this is good, if a little hard to parse without paragraph breaks in (2). i've been wondering about similar questions after trying to make sense of the harry chalmers <>kyle york debate over monogamy's permissibility. what criteria can the monogamist supply to explain why their restriction on romantic partners would not also force them to be a monogamist about friendship?
if your main puzzle is why it is wrong to enjoy the partner's displeasure despite consent, i don't think games are a super helpful analogy just b/c of their competitive nature. it's quite common and often expected in competitive games for both parties to persist despite the fact that the winner delights in the loser's displeasure. the more analogous activities seem like collaborative ones where the purpose is (at least in some large part) mutual enjoyment. things like mutual creative projects where nothing much hangs on the outcome. or non-competitive play more generally.
in those cases, it seems similarly perverse to take pleasure in the fact that the other party is not enjoying the activity, even while they persist in it. maybe not totally similar, but enough to make me think facts about mutual pleasure are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the special regard we have for sexual activity.
if the puzzle is to account for for the special type of consent that's needed for sexual activity then maybe it's more like the case of play, except with much higher stakes (children could result) and more emotional and physical vulnerability (feelings or bodies could get hurt).
thanks for this! i'm really dying to talk about all of this with philosophers. where is the chalmers/york debate? link please. i have similar questions about monogamy!
i think you're right about this. the game wasn't a carefully chosen example. i guess it depends on background context--if you're just friendly amateur chess players, that's a different situation than one in which you're both fiercely competitive. but anyway, joint activities that people do together almost always solely for the sake of mutual enjoyment (like going to the zoo or doing a puzzle) might be better. even in that kind of case, though, i still have the intuition that the moral wrong of indifference or sadism is greater in the sexual case, although i agree that it's not different in kind. taking pleasure in someone's hatred for the zoo seems mildly sadistic and most definitely weird, but somehow not as demented as taking pleasure in someone else's sexual discomfort.
as for your second point, i'm not persuaded that sex demands special consent because it has higher stakes: it seems to me that, in recent years especially, for many people the stakes are not particularly high (everyone could agree that an exchange is casual--some would deny that truly casual sex is really possible, but i think it is--and everyone could be using highly effective contraception) yet the sense that special consent is required remains. maybe the special consent standard is a vestige of a bygone time and context and will soon be obsolete. i do think at least SOME of why erotic activity seems to require special consent is due to accidental historical facts about how sex is understood (e.g., as necessarily meaningful, etc) and not due to intrinsic aspects of the activity. But the question is: does this story explain the ENTIRETY of the consent standard? I'm honestly not sure, but my gut sense is no.
this is good, if a little hard to parse without paragraph breaks in (2). i've been wondering about similar questions after trying to make sense of the harry chalmers <>kyle york debate over monogamy's permissibility. what criteria can the monogamist supply to explain why their restriction on romantic partners would not also force them to be a monogamist about friendship?
if your main puzzle is why it is wrong to enjoy the partner's displeasure despite consent, i don't think games are a super helpful analogy just b/c of their competitive nature. it's quite common and often expected in competitive games for both parties to persist despite the fact that the winner delights in the loser's displeasure. the more analogous activities seem like collaborative ones where the purpose is (at least in some large part) mutual enjoyment. things like mutual creative projects where nothing much hangs on the outcome. or non-competitive play more generally.
in those cases, it seems similarly perverse to take pleasure in the fact that the other party is not enjoying the activity, even while they persist in it. maybe not totally similar, but enough to make me think facts about mutual pleasure are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the special regard we have for sexual activity.
if the puzzle is to account for for the special type of consent that's needed for sexual activity then maybe it's more like the case of play, except with much higher stakes (children could result) and more emotional and physical vulnerability (feelings or bodies could get hurt).
thanks for this! i'm really dying to talk about all of this with philosophers. where is the chalmers/york debate? link please. i have similar questions about monogamy!
i think you're right about this. the game wasn't a carefully chosen example. i guess it depends on background context--if you're just friendly amateur chess players, that's a different situation than one in which you're both fiercely competitive. but anyway, joint activities that people do together almost always solely for the sake of mutual enjoyment (like going to the zoo or doing a puzzle) might be better. even in that kind of case, though, i still have the intuition that the moral wrong of indifference or sadism is greater in the sexual case, although i agree that it's not different in kind. taking pleasure in someone's hatred for the zoo seems mildly sadistic and most definitely weird, but somehow not as demented as taking pleasure in someone else's sexual discomfort.
as for your second point, i'm not persuaded that sex demands special consent because it has higher stakes: it seems to me that, in recent years especially, for many people the stakes are not particularly high (everyone could agree that an exchange is casual--some would deny that truly casual sex is really possible, but i think it is--and everyone could be using highly effective contraception) yet the sense that special consent is required remains. maybe the special consent standard is a vestige of a bygone time and context and will soon be obsolete. i do think at least SOME of why erotic activity seems to require special consent is due to accidental historical facts about how sex is understood (e.g., as necessarily meaningful, etc) and not due to intrinsic aspects of the activity. But the question is: does this story explain the ENTIRETY of the consent standard? I'm honestly not sure, but my gut sense is no.
Anyway, would be very happy to discuss further!
Hello, Are you going to post about your review of Jill Ciment? I read your piece and would like to ask a few questions.
probably not, but you're always welcome to email me
> I might be shattered and changed forever by the mountains or Fanny and Alexander (reader, I am)
Will you write an essay about Fanny and Alexander? I can't be the only reader who would look forward to it.