Article - Is casual sex immoral? - on sex positivity and its effect on women

[Goosefoot]

I thought people might find this an interesting article - I'll come back and give my thoughts later but there are plenty of interesting ideas in there.

unherd.com/2020/11/is-casual-sex-immoral/

@kesstrel

I don't think the point of the article is a out whether casual sex is immoral.

It's about whether it's immoral to encourage girls and young women to unquestioningly believe a narrative about casual sex that may be damaging to them, while clearly benefiting males.

If that’s the question, then for me, the answer is Yes.

I think all this casual no strings attached sex hadn't really been advantageous for women as a whole.

I’m now reminded of the Glen Close character of Basic Instincts.....🤔

I have enjoyed casual sex, I didn't want a committed relationship for a long time. What's interesting is the idea that women are looking for commitment. I found men much more clingy. I had sex on my terms and I took care of my health and well being.

We should teach our daughters to be assertive and teach our sons to be less needy, so if women chose to have a fling then they can be accommodated without a load of baggage

I think all this casual no strings attached sex hadn't really been advantageous for women as a whole

I dunno there have been some advantages ive found. If I hadn't found myself in sone kind if casual hook up situation I'd have never known it could actually be enjoyable the first 2 times with others had been painful or just really bad.

Course on the flip side it did set an impossibly high standard that took years to be lived up to...

@ErrolTheDragon

I'd say that casual sex - with the caveat that it's genuinely freely consenting adults involved, with due diligence to contraception and health considerations - is amoral. It's not bad, but neither is it 'virtuous'. I think that's the false narrative attributed to 'libfems' but mainly of use to men - that 'sex positivity' means you should be having a lot of sex.

Yes, this.

I just read the article. Am I weird in that I don’t have the feelings of moral ick about someone having sex with a dead chicken (and certainly not about someone masturbating over a shoe) that the author takes for granted? Weird but harmless.
On the other hand I’ve plenty of moral ick about any form of pressure on women on girls to engage in sexual activity they’re not enthusiastic about,

• on women or girls

I really struggle to understand why people tie themselves in knots about this issue.

Is casual sex immoral? No
Is telling someone that you're in love with them to get them into bed rape? No
Is it a shitty thing to do? Yes

If you're having sex with someone who thinks you're doing it because you love them and you're doing it for a one-off shag then you're a dickhead. If your plan is to ghost someone the morning after then you're also a dickhead. If you haven't bothered to consider why this person is having sex with you, and whether they could get hurt by it, then you're an uncaring bastard.

We should all be treating the people we have sex with with kindness and respect. Not because "otherwise it's rape" but because it's the non-arsehole thing to do. It doesn't seem complicated to me.

As with all this stuff, there's what should be the right answer - women and men can enjoy casual sex as equals in a climate of safety and mutual respect - and there's what actually happens in the society we have today, which is too many men see bedding women as a game in which they win and the woman loses, so a woman having casual sex risks losing the respect of her sex partner and possibly her wider social group.

Unfortunately, some people (sometimes with the best motives) think we can move society from the latter to the former by only telling young women about the first and ignoring the second. Result - women are conned into sex by men who hurt and shame them for having it.

‘I just read the article. Am I weird in that I don’t have the feelings of moral ick about someone having sex with a dead chicken (and certainly not about someone masturbating over a shoe) that the author takes for granted? Weird but harmless.
On the other hand I’ve plenty of moral ick about any form of pressure on women on girls to engage in sexual activity they’re not enthusiastic about,’

The author isn’t talking about a moral ick though. She mentions disgust, but that is different to morality. What she is saying is that liberals use thin principles when making moral judgements. You deciding that someone having sex with a dead chicken is doing something weird but harmless is applying fewer moral principles to your moral decision making about sex than someone more traditional would do. That’s the author’s point.

@KizzyWayfarer

I just read the article. Am I weird in that I don’t have the feelings of moral ick about someone having sex with a dead chicken (and certainly not about someone masturbating over a shoe) that the author takes for granted? Weird but harmless. On the other hand I’ve plenty of moral ick about any form of pressure on women on girls to engage in sexual activity they’re not enthusiastic about,

I don't either tbh, certainly so far as the shoes anyway. Is it that much different from the women (and it seems always to be women) who fall in love with bridges and the Eiffel Tower?

I found that article quite irritating. I said it's infantilising. It's the idea that a woman might think she consented but she didn't really and here's a feminist to feministplain why the feminist knows better.

