jacobsen's view is close to Goldman's, in many ways. That raises the question to what extent the criticisms Morgan makes of such views apply to Jacobsen's. Morgan's claim, recall, was that such views have an overly simplistic picture of what sexual pleasure is, and Jacobsen's characterization of 'sexual arousal' in terms of sensory and physical arousal of the sexual organs looks vulnerable to just that worry. Can Jacobsen recognize the ways in which 'intentional' states shape the pleasures of sex? What might Jacobsen make of Morgan's main examples: anonymous bathhouse sex; Johnny Drugs; the 'victory' example; and the smells and tastes of an old flame?

In the last paragraph, Jacobsen briefly discusses the worry that our sexual partners are mere instruments of our own arousal and pleasure. Jacobsen responds that a desire to arouse and pleasure someone else is sexual, on his account, if doing so is seen as desirable because of the effect it will have on one's own arousal. How satisfying is that response?

As you'll note, this paper is more polemical than analytical. MacKinnon is not a philosopher (by training) but a lawyer. That makes it especially important, with this reading, that you try to read it sympathetically and charitably. It's very easy to be distracted by some of the more extreme rhetorical moves that MacKinnon makes and the political consequences that those claims are supposed to have. Try as best you can to read through them and get to the underlying claims that MacKinnon is making—while, at the same time, recognizing the righteous anger with which she expresses them. (Yes, this is hard.)

The overall perspective that MacKinnon expresses has been very influential and, in some ways, profoundly prescient. (See the New York Times article for more on that.) Our goal at present is more to get some ideas on the table than to evaluate the arguments offered for them. We'll basically spend the next several weeks trying to come to terms with MacKinnon's critique of contemporary heterosexuality.

There are, no doubt, cultural differences MacKinnon does not note, but my sense is that her critique applies pretty broadly. If it seems to you that there are cutural differences that matter here, please do not hesitate to point them out.

MacKinnon argues here that gender 'difference' is really gender domination, and that this domination is sexual, ultimately expressed and enforced through rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and even intercourse itself. As she puts it, towards the beginning of the paper:

The meaning of practices of sexual violence cannot be categorized away as violence, not sex.... The male sexual role...centers on aggressive intrusion on those with less power. Such acts of dominance are experienced as sexually arousing, as sex itself. They therefore are. (p. 316)

That is: Certain forms of more or less violent domination are sexualized in our culture and therefore are sex. (This conception of heterosexual intercourse is developed in detail in the related reading from Dworkin.)

Part of what makes MacKinnon's perspective important is that she does not take sex, in any sense, as a given, as 'natural', but demands that we see it as fundmentally shaped by social forces (see esp. pp. 317-20). To take one example: The central place that vaginal intercourse has in our conception of heterosex is contingent, something that could be otherwise. To be sure, PIV intercourse plays a crucial role in reproduction. But it simply does not follow that PIV intercourse must have any central role in recreational hereosex (which is what most partnered heterosex is). So the question "Why is PIV intercourse regarded as 'the main event', even when conception is not the goal (and may actively not be wanted)?" can only be answered by asking how that social norm originated, what (and who) sustains it, to whose benefit it is, and so forth.

When MacKinnon asks, "What is sex?" then, she means to be asking a question about the social norms that shape our everyday experience of sexuality in all its aspects. All such norms, as MacKinnon sees it, and shaped and promulgated by those in positions of power, in this case, by men (collectively as well as individually).

This sort of perspective on sex, an insistence on seeing it as culturally and historically constituted, is strongly identified with the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, in his three volume History of Sexuality. Anyone who has a serious, long-term interest in this material, will need to read Foucault at some point. But he is hard to except, so we will not read Foucault in this course.

Similarly, MacKinnon refuses to take facts about 'desire' as given. To continue the example, it may well be that both heterosexual men and heterosexual women desire intercourse and think of it as pre-eminent in some ways. But then MacKinnon would ask why that is. Our desires, she would insist, are also shaped by social forces. And if, as she suspects, the social norms that govern sexuality in our culture disproportionally benefit men, then getting women to accept and embrace such norms—to claim them as their own, in their effort to be 'feminine'—would be an extremely effective way to sustain them. (This is related to 'false consciousness' and the sort of 'consciousness raising' to which MacKinnon alludes at the beginning of the paper.) So sexual desire, too, is in no sense 'natural', MacKinnon thinks.

Later in the paper, MacKinnon writes: "Love of violation, variously termed female masochism [by Freud] and consent, comes to define female sexuality, legitimizing this political system by concealing the force on which it is based" (pp. 329-30). What does she mean? In particular, why might she think that "consent" is just another term for "love of violation" (or sexual submission)?

MacKinnon is calling, then, for a feminist theory of gender and sexuality that puts sexual domination at its core. As she sees it, the sexual domination of men by women is fundamental to sexuality as it exists in our society. (The obvious example is the sexual double standard.) But MacKinnon also holds that sexual domination is fundamental to gender, too: What it is to be a woman, in our society, is (in part) to be sexually subordinate to men, to be "a thing for sexual use" (p. 318). Consider, for example, the standards of appropriate behavior for women: from clothing and dress, to conversational norms, to dating rituals, to (continue the list?). All of these, MacKinnon thinks, express aspects of "what male desire requires for arousal and satisfaction" (pp. 318-9). In particular, women's submissiveness and deference to men is not just an accidental feature of contemporary heterosexuality but an integral part of it: part of what is seen as sexy in women.

Our topic in this course is not gender, but sexuality, but it is important to understand how MacKinnon uses the term "gender" here. She does not have in mind quite the same distinction we would draw with that term today—she is not thinking of 'gender identity'. Rather, MacKinnon means something like "the social meaning of biological sex", the system of norms and expectations through which biological sex comes to have significance in a culture. (Here again, there is no reason that biological sex has to have any significance, socially and culturally speaking, although the different roles that males and females play in reproduction partly explains why it does.) See the optional SEP article on sex and gender, especially §1.2.

On pp. 320-2, MacKinnon discusses 'liberal' attitudes towards sex, roughly: Sex itself is, generally speaking, a good; the political problems surrounding sex are primarily concerned with repression and 'sexual liberation'. Here MacKinnon is echoing a then-common feminist criticism of the so-called 'sexual revolution': that its main effect was to make women's sexuality more readily available for use by men. What the sexual revolution did not do, MacKinnon argues, is do anything to restructure heterosexuality itself, which was then (and arguably is still now) defined in terms of intercourse and male orgasm. (Think here of the Fortunata and Koedt.)

Much of this discussion is a manifestation of the so-called 'feminist sex wars'. Many of the authors MacKinnon criticizes were explicitly on the other side of that conflict. We'll read one of them shortly, Gayle Rubin.

It starts to emerge where MacKinnon is going when she discusses the common claim rape is not a sexual crime but a crime of violence (pp. 323-5). MacKinnon disagrees, insisting (famously) "that violence is sex when it is practiced as sex" (p. 323). She wants to insist that sexual violence (the threat of it, if not the reality of it) is part of women's experience of sex, not something that can be separated from it. That includes not just rape but sexual harassment and everyday objectification and sexualization. All of these things, MacKinnon wants to insist, are part of what sex is in our society, and no feminist theory of sexuality can ignore them. (My own sense is that MacKinnon gets carried away by her own rhetoric in the full paragraph on p. 325. I'm not sure it is possible to make good sense of these remarks, but if there is anyone who wants to make some suggestions, I'd love to hear them.)

Thus, MacKinnnon writes: "Force is sex, not just sexualized; force is the desire dynamic, not just a response to the desired object when desire's expression is frustrated" (p. 324). What does she mean by that? What sort of criticism of, say, Nagel and Goldman might be suggested by this remark? (Where MacKinnon speaks, in the next sentence, of 'the soft end' and 'the hard end', you might read "carrot" and "stick".)

If sexuality is asymmetric in this way, is there something naïve about the accounts of sexual desire we have discussed? Fortunata, at least, is clear that she means to be presenting an 'ideal' to which actual sex might only approximate. But MacKinnon, presumably, would want to argue that such an ideal is quite irrelevant to the actual sexual experience of women, especially. Why?

On p. 326, MacKinnon begins a discussion of pornography as a window into 'what men want' sexually. It is a serious question whether MacKinnon's description of pornography as it was in 1989 is accurate, let alone whether it reflects the reality of pornography today. But there is a relevant aspect of mainstream heterosexual pornography that is still common, namely, the asymmetric roles of men and women: Men are the doers; women are the done-to; men are active subjects, while women are passive objects (strikingly, this is often true even regarding fellatio, an act where male passivity would make sense); the end (in both the temporal and teleological sense) of heterosex is male orgasm. As MacKinnon puts it elsewhere, "Man fucks woman; subject verb object" (Towards a Feminist Theory of the State, p. 124). Woman's role is thus not to choose but to consent (or not) to a choice not her own (pp. 329-30). This is the model of heterosex with which (most mainstream) pornography presents us, and it is, I think it fair to say, also the model of heterosex most prominent in our culture.

MacKinnon connects all of this to the objectification of women: Women are seen as vehicles for the exercise of men's sexuality, instruments of men's pleasure. Note, crucially, that MacKinnon vehemently denies that women's consent to such unequal treatment excuses it. That would be true even if the terms under which the consent were given were not themselves unequal, though that is, in many ways, what MacKinnon is trying to call attention to: the unequal structural conditions that shape heterosexual interactions.

On p. 334, MacKinnon returns to the issue of rape and its relation to 'sex'. As she sees it, rape is not qualitatively and categorically distinct from 'sex' but only an extreme manifestation of how sex is generally conceived in our culture. MacKinnon argues that this is manifest in the way we actually respond to rape: In the low conviction rate; in the way women who claim to have been raped are treated; in the way the experience of sexual abuse affects women themselves. It is not, note, that MacKinnon thinks there is no difference between rape and consensual sex. It is that she thinks there is more in common between the two than is usually recognized: that there is a continuum between ordinary sex and rape (one we will explore in some detail in the unit on consent). In particular, she claims, men's power over women is just as present in consensual sexual interactions as it is in non-consensual ones, and it structures women's choices in both cases. (You might want to have a look again at Gatusso's piece "Rape Culture is a Contract We Never Actually Signed" to get a sense of what MacKinnon means.)

Note that MacKinnon does not think that all heterosexual intercourse is rape (she once sued someone for libel for saying she did), and she does not think that it is all violent and unloving. She does think that the cultural fact of male domination prevades all relations between men and women and that it shapes the way that sex is experienced by all of us (even in non-heterosexual interactions).

What are some of the specific ways in which MacKinnon thinks (or might think) that men's socio-sexual dominance structures women's sexual choices?

Rubin's paper "Thinking Sex" is sometimes credited with birthing the entire field of sexuality studies, although, as she herself points out in "Blood Under the Bridge", there were many antecedents, especially in the work of gay male scholars such as Jeffrey Weeks and Allan Bérubé. Still, that credit is a testament to the influence of this paper.

Rubin describes her ultimate goal is a "radical theory of sex [that will] identify, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual oppression" (p. 275), much as feminism identifies and studies gender oppression.

The paper was written at a time of intense disagreement about sex among feminists themselves: in the middle of the so-called 'feminist sex wars'. There was a particularly intense disagreement about BDSM. (Much of this history is recounted in "Blood Under the Bridge".) Many self-described 'radical feminists', such as Ti-Grace Atkinson and, as we have seen, Catharine MacKinnon, were fiercely opposed to BDSM, seeing it as celebrating the very sorts of power imbalances—dominance and submission—that feminism is committed to eliminating. Rubin, by contrast, was a founding member of Samois, which was a San Francisco-based collective devoted to lesbian BDSM (the first such organization in the US). In many ways, Rubin's interest in the topics explored here emerges from what she saw as the 'erotic oppression' of people who practice BDSM, especially lesbians, at the hands of other feminists. What she argues in this paper is, in effect, that much of the feminist opposition to BDSM results from a confused attempt to interpret all sexuality through the lens of feminist theory. Indeed, one of Rubin's main claims (argued in section VI) is that feminist theory cannot, by itself, provide us with the 'radical theory of sexuality' for which she is calling: Although gender is surely relevant to some modes of erotic oppression, it is not, she is arguing, relevant to all of them.

In section I, Rubin discusses the various forms of erotic oppression with which she is concerned. She begins by recounting some of the history of the cultural and legal regulation of sexual behavior in England and the United States. Much of this is horrifying—and yes, she is saying that 'female genital mutilation' was practiced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in the United States, as a 'cure' for masturbation. Happily, that has changed, and of course there have been substantial changes in recent years in the laws governing homosexuality (though the matter is still hotly contested, and in many places there are still no employment or housing protections for people in same-gender relationships). But you'll note that there is, still today, a great deal of conflict over many of the issues that Rubin mentions, e.g., pornography, sex education, funding for Planned Parenthood, and teenage sexuality.

One of the more difficult, and radical, aspects of this paper concerns Rubin's attitude towards child pornography and what she calls 'inter-generational sex'. Rubin is largely concerned here with the regulation of the sex lives of teenagers, rather than pre-pubescent children; you are probably aware yourself of some of the broad public concern today about sexting, the sharing of nude pictures, and so forth among teenagers. So when Rubin speaks of 'boy-lovers', she is talking about men who are attracted to post-pubescent teenage boys, not about padeophiles, and her claims about the way in which concern about children is used to justify other modes of oppression are prescient. For more, see the discusson in "Blood Under the Bridge", pp. 37-9.

Rubin's main task in section II is to sketch some of the unspoken cultural assumptions that structure Anglo-American thought about sexuality (at least). The first is that sex is a 'purely natural' phenomenon. This idea still surfaces in a variety of forms, e.g., that men's sexuality is by nature aggressive and promiscuous whereas women's is gentle and monogamous. Rubin insists, by contrast, and largely following Michel Foucault, that "sexuality is constituted in society and history" (p. 276). If such a claim seems strange to you, it may help to think of it as primarily concerning socio-sexual norms: standards regarding proper sexual behavior, which shape our own individual sexual desires and experience. Rubin wants to bring the social and political forces that determine socio-sexual norms into view.

One example worth considering here might be changing attitudes about heterosexual anal intercourse. As Rubin mentions, until not very long ago, sodomy laws in many states made even consensual anal intercourse a crime. Such laws were struck down, and many people nowadays would regard anal sex as 'acceptable', whatever their own preferences. But it remains the case that anal intercourse is regarded as sufficiently different from vaginal intercourse that 'special consent' is required for it. (A woman who has consented to vaginal intercourse has not thereby consented to anal intercourse.) But that is a contingent fact about our culture's understanding of sex. It is something that could change. Indeed, there is some indication that many women now feel some cultural pressure to engage in anal intercourse, because it's begun to seem like part of what women are 'supposed' to do sexually. See the related paper by Fahs and Gonzalez for more on this issue.

Note that Rubin's account not only allows for but implies that sexuality will take different forms in different cultures. She is not as aware as she might have been of the fact that the culture of which she's speaking is largely white Anglo-American culture and that something quite different might need to be said about African-American culture, say, and the way that sexuality is understood in it.

Rubin proceeds to list five "ideological formations" that shape Anglo-American culture's understanding of sexuality. I'd encourage you think about ways in which they still do, for all that may have changed otherwise since 1982.

The first of these is sex negativity and a more general distrust and discounting of 'the flesh'. Rubin bemoans the way in which our culture demands that "the exercise of erotic capacity, intelligence, curiosity, or creativity all require pretexts that are unnecessary for other pleasures, such as the enjoyment of food...." (p. 278). What she means, in part, is that there is a widespread suspicion of sex for sex's own sake. One case worth thinking about here might well be mastubation, which Rubin mentions herself. Though no longer (widely) regarded as abnormal or harmful, it is still shrouded in secrecy and shame, especially where women are concerned. (See e.g. this controversy over the inclusion of sex toys (in particular, vibrators) at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2019.)

What does it say about our sexual culture that what is probably the most common form of sexual behavior, masturbation, is still so stigmatized? Why is it so stigmatized? (If you think you're immune, then ask yourself these questions: How willing would you be to discuss your solo sexual adventures with your friends? Which friends? How does that compare to your willingness to discuss sex you've had with someone else?)

Rubin's other four "ideolgical formations" are really aspects of sex negativity. Feel free to comment on any of them. The most important, to my mind, is what Rubin calls "the hierarchical valuation of sex acts". There is a lot packed into that notion, but what she mostly has in mind is the way in which certain kinds of sexual behavior are seen as 'normal' and others are seen as deviant or perverse, to borrow a term. (It is here that Rubin's concern with BDSM emerges, though she does not focus on that directly.)

Closely related is "the lack of a concept of benign sexual variation". Rubin argues that this is due, in large part, to a tendency to universalize one's own experience. It's a matter of fact that people do have strong, visceral reactions to certain kinds of sexual acts. For any one of us, there just are going to be things that make us genuinely uncomfortable: that 'squick' us. (I'll leave it to you to think about what your own squicks are.) How could anyone genuinely be into that, it's easy to think; there's got to be something wrong with such people! It's one of Rubin's main complaints about her feminist opponents that they make precisely this mistake. (Gloria Steinem's "Erotica vs Pornography", which is one of the related readings, makes many of these moves quite explicitly.)

This may be the most difficult paper we will read this semester. Take it slow, read it a couple times, and remember you can ask questions on Ed Discussion or by email or whatever.

Herman's central goal in this paper is to argue that remarks that Kant makes about the nature of sexual relations reinforce the analysis of sex and gender that we find in MacKinnon. Kant is particularly concerned with whether, and under what circumstances, it is possible to treat one's sexual partners as 'ends in themselves' and not merely as means to one's own ends.

Kant's so-called Categorical Imperative is often taken to be central to his moral theory. There are a number of distinct formulations of it (see the SEP article linked above), but the one most relevant here is that one must never act in such a way as to treat others merely as means to one's own ends but must always treat others as 'ends in themselves' (that is, roughly, as persons with intrinsic and not merely instrumental value). Another is a version of the `Golden Rule': that one should always treat others as one would want to be treated oneself. (In Kant's formulation: One is to act only according to principles (`maxims') that one can will to be universal (in particular, that one is prepared to have other people act upon, as well, and so to be on the receiving end of, as it were.)

