TonioTimeDaily

"However, casual sex — as long as it is consensual and not exploitative — is not unethical because people are using each other. It is just another transactional activity: I enjoy your body while you enjoy mine. I get pleasure and you get pleasure. Even in the most impersonal casual sex, there is an implicit recognition that we are dealing with a person, with desires and sexual needs that need to be satisfied. We are not using a person disregarding their humanity, like corporations do when they treat us as machines. The fact that pleasure is an emotion prevents us from seeing each other as objects.

Which takes us to the second objection.

“Sex is too intimate to be transactional, so it is unethical in the absence of love”

A second argument against casual sex is based on the idea that sex is somehow special or sacred, so it is only allowed in the context of love or a relationship.

Prudish philosophers like Kant and social conservatives do not seem to be bothered when capitalism and corporations use human beings — workers and consumers — as means to an end — making money —while ignoring that humans are ends in themselves. But when it comes to sex, things suddenly change and the accusations fly about being used and objectified.

One old argument is that sex should be used only for procreation. As I explained in my article The Seven Enigmas of Sex, that idea has been largely put to rest by science. In humans, sex has been co-opted as a powerful mechanism for bonding and to create cooperation and trust between couples and perhaps even amongst entire tribes. Most of the sex we have is not for procreation, and that is completely morally acceptable. Even the Catholic Church is having to reckon with the fact that even the most pious couples have sex that is not procreative.

But then, if sex is for bonding, wouldn’t this support the idea that sex is only ethical when done by a loving couple? Isn’t it true that sex is a most intimate act? There certainly seems to be something special about sex. Otherwise, rape wouldn’t be considered such a horrible crime — it would just be similar to any other act of physical violence. If sex is indeed special, it might be that is too intimate to be casual. We may violate something inside ourselves when we do not recognize its emotional importance.

I examined the problem of the specialness of sex in my article Is Sex Sacred? I pointed out that if sex is sacred, then masturbation would also be unethical.

Let me give you an example of something that is both transactional and intimate: psychotherapy. Indeed, it is even more intimate than sex, since we reveal to the therapist our deepest emotions, traumas and fears. In fact, intimacy is the whole point of therapy. In addition, the client is using the therapist for his own personal benefit. He will dispose of the therapist the moment he sees that his goal of improving his mental health is not being achieved. Again, the fact that it is transactional is an important part of going into therapy. The therapist is a professional committed not to reveal our secrets, and who doesn’t have the biases and the personal investment of a friend in whom we would confide instead. If psychotherapy is not wrong, even though it is intimate and the therapist is being used as a means to a goal, how could we condemn casual sex on the same grounds?

This should get rid of the objection that casual sex is unethical because is too intimate."

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