The Nature of Sex

In this article, I consider the harms inflicted upon transgender persons through “misgendering,” that is, such deployments of gender terms that diminish transgender persons’ selfrespect, limit the discursive resources at their disposal to define their own gender, and cause them microaggressive psychological harms. Such deployments are morally contestable, that is, they can be challenged on ethical or political grounds. Two characterizations of “woman” proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. When we consider what would happen to transgender (...) women upon the broad implementation of these characterizations within transgender women’s social context, we discover that they suffer from two defects: they either exclude at least some transgender women, or else they implicitly foster hierarchies among women, marginalizing transgender women in particular. In conclusion, I claim that the moral contestability of gender-term deployments acts as a stimulus to regularly consider the provisionality and revisability of our deployments of the term “woman.”. (shrink)

Recent philosophical writing on sexual desire divides broadly into two camps. Reductionists take sexual desire to aim at an essentially physical bodily pleasure, whereas intentionalist accounts take a focus upon the reciprocal interaction of the mental states of the partners to be crucial for understanding the phenomenon. I argue that the apparent plausibility of reductionism rests upon the flawed assumption that sexual pleasure has the same uniform bodily character in all sexual encounters, which rests in turn upon flawed assumptions in (...) the philosophy of mind. Drawing on an Aristotelian understanding of persons as essentially embodied minds, I outline an alternative account of sexual desire, showing how the nature of the sexual pleasure we take in the body of another can be transformed by the significance the person or situation has for us. I proceed to show that my account of sexual desire is able to accommodate the entire range of sexual phenomena, including those that seem to undermine standard intentionalist accounts as well as those that reductionists have difficulty in fully explaining. Finally I make some brief remarks about the implications of my account of sexual desire for sexual morality, suggesting some reasons why it casts doubt on the view that universal participant consent is sufficient for a sexual act to be morally unproblematic. (shrink)

Introductory courses dealing with sex, gender and sexuality often assign excerpts from Thomas Aquinas as an exemplar of the naturalist view. Given that most novice students tend to side against such naturalism uncritically, they need to be exposed to a more charitable account of the biological considerations motivating a stance like Aquinas.’ With that in mind, this article presents accessible arguments aimed at restoring deliberative balance in the classroom.

Through a discussion of the way science has been used to address intersexuality, I explore an idea about how to understand science as objective and yet influenced by social, historical, and cultural factors. I propose that the Semantic View of theories provides a means of understanding how science describes reality, and I look at the way science has been used to distinguish the sexes to provide an illustration.

This essay relates scenes from Beauvoir's novels to her views of female eroticism and frigidity in The Second Sex. Expressions of frigidity signal unjust power relations in Beauvoir's literature. She constructs frigidity as a symbolic means of rejecting dominance in heterosexual relations. Thus frigidity need not be interpreted, as it sometimes is, as a form of bad faith. The essay concludes with some thoughts on the relevance of Beauvoir's view of frigidity to contemporary feminism.

_What _is_ the meaning of sex?_ Everyone in every time and place is interested in sex. Our own time is obsessed by it. One would think that a society obsessed by sex would understand it very well. But the truth is that obsession drives out understanding. We no longer understand even the common sense of sexuality, the things that were common knowledge in supposedly less enlightened times. Acclaimed philosopher J. Budziszewski remedies this problem. His wise, gracefully written book about the (...) nature, meaning, and mysteries of sexuality restores lost wisdom, raising and answering such questions as: Does sex have to mean anything at all? What is the meaning of the sexual powers, of sexual differences, of sexual love, of sexual beauty, of sexual purity? Is sexuality “all about sex”? why does sexuality stir up such transcendent longings for something more than sex? __On the Meaning of Sex__ corrects the most prevalent errors about sex, particularly the errors of the sexual revolution, which by mistaking pleasure for a good in itself has caused untold pain and suffering. In restoring the meaning and purpose of sex, the author reclaims what Dante calls “the intelligence of love.” “Looking out over the sexual landscape of our time,” Budziszewski writes, “I see a terrain of unutterable sweetness, despoiled by unmentionable pain. Yet who knows? Perhaps it is not too late to redeem the unutterable sweetness. Shall we try to find out?”. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in the legal, medical, and common-sense logics governing the designation of sex on birth certificates issued by the City of New York between 1965 and 2006. In the initial iteration, the stabilization of legal sex categories was organized around the notion of "fraud"; in the most recent iteration, "permanence" became the measure of authenticity. We frame these legal constructions of sex with theories about the "natural attitude" toward gender.

In this chapter, we focus on the simple sounding question: What is it to have sex? On the assumption that having sex is what you do with all and only your sexual part-ners, this offers a way of focusing the question: What would it take for a sex robot to be a sex partner? In order to understand the significance of the development of robots with whom (or which) we can have sex, we need to know what it is to (...) have sex with a robot. And in order to know this, we have to know what it is to have sex, period. In the bulk of the chapter, we develop an account of shared sexual agency we think is a plausible precondition of genuinely having sex. In the final section, we remark briefly on the issue of what it would take to form a sexual we (as we call it) with a robot. For if we can do this, we can probably have sex with robots; but if we can’t, we can’t. (shrink)

A review of Loose Women, Lecherous Men, by Linda LeMoncheck.