The paper opens with some very general, orienting remarks. You can skim this section. Nothing Herman says here is terribly important to what follows. Herman makes two main points. First, Kant's emphasis on 'impartiality', and his conception of agents as independent rational actors, can be called into question on a number of grounds, including broadly feminist ones. Many of these involve seeing ourselves as fundmentally social beings, enmeshed in relationships, and insisting that these relationships are of fundamental moral signifiance. Second, if that is right, then the moral significance of our actions will be partially determined by the social structures within which we act. Even an account of the morality of individual actions will therefore be enmeshed, in a certain sense, in politics.

Section I sketches some relevant background about Kant's moral theory. You can also skim this section. It sketches Kant's argument that civil society (government) is necessary if there are to be any property rights (or corresponding obligations to respect the property of other persons). This is relevant because Kant's account of the need for the institution of marriage, and his argument that sex is only permissible within it, is of almost exactly the same form. But you only need a very general sense of what Kant's argument is—and I'm about to explain that—to understand the rest of the paper.

The fundamental question with which Kant is concerned is how the use of coercive state power—e.g., to prevent and punish theft—can be justified, given that such coercion seems not to respect the autonomous wills of citizens. I.e., it looks as if the state is forcing some people to do certain things—e.g., not make use of certain stuff—and it is not clear how that can be reasonable. The crucial point is that the answer, "Well, that stuff belongs to other people", isn't good enough by itself, because ownership just is an exclusive right to use that imposes restrictions on the behavior of on other people, and the question was how those restrictions (and state enforcement of them) can be justified.

Kant's answer begins with the thought that, "Given the conditions of human life, there are things we each must be able to do that are not morally possible absent certain coercive political institutions". This includes, most notably, "mak[ing] use of things", that is, taking things for our own private use, which means having some moral claim to those things, e.g., to food we have gathered for the winter (p. 58). But, as already noted above, Kant thinks there is no 'natural' right to property; such rights can only exist in the context of a civil society that treats the rights of each party with equal, and reciprocal, respect. We need such a society because we need to "make use of things"; we are bound by its dictates for the same reason.

For our purposes, we certainly do not need to worry about whether Kant's account of the necessity of civil society and the basis of property rights is correct. That is a topic for a very different course (on political philosophy). Our interest is in the structure of Kant's position: the way in which what would otherwise be a violation of individual autonomy is morally justified not just by practical necessity but by the existence of an institution that fairly distributes the benefits and burdens that are required if we are to meet those practical needs.

Section II begins the discussion of marriage. The central worry is that "sexual interest in another is not interest in the other as a person" (pp. 59-60, my emphasis) but only in their body. That seems to amount to objectification, to treating the other as a thing: "According to Kant, the objectification of the other is both natural and inevitable in sexual activity" (p. 60). Herman proceeds to note that there are strong echoes of this line of thought in the work of Andrea Dworkin, though Dworkin's emphasis is on the objectification of women by men and on women's self-objectification: "...the pleasures of sex lead women to volunteer to be treated as things..." (p. 61, my emphasis)..

Recall the various views we have considered about the nature of sexual desire. Do some of them seem particularly vulnerable to this kind of worry? Are there ones that seem particularly well placed to respond to it?

It is clear enough why this sort of objectification would raise moral questions (though we will spend quite a bit more time considering this issue). But it is less clear why Kant thinks that sexual relations are inevitably objectifying. Before we address that question, however, it's worth noting the pressure this puts, if it is correct, on the notion of consent. It is not at all obvious that it is sufficient to solve the moral problem posed by objectification that both parties consent to be used as objects. The fact that the person consents to be used as an object does not change the fact that one is using them as an object. So, if it is wrong to treat someone as an object, then it is unclear how the fact that the person consents can remove that wrong.

Some of the authors we have read try to resolve the probelm exacty this way. Who? Do they just miss the mentioned response? Or can they answer this objection?

So, again, why think that the bodily character of sexual attraction is incompatible with an appropriate sort of regard for the person? Kant draws a distinction between human love and sexual love. Here, it is important to recognize that what Kant means by 'sexual love' is, in the first instance, purely sexual desire. Think here of seeing someone at a party to whom you have some deep and visceral sense of attraction. The attraction itself "makes [them] an Object of appetite" (Kant), and what one wants is, as part of the nature of the attraction, "pleasure of a certain sort to be had from the sexual use of [their] body" (p. 63). As Herman notes, however, to a large extent, it doesn't really matter whether objectification is essential to sexuality or is just part of sex-as-we-know-it. The problem that objectification poses for us now is the same either way.

Note that the crucial claim here is that (other-directed) sexual desire is, at some fundamental level, a desire for a certain kind of sensual pleasure to be derived from bodily interaction with that person. Goldman's view seems most obviously vulnerable to Kant's worry. How does he attempt to resovle it? (See pp. 282-3.) How effective is his response? Ruddick also recognizes the problem (see p. 100). How does her response fare?

What's most obviously problematic for Kant, then, is casual sex (all the more so anonymous sex). But even sex with someone one 'loves as a person' is, Kant thinks, still problematic. In effect, what Kant thinks is that, if Romeo loves Juliet, then this might temper the ways in which he uses her to give himself sexual pleasure. But it does not change the fact that he is using her for his own purposes. And neither her agreeing to his doing so (consenting) nor his allowing her to do the same affects this fundamental point.

Section III concerns Kant's solution to the problem so far developed: Sexual activity is inherently objectifying (and so prima facie immoral), yet sex is essential to the continuation of the species and, for many of us, an essential part of a satisfying life. So, like property, it is immoral yet necessary. It will likely seem implausible (if also unsurprising) to many of you that Kant's solution to this problem should involve marriage—all the more so given the history of that institution (though, as Herman mentions, Kant's argument needn't be thought to justify marriage in any particular form). But we can, perhaps, set aside the issue about marriage and ask whether Kant's arguments might justify a weaker (and much more widely held) claim: that sex is only morally permissible in the context of a loving or committed relationship.

This is a good example of why it can often be valuable to consider carefully an argument whose conclusion one does not accept. It may be that there are ways of weakening or modifying the assumptions behind the argument so that they are acceptable, and that in that form the argument will yield a similar if weaker conclusion.

Herman discusses two arguments Kant gives for why marriage can make sex permissible, i.e., how it can resolve the problem of mutual objectification. The first she dismisses on grounds we've already discussed: Symmetry cannot solve the problem.

The second argument—one that parallels the justification of civil society—Herman finds more promising. We have a need (be it personal or, so to speak, species-wide) for sex with other people (a need "to make use of them", as it were). But morality demands that we treat people as people, not as things:

Although the sexual appetite leads me to regard and so treat another as a thing suitable to yield sexual pleasure, morality opposes this. One may grab a piece of fruit seeking its sweetness; one may not "grab" a person for sexual pleasure. That is rape. (p. 68)

Utlimately, Herman suggests that Kant's solution to this problem is to insist that "sexual interest in another person [is permissible] only where there is secure moral regard for that person's life"—meaning: regard for their future, for what matters to them, etc—so that "acceptance of obligations with respect to that person's welfare [is a moral pre-]condition of sexual activity" (p. 68). As Kant sees it, that is only possible within marriage, but that is something of an optional add-on.

Herman claims, on Kant's behalf, that "human love will...not do the job of marriage" (p. 68), i.e., that human love between partners cannot guarantee the right sort of moral regard. Why not? Note that the issue here is largely whether some institutional structure is required to solve Kant's problem. What might be the alternative? One important question is how long the "moral regard" that is required for ethical sex is supposed to endure.

Early on in the paper (p. 54), Herman gives as an example sexual harassment: It is generally accepted nowadays that institutions, like Brown, may 'interfere' with private sexual relationships by prohibiting them where there are power imbalances. So, in that sense, we have come to understand that 'private problems' do not always have 'private solutions'. How might an analogous point apply to the problem of objectification?

Herman also suggests a different reason Kant might think an institution is required if sex is to be moral: that there is no unique solution to the problem thus posed (p. 68). This might work in the case of property: Since many property-like arrangements are possible, we aren't all going to stumble naturally upon the same one, so we need to make some agreement about which one we'll follow. Does the same sort of argument seem to work in the case of sex and marriage?

This is the classic paper on objectification in analytic philosophy: the one everyone else cites. Nussbaum's primary goal is just to get clear about what objectification is. She argues that there are seven different things that might be meant by 'objectification', some of which go together much of the time but which are in principle distinct. Moreover—and this is the claim for which the paper is best known—she argues that some forms of objectification may be good and even wonderful parts of sexual life.

Nussbaum's discussion focuses on six putative examples of objectification taken from literature. One important distinction that she makes concerns objectification by characters in some story with objectification by the story itself (the "implied author"), and objectification by the author of that story. We'll not be too concerned with that distinction here, but it is important to keep in mind when discussing whether and how pornography objectifies, for example.

Section I lists seven types of objectification. (Rae Langton adds three more in her paper "Autonomy-Denial in Objectification", reprinted in her Sexual Solipsism. See the SEP article mentioned above as an optional reading.) All of them, Nussbaum says, are ways of "treating as an object what is not really object, what is, in fact, a human being" (p. 257). She regards the notion of 'human being' here as broadly Kantian (recall Herman's paper), but she suggests that what's involved in "treating [someone] as an object" can vary.

So we have the following notions of objectification:

1. Instrumentality: The objectifier treats the object as a tool of his or her purposes.
2. Denial of autonomy: The objectifier treats the object as lacking in autonomy and self-determination.
3. Inertness: The objectifier treats the object as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity.
4. Fungibility: The objectifier treats the object as interchangeable (a) with other objects of the same type, and/or (b) with objects of other types.
5. Violability: The objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary-integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into.
6. Ownership: The objectifier treats the object as something that is owned by another, can be bought or sold, etc.
7. Denial of subjectivity: The objectifier treats the object as something whose experience and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account. (p. 257)

I confess that I do not understand Nussbaum's distinction, drawn in (3), between 'agency' and 'activity'. She says, e.g., that a Monet painting is inert but not inactive and that her word processor is not inert. If anyone has any idea what these terms mean, please do say so.

Nussbaum notes that some of these seem more immediately objectionable than others: autonomy and subjectivity are not properties of things at all (in the sense in which she is using that term), so to deny them to people seems very likely to be problematic. She also argues that all seven notions are distinct, though two of them seem to be more basic than the others. These are (1) and (2): instrumentality and denial of autonomy.

This part of Nussbaum's discussion is somewhat confusing, for two reasons. First, one might have expected her to argue that denial of autonomy, say, does or doesn't imply various of the other forms of objectification. What she argues, however, is that recognition of autonomy precludes the other forms of objectification, with the possible exception of fungibility. (She uses the example of anonymous sex to make this point.) So, in effect, what we have is that, in order to obectify someone in any of the other ways (with the mentioned exception), you also have to deny their autonomy. That would make denial of autonomy the most basic form of objectification: To objectify someone in any of the other ways, you also have to deny their autonomy.

Nussbaum's claim that Rubin thinks recognition of autonomy is compatible with violability seems to me a mistake. But Nussbaum does not, in my view, take sufficient notice of the importance of consent and of what consent involves in such cases. I would suggest, however, that we set that aside for now. We'll return later to questions about the ethics of BDSM.

Second, when Nussbaum remarks that, nonetheless, there are ways in which "instrumentality seems the most morally exigent notion" (p. 261), one might have expected her to make a similar claim. Instead, she notes that denial of autonomy does not imply instrumentality and denies that treating something as a mere instrument implies any of the other forms of objectification—though she allows that, in the case of human adults, treating them as not just instruments might imply recognizing their autonomy, etc. She then proceeds to limit her attention to that specific case: the objectification of human adults by other human adults.

I'm a bit puzzled how Nussbaum can make both these claims: that recognition of autonomy precludes instrumentality and that instrumentality does not require denial of autonomy. That seems like a straightforward contradiction. But maybe I'm missing something. Probably what Nussbaum thinks is that the former implication holds only where adults are concerned, or that the latter fails only in cases where adults are not concerned.

On pp. 262-5, Nussbaum considers the relation between her seven notions of objectification where human adults are concerned. But she does not explicitly detail those relations (e.g., which of them imply others). It would be a worthwhile exercise to try to figure that out.

Ultimately, Nussbaum concludes that:

..[T]here is something especially problematic about instrumentalizing human beings, something that involves denying what is fundamental to them as human beings, namely, the status of beings ends in themselves. From this one denial, other forms of objectification that are not logically entailed by the first seem to follow.

That is: Other forms of objectification aren't strictly required by instrumentalization, but it does tend to lead to them.

So Nussbaum regards both denial of autonomy and instrumentalization as central. How does she see them as related?

In section II, Nussbaum applies the machinery she has developed to the case of sexual objectification. As Nussbaum notes, instrumentality is the notion of objectification with the most obviously Kantian ring to it: one is not to treat human beings merely as means to one's own ends but must also treat them as ends in themselves. And, as we saw with Herman, Kant's concern was precisely that sexual desire leads us to treat other persons as instruments of our own pleasure. Nussbaum also notes, largely elaborating on MacKinnon and Dworkin, that in this case instrumentalization is liable to be closely connected with a denial of autonomy and a denial of subjectivity. She also suggests that it might lead to violability, i.e., that instrumentalization might tend to lead to rape.

This leads Nussbaum to the question why Kant thinks sex always involves (or even usually threatents to involve) instrumentalization (pp. 266-7). She suggests that it is because Kant thinks that sexual arousal is so powerful that, in effect, it prevents one from seeing other people as anything but tools of one's own satisfaction. How might this idea compare to Nagel's suggestion that, in sex, one is dominated by one's body and that, "ideally, deliberate control is needed only to guide the expression of [sexual] impulses" (p. 13)?

As we saw with Herman, the most obvious difference between Kant's view and that of Dworkin and MacKinnon is that they do not think that sexual desire is necessarily objectifying, only that, under current social conditions, (i) men's sexual desire for women objectifies women and (ii) women's sexual desire for men involves "volunteer[ing] for object-status" (p. 268). Nussbaum goes on to argue that Dworkin, in particular, tends to run together the various notions of objectification that she (Nussbaum) has distinguished. This raises the question whether objectification, in the central sense of instrumentalization, is as pervasive as Dworkin and MacKinnon claim it is—a question Nussbaum does not quite answer.

Consider sexual harassment. In which of Nussbaum's seven ways does it serve to objectify?

Section III is organized as a series of reflections on the original examples. We'll focus our attention just on the discussion of the passage from D.H. Lawrence. Nussbaum argues first, however, that context is not just crucial to determining not whether some mode of treatment is objectifying but also to whether such objectification is morally wrong. She gives an example in which W(endy) is going out of town for an interview and M(ark) says to her, "You don't really need to go. You can just send them some pictures" (pp. 271-2). This remark, Nussbaum says, does sexually objectify Wendy, but whether it does so objectionably, she argues, depends on what relationship, if any, Wendy and Mark have, what the interview is for, etc.

Nussbaum suggests that Mark's remark slights Wendy's autonomy, treats her as inert, and "may suggest some limited form of fungibility" (p. 272). Does it? Is it, in fact, obvious that this remark objectifies Wendy in any of the ways Nussbaum distinguishes? If not, it need not follow that it does not objectify her. It would follow that Nussbaum has missed something important.

Perhaps the most intriguing version of the case Nussbaum considers is the one in which Mark is a close friend whom Wendy "wishes...would notice her body once in a while" (p. 272). What should we say about that case? Does it involve objectification? If so, in what senses?

Nussbaum then turns to Lawrence. She argues that objectification of the sort we find there—including a sort of identification of a person with their genitals—can be benign and even wonderful. Perhaps the most striking remarks Nussbaum makes are these:

[For Constance] to be identified with her genital organs is not necessarily to be seen as dehumanized meat ripe for victimization and abuse, but can be a way of being seen more fully as the human individual she is. It is a reminder that the genital organs of people are not really fungible, but have their own individual character, and are in effect parts of the person, if one will really look at them closely without shame. (p. 276)

Nussbaum proceeds to make two points. First, that this example exposes the role that is played in Kant's views by a devaluation of the body (and so a kind of dualism); focusing one's attention on someone's body need not involve ignoring their humanity. Second, Nussbaum wants to claim that sexual expression, even for women in Victorian England (the time Lawrence was writing about), can be a vehicle for self-actualization and growth.

The words "in effect", in the quotation above, are odd—unless one wanted to deny that any part of someone's body is part of the person they are. What might Nussbaum have in mind? What do you think she means when she says: "We have to learn to call our genital organs by proper names [i.e., to give them names of their own]—that would be at least the beginning of a properly complete human regard for one another" (p. 277)?

Nussbaum expresses some sympathy for core elements of Lawrence's picture of sexuality, in particular, "the value of a certain type of resignation of control, and of both emotional and bodily receptivity", as well as a kind of willingness to be objectified by one's partner. How attractive does that picture seem? How, again, might it compare to Nagel's conception? or Ruddick's? or Fortunata's?

To what extent do Nussbaum's criticisms of Playboy apply to soft-core pornography generally? Do you think she would say that erotic nude photographs (ones intended to stimulate the viewer sexually) always objectify in an objectionable way? Why or why not?

Nussbaum argues that some forms of objectification are "benign", but only when they are embedded in the right form of relationship. Marino argues in response that less is required: a proper respect of one's partner's autonomy, as expressed in part through consent. It follows, Marino claims, that there is nothing wrong with objectification, in and of itself. (Maybe a different way to understand what Marino is claiming is that only the form of sexual objectification that Nussbaum labels 'denial of autonomy' is generally liable to be wrong.)

In Section I, Marino asks the question what, for Nussbaum, makes objectification "benign", in the cases when it is. Nussbaum's answer, as Marino understands her, is that it is so when, first, the form objectification takes is not that of instrumentalization or the denial of autonomy; second, when it is symmetrical and mutual; and third, when it occurs in a context of "rough equality". Marino suggests that 'mutuality' involves each partner's 'use' of the other as being linked, in some appropriate way, with the other partner's use of them.

What Marino most emphasizes, though, is that, on Nussbaum's view, consent by itself is not sufficient to make sexual objectification benign. Rather, what does most of the work is the broader context of the relationship between the partners. Nussbaum's view thus has some similarity to Kant's (recall his views about marriage) and thus would call into moral doubt some forms of casual sex (such as anonymous bathhouse sex).

Does this account of what Nussbaum argues in "Objectification" seem right?

