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The Philosophy of Sex Also by Alan Soble Pornography, Sex, and Feminism Sexual Investigations The Philosophy of Sex and Love: An Introduction The Structure of Love Pornography: Marxism, Feminism, and the Future of Sexuality Sex, Love, and Friendship (editor) Eros, Agape, and Philia (editor) The Philosophy of Sex Contemporary Readings Fourth Edition Edited by Alan Soble ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com 12 Hid’s Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Copyright © 2002 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re- trieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani- cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 0–7425-1345–9 (alk. paper) ISBN 0–7425-1346–7 (pbk : alk. paper) Printed in the United States of America TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. For Rachel Emoke,˝ “the finest girl” Love always from your Daddy CONTENTS PREFACE xi INTRODUCTION: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SEX xvii Alan Soble PART 1: CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS 1. Are We Having Sex Now or What? 3 Greta Christina 2. Sexual Perversion 9 Thomas Nagel 3. Sexual Paradigms 21 Robert Solomon 4. Sexual Behavior: Another Position 31 Janice Moulton 5. Plain Sex 39 Alan Goldman 6. Sex and Sexual Perversion 57 Robert Gray 7. Masturbation: Conceptual and Ethical Matters 67 Alan Soble vii viii Contents PART 2: HOMOSEXUALITY 8. Is Homosexual Conduct Wrong? A Philosophical Exchange 97 John Finnis and Martha C. Nussbaum 9. Against Homosexual Liberation 103 Michael E. Levin 10. A Christian Homosexuality? 127 Edward Vacek, S.J. 11. Homosexuality: The Nature and Harm Arguments 135 John Corvino 12. Defending Marriage 147 Cheshire Calhoun PART 3: ABORTION 13. Abortion and the Sexual Agenda: A Case for Prolife Feminism 177 Sidney Callahan 14. Abortion: Is a Woman a Person? 191 Ellen Willis PART 4: KANT AND SEX 15. Duties towards the Body in Respect of Sexual Impulse 199 Immanuel Kant 16. Sexual Morality and the Concept of Using Another Person 207 Thomas A. Mappes 17. Sexual Use and What to Do about It: Internalist and Externalist Sexual Ethics 225 Alan Soble 18. The Morality of Sex: Contra Kant 259 Irving Singer PART 5: RAPE AND HARASSMENT 19. Is This Sexual Harassment? 275 Robin Warshaw Contents ix 20. Sexual Harassment in the Law: The Demarcation Problem 283 Mane Hajdin 21. How Bad Is Rape? 303 H. E. Baber 22. The Harms of Consensual Sex 317 Robin West 23. Antioch’s “Sexual Offense Policy”: A Philosophical Exploration 323 Alan Soble 24. Consent and Sexual Relations 341 Alan Wertheimer PART 6: PORNOGRAPHY AND PROSTITUTION 25. Talk Dirty to Me 369 Sallie Tisdale 26. Objectification 381 Martha C. Nussbaum 27. Pornography and the Social Sciences 421 Alan Soble 28. Should Feminists Oppose Prostitution? 435 Laurie Shrage 29. What’s Wrong with Prostitution? 451 Igor Primoratz 30. Whoring in Utopia 475 Pat Califia SUGGESTED READINGS 483 INDEX 501 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 509 PREFACE I have been teaching undergraduate courses in and writing about the philosophy of sex and love since 1976. That comes to more than twenty- five years: a good portion of my adult life (almost half) and all my post- graduate professional life. You might think that I would be sick of the subject, if not of sex itself, by now—say, by a kind of excitatory habitua- tion. To some extent that has happened.1 Nevertheless, I still experience a scholarly-sensuous frisson whenever I open an envelope or an e-mail in which a colleague has sent to me, for comments or perusal, a new piece on sexual morality (most recently, when Igor Primoratz sent me his en- ticing “Sexual Morality: Is Consent Enough?”);2 or whenever I page through a professional journal or an anthology and unexpectedly find an exploration of sexuality (for example, Louise Collins’s unfortunately somewhat tedious “Emotional Adultery: Cybersex and Commitment”);3 or whenever, browsing through a university press catalogue or the New York Review of Books, I discover yet another scholar bringing innovative ideas and a fresh perspective to the field (David Archard’s Sexual Consent comes to mind immediately).4 This revised, fourth edition of The Philoso- phy of Sex: Contemporary Readings contains the kind of philosophical inves- tigations of sexuality that have sustained my interest in the field during all these years in the face of a suspicion (and the fact) that some philoso- phers, theologians, and other writers have, in their published work, been merely repeating the same old tired formulas over and over again. The second edition of The Philosophy of Sex (1991) was an 