The author is arguing against consent being a useful moral measure for most ethical issues around sex. She points out that someone else has used the consent argument but she doesn’t think it is the right framework.

As far as I can work out, what the author is arguing is that the current liberal sex positive framework on sexual morality is as follows:

1. Did everyone consent?
2. Did anyone get hurt?

Once those two questions are answered appropriately, there is no further morality applied to questions about sex. In fact BDSM can be viewed as more ethical in that limited framework because the questions are answered more fully (allegedly. I would dispute that).

Under that limited moral framework there is no actual way of making a moral distinction between a committed couple attempting to conceive and someone having sexual with a dead chicken. They become morally equivalent.

Stakes are always higher for women with sex. Due to biology, more repercussions lie with us. Risk of pregnancy, consequences of taking hormonal contraceptives if we do (weight gain, depression), vulnerability due to physical differences, cystitis (happens to many women regularly due to sex), pressure to endure painful practices. What stakes are there for men that are comparable?

Stripes you're absolutely right. The moral framework is bizarre. Under what other circumstances would we apply such a low bar to a social interaction?!

It's not an exaggeration though, many of my friends are still single and doing the Tinder thing and the stories are just awful. One friend found out a guy she'd been sleeping with for 6 months had 5 other women on the go as well. She said "well I guess I didn't specifically ask him if we're exclusive...I just assumed".

So now we're all allowed to be arseholes to each other if we haven't specifically said "can you confirm you're not being this type of arsehole?".

Also I have thought in the past that it would do women a world of good if most men were aware of the fact that most women do not orgasm on a one-night stand.

I haven't done the scientific study but I've asked about 30 of my female friends and I don't know a single person who has. That's not to say there aren't any women who have - of course there will be - good for them.

However, curiously when I ask men - I've yet to find a single man who thinks that any woman he's slept with on a one night stand has failed to orgasm.

I've often thought that putting posters or stickers up in men's toilets saying "Less than x% of women orgasm on a one night stand" (I need to actually do a survey to find out what X is) might make men think a bit.

1. Did everyone consent?
2. Did anyone get hurt?

The fact that these questions can be answered, 1. before the event*, and 2. after the event means there's a gap. For example, you can answer "look, all's fine" if a woman gave consent, had sex that made her feel uneasy, but didn't actually get hurt.

All was well, right? Actually, no. There needs to be more than consent and a lack of harm.

• the fact that during the event a woman can withdraw consent doesn't remove the problem

I just read the article. Am I weird in that I don’t have the feelings of moral ick about someone having sex with a dead chicken (and certainly not about someone masturbating over a shoe) that the author takes for granted? Weird but harmless.
On the other hand I’ve plenty of moral ick about any form of pressure on women on girls to engage in sexual activity they’re not enthusiastic about,
Nope, agree. I dgaf about any sexual activity an adult does that doesn't harm anyone else. None of my business.
However coercive sex is wrong.

I've come from one night stands BTW. But sex is more than orgasms.

Evolutionarily its more effective for both men and women to be in a monogamous relationship which is why I think its too simplistic to say women have more to lose.

The physical cost to an individual woman is higher, but without monogamy most men would not get to pass on their DNA so monogamy suits men too

Why do men need monogamy to pass on their DNA?

Its not they need it, just its more evolutionarily successful. Which is all that counts really
www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/sex-and-the-female-agenda

I don’t think the timing is the issue Nauticant. At any point consent can be withdrawn and at any point someone could get hurt, particularly if there is a lack of communication. The problem is that it is such a minimal standard to apply to human behaviour.

From Quentin... ‘I dgaf about any sexual activity an adult does that doesn't harm anyone else.’

What if you remove the word sexual from that sentence? Is it a good attitude to take? That you only care about what other people do when it crosses the line over into harming someone else?

It is a significant part of most people’s lives. Shouldn’t we care about this part of life?

At the very least I care about the sex lives of those close to me, and that they are well informed, have thought things through, are finding meaning in it.

From Quentin... ‘I dgaf about any sexual activity an adult does that doesn't harm anyone else.’

What if you remove the word sexual from that sentence? Is it a good attitude to take? That you only care about what other people do when it crosses the line over into harming someone else?

I dgaf about any activity an adult does that doesn't harm anyone or anything else

I'd "anything else" because animal rights and prevention of cruelty and abuse to animals is the thing which concerns me most and "anything else" would include the environment too.