Marino argues against this view in Section II, claiming that all objectification involves some form of instrumental use and that "intimacy, symmetry, and mutuality" can never excuse instrumental use by themselves. The basic thought is one Marino borrows from Alan Soble: How can it be permissible to treat someone as a mere means sometimes? The fact that one treats them as an end in themselves at other times cannot justify one's treating them merely as a means now. Worse, treating someone you love as a mere means seems especially objectionable.

Marino gives an example, involving typing, of how one partner in a relationship might instrumentalize the other in ways that were especially hurtful. Is the example convincing? What makes it so (or not)? Can you give other (maybe better) examples that make the same point?

One suggestion Marino makes in connection with this example is that intimacy can cloud questions of consent (which, she will be suggesting, is what really matters here). What might a sexual analogue of this case look like?

Marino then distinguishes two kinds of instrumental use. In the first (the strong sense), one person utterly disregards the other person's humanity; in this case, mutuality and the like clearly cannot excuse such behavior. The second (the weak sense) is a bit harder to get a grip on. Marino says that, when she asks her partner, "May I put my head on your stomach?" she is not taking his wishes and desires into account but is simply assuming that he'll speak up if he has something else he'd rather do. It involves "treat[ing] someone in such a way that they further ends of our own, consensually, while we do not concern ourselves with their ends..." (p. 351). She gives several additional examples to illustrate the difference. What she calls "weak instrumental use" is supposed, then, "involves respecting a person's stated permissions, while ignoring the full range of their wishes and desires" (p. 351). It seems, that is, to involve one person's not actively seeking to determine, and then take into account, what all the other person's needs and desires are.

This weaker sort of instrumental use, Marino claims, is common in sexual life—and, crucially, it need not involve any denial of autonomy. How good are the examples Marino uses to support this claim? Can you give other or better ones? Do all these examples seem "benign", then, if they are consensual? Is it right that "...a partner who is moved by intense desire and sexual excitement to become momentarily focused on his or her self is often taken to be part of the ideal sexual encounter" (p. 352)? (Compare also the remark mentioned in the next paragraph.)

Marino argues that symmetry and mutuality cannot excuse instrumental use in such cases. Again, the point is relatively straightforward: Two wrongs do not make a right. What does seem to make weak objectification benign is "a certain kind of attention [to] and respect for the other", which includes consent (and so respect for their autonomy). That suggests that what matters might be something about the quality of the sexual interaction itself. For example, equal pleasure might be enough to make weak use benign. But Marino claims "that it is not equality that matters in sex, but rather the choices of the participants" (pp. 354-5).

In Section III, Marino argues that consent both can and does make objectification, sexual and otherwise, morally benign. Of course, it is essential that the consent be freely and voluntarily given, and not based upon coercion or deception. But Marino goes beyond what she styles as 'standard' views to claim that one can consent to being used, in the weak instrumental sense. In fact, she thinks that 'good sex' often involves using one's partner in this sense, and allowing oneself so to be used: "Typically, in the kind of example mentioned above, in which passion causes A to temporarily pursue A's own pleasure and ignore B's desires and wishes, B won't mind, because B wants A to have this experience; it's often part of what one hopes for in having sex with another person" (p. 356).

Marino gives two more examples: dressing in a way that is intended to be sexually arousing for people who see her, and putting sexualized photographs on tumblr, say (before that got banned). Is there a difference between these? And do they seem entirely benign? (The related blog post by Vex Ashley speaks to how important the latter was to some people. How does what Ashley has to say bear upon discussions of objectification?)

In what kinds of cases might someone "temporarily pursue their own pleasure and ignore [their partner's] desires and wishes"? Are there gendered asymmetries here? If so, how worrying is that?

The crucial question is whether one can really respect someone's autonomy while treating them as an instrument in the weak sense. Marino, unsurprisingly, argues that this is possible. It requires being attentive to whether one's partner's "consent is ongoing", that is, whether they continue to consent to being used in this way, while one is using them in that way. (She bases this on an analogy with the role of consent in BDSM, which we'll explore in more detail later.) Marino suggests that this requires a kind of attentiveness to one's partner and acknoweldges that there are risks here: Misunderstandings are possible, but that "only shows that consent is sometimes difficult to accurately determine" (p. 357).

The remark just quoted might ring some alarm bells. Why? Is there a serious worry here about Marino's position? Or is it a false alarm?

It does not yet, however, follow that casual heterosex is morally unobjectionable, so long as it is consensual. (Might it follow, though, that anonymous gay bathhouse sex is unobjectionable if consensual?) The reason, Marino argues, is that social circumstances can make the question whether someone has freely consented to be objectified less than obvious. Indeed, Marino seems to allow that, as things are, such choices might not, in a heterosexual context, ever be truly free, in which case the sexual objectification of women by men might never in fact be permissible (and there might be similar problems with casual heterosex).

Marino mentions the term 'adaptive preferences' in the course of this discussion. These are, roughly speaking, choices one makes among a set of bad options: one chooses what is least bad (rather than what is good). Such 'constrained choices' raise a host of moral questions, and there is a sizable literature on this topic.

The main claim Bauer wants to make here is that "the understanding of sexual objectification as something that happens when and only when [Kant's] formula of humanity is violated in a sex-related way" (pp. 32-3) is fundamentally wrong-headed. But that, of course, is the approach we've been exploring to this point: in Herman, Nussbaum, and Marino. It's a sub-theme of the chapter that 'we know sexual objectification when we see it' and that we don't really need an 'analysis' or 'definition' of the kind Nussbaum attempts to provide. It's important to appreciate that Bauer is not claiming that sexual objectification is 'subjective' in any sense.

Bauer begins her essay by recounting some of the history of attempts by the US Supreme Court to define what counts as obscene. Bauer's real interest is in a more general fact about the nature of such characterizations: "...[W]hen human beings make judgments about what counts as what, it's often the case, no matter what phenomenon is at stake, that, if for whatever reason we are called upon to adduce explicitly the criteria that we are using, we have great difficulty doing so..." (p. 23). Philosophy, by contrast, and analytic philosophy in particular, is often concerned precisely to articulate such criteria. Think, for example, of the question what knowledge is. Here, the standard way to think of the problem is as concerning the correct definition of knowledge. (Indeed, in most of the papers we read on sexual desire, the issue was conceived that way.)

As Bauer notes, this problem is not one that tends to arise in everyday life. We tend to agree well enough with one another about what counts as (to use her example) a wastebasket to figure out where we should put the trash. The cases that do tend to pose problems, she suggests, are ones in which a given term "gets its sense only within a particular worldview" (p. 25), that is, only if certain sorts of normative (e.g., moral) presuppositions are in place. Her specific suggestion—though, again, this won't be of great significance for us—is that "obscene" is such a term (in its sexual use).

One way to think of what Bauer is arguing here is that she wants to claim that the question whether sexual objectification might sometimes be a "good thing"—one of the central claims for which Nussbaum wants to argue—is, in a certain sense, just confused. The term will only make proper sense to you if you see the world in a certain way: as one in which women as systematically disadvantaged and in which "certain ways of perceiving and representing women tend to cause women direct or indirect material and psychological harm" (p. 28). It's these ways of perceiving and representing women to which the term "sexual objectification" refers, on Bauer's view, and they are always bad.

Bauer proceeds to mention a number of examples of sexual objectification in the media. (Unfortunately, some of her links are now broken. See this page for the ads to which she refers.)

Think about Nussbaum's seven types of objectification. How do the various examples Bauer mentions fit into her categories, or not? (Don't forget the example mentioned in note 11.) Are they all objectifying or are some of them just stupid (and is there a difference)? What is so offensive about many of these ads?

Bauer suggests that the underlying project (which seems independent of any attempt to 'define' sexual objectification) is to explain why sexual objectification is wrong in broadly Kantian terms. (There are some useful remarks about what Kant's view of marriage actually involved: "the erasure of women as autonomous beings" (p. 32).) The assumption, that is to say, is that sexual objectification fundamentally involves treating someone as a means only, rather than as an end in themselves, and doing so in a sexual way: roughly, that is, one is treating a person as a mere thing. It is this claim that Bauer wants to question. (And it's that claim that fuels Marino's argument that objectification, just by itself, is never wrong.)

Bauer specifically questions Nussbaum's analysis of the example from Lady Chatterly's Lover. Nussbaum claims that the mutual respect and consent present in their relationship makes whatever objectification may occur "benign". Bauer notes, however, that this assumes, contrary to what Nussbaum herself argues elsewhere, that Connie's preferences are not "adaptive". The basic idea here is that, if someone is structurally disadvantaged, then the choices that are open to them may be in some way circumscribed or limited. So they are is forced to choose among options all of which may be in some way bad (at least relative to the options open to others who are not disadvantaged in the same way): "...[W]hen frank social inequalities exist, people may shrink their expectations and desires to fit within the resulting constraints" (p. 35). That is, they "adapt" their preferences to their situtation. It follows, Bauer claims, that mutual desire and consent are not sufficient to guarantee that whatever sexual objectification is present is not of a negative, "noxious" sort.

As is perhaps especially clear in Marino, the concept of objectification that is under discussion is actually very general, and sexual objectification is treated as a special case of this more general phenomenon. Might it be appropriate to say that, according to Bauer, that is the fundamental mistake? If so, then how so?

Cahill's central claim in this paper is that the concept of objectification has outlived its usefulness and that a related but distinct concept of 'derivitization' is more helpful. This view encompasses more than just the analysis of sexual violence, but that is her focus here.

Cahill defines that notion thus: "To derivatize is to portray, render, understand, or approach a [person] solely as the reflection, projection, or expression of [one's own] being, desires, fears, etc", rather than as an independent being in their own right (p. 14). Note that this is related to but different from what Nussbaum calls "denial of subjectivity". It is not to see someone as lacking in subjectivity but to distort their subjectivity for one's own ends. Cahill also emphasizes that this does not involve treating someone as a 'thing': so it is not a form of objectification, in the sense in which Nussbaum uses that term.

The first main section discusses the interpretation of sexual violence in terms of objectification. Cahill distinguishes two such accounts. On the first, rapists treat women (but see p. 16) as mere things without any desires or experiences that matter. On the second, women are seen not just as things but specifically as things for sexual use. The former approach Cahill identifies with Susan Brownmiller. It downplays the sexual aspects of rape, construing it primarily as an act of violence. One main criticism of this view is that rape is not, as women experience it, just another act of violence. The latter approach Cahill identifies with Catharine MacKinnon. A central criticism of it is that MacKinnon makes too little room for the possibility of resisting culturally dominant conceptions, both out in the world and in one's own lived experience. Thus, she claims that MacKinnon "collpases a distinction—that between sexual violence and other sexual experiences—that many women experience as at least sometimes clear" (p. 20).

These criticisms are familiar from the work of other philosophers. The former is MacKinnon's own criticism of Brownmiller; the latter is found in many 'sex-positive' feminists. Cahill, though, sees a common thread in these criticisms: that they underplay women's own embodied experience of sexual violence and of sexuality more generally.

In particular, Cahill argues (on pp. 20-2), Brownmiller overlooks the fact that rape would not have the significance it does for the rapist if women were seen as mere things: "In order to establish his own dominance, the assailant must have a real person to dominate; ...she cannot be a mere object" (p. 20). (Note that this is an 'internal' criticism of Brownmiller's view: She regards rape as an act of violence, but acts of violence are directed at people, not things.)

Cahill suggests that Jessica Benjamin's concept of 'intersubjectivity' might help us to deepen this criticism. As Benjamin sees it, much of human experience is shaped by a desire for 'recognition' on the part of others: to be seen as distinct people with our own hopes, wishes, fears, and desires, ones that matter and that deserve some sort of respect. Domination, Benjamin suggests, thus becomes almost paradoxical: It is a desire to overwhelm someone else's subjectivity but, at the same time, it requires their subjectivity (since 'overwhelming' a blowup doll wouldn't be overwhelming anything).

Does Cahill underplay the way in which denial of full subjectivity (or humanity) is used to justify certain kinds of domination? How might that work in the case of sexual violence?

The notion of 'destruction' is perhaps the most difficult in Benjamin's work. Cahill suggests that this means "recognition of the otherness of the other, the negation of the other as 'not me'" (p. 21). But that is the result of survived destruction, not the process of destruction itself. To understand what Benjamin means, we need to disginguish the other as I imagine or want them to be (the 'psychical' object of my own creation) and the other as they are independent of me (the 'real' other, as we might put it). Acts of 'destruction' are (I think) assertions of my own subjectivity, ones that (in a certain sense) threaten to destroy the other as an independent being. If all goes well, however, what I actually destroy is the fantasized other and what 'survives' is the other as they really are. (At times, Benjamin speaks of a need to destroy the other in order to discover them.) Thus, if I say, "I want this", the other can respond in various ways. It is the possibility of their declining that makes them truly other—but it is also what makes room for the possibility of their genuinely and freely agreeing to my request. What is not consistent with their being truly other is their simply acceding no matter what I ask. To put it differently: Their agreeing would be of no value to me if it were not free; but, for that to be a possibility, so must their declining be a possibility. (So one can, in a way, understand the desire to force them to agree. But that desire is, in a way, paradoxical.)

Although Cahill invokes Benjamin here for other purposes, it is perhaps worth reflecting on what Benjamin says about "erotic union" and the 'intersubjective' character of it. In erotic union (as opposed to domination), she suggests, one's actions breed not submission but a response that 'makes a difference' to what happens. Thus, Benjamin says that "The idea of destruction reminds us that the element of aggression is necessary in erotic life...". If we think of 'destruction' in the terms just described, how is it that this is 'aggressive'? (How, to see it from the other side, does it impose on one?) Why might it be essential to erotic life? And how might it help us to unpack Nussbaum's idea that objectification can be a wonderful part of sex?

Cahill then turns again (on pp. 22-4) to MacKinnon's view. Her central criticism is not unlike Nussbaum's: that it is not in general true that being "a sex object is necessarily degrading and violent" but sometimes to be treated as such "can be a vital element of a robust, healthy subjectivity" (p. 23). We are all, Cahill thinks, 'things for sex': "To be a sexual, embodied human being is to be a material entity capable of engaging sexually with other sexual, embodied human beings, and this engagement can (perhaps should!) include sexualizing gazes" (p. 23). The problem, as Cahill sees it, is that the positions of sexual subject and sexual object are not equally available to all people but are gendered. Men are seen as sexual subjects and as the active 'do-ers'; women are seen as sexual objects and as the passive 'done-to'. (Recall MacKinnon's quip, "Man fucks woman; subject verb object".) And, although Cahill does not make this observation herself, the way these same roles structure male homosexuality reinforces her point about their significance.

If so, however, then the solution need not be (and Cahill thinks cannot be) to banish sexual objectification. Rather, what we need to do is reconceive "sexual interactions...as dynamic engagements between differentiated beings" in which we are all "always already both subject and object" (p. 23). Indeed, going somewhat beyond Nussbaum, Cahill thinks that sexual objectification is, in a way, an essential part of erotic experience: Our "very sexual subjectivity involves being a sexual object for another subject..." (p. 23). If that is right, then objectification by itself is not morally wrong. Thus, Cahill concludes, "If sexual violence often involves constructing the victim as a sex object, as a thing-for-sex, this does not yet explain its harms or its ethical wrongness" (p. 24).

What does Cahill mean when she says that we are "both [sexual] subject and object" in sexual interactions? What does she mean when she says that "To be sexual, one must be seen as a thing-for-sex" and, indeed, to some extent be one (p. 24)? (What does she mean by a 'thing'?) How is it that this makes possible an understanding of passivity that isn't opposed to activity?

That brings us to Cahill's proposed alternative. Properly to understand the horror of sexual violence, she suggests, we need to understand it as "the attempt on the part of one subject (the assailant) to overwhelm the subjectivity of the other (the victim) in a particularly sexualized way" (p. 25): to force her to conform to his will, whatever she may want. Borrowing from Benjamin, again, Cahill suggests that such acts involve a certain sort of inability to accept the otherness of the victim: "to force the other to either be or want what [the rapist] wants..." (quoted on p. 25). The victim is not allowed effectively to express their own sexuality but only within whatever bounds the assailant imposes. As she puts it near the end of the paper:

Rape does not turn women into things: it forcibly reduces their sexual being to that of another, thereby eclipsing their ontological distinctiveness. The two become one, and the one is the rapist. (p. 28)

One might wonder whether derivitization properly describes all forms of rape. The remarks Cahill makes in note 23 about rape as a war crime—one of the central cases for Brownmiller—do not seem entirely convincing. Is there a significant subset of cases, however, to which her analysis does apply? Might most date rapes have this structure, for example? (Cahill is, as she mentions early in the paper, especially concerned with rape as something that typically happens between people who know each other.)

Cahill writes that the problem in rape is not that the victim is seen as a thing-for-sex but that "...the ability to control, define, and force the sexual encounter lies only with" the rapist (p. 25). Are there ways in which that same sort of phenomenon arises also in ordinary heterosex?

The remarks just quoted, and others Cahill makes, identify the crucial issue here as being the denial of autonomy. But of course that was only one aspect of objectification as Nussbaum defines it. Is Cahill not really giving us an alternative to objectification, then? Or are there still important differences? One way to answer this question might be to ask whether derivitzation involves treating others as means only rather than as ends in themselves.

The main topic of this paper is a question about the nature of sexual orientation. Many theorists nowadays take sexual orientation to be a matter of the gender of the people to whom one is sexually attracted; one's own gender is irrelevant. So both lesbian women and straight men are gynephilic (attracted to women). Bettcher argues that this account is inadequate and that one's own gender does play a role in sexual orientation. For our purposes, however, what is most important about Bettcher's argument is her conception of the nature of sexual experience.

Bettcher calls her view 'erotic structuralism', and its central feature "is that sexual attraction to a person possesses an internal, constitutive structure that includes the eroticized self as an element": a self that is interacting sexually with an eroticized other (p. 606).

Bettcher also argues that her view helps us to understand what is wrong with the claim (still sometimes made) that trans women suffer from 'autogynephilia': sexual attraction to a feminine version of themselves. We won't focus on this part of Bettcher's argument, but her basic idea is that this view itself suffers from a failure to recognize, first, that one's own eroticized self is an essential component of sexual attraction to others and, second, that one's own gender may well figure in this 'structure' without one being attracted to oneself.