80-percent re- vision of the first edition (1980); the third edition (1997) was also an 80- percent revision of the second. By contrast, this fourth edition (2002) is about a quarter or so revision of the third edition—which is supposed to inform you, my students, colleagues, and other readers, that I was happy with the third edition, although not perfectly happy with it. This fourth edi- tion is the largest Philosophy of Sex ever published, containing thirty chap- ters (or thirty-one, depending on how you do the counting), thereby xi xii Preface providing, in the resulting mixture, more substance and variety for stu- dents studying the philosophy of sexuality and for researchers working in the field. It newly contains, for example, my introductory essay “The Fun- damentals of the Philosophy of Sex,” written to ease students into, and provoke them about, the subject matter. This edition also contains other essays that are appearing in the collection for the first time, plus a much- expanded “Suggested Readings” section. Once again the core theoretical and historically important essays that are central to contemporary phi- losophy of sex are included (four of which were originally and surpris- ingly published in the dignified pages of the Journal of Philosophy): Thomas Nagel’s “Sexual Perversion,” Robert Solomon’s “Sexual Para- digms,” Janice Moulton’s “Sexual Behavior: Another Position,” Robert Gray’s “Sex and Sexual Perversion,” and Alan Goldman’s “Plain Sex” (from the prestigious journal Philosophy and Public Affairs). The bulk of the fourth edition of Philosophy of Sex falls properly in the area of applied philosophy of sex or, more generally, applied philoso- phy, applied ethics, and gender studies (so the book could be used in those sorts of courses as well as in courses that concentrate on the phi- losophy of sex). Some of the essays I have chosen to include in this vol- ume are very good, even excellent; others, I think, are probably wrong, even if provocative. But this latest version of Philosophy of Sex would be an extraordinarily boring book were I to assemble together only what I per- sonally like, find compelling, or sympathize with ideologically. Such a monistic collection, furthermore, would not serve well the interests of students who are attempting to learn about the philosophy of sex or of scholars who utilize this text for research, and it would not do justice to the richness of sexual philosophy. Hence there are essays in this anthol- ogy that are critical and supportive of homosexuality, abortion, prostitu- tion, and pornography, which makes the book unlike a large number of recent collections in sex and gender studies that are merely platforms for partisan views.5 The section on conceptual analysis (Part 1) begins with a sweet and sour essay by Greta Christina, who exhibits how the paradigmatically philo- sophical task of providing criteria for the identification of sexual acts also arises in (some of) our sexual lives.6 “What is sex?” (definitionally and de- scriptively) is the question addressed in the other essays of Part 1: Thomas Nagel focuses on the sophisticated psychological nature of human sexual interaction; Robert Solomon explores the expressive functions of sexual behavior; Janice Moulton exposes what is false and misleading, from a woman’s perspective, in Nagel’s and Solomon’s accounts of human sexu- ality; Alan Goldman attempts to define “sexual desire” and “sexual activ- ity” by discovering the lowest common denominator of all sexual events; Robert Gray illuminates the conceptual relationship between sexual ac- tivity and sexual pleasure and explains how this bears on our understand- Preface xiii ing of sexual perversion; and in my contribution to Part 1, I examine con- ceptually and ethically the much-maligned yet nearly universally practiced (among males, at least) act of masturbation. (You might remember Woody Allen’s joke: “Why are you such a good lover?” Answer: “I practice a lot when I’m alone.”) In Part 2, the pieces by John Finnis and Michael Levin express severe doubts about the morality, wisdom, and normality of homosexuality,7 while those of Martha Nussbaum and John Corvino offer defenses of gay and lesbian sexuality. Ed Vacek’s prescient paper presents an early statement of a position that has lately been growing in popularity and visibility, namely, that the tenets of Christianity do not entail that loving and consummated homosexual relationships are morally wrong.8 Cheshire Calhoun, in her recent essay “Defending Marriage,” critically analyzes several arguments that attempt to defend same-sex marriage, and concludes that such marriages are essential for the full citizenship of gay men and lesbians.