In the first main section, Bettcher argues for a distinction between what she calls "erotic interest" and "sexual attraction". This latter term she uses in preference to "sexual desire", because of ambiguities in the latter (some of which we have encountered ourselves). So Bettcher is particularly interested in "the actual experience of sexual attraction to a person" (p. 608). Note that this experience is meant to be "occurrent", as philosophers say (something one is actually experiencing at the moment) not "dispositional (something that is relatively permanent, e.g., that I am sexually attracted to my partner).

I find Bettcher's terminology here a bit confusing. Here, though, is what I think she means. The 'erotic content' is something like: something one finds arousing; that is what we take an 'erotic interest' in. So the 'erotic content' is some situation that one is perceiving, conceiving, or imagining. Sexual attraction, by contrast, is directed at a person.

The question at issue here, then, is whether there is any distinction between the 'source of attraction' (the person you're attracted to) and the 'erotic content'. Bettcher wants to argue that there is. The basic point is that one very often is aroused by the possibility of a sexual interaction with the person to whom one is attracted not just by that person. Bettcher allows that it is possible just to be attracted to a person "without having an explicit aim of doing something sexual with them, it is also the case that often one experiences doing something with the source of attraction as itself exciting" (p. 608). Thus, different people could be attracted to the same person but be aroused by the possibility of doing different things with them. That 'thing one might do' is the 'erotic content'. The 'source of attraction' figures in it but need not exhaust it.

Note, however, that one will also typically figure in the 'erotic content' oneself. It's my doing something with Scarlett Johansson that I find exciting (say). But that might seem puzzling: Am I supposed to be attracted to my own body? Bettcher's answer is that we will only think that if we confuse the 'source of attraction' (whom we're attracted to) with 'erotic content' (the (in-process of just hoped-for) activity we find arousing). To spell out that idea, she discusses an example in which a trans man (Sam) is being fellated by a woman (Kim) and gives the following argument:

1. The fantasized penis is a significant part of Sam's erotic content.
2. Sam is not attracted to his fantasized penis.
3. Therefore, some erotic content is not reducible to "the source of attraction".

Bettcher gives sub-arguments for the two premises on pp. 609-10. Do they work?

Bettcher goes on to suggest that the argument generalizes, since there are other practices of similar structure in which trans people engage. Is it also true that the typical sexual practices of cis people (i.e., people who are not trans or genderqueer) have this sort of structure? Bettcher does give another example, involving David, Wendy, and Jeremy, but that example involves fantasizing about being with someone else, which might make it seem less than representative. Are there more 'ordinary' examples? The worry here is that, while Bettcher has identified a real phenomenon, it may not be particularly central to most people's experience of sexual attraction. (This question is addressed, obliquely, around pp. 615-6.)

In the next section, Bettcher turns to the question how to distinguish those elements of the 'erotic content' that are 'sources of attraction' from those that are not. The rough idea is that "to be sexual[ly] attracted to a person is to be aroused by increasing physical intimacy" with that person, or at least by the prospect of it (p. 612). Here, physical intimacy is understood in terms of (i) "sensory access to bodies" (p. 612), where this can be visual, tactile, etc, and (ii) the crossing of boundaries that would ordinarily deny sensory access to certain parts of other people's bodies. (As Bettcher notes, these are culturally defined.)

Now, that much leaves it open that what one experiences as erotic in such cases is simply (the prospect of) increased sensory access to the body of the other. If so, then one's own self has no special role to play in the story. (Compare the question, if you are familiar with this issue, whether Decartes's "I think" really involves an "I".) But Bettcher notes, quite rightly, that it can be arousing to become more available, sensorily, to another person, e.g., when being undressed by them. And, in this case, one's awareness of oneself as naked is part of what one experiences as erotic, although one need not experience, at such moments, an attraction to oneself. (In more typical cases, one experiences both of these aspects at once, as both partners become more 'available' to the other. See p. 615.)

Bettcher claims that "...it is impossible to be attracted to oneself insofar as there is no interpersonal distance between oneself and oneself..." (p. 612). Is that right? The 'boundaries' of which Bettcher speaks apply to my access to my own body, too, at least when I am in public. And they apply, in a different way, on the basis of social norms around masturbation. Could Bettcher say that, in such cases, there might be 'erotic content' (involving something I might do alone) but that there is no 'source of attraction'?

On p. 613, Bettcher claims that increased arousal correlates with increased intimacy (sensory access), together with the sense that this is 'leading somewhere': "...[V]isual access to breasts is a stage of intimacy that can lead to closer stages, so part of the erotic significance of this visual access now is precisely its implied potential for greater intimacy later" (p. 613). Need that be true? (And how much does it matter to Bettcher's overall argument?) How do shoe fetishes, or lingerie fetishes, etc, figure into this picture?

Bettcher argues further that one's awareness of oneself as gendered may figure importantly in erotic experience, since the 'boundary structure' of one's body is a gendered matter. (She explores that topic in more detail in the related reading, "Full Frontal Morality".) And, of course, it was already obvious that the gender of one's partner could be erotically important. Moreover, however, Bettcher claims that these are (or at least can be) interacting rather than independent elements. E.g., it might be a very different experience for a bisexual woman to be naked in front of another woman rather than to be naked in front of a man, due to the different norms involved.

What, then, is it for some erotic content to be a "source of attraction"? The claim, recall, was that "...to be sexual[ly] attracted to a person is to be aroused by [the prospect of] increasing physical intimacy" with them (p. 612). Or, as she puts it later, "...sexual attraction is the eroticization of gendered intimization between self and other" (p. 616). But has Bettcher really given us reason to regard sexual attraction in the way she describes? If so, what is her argument?

As Bettcher notes (see note 1 on p. 619), her account bears some similarities to Nagel's. That makes it a nice question whether it shares some of the weaknesses of his account. Does her account have difficulty explaining "plain sex"? How might sexual pleasure fit into her view?

Is there something "morally defective" about people who have 'racial sexual preferences' (RSPs)? Is it objectionably discriminatory to have sexual preferences for members of certain racial groups? Of course, someone could have RSPs for bad reasons, as it were. But Halwani argues here that there is no good reason to think that RSPs are always objectionable. He considers three kinds of arguments for the claim that they must be and argues that none of those arguments work. (It's very important to keep in mind here that Halwani is talking about sexual preference, not relationship preference, which raises somewhat different issues, as he himself points out.)

There's something to be learned from Halwani's method here. He wants to figure out why people have thought RSPs were problematic and then to argue that they aren't. So he tries to figure out for himself what the best arguments for that claim are and then to argue that none of them are convincing. That's what doing philosophy is.

Halwani tends to talk in the paper of whether people with racial sexual preferences "are racist". That language may not be the most helpful. I'll try to talk here, and suggest you try to think, in terms of whether those preferences are morally objectionable in some way.

The first argument is that preferring only members of one racial group unfairly discriminates against members of other racial groups. The crucial question, as Halwani sees it, is whether someone's race is or ought to be irrelevant to whether one is sexually attracted to them, in the way it is irrelevant to someone's ability to perform a certain job. Halwani claims that it is not, since physical appearance is, for many of us, an important part of sexual attraction, and race is a component of physical appearance. We do not think that someone who is not sexually attracted to very thin people unfairly discriminates against them. Nor do most people think that gay men unfairly discriminate against women by not being sexually attracted to them. It therefore isn't clear, Halwani concludes, that someone who just does experience sexual attraction primarily or even exclusively to members of one racial group unfairly discriminates against members of other groups.

The point of the term 'unfairly' here is that, in the strict sense, to 'discriminate' just means: to make a distinction. A women's-only discussion group discriminates against men, but it is a different question whether it does so unfairly.

Is the comparison to homosexuality reasonable?

The second argument is that people with RSPs are "defective individuals because their desires are narrow and are not as encompassing as they can be" (p. 186). Halwani objects that this argument faces a dilemma. If the claim is that having 'narrow' sexual desires is always wrong, then it follows that having any kind of sexual preference makes one 'defective'. If, on the other hand, it is only racial preferences that are supposed to be wrong, then the argument begs the question: The issue was precisely whether there is anything wrong with RSPs. If there is, then we need to be told why that is. It can't just be because the preferences are racial (as opposed to gender-based, or whatever).

Halwani argues that many attempts to answer this last question commit the 'naturalistic fallacy': Inferring that because such and such is 'natural', it is good. This is an important fallacy to know about, so that one can be careful not to commit it!

Halwani focuses on cases in which someone who is a member of one racial group sexually prefers members of a different racial group. But the first two arguments would apply equally to someone who had a sexual preference for members of their own racial group. How (if at all) does that observation affect your evaluation of these arguments? Do they seem better or worse depending upon whether the preferences are within group or across groups?

The third argument is that RSPs are based upon, or importantly involve, racial stereotypes. (Daniel Tsang, quoted early in the paper, seems to have given an argument of this type.) Someone who is attracted (say) to Asian women because of stereotypes about Asian women would seem to accept those stereotypes, and that seems morally objectionable; indeed, it seems objectionable for the same reason that not being attracted to Asian women because of those same stereotypes would be. Halwani suggests that it is less obvious than it might seem that accepting certain kinds of stereotypes is morally objectionable. (Consider, e.g., the stereotype that Chinese families value education.) But, for the purposes of argument, he concedes that accepting or endorsing racial stereotypes would be morally problematic. Certainly that is often true.

This is one place we might note that RSPs can be morally problematic: if they are based upon racial stereotypes that one accepts. But, Halwani argues (see p. 192), it's not the RSP that is problematic but the acceptance of the stereotypes. This is also one place that Halwani's phrasing the argument in terms of whether people are 'racist' seems unhelpful. It's better just to ask whether people with RSPs must always endorse objectionable stereotypes, if that's what's actually at issue.

The question then becomes whether having RSPs does require accepting or endorsing racial stereotypes. Halwani suggests that there is no obvious reason to think they do. Someone could just be attracted to Asian women because of how they look, quite independently of any stereotypes about them. And, even when stereotypes are involved, Halwani argues, they needn't be involved in a way that requires the agent to endorse them. He considers three kinds of cases.

1. The stereotype might actually figure in the agent's sexual desires. E.g., someone who prefers Asian men might, during sex with an Asian man, enjoy the thought that Asian men are (relatively) hairless. But, Halwani claims, they need not actually endorse that attitude in ordinary life, so there is nothing obviously problematic about their desires.
   Halwani puts a lot of emphasis on the difference between believing a stereotype and endorsing it. What is this difference? Does it have the moral significance he ascribes to it? (Obviously, this question raises large issues about the nature of prejudice that are not really the focus of this course.)
2. The person might have RSPs because of the stereotype. E.g., "...the belief that Latinos are passionate lovers might [cause] Belinda to form a sexual preference for Latinos..." (p. 192). Halwani notes that someone could have originally formed their preference for this reason but no longer endorse or even believe the stereotype.
   Relatedly, Halwani claims that the mere fact that someone's preferences are caused by something wrong does not make the preferences themselves wrong. Is that right? Are there good examples of cases in which one's preferences are shaped by unjust social arrangements but in which the preferences are not themselves wrong? (This question looks forward a bit to our discussion of sexual fantasy.)
3. The person might treat the stereotype as a reason for their RSP. E.g., "...Belinda says, 'Yes. I do like Latino men, and I like them because they are passionate lovers'" (p. 193). This is the case, Halwani suggests, that is most worrying. But in this case, he argues, it is not the RSP that is problematic. It is the fact that the person accepts and endorses a racial stereotype.

Might there be cases in which one's awareness of a stereotype leads to an RSP even if one does not believe it oneself? (This might be compared to certain cases of so-called stereotype threat.) If so, what should we make of such cases?

Does the third argument also apply to sexual preferences for members of one's own racial group? Do such preferences seem less problematic? Why or why not?

Zheng argues against the main claim Halwani makes: that racial fetishes are unobjectionable so long as they are not based upon racial stereotypes. Her focus is on the experience of people who are the objects of such fetishes and the larger social effects that such fetishes have. She argues that racial fetishes are problematic even if they are only based upon aesthetic preference.

In section 1, Zheng lays out what she calls the Mere Preferences Argument (MPA), which goes as follows:

1. There is nothing morally objectionable about sexual preferences for hair color, eye color, and other nonracialized phenotypic traits.
2. Preferences for racialized physical traits are no different from preferences for nonracialized phenotypic traits.
3. Therefore, 'mere' preferences for racialized phenotypic traits are not morally objectionable.

Zheng emphasizes that the core idea here is that attraction to Asian women (for example) is simply a function "of superficial physical traits and nothing deeper" (p. 403) and does not rest upon racial stereotypes.

Zheng's claim that the MPA "supports, and is likely to be motivated by, belief in color-blind ideology" (p. 403) is speculative. That is very much not the kind of claim one should make (in a philosophy paper) without argument or evidence, but she gives no argument and cites no evidence. (I'm also somewhat puzzled what the MPA has to do with 'minimal race', but that does not seem to matter for Zheng's argument.)

In section 2, Zheng considers one familiar response to the MPA: rejecting premise (2) on the ground that such racial sexual preferences are founded on objectionable racial stereotypes. As Zheng emphasizes, the effect of these stereotypes may not always be apparent to the people who have them. (There may be a kind of 'implicit bias' operating.) And she argues that empirical work suggests that racial stereotypes may have more of an influence than people are inclined to allow: "...[I]t would be utterly unrealistic to deny that lengthy exposure to a culture historically saturated with sexualized stereotypes of Asian women contributes to an individual's sexually preferring them, even if that contribution is not obvious or accessible to introspection" (p. 406), she concludes.

How might Halwani might respond to this argument? Set aside the question whether all racial sexual preferences are immoral and focus simply on the ones that result either from implicit bias or from "exposure to a culture historically saturated with sexualized stereotypes of Asian women".

Nonetheless, such arguments cannot show, Zheng notes, that all sexual preferences for Asian women are rooted in racial stereotypes. So if one wants to argue, as she does, that sexual racial preferences are always morally problematic, one needs a different argument.

In section 3, Zheng discusses the effects of sexual racial preferences in a world in which there is racial discrimination. Her claim will be that racial fetishes lead the targets of such fetishes to "suffer disproportionate harms or burdens on the basis of their race" and to be "wrongly represented in their sexual capacities" (p. 407).

The first claim is based upon the testimony of Asian American women themselves about the ways in which the existence of 'yellow fever' leads to self-doubt, concern about whether they are being racially objectified—specifically, treated as 'fungible' in Nussbaum's sense—and 'othered', in the sense of being treated differently because they are Asian. (E.g., "I never felt that I was being complimented for being myself...but rather for being an Asian female who looked exotic" (p. 408).) Having to navigate such issues is in itself harmful to Asian American women, Zheng claims, in ways for which there is no parallel in the experience of blonde women, say. So the analogy on which the MPA rests seems to flounder.

In (the misnumbered) section 5, Zheng considers some objections. The first is that the argument seems to show as well that preference for people of one gender reinforces gender stereotypes, etc. Zheng gives two replies. The first is that maybe gender preferences are morally problematic, given the current social meaning of gender. The second is that the cases aren't really parallel: No one worries that their partner only likes them because they're a woman or a man.

Zheng mentions several different reasons that a sexual preference for Asian women is problematic. One of them is that it leads such women to doubt whether they are really desired for who they are, etc. But there are several others, too. Are there analogues of those in the case of gender preference? If so, can Zheng really avoid the 'radical' reply? Or are there other disanalogies she could exploit?

Perhaps the biggest puzzle is what Zheng thinks people should do. She writes: "...[W]e can simply set aside the question of whether people's racial fetishes render them...ethically defective [which was Halwani's main concern], since, as I have shown, we can object to these preferences on other grounds" (pp. 414-5). So are the preferences themselves objectionable? Should people who have them try to get rid of them? Should they not act on them (since doing so has a racially charged 'expressive meaning')? How important is it to Zheng's view here that sexual preferences can be changed? Can they be? Or is that unrealistic?

Halwani responds to Zheng's paper—a bit impatiently, it seems to me—in the first footnote of his. He makes three main criticisms.

1. Much of the testimony from Asian American women concerns relationships rather than sexual attraction. So it is unclear what effects a mere sexual preference for Asian women might have.
2. The fact that one is attracted to someone, in part, because they are Asian does not imply that one is not, specifically, attracted to them, as the individual person they are. (I think that is the point. It is stated very briefly.)
3. Zheng assumes that the harms suffered by Asian American women are morally objectionable. Halwani briefly compares this case to the doubts a black person might have upon being hired for a job. Surely we do not think affirmative action is objectionable because it leads to such doubts. It's the background racism that is objectionable. Similarly, then, it might not be the preference for Asian American women that is objectionable but the background racism that causes the ill-effects Zheng emphasizes.

How good are these criticisms? How might Zheng respond to them?

Eaton is interested here much the same issues as Halwani and Zheng, but from the other side: How should we think about sexual aversions to members of oppressed groups? In this case, the group is fat people. (See the end of section 1 for Eaton's reasons for using the term "fat".)

Eaton approaches this issue through the broad frame of aesthetics. (Most of her work is on aesthetics.) Her focus, in fact, is on what she calls our 'taste in bodies' (she means taste as in 'taste in music') and on our 'collective' (or broadly social) distaste for fat bodies (as revealed, e.g., by our "prevailing forms of cultural expression" such as movies and television). What she calls "the standard picture" holds that this distaste is largely due to stereotypes and the like and so sees it as largely a side-effect of fat oppression. Eaton wants to argue, by contrast, that the cultural distaste for fat bodies "is an important constitutive element of the oppression of fat people", i.e., part of what sustains that oppression (p. 38).

Eaton clearly has in mind contemporary Western culture, and even within it there are important differences. (See footnote 2 and the top of p. 41.) It would be useful to compare and contrast different cultures here, with an eye to whether variation in taste for fat bodies correlates with variation in the extent to which fat people are oppressed.

Although Eaton does not discuss the matter, she suggests (on the top of p. 39) that similar considerations also apply to other sorts of sexual aversions, e.g., to members of a different race. How might that argument be developed? Zheng, you will recall, is focused on sexual preference for Asian women. Might Eaton's ideas still be helpful to her argument, though? If so, how? (This could make for a good paper topic.)

In section 2.1, Eaton begins by recounting various ways in which fat people are socially stigmatized and the effects that such stigmatization has. Her main goal here, however, is to argue for the importance of what she calls "sentiments". (This term largely derives from David Hume.) These are, roughly speaking, feelings that we have about other people and things, and they are to be sharply distinguished from the beliefs we have about those people or things.

Eaton says that sentiments are "occurrent, affect-laden, [and] object-directed" (p. 40). This means that they are something that happens and that one experiences at a given time (occurrent); that they are filled with feeling or emotion (affect-laden); and that the feelings are directed at a person or thing (object-directed or 'intentional'). She also mentions that many sentiments are evaluative: They involve a sense of their target as valuable or not (not necessarily or even primarily in a monetary sense but more in the sense of 'good').

In section 2.1.1, Eaton explains what she means by 'taste'. One's taste, with respect to some group G, is one's "standing disposition for evaluative sentiments regarding" members of that group, "where these sentiments are partially or fully constituted by or based on pleasurable or displeasurable responses to some of [their] properties" (p. 41). That is: Your taste in G's is a matter of how you tend to feel about G's, the way you tend to take pleasure or displeasure in members of that group. (E.g., your taste in music would be a matter of what kinds of music tend to bring you pleasure or displeasure, enjoyment or irritation, etc.) Summing up, Eaton remarks: "At its most general level, a person's taste in bodies is her sense of what makes a person (herself or another) physically attractive or unattractive" (p. 42).

In section 2.1.2, Eaton argues that "everyday taste has far-reaching moral, psychological, social, and economic ramifications that are nowhere more apparent than in the case of taste in bodies" (p. 42). She first notes, with reference to much empirical work, that judgements of how attractive someone is affect a large number of other, seemingly unrelated judgements—and, of course, weight is an important component of attractiveness (especially in white society). Eaton notes further that there is now a sizeable literature that explores how feelings of disgust (an extreme negative sentiment) towards certain groups can reinforce their marginalization.

As Eaton notes, bias against people who are perceived as unattractive might be regarded as its own form of oppressions, sometimes called 'lookism'. Here, then, is another place that one might want to compare Eaton's ideas to Halwani's and Zheng's, since much of that argument is about the role of aesthetic preferences for bodies.

Section 2.1.3 considers the objection that distaste in fat bodies is justified because fatness is so unhealthy. Eaton responds (i) that this would not justify fat oppression, even if it were true; and (ii) that it is far from clear that it is true. But our 'collective distaste' for fat bodies might be explicable simply in terms of the widespread belief that fatness is associated with ill-health. In response to that objection, Eaton suggests that "the health objection is a red herring, adduced post facto to justify and disguise what is at bottom a discriminatory attitude" (pp. 45-6) which is ultimately founded on negative sentiments. Her reason is that there are plenty of other things that are at least as unhealthy as fatness but which are not regarded as unattractive, such as extreme thinness and tanning.

Note the structure of this part of the paper: Eaton considers an objection; she answers it; she then considers a re-formulated form of the objection that avoids that response; she then addresses the modified argument, and then considers yet a third form of the argument (connected with 'lifestyle choices'). This is a good example of the 'dialectical' (points made back and forth) character of much philosophical writing and thinking.

Eaton might be right that extreme thinness and tanning are in fact as unhealthy as fatness. But is that enough for her argument? If not, are there other examples one might use instead?

In section 2.1.4, Eaton discusses why an aversion to fatness is so readily internalized. She mentions four points: (i) Attractiveness is extremely important to many people, especially women; (ii) Fatism affects women (an already oppressed group) more than men (not to mention the poor); (iii)  Even fat people themselves internalize such norms; (iv) Such attitudes resist rational change: "A compelling argument for why one ought not to be repelled by a certain physical trait or body type or physical act will do little on its own to undermine one's repulsion" (p. 48).

In section 2.2, Eaton begins to discuss how fatism might be combatted. As just noted, what was argued in section 2.1 suggests that simply addressing people's beliefs is not enough: We need also to "work to undermine our pervasive collective distaste for fat" (p. 48).

Eaton describes an 'Aristotelian' view on which having the right sort of moral character involves not just having the right sorts of attitudes but also having the right sorts of feelings about things (sentiments). Moral education thus involves 'training' one's feelings, through a process of 'habituation': repeated exposure to a thing, in the right sort of setting, to teach one to respond to it in the right way. (The details here, though interesting and important, will not be our main focus.) And one important way in which this can be done is by engaging the imagination, through 'mimetic art' (that is, representational art, broadly understood so as to include popular media). "By vividly engaging our sentiments and training them on a particular kind of object", a painting or photograph can help us to see something that we previously regarded as unattractive as attractive (p. 52).

In section 2.3, Eaton suggests that such a strategy is needed if we are to re-educate our collective taste in bodies. She mentions several classical and contemporary works that might contribute to doing this: Peter Paul Rubens's paintings, such as Venus at a Mirror (here); a series of photographs by Leonard Nimoy (here and here); and another by Laura Aguilar (see e.g. here and here). As Eaton notes, however, all of these, and other examples that she mentions, might be criticized on other grounds.

In the paper "Feminist Pornography" (listed as optional), as well as in other work, Eaton argues that much pornography distorts our sexual tastes but, for that very reasons, could also help to re-educate our sexual tastes. Could there be a 'fat-positive' pornography that could help re-train our collective distaste for fat bodies? (See, for example, the work of Courtney Trouble. Please note that some of the links off that page are very NSFW.) What downsides might 'fat-positive' porn have? How could or might it be different from fetishizing fat bodies, as much so-called "BBW" porn does? (Here it might be worth reflecting on Zheng's paper and her remarks about sexual fetishes for fat women.)

Gavey is interested in the ways in which consensual sex can nonetheless be harmful. She is particularly interested here in the reasons for which women consent to sex that they do not actually want to have within heterosexual relationships. Gavey's discussion is emprically based: Her data comes from interviews with six women. (This is a small group and so the experience of these women might not be representative. But anecdotal evidence, as in the two blog posts, suggests that it is at least somewhat widespread.) Gavey's larger goal, though, is to begin to interrogate how 'dominant discourses on sexuality' prescribe relatively passive positions for heterosexual women and encourage compliance with their partners' sexual requests.

Although Gavey's focus here is on heterosex, at least of the dynamics she discusses can and will appear in other contexts. As the related paper by Struckman-Johnson, et al., demonstrates, heterosexual women do sometimes also coerce their male partners into sex. Gender norms figure in such coercion (see below), but gender inequality might affect one of these more than the other. How so? Moreover, some of the phenomena Gavey discusses seem almost inherent in long-term relationships and so will probably appear in homosexual contexts, as well. Are these more or less worrying if they are almost inevitable? How, again, do broader social inequalities affect one's answer?

Gavey begins by outlining some of the background against which she operates. One key term to understand here is "discourse". In this sense, 'discourse' is something like a set of public assumptions, norms, and stereotypes about some topic that serve to structure our thinking about it. Discourse is said to define possible 'subject positions', which I take to mean: It identifies different categories of people (man and woman, for example), their relations to each other, and artciulates expectations, rights, responsibilities, etc, that people in those categories have. But the crucial observation is that we also think of ourselves in these terms and understand ourselves and our own actions in terms of the conceptual resources that the 'discourse' makes available: That is the sense in which the discourse 'constitutes us as subjects'. (I take talk of 'language' here really to be talk about the concepts we use to understand and explain the actions and events that occur in the topic area.)

Another important idea, which Gavey borrows from Michel Foucault, is that of 'discplinary power'. The basic idea here is that, because we understand ourselves in the terms the 'discourse' makes available, we regulate our own behavior so that, by and large, it conforms to the norms the discourse prescribes. (Even when we challenge those norms, we feel their influence.) This leads to a diagnosis of women's "complicity...in [their] own subjugation" (p. 327), which in earlier work had been described in terms of 'false consciousness' (a concept that originates with Marx).

It's important to recognize that Gavey does not use the term "complicity" with any moral connotation. In fact, she remarks on p. 330 that "To forget th[e] material condition of women’s lives is, perhaps, to move onto the slippery slope of victim-blaming". What does she mean by that?

As Gavey notes, Sandra Lee Bartky had already (in one of the related papers) given an account of how women are thus led to feel a pressure from within to conform to the norms of femininity.

Gavey quotes Bartky as having said that "a panoptical male connoisseur resides within the consciousness of most women". She puts this herself as: "...[W]hile women may not engage in conscious and deliberate submission, disciplinary power nevertheless produces what can be seen as a form of obedience" (pp. 328-9). Can you explain in your own words what Bartky and Gavey mean? (It's enough to study the rest of p. 328, including the long quotation.) Recent work on masculinity suggests that something similar might be true for men. (See e.g. this article and this TED talk.) How so? What might men's 'self-surveillance' involve?

Gavey's goal is to extend Bartky's analysis to the norms of heterosexuality: "Women involved in heterosexual encounters are...engaged in self-surveilance, and are encouraged to become self-policing subjects who comply with normative heterosexual narrative scripts which demand our consent and participation irrespective of our sexual desire" (p. 328). This includes both the decision whether to have sex on some given occasion and what kind of sex one has. As Gavey notes, the sources of such norms are various and sometimes conflicting, but also pervasive.

Gavey thus wants to understand how ordinary women understand their own experiences of heterosexual coercion and how the terms in which they do so affect their ability to see it for what it is. (So Gavey is interested in what Miranda Fricker calls "hermeneutical injustice": not even having the conceptual tools to talk about and understand one's oppression.) She characterizes a number of themes that emerged from her interviews:

• What is 'normal': There are strong expectations about what 'normal' heterosex will look like, and the pressure to be or appear 'normal' acts to channel women's sexual behavior into those forms. In many cases, this simply involves expectations that there will be sex in certain cases, and the expectation that sex means intercourse.
• A felt inability to say 'no': This discussion involves a number of subtle fears about the consequences of saying "no" to sex. The most striking is that some women sometimes feel as if, if they say "No", then they will be raped. So they don't say "No", and they aren't raped. But they end up having sex they do not want to be having. (Recall the pieces by Reina Gattuso we read earlier in the semester.)
• Problems with the notion of 'consent': The notion of consent itself is operative only in contexts where something is being done to someone. Framing women's sexual choices in these terms thus tends to leave out the very idea of women's sexual desire. (See especially the related paper by Fine and recall the paper by Corinna we read earlier.)
• The consequences of 'abnormality': Though related to the first point, the focus here is on the penalties to be paid for not being 'normal', such as shaming. (As Struckman-Johnson et al. show, shaming men is a popular strategy among women for coercing their male partners into sex.) Much of this relates to women's sense that they owe sex to men, especially when in relationships with them.
• A desire to 'take care' of men's sexual 'needs': Although there can be and are cases in which people can agree to have sex as an act of generosity when they don't really want to do so, many of Gavey's subjects report also having done so out of a sense of duty, a responsiblity to care for men's sexual needs.

I'll leave it to you to comment on these different phenomena. They strike me very differently. Some of them, for example, seem more gendered than others. Some of them almost seem inherent in the structure of long-term, monogamous relationships. Note also that, in some cases (such as those of Rosemary and Lee), it seems clear that someone is to blame. But in many of these cases, there isn't anyone who is coercing the women, and yet their choices still seem constrained in the same sort of way that coercion might constrain them. What is the significance of that difference?

On p. 348, Gavey discusses ways in which the absence of women's desire from traditional discourses around sexuality problematizes consent and restricts women's sexual choices to "limit[ing] and control[ing] male sexual access". What does she have in mind here? (This will be a central topic in our next several readings.) Of what significance is it that, as she notes on pp. 348-9, her analysis does not rely upon any centralized soure of control but, rather, emphasizes ways in which women conform their own behavior to social expectations?

Beres's paper is a helpful overview of some of the literature on consent. What is consent exactly? Why should it be thought of any legal or moral significance whether someone has 'consented' to sex? Our main goal with it will be to understand some of the basic distinctions that get drawn in this area.

Beres notes first that the notion of consent is rarely defined; rather, it is just assumed that the notion is understood. In fact, however, different authors seem to have quite different notions in mind. For example, some authors (e.g., Ostler) use a broadly behavioral definition (X acted as if they wanted to have sex), whereas for others (e.g., Walker) consent involves verbal agreement. Sometimes, authors speak of someone as 'consenting' even when they were coerced, whereas others regard someone as consenting only if they do so freely. And in some cases, the term 'consent' is not used in both senses within a single paper (e.g., O'Sullivan and Allgeier). So there is a good deal of confusion to be sorted out here.

Beres also notes that many authors regard consent as, in practice, in heterosexual contexts, as significantly gendered: It is women who 'consent' or not to men's sexual requests. Beres suggests that this asymmetry does need to be incorporated into any adequate account of consent, since gendered power asymmetries can't but affect consent, but focusing only on women's consent "assumes that mens consent is never contested and ever-present" (p. 97). Moreover, many authors fail even to consider consent in non-heterosexual contexts and seem to assume that consent is always asymmetrical: one person asks and another consents, or doesn't.

In what ways might the invisibility of men's consent distort our understanding of men's sexuality? Beres mentions one: that it implicitly assume a "'male sexual drive' discourse in which men are viewed as always desiring sex, and always in pursuit of sex". Are there others?

Beres then turns to one common thread in discussions of consent: that it "represents some form of agreement to engage in sexual activity" (p. 97). But there is less agreement about exactly what that means. Does saying "yes" always amount to consenting? Or does coercion invalidate consent? Beres suggests that definitions of consent that require it to be 'freely given' highlight the important distinction (since coereced consent does not have the same significance) and is less likely to be confusing, since "consent to unwanted sex" can mean very different things if consent can be coerced.

To some extent, it is of course a verbal question whether we say that someone has 'consented' when they have been coerced. Is it merely a verbal question, though? Or is there something significant at issue?

Beres notes that some authors, such as MacKinnon and Gavey, speak of forms of 'coercion' that are not interpersonal but socio-political. This problematizes the notion of consent, even if we do decide to say that social coercion does not invalidate consent in the same way that interpersonal coercion does.

Beres then turns to questions about the 'nature' of consent: Is consent something mental or is it an outward act? Many authors consider consent to be a kind of behavior: some form of verbal or non-verbal communciation. If so, then what a proper account of consent requires is a way of distinguishing the behavior that count as 'consenting' from the ones that do not. Beres raises two difficulties for this approach. The first is that there do not seem to be any behaviors that always signal consent. Rather, whether a given behavior signals consent will depend upon the situation in which that behavior occurs. Moreover, consent can sometimes be signaled in very unconventional ways, such as in BDSM.

Such problems lead other authors to think of consent as a kind of mental state or act: a willingness or intention to engage in sexual activity. One problem with such accounts is that it seems to make consent difficult to determine. Indeed, someone might act as if they are consenting but not actually consent: What should we say about the legal and moral status of sex in such a case? Some authors therefore think of consent as a kind of hybrid: an act that communicates or indicates willingness.

Beres cites Larry Alexander, the author of one of the related papers, as defending a view of the latter sort. On his account, certain behaviors can indicate consent but do not constitute consent. Can you explain this distinction in your own words? How does it help to solve the problems just mentioned?

Beres then turns to a very important aspect of consent: that it is supposed to be 'morally transformative'; whether a particular behavior is morally acceptable is often thought to depend upon consent. If so, then the crucial question may be not "What is consent?" but rather: What kinds of things have this transformative moral power? Beres, however, suggests that thinking of consent this way is 'pessimistic': The default is that sex is bad or impermissible, and it takes something special to make it good or permissible. Beres also notes that, according to many people, consent by itself does not make sex acceptable: Perhaps marriage or love is required.

What should we make of these worries? Does thinking that consent is 'morally transformative' require thinking that sexual relations are, by default, wrong? Or is there some other way of thinking about what 'morally transformative' means?

In the section titled "Communicative Sexuality", Beres discusses what is nowadays known as affirmative consent, regarded either as a legal standard or an institutional one (e.g., as a university policy). The Antioch College version of this policy required consent to be obtained for each 'stage' of sexual activity. This policy was widely regarded as unrealistic. (It was also unclear what makes for a different 'stage' of sexual activity.) Beres suggests, however, that the important aspect of this approach is that it shifts the burden of proof: Women no longer have to show their non-consent; rather, men have to make sure they have consent.

Theoretically, Beres suggests that what would be most helpful is for researchers to study the ways in which people already communicate consent. She notes that some such work had already been done (in 2007).

Jozkowski and Peterson address this question, though restricted to heterosexual college students. (The data set simply did not include enough students who identified as homosexual. But the related paper by Beres, Harold, and Maitland does discuss that. See also the related papers by Littleson and Axsom and Hickman and Muehlenhard.) They draw four main conclusions:

1. Many college students "endorse the traditional sexual script" which has men attempting to initiate sex and women consenting to it (or not). That is, both men and women described their own consent behavior in a way that conforms to that script.
2. Oral sex is asymmetrical: When asked questions about consent to oral sex, people tended to assume the question concerned fellatio, not cunnilingus.
3. A significant percentage of men indicated that they are aggressive in their attempts to secure consent (or, at least, to initiate sex).
4. A small but significant percentage of men indicated that they use deception to obtain consent or purposely initiate sex without obtaining consent.

To what extent do these conclusions seem supported by your own experience and that of your friends? (The subjects for this study came from Indiana University in 2010, so things may have changed in the intermim—indeed, hopefully, some things have changed, especially around (4)—and Brown students might be different from Indiana students.)

These notes will focus on the paper by Millar. I'll leave it to you to think about the ways in which "Cat Person" illustrates some of the themes of his paper.

This short (and not very dense) paper identifies and criticizes what Millar calls the 'commodity model' of sex and suggests that it should be replaced (both in our theorizing about sex and in popular discourse) with a 'performance' model. Note that Millar does not mean to speak here of 'performing' in the sense of performing for someone. Rather, he means to invoke an analogy with musical performance or, more specifically, with musical improvisation: what is colloquially known as 'jamming'.

Millar suggests that Western culture has tended to think of sex as a commodity: something women have and men want; something women 'give' to men or trade for other things, such physical, financial, or emotional security. (It's a good question how this model plays out in non-heterosexual contexts, but it would obviously be unwise to assume that it is simply absent.) This is related also to the so-called 'gatekeeper' model, in which it is women's role to control men's access to sex, since men's sexual drive is so strong that they cannot do so themselves.

Millar argues that the commodity model is not the exclusive property of one side or other of the culture wars. It is perhaps most obviously present in the abstinence-only movement and other chastity-focused versions of sexual conservatism. Here, a woman's sexuality is regarded as something of value that she needs to protect and preserve so that she can exchange it later for something else of value (love, marriage, family). (For more on that, see Jessica Valenti's book The Purity Myth.) What's perhaps oddest about this perspective, as Millar points out, is that, by valuing virginity in the way it does, it treats women's sexuality as a non-renewable resource.

But the model is also found, Millar argues, in male-focused versions of 'sexual liberation': Both among 'pickup artists' and 'Nice Guys', who are the spiritual ancestors, at least, of self-identified 'incels' today. (See the optional reading by Srivinvasan for more on this topic.) The underlying idea shared by all these otherwise very different ways of thinking about sex is that men by nature 'pursue' sex, and women are supposed to reward men who do so correctly with the sex they desire. What's different in the different cases is largely what it is to 'pursue sex correctly'.

It's a fairly common response to many of Millar's observations that there just is, biologically, an asymmetry of sexual desire: Men just do have more of a desire for sex than women do, so it's hardly surprising that men are often the ones who initiate sex and that women are put in the position of saying "yes" or "no". What's the best response to that argument?

Millar argues that there are several problems with the commodity model. The first is that it is heteronormative—but Millar argues that it still has a effect on how homosex is conceptualized in Western culture. (The point probably applies more broadly, too.) The second is that it is a pillar of rape culture: What can be 'given' can also be 'taken'. (See especially the discussion of the comment by Aegis.) Millar also suggests that the idea that women 'let' men have sex with them invites a very minimal understanding of what consent involves. In particular, if women are exchanging sex for something else, there seems to be no reason to suppose that anything like an enthusiastic "Yes" should be required.

In place of the commodity model, Millar offers what he calls a 'performance' model: He wants to think of sex as analogous to musical improvisation, 'jamming'. He emphasizes the ways in which sex, on this model, involves a kind of negotiation, but between equals: "communication of likes and dislikes and preferences, not a series of proposals that meet with acceptance or rejection" (p. 39). Note that Millar is focused here not just on sexual initiation—the original proposal to have sex or not—but at least as much on what happens within a sexual encounter.

What exactly is the purpose of the analogy to 'jamming'? What features of the latter does Millar think help to illuminate what sex is (or, perhaps, can be)? Are there other features of 'jamming' that seem illuminating that Millar does not mention? Are there important disanalogies between sex and musical collaboration that might make the comparison misleading? (Of course, there will be some differences. Analogies are never perfect.)

Perhaps one of the most striking claims Millar makes is that the very notion of a 'slut' makes no sense except against the background of the commodity model. Is that right? What is his argument here? How does it relate to the 'sexual double standard'?

Millar frequently mentions 'enthusiastic' or 'affirmative' consent. (The book in which the paper was published is in some ways responsible for the popularity of that notion.) The 'performance model' does incorporate such ideas: "affirmative participation is built into the conception" (p. 40), Millar tells us. But the performance model, I'd suggest, cannot be reduced to anything we could state in terms of 'consent'. Why not? What does Millar mean by "affirmative participation" (p. 38). What aspect of 'good' or 'ethical' sex is he trying to capture here?

That last question raises another one: Of what is the performance model supposed to be a model? Good sex? Ethical sex? Legal sex? How might it fare when regarded in these different ways?

Millar suggests toward the end of the paper that the performance model can help us understand why rape is particularly awful sort of violation, quite different from other forms of assault. What is his central idea here? How plausible is it?

Conly's central question here is whether 'verbal coercion' of certain sorts, involving threats of emotional rather than physical harm, can sufficiently invalidate consent to make any sex that results rape. One central question is whether it can be legitimate to threaten to end a relationship if one's partner is not willing to have sex more often or whether that amounts to a form of immoral coercion. Conly is also interested in the difference between coercion and seduction.

The first section sketches some background (and you should be able to read it fairly quickly). What is most important in this section is what, at the end, Conly identifies as the central issue: "whether the motivation which decides [a woman] to have sex"—whether the reason for which she ultimately decides to have sex—"is a result of coercive pressure" (p. 104).

Conly frames her question, at one point, as "what constitutes rape from the moral perspective" (p. 104). I am not entirely sure what she means by that. One possibility is that she means is what we should regard as being rape in the legal sense, though if so I think the description is confusing. Another possibility is that she is just talking about a moral (and not a legal) question: When we should regard someone as having sexually violated someone (and so have done something sexual that is morally wrong, or perhaps egregiously wrong).

Of course, that raises sharply the issue what coercion is. Conly takes that topic up in section II, largely following an account developed by Alan Wertheimer in his book Coercion. She identifies four elements that comprise the notion and discusses whether these could be present in cases of 'emotional' coercion.

• Intent: Coercion is something done intentionally, as a means of influencing someone's decision. Conly says that it seems clear that someone could emotionally coerce someone intentionally.
• Choice: It might initially seem as if physical coercion gives the victim no choice, whereas emotional coercion doesn't. But Conly argues that, on closer examination, this is not true: A women may choose to have sex, rather than to be beaten or killed, but the choice is not free, so the sex is still rape. So it looks again as if this won't distinguish physical from emotional coercion, after all. I.e., there's no more or less choice in one case or the other.
• Harm: For a threat to be coercive, it has to involve a great enough harm: Minor harms don't count. But just as physical threats come in degrees, so do emotional threats, and emotional pain can be every bit as extreme as physical pain. So, again, there does not seem to be any reason here that emotional threats cannot be coercive.
• Legitimacy: The threat must be one that the threat-maker does not have the legitimate authority to issue. A simple example Conly mentions helps one get the idea: It's perfectly legitimate for an employer to 'coerce' their employee to do a better job by threatening to fire them if they do not. So the question becomes: Can it ever be legitimate to pressure someone to have sex? Conly says that "This will depend on the kind of pressure brought to bear and the legitimate parameters of the relationship in which it is brought to bear" (p. 108).

In discussing 'choice', Conly mentions that a woman might choose to have sex rather than to be beaten. Are there less dramatic examples involving physical threats? (What, e.g,. of harm to others?) Might there also be cases in this vicinity (like ones Gavey mentions) in which a woman chooses to have sex rather than to be raped?

This last feature of coercion, legitimacy, is the most difficult to navigate, and Conly spends the most time discussing it. The central case she discusses is whether someone "can legitimately threaten to break off with someone if she refuses to have sex..." (p. 108). Conly distinguishes two versions of this case. In the first, the person does not want to be in a sex-less relationship and sincerely intends to end it if there is no sex. Conly argues that it is, in general, legitimate to condition one's continuing a relationship on many different things, and there is no reason that sex cannot be one of them.

Does that seem right in all cases? Or might there be ways of developing the case so that it does, again, start to seem coercive to condition the relationship on sex?

In the second version, the person "sincerely intend[s] to leave this unsatisfactory relationship but also hop[es] that his threat will motivate [his partner] to have sex, even if her other desires not to have sex remain in place" (p. 108). It is not clear to me that Conly ever discusses this version of the case. Indeed, it is not entirely clear to me what she has in mind here. Thoughts?

Section III discusses a variety of reasons for which people might have sex they do not really want to have. Conly suggests that some of these are versions of 'weakness of will'. Some such cases, Conly suggests, are not morally problematic. "The problem arises when one feels that one's weakness has somehow been induced by another" (p. 112).

The first sort of case Conly considers is that of seduction, which she understands as succumbing to temptation. There are two forms of this, she thinks, involving 'positive' and 'negative' temptations. The former involves the seducer's highlighting the positive advantages of the tempting thing (sex, in our case) while leaving as little room as possible for rational thought, so that one forgets all about the reasons one had not to do the thing. Conly describes a non-sexual example with a similar structure and then writes: "If he touches you when you have told him to stop, he is guilty of assault, but if you don't try to stop him from touching you and you let him talk to you about why it is okay to have sex, changing your mind is ultimately a decision for which you are responsible" (p. 114).

Suppose M asks W to have sex, and W refuses, but M continues to try to interest W who, at some point agrees. There are a variety of ways of filling in the details of such a case, some of which are relatively benign. But, in some of them, we might want to use words like "pressured" or "harrangued" to describe M's treatment of W and words like "acquiescence" or "submission" to describe her eventual agreement. How much responsibility does W really have to stop M from touching her or not to "let him talk to [her] about why it is okay to have sex"? How does Grace's experience with Aziz Ansari (as described in the recommended reading) illustrate this issue? (It's important here to distinguish clearly between the legal question whether Ansari's behavior might be criminal from moral questions about whether it is ethical.)

The other case is the one identified as crucial earlier: threats of emotional pain. (As Conly notes, this is not what anyone would normally call 'seduction'.) Here again, Conly describes a non-sexual example with a similar structure, in which relatives ask you to invest in their business and threaten to break off their relationship if you do not. Conly remarks that these relatives are sleazy and despicable, but that they are neither "thieves" nor "extortionists". And, she insists, the cases really are analogous, so that 'coercing' someone into sex by threatening them with emotional harm is not rape.

It's at this point that an issue mentioned above, what Conly means by "what constitutes rape from the moral perspective" (p. 104), becomes pressing. Is Conly's view that the sort of behavior she describes is immoral but not criminal? Or what?

Conly then turns to what she terms persuasion. Drawing on Jane Austen, she argues that "if we are to be persuadable, we will be sometimes persuaded to do the wrong thing but sometimes to do the right thing" (p. 117). It is, she suggests, inherent in the nature of loving someone that we are more apt to be persuaded by them, and not always for 'reasons'. More generally, she claims, it's just a fact of life "that we want different things and that we try to get the other person to do what we want" (p. 118), and that's as true for sex as for anything else.

Continuing, Conly writes: "And where such actions are immoral, where we go beyond the normal degree of dishonesty or manipulation implicit in human relationships, the resulting intercourse may not be rape" (p. 118). What kind of immoral actions does she have in mind? What distinction between immmorality and rape is she trying to draw? (Conly's remarks in the conclusion might help here.)

Conly frequently writes as if sex is an 'exchange', going so far as to describe herself as endorsing an "economic model" (p. 120, fn. 31) or, perhaps, what Millar calls the 'commodity model'. How does her acceptance of such a model shape her discussion? Or, to put it differently, are there claims she makes that would seem odd from the standpoint of the performance model Millar suggests as an alternative? (This would make a good paper topic.)

Anderson's paper is a reply to Conly's. His main claim is that the analogies on which Conly's argument rests are inappropriate: Because of background social inequalities, pressuring someone to have sex is not relevantly like pressuring them to invest in a business.

Since Anderson is particularly focused on how gender inequality affects the ethics of 'seduction', two questions naturally arise. First, are there are other forms of inequality to which his analysis might also be applied? Second, would Conly's account apply well enough to same-sex seduction?

Anderson uses the term 'seduction' to refer to the use of pressure to get someone to have sex. It seems to me that, in ordinary use, it does not always have such a negative connotation, but that is how Anderson uses it here. I'll tend to put it in scare quotes below for this reason.

Anderson initially interprets Conly as having argued that, so long as the pressure exerted does not amount to coercion, then consent has not been undermined and so the resulting sex is ethically unobjectionable. As he notes later, however, that probably isn't what she means to argue. At the end of the paper, Conly explicitly warns against "subsum[ing] all areas of sexual wrong under the heading of rape..." (p. 121). So she seems to leave it open, at least, that sexual pressure might lead to sexual wrongs that aren't rape (and so that some consensual sex could nonetheless be wrong).

Then again, as Anderson says later (p. 353), Conly does seem to regard the cases she discusses as no worse than what salesmen do when they pressure people into buying something, and that doesn't seem like a terribly serious wrong. But Conly doesn't say very much about the nature of the 'sexual wrongs' that aren't rape. That, I take it, is exactly what Anderson does set out to do, so we might just focus on that aspect of his discussion.

Anderson wants to argue, then, that there are more similarities between rape and 'seduction' than Conly is prepared to allow because she has failed to pay attention to the broader context in which men's 'seduction' of women takes place. Seduction and rape are connected, he wants to argue, in ways that 'finagling money' and robbery are not.

Anderson takes what's driving Conly to be a broadly 'liberal' worry that, if we insist on something more than consent if sex is to be ethical, then we undermine women's autonomy not to be free from unwanted sex but to pursue wanted sex: It "is in effect to deny the validity of her expressed consent" (p. 358), as Anderson puts it. But then what is wrong with men's pressuring women to have sex with them? Even Conly thinks something is wrong with it.

The fact that the problem here seems to be gendered offers a clue. Anderson argues that this can't be explained in terms of men's being more willing to pressure their partners or, more generally, in terms of "the bad ethical character and unscrupulous tactics of individual men..." (p. 363). Rather, he wants to suggest, the explanation is to be found in social norms surrounding heterosexual behavior.

Both Conly and Anderson confine their remarks about the role of alcohol in 'seduction' to footnotes: Conly's footnote 33, at the end of her paper, and Anderson's footnote 24. How do their different frameworks affect their views about this matter?

Anderson begins the next section with a striking observation: Although we know that women will sometimes have sex with men because they have been threatened with violence, we rarely pause to ask why they give into such threats. This is a wonderful example of where asking a question to which the answer is obvious can actually be of real value, since it exposes assumptions of which we weren't previously aware. The relevant assumption here is that there are certain kinds of physical powers that men have over women and, in many cases, are willing to use.

Anderson suggests that the same question arises with respect to non-physical threats or pressure and that the answer is that there is an analogous non-physical gendered power imbalance. These include "avoiding an escalation of aggression that could lead to rape" (p. 365), which is itself intertwined with men's greater willingness to resort to physical force and women's lesser abilty (typically, and on average) to resist it. "Hence the ability to apply pressure to have unwanted sex may differ markedly between men and women on average" (p. 366, my emphasis). (Compare here some of the stories related by Nicola Gavey.) Thus, Anderson concludes, we do not need to deny women's autonomy to consent to sex with 'boorish jerks' in order to regard their behavior as unethical.

Anderson suggests that the behavior of 'boorish jerks' might be regarded as wrong because it involves taking advantage of a power disparity that is itself unjust. Are there non-sexual examples to which we might compare this case? Do your ethical judgements about those examples seem to align with your ethical judgements about the sexual case?

On that same note: Is what makes the behavior of 'boorish jerks' wrong that it involves taking advantage of a power disparity that is itself unjust? Or is there more to it than that? Here, it would be worth reflecting on some of the cases discussed by Nicola Gavey and those found in some of the 'popular' pieces we've read.

Anderson makes some suggestions at the end of the paper for what positive steps one might take to support women's sexual autonomy in the face of the existing imbalances he mentions. But he leaves the suggestions very abstract. How might they be made more precise?

Nicola Gavey argues, on broadly empirical grounds, that there is a continuum leading from rape to unwanted but consensual sex to enthusiastically consensual sex. In this paper, Anne Cahill suggests that this provides us with a way of understanding some of the seemingly extreme claims that Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon make about the practice of heterosexuality. Cahill argues that these claims are exaggerated, but that they have a point, and that they force us to displace 'consent' from the central place it has occupied in thought about sexual ethics. In its place, she suggests, we need to put the notion of desire—recall here the piece by Corinna—but, to do so properly, we also need to think about the role that desire plays, or should play, in structuring sexual interactions.

Although Cahill is focused on heterosex, and although the problems that motivate her discussion are importantly gendered, the account itself seems to apply quite generally, to homosex as much as to heterosex and independently of how many people are involved.

Cahill articulates MacKinnon's position as one according to which, under conditions of patriarchy, women's freedom not to consent to heterosex is doubtful, whence consent itself is doubtful as a moral standard. Cahill had earlier responded, in her book Rethinking Rape, that this view fails to appreciate the phenomenological difference between rape and consensual sex—that these feel different to most women—and to acknowledge the possibility of women's heterosexual agency (however constrained it might be by patriarchy). As Cahill points out, however, Gavey's work raises questions about whether women can always clearly distinguish between rape and consensual sex, as Cahill's earlier analysis had required.

Moreover, Cahill suggests, Gavey makes a much stronger case than MacKinnon did for the 'continuum of heterosexual interactions'. Gavey argues that contemporary heterosexuality is shaped by norms that "work as a cultural scaffolding for rape" (Gavey, quoted on p. 308). What she means is that even ordinary, otherwise consensual interactions are governed by assumptions—that men 'need' sex (the 'male drive discourse'), that it is women's role to 'give' it to them in exchange for emotional benefits (the 'have-hold discourse')—that all but undermine the significance of women's own sexual desire. (We have seen similar ideas in other authors, especially Millar: Note, in particular, Cahill's remark that "Heterosexual women are encouraged to view their sexuality not as a good in and of itself, but rather as something that can be traded for other goods" (p. 308).)

This desire then becomes the focus of Cahill's analysis. The obvious alternative to the view that consent makes sexual relations ethical is that desire does so. But Cahill proceeds cautiously: While consent must be present prior to sexual engagement, it is not so clear that desire needs to be. Moreover, some empirical work suggests that, for many women, sexual desire is "responsive" (occurring in response to external stimuli the woman may seek out) rather than "spontaneous". Indeed, Cahill goes on to suggest (following Meana, in one of the related readings) that it may well be that all sexual desire is "responsive" in this way and that the illusion to the contrary is due to our failure to understand, or even to ask, what 'spontaneous' desire actually is responsive to.

Cahill notes a number of possible advantages to centering desire rather than consent: (i) desire is not asymmetric in the way consent is; (ii) this view acknowledges that women do desire sex; (iii) it potentially avoids MacKinnon's pessimistic view that women's desire is always a product of gender inequality; and, as a result, (iv) it acknowledges the possibility of women's sexual agency. How important are these? Are there also disadvantages that Cahill doesn't consider?

In some ways, Cahill's discusion on pp. 310-2 exposes an ambiguity in the concept of sexual desire as we've encountered it. In one sense, desires are just wants: I can desire (want) to see Rage Against the Machine on their reunion tour, for example. But sexual desire can also mean something very close to sexual arousal, what Basson describes as "a craving for sexual sensations for their own sake" (quote on p. 310). Which of these notions of desire plays a role in Cahill's account? Which should? (Consider, in this connection, what she has to say about 'sex as an act of giving', on p. 314.)

Cahill proceeds to argue that the really important question is not whether a woman desires sex, but the extent to which her desire matters (compare Ruddick): how it does or does not shape what happens. (Cahill thinks this is true of interpersonal interaction generally.) Think here of some of the cases Gavey and Gattuso describe in which a woman does desire sex but wonders whether, if she did not, it would make any difference. Nor is it enough, one might think, that the sex itself should evolve in ways that 'match' what someone wants. If that is just a happy accident, then one might nonetheless feel disregarded.

Cahill notes a number of questions worth asking about sexual desire: Does ethical sex require that both parties experience sexual desire? Under what circumstances is it permissible to try to 'generate' sexual desire in someone else? Where is the line between doing so and subtle (or not so subtle) forms of pressure and coercion? Note that it is a good feature of a theory if it draws our attention to good questions, even if it cannot yet answer them. Are these good questions? How might we try to answer them? (Attempting to answer some of these questions would make for a good paper topic.)

What matters, ethically, is the extent to which sexual partners' desires matter: That is the core of Cahill's proposal. But she does not do very much to develop it. Can you say more about just how one must recognize and acknowledge a partner's desires if sex is to be ethical? (This also would make for a good paper topic.)

Feminist criticisms of pornography have often focused upon ways in which it leads to, endorses, or legitimates sexual violence against women. If Gavey and Cahill are right, however, then being forced to engage in sex against one's will is only the most extreme form of sexual harm to which women are subject. Might pornography harm women in ways that fall short of legitimating rape but are nonetheless significant? If so, how?

Kukla is interested here in what she calls "the language of sexual negotiation". She is particularly interested in the question "how [good] sexual communication can effectively enhance pleasure and agency" (p. 72) and not just in how bad sexual communication can lead to negative experiences.

Kukla frames her discussion against the background of "speech act theory". A speech act is just any action that is performed by speaking. Among these are the simple cases of asserting, questioning, and commanding; but J.L. Austin famously pointed out that language can also be used to perform non-linguistic acts, e.g., to promise or to marry. Speech acts of this latter type are known as 'performatives'. These are cases where one can make something true—that a promise has been made, that two people are married—just by saying something. Consent is plausibly a speech act in this sense, and a performative one: Saying "I consent" (or something similar) can make things permissible that otherwise would not be.

One basic distinction that Austin draws is between 'locutionary content', 'illocutionary acts', and 'perlocutionary effects'. The locutionary content is, roughly speaking, just the meaning of the words one uses, but abstracted from the specific act one is performing. So "The door is closed", "Close the door", and "Is the door closed?" might all have the same locutionary content, though one can do different things with these sentences. The illocutionary act is the act one performs in saying whatever ones does: So, e.g., in saying "I promise...", I make a promise; in saying "Do you know what time it is?" I ask what time it is. The perlocutionary effects are the downstream results of performing that illocutionary act. So, e.g., consenting to sex may lead to one's having sex; refusing it might lead to someone's feeling rejected; etc.

Some other language Kukla uses: "felicity conditions" are the conditions that need to obtain for it to be possible to perform a given speech act; "authority conditions" are those that concern who can perform that speech act and under what circumstances. Thus, for example, the felicity conditions for sexual consent might include not being drunk or otherwise incapacitated, and the authority conditions might include not being a child.

In section II, Kukla argues here that "our near-exclusive focus on consent and refusal when we talk about sexual negotiation has had a deeply distorting and damaging impact on our understanding of sexual ethics and communication" (p. 75). She lists several ways in which this might be so. In light of our previous readings, which of these seem to you to be most significant? Why? (You can skip pp. 77-9 if you wish.)

You can skim or skip section III. Here, Kukla notes a tension in sexual communication: It's important that we express clearly what we do and do not want, and yet sexual communication is often indirect, and even non-verbal. We need, she suggests, practical tools for managing this paradox and theoretical ones for describing it. The tool she offers is the idea that communication within and about sex involves a set of assumptions (what she calls an 'alternative discursive frame') about what words are used to do in that context, e.g., that they are often used non-literally.

Section IV discusses sexual initiation. Kukla argues that this is far more complex than is usually assumed. The consent model essentially assumes, she claims, that requesting sex is the typical way of initiating sex (with all the gendered assumptions built into that). More typical, she says, are 'invitations' and 'gift-offers'.

Kukla notes that invitations are embedded in a mesh of complex social norms (which probably vary by culture). Importantly, inviting someone to have sex is supposed to express a desire to have sex with them but still to leave the person free to decline, much the way that an invitation to go for a walk with someone expresses a desire to go for a walk with them but leaves them free to decline.

Kukla does not really say in detail, at least so far as I can see, exactly how sexual invitation are supposed to differ from sexual requests. Presumably, the difference lies in the associated norms. But what are these? How do invitations differ from requests, generally speaking? And is "Would you like to have sex?" typically a request or an invitation or a question or something else? Note that this is a question of what one is doing with those words and not just one about the words themselves. (Thus, similarly, "You left the door open" can function as a command to close it and not just as an observation.)

Is Kukla right that sexual initiation, especially in casual sex, is typically characterized by invitations? Is she making a descriptive or normative claim here? How might sexual initiation vary with relationship status, e.g., someone you just met at a party versus a friend with benefits versus someone you've been dating a while versus someone with whom you are partnered?

Kukla suggests that focusing on sexual invitations as the typical way of initiating sex brings a number of questions to the fore. These are listed on p. 84. Are these good questions? (It's a mark of a good idea that it leads us to good questions.) If so, what might good answers look like?

Gift-offers, Kukla suggests, are more common in established relationships. She gives several examples, which mostly concern initiation. But better examples, it seems to me, come from within sexual activity, as when one offers one's partner oral sex. Like invitations, sexual gift-offers can be freely declined. One difference, she claims, is that "Gifts that are accepted essentially call for both gratitude and reciprocation from the receiver" (p. 85, my emphasis).

Kukla notes that what form reciprocation takes, when it should occur, and so forth, can vary enormously. But, if so, is there any clear sense in which sexual gifts, in particular, do need to be reciprocated? Is there some fact about ethical sex that Kukla is trying to explain here? How else might it be explained?

Kukla notes a number of disanalogies between 'ordinary' invitations and gift-offers, on the one hand, and sexual invitations and gift-offers, on the other. To what extent do these dissimilarities undermine her claim that we should understand sexual initation in terms of invitations and gift-offers? or, at least, undermine the usefulness of that claim? (While analogies are never perfect, Kukla does not seem to say that sexual invitations are analogous to other invitations but that they are invitations.)

Section V discusses the use of 'safewords' in BDSM and suggests that safewords might also be useful outside BDSM, in 'vanilla' sex. Kukla has both positive and negative reasons to make this suggestion. On the positive side, the use of safewords can "expand the space of opportunities for sexual agency" (p. 89) by allowing us safely to experiment with activities we are not sure we will like and that might push our existing limits. On the negative side, safewords, as used within BDSM, provide participants with a way of 'exiting' a sexual interaction "without ambiguity or normative residue" (p. 89). I.e., safewords are as clear as they could be and require no interpretation, and someone who uses their safeword owes no explanation.

Although Ethics seems to have insisted upon "safe word", the proper spelling is "safeword". Safewords are not words that are safe.

Leaving aside the question whether the use of safewords in BDSM has no "normative residue", is it plausible that the use of safewords in everyday sex (e.g., among "young people who are just beginning to explore sex") would have no "normative residue"? What exactly does Kukla mean by that claim? What are her reasons for it? What might it take to get safewords not to leave a 'normative residue' if they would currently have one?

Section VI explores BDSM a bit further and the role of 'non-consent' within it. It would be worth returning to this section when we discuss the ethics of BDSM later in the semester. (The term "consensual non-consent" is not, I think, typically used the way Kukla uses it. As I understand it, it typically refers to situations in which someone grants consent initially, for the duration of a 'scene', with the understanding that it cannot be revoked. This sort of 'playing without safewords' is controversial even within the BDSM community.)

Section VII considers the question what the ethical standard for sex should be if not that everyone should 'consent' (since, among other things, no one consents to being given a gift). Kukla considers a couple options. One is a 'negotiation model' proposed by Michelle Anderson (in one of the related readings): The idea here would be that ethical sex requires some sort of "dialogical conversation rather than passive assent or dissent" (p. 93). Another is Thomas Macaulay Millar's performance model, which Kukla sees as extending Anderson's, since it applies to 'negotiation' within sex and not just before it begins. But, while Kukla calls for a finer-grained sexual ethics, she does not herself develop one here.

Section VIII discusses sexual promises and seems somewhat orthogonal to the main concerns of the paper—except in so far as it is another example of where the focus on having sex vs not having sex, as opposed to what happens within sex, can be problematic.

This is in many ways a puzzling paper. For much of it, Bartky seems to be suggesting that there is something deeply problematic about, e.g., rape fantasies. At the end of the paper, however, she suddenly switches gears in a way that is not entirely clear.

Bartky begins by making two claims:

1. "...whatever pertains to sexuality—not only actual sexual behavior, but sexual desire and sexual fantasy too—will have to be understood in relation to a larger system of [gender] subordination..."
2. "...the deformed sexuality of patriarchal culture must be moved from the hidden domain of 'private life' into an arena for struggle, where a 'politically correct' sexuality of mutual respect will contend with an 'incorrect' sexuality of domination and submission" (p. 323)

The former claim we have already encountered in such authors as Catharine MacKinnon; the latter might be understood as part of what emerged in our discussions of 'the limits of consent': that there is a need to transform how, culturally, we think about sex and not just how individual people do.

Bartky's first question is what we should do when our own sexual fantasies or desires conflict somehow with our principles. Her focus is on fantasies of domination and submission, especially women's fantasies of being dominated by men, including fantasies of being raped. These, she notes, are 'politically incorrect' if any fantasies are. But they are also extremely common, as Bartky emphasizes. But such fantasies seem to eroticize the domination of women by men, which is precisely what MacKinnon argues is one of the pillars of gender oppression. (Bartky echoes those sorts of considerations herself on p. 324.)

The conflict is felt on a personal level by some women who have such fantasies: Their fantasies are at odds, somehow, with their values. So it seems there are two options: One can try to stop having such fantasies, to transform one's sexual desires so they are no longer appealing; or one can accept the fantasies and try to stop feeling ashamed of them.

Although Bartky does not discuss such fantasies here, it is worth keeping in mind that there are parallel questions to be raised about men who have fantasies of dominating women and even of raping women. And many of the people who are critical of such fantasies are also critical of BDSM, not just when practiced by heterosexuals but, in some ways, especially when practiced by lesbians and gay men. MacKinnon, you will recall, is troubled by the eroticization of dominance and submission whatever the genders of the participants. So far as I can see, Bartky's discussion also applies to these cases.

In section II, Bartky addresses the second option, though her focus is primarily on the practice of BDSM (the acting out, "in controlled situations", of such fantasies). Bartky considers a defense of BDSM in terms of sexual freedom (which you may remember from the paper by Rubin we read earlier). She regards the best argument here as one based upon the idea that "sexual satisfaction is an intrinsic good" so that we should be "free to engage in any sexual activities whatsoever", so long as they are consensual (p. 326). Bartky's criticism is that this simply fails to engage the original critique: The claim was that the desires that lead people to engage in BDSM are a result of what Rubin elsewhere calls the 'sex/gender system', that is, of gender oppression.

Suppose it is true that rape fantasies are a product of gender oppression. Does it follow that there is something wrong with rape fantasies?

Bartky offers a very different sort of argument, too: "Each of us is in pursuit of an inner integration and unity, a sense that the various aspects of the self form a harmonious whole" (p. 327). if one's fantasies and sexual preferences do not 'fit' with one's values, then, to that extent, one is not 'harmonious'. How good is that argument?

Bartky concludes, therefore, that the shame a feminist might feel at having submissive fantasies is, to some extent, appropriate: It reflects a genuine conflict between her fantasies and her values.

In section III—-which you can mostly skip, except for the last paragraph—Bartky turns to the question whether such a person ought to try to get rid of her submissive sexual desires. She reviews psychoanalytic accounts of 'feminine masoschism' and concludes that therapy is probably not the right route. Is it, then, even possible to change one's desires?

In section IV, Bartky turns her attention to what she calls "sexual voluntarism": The idea "that female sexuality is malleable and diffuse and that a woman can, if she chooses, alter the structure of her desire" (p. 329) simply by force of will. (This idea is perhaps most familiar from 'political lesbianism'.) As Bartky sees it, the idea here seems to be that, since dominant forms of sexuality are 'socially constructed', they are contingent and so can be reconstructed by each of us. But, first, it is far from clear that all sexual desire is 'constructed' in the relevant sense, since otherwise it would be hard to explain sexual deviance; and second, the move from contingency to the possibility of personal transformation is a non sequitur (and, Bartky suggests, is often based upon behaviorism).

In section V, Bartky offers an alternative way of understanding the conflict between sexual desire and one's values. Drawing on the psychoanalysts Ethel Spector Person and Robert Stoller, she suggests that the structure of one's sexual desires is probably determined at an early age and by a wide range of forces. Structures of gender oppression may play some role, but so also may the helplessness of the child and the power of care-givers. As a result, one's 'sex-print' is "experienced not as chosen but as revealed, ...unchanging and unique", part of who one is (p. 331). That, Bartky seems to be suggesting, is most fundamentally why sexual voluntarism is mistaken and the project of just getting rid of 'problematic' sexual desires and fantasies is doomed.

Bartky does not really offer a solution to this problem, though she does counsel that it's a mistake to blame or shame people for having 'problematic' fantasies and desires. But one might still wonder whether the 'shame' that is felt by people with such fantasies is really appropriate, as Bartky earlier claimed. What was Bartky's argument that it is? What are its presuppositions? Is that conclusion really compatible with her rejection of sexual volunatarism?

Toward the end of section V, Bartky suggests that the 'meaning' of sexual fantasies and preferences is often not obvious, and may not be what it originally seems. How well does that suggestion fit with her claims in section II concerning the relationship between such fantasies and gender oppression?

In her discussion of Samois, Bartky notes their charge that "critics of sadomasochism conflate fantasy and reality" (p. 325), but she does not directly respond to it. How might Friday's discussion, in Chapter One of My Secret Garden, reinforce that charge? How does Friday want us to think of 'problematic' fantasies?

This essay is about a lot of things, and since we'll be discussing it in small groups, it will largely be up to you what gets discussed. But the reason I've assigned it for this class has to do with what Chu has to say about desire.

There is also a way in which Chu's discussion dovetails very well with Bartky's. You will recall that Bartky is concerned, in section IV of her paper, with 'sexual voluntarism': the view that sexual preferences and desires are sufficiently plastic that one can change them more or less at will. Bartky's main focus is on women who have 'masochistic' fantasies, but she also mentions, a bit obliquely, what was known as 'political lesbianism': women who consciously choose to become lesbians because they have become convinced that heterosexuality is oppressive. Some such people were very critical of women who claiemd to be feminists but still had sex with (and relationships with) men: They were, as it was said, 'sleeping with the enemy'. Bartky argues that there is no very good reason to think that sexual desire can be changed so easily and, moreover, that it is divisive to critcize straight feminists in this way.

Chu's essay also discusses political lesbianism and contains a criticism similar to Bartky's, though one that seems to me to go much deeper. (This part of the essay begins with the paragraph starting "This is to say two things.") Chu also discusses, though, a similar but different case: the desire that some trans women have to have 'bottom surgery' (that is, vaginoplasty: the surgical creation of a vagina and associated structures from a penis and its associated structures). Some trans activists regard that desire as at odds with a proper understanding of gender, especially if it is framed as a desire to 'become a woman'. Some women, the argument goes, just do have penises; you don't become a woman, or become more of a woman, by getting a vagina. Some trans activists even have claimed, again echoing themes in Bartky, that, by insisting upon bottom surgery, trans women like Chu (who wrote about her own surgery in the New York Times piece listed as an optional reading) are reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes: that women (or 'real' women) have vaginas.

Chu does not address this argument quite directly but argues that there is something important about the nature of desire that it does not take into account. What?

How we might apply Chu's ideas to the case of submissive fantasies?

Grimshaw's paper continues the discussion of 'problematic' sexual fantasies. She begins by outlining the sort of view to which she wants to respond. It will largely be familiar by now, but it is perhaps worth emphasizing the way in which it involves the 'internalization', by women, of oppressive socio-sexual norms. The form of this view that Grimshaw finds in Sheila Jeffreys takes it to be incumbent upon women to attempt to transform their own sexual desires and fantasies so as to rid them of distorting social influence. Jeffreys's claim is thus, as Grimshaw puts it, that "Without eradicating...the negative forms of [sexual fantasy and] imagination, there can be no freedom for women" (p. 148).

As Grimshaw notes, this leaves us, largely, where Bartky's paper begins. And the difficulty, she thinks, is that Bartky seems to leave us with no way forward. There are three things that Grimshaw thinks need to be clarified: the relation between fantasy and desire; the nature of eroticism; and the point of projects of 'self-transformation'.

Fantasy and Desire

Grimshaw argues that Bartky does not distinguish sufficiently between fantasy and desire. Much of Bartky's dicussion of her first option—doing away with shame—is focused on BDSM, that is, on the acting out of sexual fantasies (in a 'controlled' setting). But someone who has fantasies about bondage need not have any desire to engage in bondage play. (Grimshaw herself does not much discuss BDSM; we'll do so later, but one might well want to consider here the extent to which her discussion does or doesn't apply to that case.)

Grimshaw also claims that the notion of fantasy itself is more complicated than many writers assume. Fantasies are often fragmentary, with the position of the subject being somewhat ill-defined. This point is often credited to Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, who write in one of the related readings that "...the subject, although always present in the fantasy, may be so in a desubjectivized form...". Their point is that fantasies do not always even have a subject position: I may not even be present in my fantasy. And even if I am, I needn't identify with my fantasy-self but can take up a third person viewpoint: I can be just a character in the story. As Grimshaw notes, corresponding points apply also to the position one takes up when viewing a film or reading a story.

A related point—one much emphasized by Judith Butler, in another optional reading—is that the meaning of a sexual fantasy cannot, as Grimshaw puts it, "just be read off from some account of the salient features of the narrative" (p. 151): The 'meaning' of a fantasy, if it has one at all, may not be obvious on the surface. Fantasies, she suggests, are often ripe with symbolism and might be more like metaphors than like literal speech.

Grimshaw leaves this point abstract. In what ways might fantasies of dominance or submission not just have the meanings they bear on their face? Are their examples of such fantasies that Nancy Friday discusses that could be used to make this point? Recall her remark, for example, that "The message isn't in the plot—the old hackneyed rape story—but in the emotions that story releases" (My Secret Garden, p. 109).

Eroticism

Grimshaw suggests, somewhat tentatively, "that without a background of early infantile experience and embodiment, it would be difficult to make much sense of adult human sexuality at all" (p. 152). There are two broad aspects of erotic experience that, she thinks, reflect this fact. The first is the way in which power is part of erotic experience. Grimshaw mentions several respects in which this might be so. The other is the experience of loss of self that one can sometimes have during sex, but which is very hard to express in words (let alone to explain).

Grimshaw mentions several ways in which sexuality involves power: "the power to give pleasure, to dominate the senses of the other, temporarily to obliterate the rest of the world; the power involved in being the person who is desired, the power to demand one's own pleasure" (p. 153). Consider also sexual 'teasing', of which 'edging' one's partner would be one form. What sort of power is at issue here? How is it similar to or different from the kind of power an abuser exercises?

Grimshaw suggests that these are 'constitutive' (essential) aspects of human erotic experience, so that any attempt to free it of all relations to power, domination, and submission are doomed to failure. But, she emphasizes, that is not to say that one could not or should not try "to purge sexuality of the oppressive features of certain kinds of power..." (p. 153). What Grimshaw is suggesting, I think, is that fantasies of domination and submission wouldn't disappear if gender oppression did, though they might take somewhat different forms.

In one of the optional readings, Jesscia Benjamin suggests that there is a sense in which domination and submission are unavoidable aspects of human relationships, sexual or otherwise, so that it is no surprise that they should surface in sexual fantasy.

Suppose it is true that (some) women would have fantasies of being dominated even if there were no gender oppression. Does that show that Bartky's assumption, that women's fantasies of being dominated 'reflect' gender oppression, is false? Does it perhaps show that there are different ways in which such fantasies might reflect gender oppression? How might Grimshaw's suggestion that the 'meaning' of fantasies isn't always readily apparent help us here? How might fantasies of domination and submission relate to the forms of 'power' that Grimshaw thinks are essential to human sexuality?

The Project of Self-Transformation

Grimshaw notes that, if both the origin and meaning of (say) P's submissive fantasies is unclear, then it is unclear what, if anything, she needs to change to bring her sexuality into line with her feminist principles. But, still, there are cases where it might seem that there clearly is a conflict, e.g., if P frequently fantasies about gang rape. Should P feel guilty (or ashamed) about having such fantasies? Should she try to stop having them?

Grimshaw notes that, if there were no gender oppression, then the sorts of fantasies people have might well be quite different. But, she asks, so what? Why does that indict the fantasies we have now? Grimshaw warns against focusing too much on extreme cases (and on people who have certain fantasies obsessively) and notes that, if the problem is that the fantasies cause P herself distress, then maybe "not letting oneself assume that there necessarily is any deep conflict between one's desires and one's politics" would be a solution (p. 156).

But, Grimshaw suggests, what's really behind Bartky's concern is "an ethical vision of self and community" (p. 156) or, perhaps more fundamentally, an ideal of the self as 'integrated' and 'whole'. Here, Grimshaw suggests, once again, that 'integration' or 'coherence' might be more complicated than first seems: "Don't assume that 'conflict' can easily be identified, or that the only possible meaning of 'coherence' in one's life must be the impossible dream that all elements of thought, fantasy, imagination, desire and action might fit together into a seamless whole " (p. 158).

You will recall that Bartky distinguishes two possible responses to the 'conflict' some women experience between their fantasies and their politics. The first was to accept one's fantasies as they are and to learn not to be ashamed of them. Is that what Grimshaw is suggesting?

Here again, the focus has been on women's fantasies. But consider now a man, perhaps one who identifies as a feminist, but who has fantasies of dominating (maybe even raping) women. He might feel the same sort of 'conflict'. Should Grimshaw give the same advice to him? Or are the situations so different that he really should be ashamed of his fantasies and try to get rid of them?

Corvino

Corvino focuses his attention on what he calls 'naughty fantasies'. These are fantasies that eroticize acts that, in real life, would be morally wrong. The argument in which he is interested claims that such fantasies are themselves wrong—it is, at least, wrong actively to fantasize in such ways, or to act out such fantasies—because it is wrong to eroticize things that are wrong.

Corvino first considers a response to this argument due to Patrick Hopkins (in one of the related readings): One does not actually eroticize activities that are morally wrong but rather simulations of those activities. Corvino responds that e.g. if someone is watching pornography that presents a fraternity hazing (a common form of gay male porn), then it is the hazing that is experienced as erotic, not the simulation of it.

Corvino considers a case in which Fred finds out that a fictional story he had found erotic is in fact a recounting of a real-life happening and asks: "...[W]ill he find it less erotic? Might he not even find it more erotic?" Suppose that, unlike in Corvino's example, the fantasy involves someone's being raped. What should we say about Fred's different possible responses?

Corvino argues that to be aroused by a simulation (rather than by the thing being simulated), one would need to be aroused by features it had as a simulation: the quality of the performances, say. Is that right?

Corvino turns his attention, then, to the claim that it is always wrong to eroticize activities that are wrong.

Corvino distinguishes two forms this claim might take. The first is that "...naughty fantasies are incompatible with good character..."; the second is "that actively entertaining naughty fantasies is wrong in itself...", and he focuses his discussion on the latter version of the claim. (We'll see Dwyer develop a version of the former argument later.) What underlies it is the thought that "...any seriously wrongful activity merits an attitude of disapproval, and eroticization of such an activity is inconsistent with this attitude" (p. 216). The first part of that is clearly correct; it's therefore the latter claim, that eroticizing rape in fantasy is inconsistent with disapproving of rape, that needs defense.

Corvino asks us to consider a character, Raymond, who finds stories of actual rapes to be erotic. He notes that, if there is something wrong with Raymond's doing so, then it is not because it has bad consequences: The example is designed to guarantee that there are no bad consequences. If so, however, then what makes Raymond's action wrong is arguably the inconsistency noted above: The right response to stories of actual rapes is not sexual arousal.

The crucial question here is obviously whether finding stories of fictional rapes erotic is, in some imprortant moral respect, different from finding storeis of actual rapes erotic. Why might one think it is? Note that Corvino addresses this worry, obliquely, in his discussion of a video game involving ethnic cleansing. How does that apply to the case of rape fantasies?

Corvino then turns to some counter-arguments. I'll focus on the first (though comments on the others are of course welcome), which is that "the object of eroticization is often non-specific". The thought here, I take it, is that precisely what Raymond eroticizes is not so clear. In particular, it might be possible to "eroticize a wrongful behavior while remaining fully cognizant of its wrongfulness" (p. 219).

It would help, Corvino suggests, if we had a better sense for what 'eroticizing' something is. Could some of the work we read on sexual desire help here?

Card

Card raises a number of questions about Corvino's argument. The first substantive one is what we are doing when we fantasize. Card wants, in particular, to distinguish between fantasizing about something and what we might call imaginative planning. One can see easily enough why planning to rape someone might be wrong, but fantasizing is not planning.

As we have seen, Nancy Friday also insists upon this sort of distinction. But it is less clear how this affects Corvino's argument, since he does not suggest that the wrongness of naughty fantasies derives from associated intentions. What might help, though, is the analogy with watching a horror movie. How? (We'll discuss this comparison further when we read Stear.)

Card's second suggestion is that there need be no conflict between the experience of arousal at fantasies of a certain kind and one's general condemnation of real behavior of that kind. In some sense, that seems right. One might worry that this will prove too much: Does it also excuse Raymond, who finds stories of actual rapes erotic? Why or why not?

Dwyer's broader interest here is in pornography, but her specific focus in this paper is sexual fantasy. Her claim is that (i) certain sorts of sexual fantasizing are morally problematic and (ii) that kind of fantasizing is encouraged by pornography. The second claim is, at least with respect to certain kinds of pornography, pretty clear. So Dwyer's argument rests upon the first claim.

Dwyer's view is that rape fantasies (say) are morally dangerous because they negatively affect our 'character'. Her overall view is thus framed within the tradition known as 'virtue ethics', which derives from Aristotle. You may recall that John Corvino suggests such an argument: "that naughty fantasies are incompatible with good character..." (p. 216).

Dwyer begins by reminding us that many of us have an "intuitive unease" with certain kinds of sexual fantasies. (If one does not experience such unease with respect to the fantasy she describes, then try ones involving Nazis.) But, she notes, that by itself cannot show that such fantasies are morally problematic. The first obstacle to such a conclusion is that there are reasons to worry that fantasies cannot be morally evaluated. Dwyer then turns to examining those reasons.

The first reason is that fantasizing is 'inner', whereas the only things that can be morally evaluated are actions. In response, Dwyer notes that fantasizing is an action, although one that takes place within one's own mind. Dwyer also rejects the claim that 'naughty fantasizing' could only be morally condemned if it had bad consequences. (The view that all moral evaluation depends upon consequences is known as 'consequentialism' and is contoversial, to put it mildly.) So, she concludes, fantasizing is at least "morally evaluable".

Second, one might think that sexual fantasizing should be immune from criticism even if fantasizing in general is not. After dismissing a 'slippery slope' argument, Dwyer considers two forms of this claim. The first is that the 'meaning' of sexual fantasies is 'indeterminate': that rape fantasies, for example, may not really be 'about' rape. Dwyer rejects this argument on the ground that it is selectively applied: Most sexual fantasies do wear their meaning on their face, she claims; it's only when the fantasy is troubling that we look to re-interpret it. But that makes the response seem ad hoc.

Dwyer refers to Bartky here, in footnote 10. But, while Bartky expresses some skepticism about the possibility that psychotherapy could 'cure' someone of their fantasies, she suggests herself that P's fantasies may not mean what they seem to mean. Grimshaw makes a similar suggestion, too. Are those arguments as easily dismissed as Dwyer supposes? What role exactly is the claim that rape fantasies are not 'about' rape supposed to play?

The other argument Dwyer considers is that sexual fantasies are responses to desires with which we just happen to find ourselves. But, Dwyer replies, while it may be true that what we find arousing is not up to us (i.e., we're not responsible for what turns us on), it remains the case that we choose whether to fantasize, and that decision is therefore morally evaluable. (There might be some cases where a thought just pops into one's head, but even then what one does from that point on might be morally evaluable.)

Even if successful, those arguments only show that some sorts of fantasizing might be morally problematic, not that they are. More argument is needed to show that they are problematic.

Dwyer proceeds to outline an approach to ethics that makes 'character' a central notion. The rough idea is that each of us has certain moral capacities: "...the ability to deliberate between options for action, taking into account not only one's own well-being, but the well-being of others; the capacity to recognize when a situation demands a moral response of some kind..." (p. 224-5). Those features of oneself that determine how one responds morally to various cases (not just in one's judgements, but in what one does) are what Dwyer means by 'character'. It includes, but is not limited to, what sorts of moral principles one accepts. Dwyer emphasizes that one's character is not static but can change in various ways throughout one's life and that character both affects what we do and can be affected by what we do.

Having developed the necessary background, Dwyer then presents her argument that certain kinds of sexual fantasizing are "morally risky" (p. 226).

Habitually performing bad actions or actions which desensitize one to morally salient facts can seriously hinder the project of character development. ...Consider again our sexual fantast Dennis. Here is a man who appears to endorse actions that might seriously undermine his character and thus his moral agency. He takes deep pleasure in fantasizing about harming others and he does so habitually. One ought not be the sort of person who takes sexual pleasure in the debasement of others. And one ought not act in ways that constitute being that sort of person.

There seems to be two ways of interpreting Dwyer's argument. On the first, her claim is simply that it is bad to be the sort of person who fantasizes about rape, because doing so involves 'endorsing' actions (rape) that are morally wrong and even evil. If that's the argument, then a great deal turns on what's meant here by 'endorsing'. What is meant? (See the brief discussion of Corvino on p. 224 and then again on p. 227.) Is it wrong to 'endorse' rape in that sense?

The other interpretation would be that fantasizing about rape is liable to corrupt one's character, to make one a worse person, because it can "desensitize one to morally salient facts", such as the wrongness of rape. What's the best response to that argument?

Which of the two interpretations seems best? Why? Or should we perhaps think of Dwyer as offering both sorts of arguments? In thinking about this, it might be worth keeping in mind Dwyer that clearly wants a non-consequentialist argument against 'naughty fantasizing': one that does not depend upon any claim about the consequences of such fantasies.

The remainder of the paper speculates about ways in which internet pornography, especially, might be especially liable to shape people's sexual fantasies. If certain kinds of sexual fantasies are indeed problematic, then that will indict pornography that promotes such fantasies.

In the first section, Stear outlines some earlier arguments by Patrick Hopkins. His main complaint is that Hopkins does not adequately answer the third anti-BDSM argument that he identifies: that BDSM "validates and supports patriarchy" (Hopkins, p. 118). Part of the difficulty is that Hopkins does not tell us much about what 'simulation' actually is. Another is that Hopkins just doesn't seem to answer the strongest form of the argument. Stear's suggestion is that we can do so if we characterize BDSM not as simulation but as 'make-believe', in a particular sense of that term discussed by Kendall Walton. The basic idea is that "engaging in SM scenes is relevantly similar to engaging with fictions" (p. 23, my emphasis).

Note the phrase 'relevantly similar'. As we have seen repeatedly, comparisons are never perfect: If the things being compared were exactly the same, there would be no comparison to make. What matters is that they are similar in ways relevant to whatever the purpose of the comparison is. That's what Stear means by "relevantly similar".

Stear next outlines Walton's view of make-believe. As he mentions, the view has been very influential in philosophical aesthetics and has been applied, e.g., to metaphor in philosophy of language. The basic idea is to model engagement with fiction (stories, films, etc) on children's games of make-believe (which seems to be a universal human phenomenon). As Walton sees it, there are 'principles of generation' which connect real things (a dark paving slab) with imaginary or fictional things (fire); these, in effect, are the rules of the game. But such games are, at the same time, open-ended, in the sense that they allow for and even invite various sorts of creative elaboration.

Stear proceeds to explain how Walton's view allows us to solve the so-called 'paradox of fiction': that we can have emotional responses to things we know are not real. The key idea is that, in engaging with fiction, we effectively become participants in the make-believe game being played (typically, though not always, as observers).

In the following section, Stear applies Walton's theory to BDSM. He first argues, borrowing from Hopkins, that BDSM is a form of make-believe game. This might, he suggests, be what Hopkins really had in mind when he spoke of 'simulation', though some of Hopkins's remarks—his comparison to performers on the stage, for example—would not fit this model. The crucial point, however, is that this leaves many of Hopkins's observations untouched: It remains the case that BDSM practitioners are not 'replicating' oppressive structures, since those structures are not actually present in their activities but only are pretend-present.

On p. 29, Stear argues that being an actor on stage is importantly different from participating in a make-believe game. How so? Is this true of all forms of acting? If not, might that help his argument?

Stear begins the following section with the words: "With the relevant similarity of role-play SM and other make-believe games established..." (p. 30). In what way exactly is BDSM role-playing supposed to be similar to make-believe? Why is that similarity supposed to be 'relevant'?

Stear then turns to the question whether, that "by eroticizing sexual dominance and submission, SM validates and supports patriarchy" (p. 30), which was the Third Argument that gave Hopkins so much trouble. Stear's claim is that, since "performing an SM scene is relevantly similar to engaging with fictional works", it will follow that, if engaging in BDSM supports patriarchy, then so does engaging with fictional works such as, say, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (or the recent cinematic adaptations).

It's crucial to this argument that participating in BDSM is like watching a film. But one might worry that this analogy is misleading. Participating in BDSM is more like taking part in a game than it is like watching one, even if watching one (with any understanding) means entering into it in a certain way. Watching a film might seem more like watching a BDSM scene. Thoughts?

Stear finds in Vadas, however—in the recommended reading—a different form of this objection, namely: "To take pleasure in SM is to make one's pleasure contingent on the actual occurrence and meanings of rape, racist enslavement, and so on" (Vadas, p. 216). That is, there would be no BDSM rape scenes for anyone to enjoy if there was no actual rape (or, at least, if people did not know about the possibility). The former seems to presuppose the latter. Stear's reply is that this is also true of much fiction: There would be no Schindler's List had there been no Holocaust, but we don't think that makes the film anti-Jewish.

One question Stear does not address is how exactly BDSM is supposed to 'support patriarchy'. We did get an answer—one answer, not necessarily the only answer—to this from Dwyer. What was her answer? Do Stear's arguments address her concern?

There is a somewhat different worry in this vicinity, one that would emphasize the pleasure that is taken in domination or submission. Someone may enjoy Schindler's List, but they do not (we would hope) take pleasure in all of its aspects (e.g., the mass murder of Jews). Stear mentions a form of this objection in footnote 16. How good is his response? It might be worth comparing this to an example Corvino mentions: someone who enjoys playing video games in which they are a Serbian soldier slaughtering Bosnian Muslims.

Stear then makes a nice philosophical move: He asks, "What is really behind the worries Vadas and others have expressed?" His answer is that they regard role-played rape scenes (or rape fantasies) as inappropriate or in bad taste.

Stear does not exactly dismiss criticisms of taste, but he does seem to suggest that they are a "personal" matter. That might remind one of A.W. Eaton's arguments. Might someone argue, largely following her, that having a 'taste' for rape fantasies is problematic, on the ground that such tastes are part of what constitute patriarchy? How might such an argument be developed?

Stear turns to some objections. The most important, I think, is the last: that BDSM "glorifies" or "celebrates" domination. One does often hear (or read) people make this kind of claim. The crucial question is what "glorify" means here. Stear suggests that, in the crucial case, it means something like: Even if a film (say) does not intentionally mean to "endorse[] some dubious principle, ...the audience will receive the film in such a way as to endorse such a principle", that is, the audience will be encouraged to endorse some morally dubious principle by their engagement with the film (p. 35). Stear claims that there is no evidence that participants in BDSM are liable, as a result, to endorse dubious moral principles.

Obviously, it is an empirical question whether people with rape fantasies, say, are more likely to endorse rape myths. See the optional paper by Zurbriggen and Yost for some work on this.

Stear notes that people who are privately engaging in BDSM do not seem vulnerable to either charge. But that leaves open the argument that BDSM pornography (be it visual or written) might unintentionally 'glorify' violence, since it might well be understood (or misunderstood) as doing so. How serious is this worry? (How might Walton's theory apply to viewers of BDSM pornography?)