This dissertation is an attempt to provide a philosophical basis upon which the descriptions of human sexuality, as revealed by the natural and social sciences, may be coordinated, synthesized, and fully understood. Our primary purpose is to reassess the way in which human sexuality is conceived, studied, experienced, and expressed. This involves viewing sexuality as an essential function of personhood, incorporating it within the whole of human existence , and ultimately re-evaluating what it means to speak of persons as sexual (...) beings. ;The meaning we assign to "human sexuality" is broader than the ordinary one. We use this term "sexuality" to indicate a form of human behavior whereby an embodied consciousness expresses itself and finds expression in its relations with others and with the world. It is characterized by the fact that, while arising out of the bio-physical conditions of physical--i.e., reproductive--sex, it is not restricted to these conditions for its full meaningfulness. Instead, human sexuality is conceptualized as a form of behavior through which we may manifest our unique ability to orient ourselves to the world, subjectively and creatively, as persons. ;Using Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior as a running thread, this phenomenological inquiry proceeds from a bio-physical description of human sexuality through a psycho-social one, and brings us to a point where it becomes possible to distinguish the fact of human sexuality, human sexual behavior, the consciousness of sex differences, and the consequences of the consciousness of sex differences. Our phenomenology of human sexuality thus enables us to recognize the true interdependence of all the factors that go into an individual's sexual make-up. Along with this, it provides a trans-disciplinary basis upon which we can create a synthesis and a unity of the various perspectival approaches to the subject. Further our investigation serves to point out the need for us to consider more carefully the value of sexuality in human life, and to re-evaluate seriously the framework from within which it is currently conceptualized. (shrink)

The paper follows an ontological approach in analyzing sexual experience. Sexual experience is defined as: (i) an experience in action. Correspondingly, its individuals are of two different types: (a) sense-data and (b) gestures. (ii) It is a kind of knowledge—a typical synthetic a posteriori knowledge (a virgin cannot know what sexual experience could be). (iii) It is a kind of anti-realist knowledge—its objects are constructed in the process of knowing. (iv) Sexual action proceeds in judgments that are micro-decisions of how (...) to proceed further. (v) The objects of sexual experience are seen in a specific perspective. This makes their meaning different from the meaning of physical objects. (shrink)

An analytic investigation of Antioch's "Sexual Offense Policy.".

A critical review of a book on rape by Joan McGregor.

This best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena. Updated and new discussion questions offer students starting points for debate in both the classroom and the bedroom.

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience. Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism advocates a less (...) demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self. In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

Critics of homosexual activity often appeal to some form of natural law theory as a basis for their arguments. According to one version of natural law theory, actions that “pervert” or misuse a bodily faculty are immoral. In this paper, I argue that this “perverted faculty argument” provides a successful account of good and evil action. Several objections are assessed and found inadequate.

Transsexuality has been subject to careful reflections in many disciplines outside philosophy. I first contextualize my philosophical approach by relating to the existing scholarship on transsexuality. Focusing on matters of sexual identity, I then propose a characterization of what might be considered the philosophical dimension of transsexual identity. Paying particular attention to the propositional consciousness of transsexuals, I develop the main thesis that transsexuality helps philosophers of sex to forcefully establish the contingency of sexual identity in terms of the underlying (...) biology of the sexed human body. I eventually argue that sexual identity is a cluster concept, which is constituted by sex, gender, sexual practice and desire. In this sense the following argument against “foundationalism” in philosophy of sex emerges: none of the four aspects of sexual identity can function as basic, prior to any normative commitments regarding the nature of human sexuality. (shrink)

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience. Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism advocates a less (...) demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self. In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the human mind in its creativity and emotional self-awareness is the result of the evolutionary transition from sexuality to eroticism. Eroticism is arrived at and defined by the high amount of energy displayed in animal sexuality. We propose that the unique human emotional intelligence is due to this “overflow” of mating energy. What from the survival viewpoint looks like an enormous waste of time and energy reveals itself to be an unexpected psychological benefit. The diversion of (...) sexual energy from procreation — a process that results in erotic fantasies — turns intimacy into a source of human self -consciousness. This places different emphasis on the meaning of eroticism and provides a coherent scenario of mental development beyond mere cognitive capacities. Arguments are presented on how erotic imagination, or sexual excitation as an end in itself, promotes the human propensity for explorative curiosity; data from ethology, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience are presented to support these arguments. As philosophical anthropologists, we do not provide new empirical data, but the available results of comparative behavioral research confirm our hypothesis. (shrink)

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience. Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism advocates a less (...) demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self. In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

One WHY LOVERS CAN'T BE FRIENDS James Conlon That one's spouse is also one's closest friend is a common claim and seems innocent enough. ...

In Bodies and Pleasures, Ladelle McWhorter reads Foucault from an original and personal angle, motivated by the differences this experience has made in her life.

This best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena. Updated and new discussion questions offer students starting points for debate in both the classroom and the bedroom.

Kant on sex gives most philosophers the following associations: a lifelong celibate philosopher; a natural teleological view of sexuality; a strange incorporation of this natural teleological account within his freedom-based moral theory; and a stark ethical condemnation of most sexual activity. Although this paper provides an interpretation of Kant’s view on sexuality, it neither defends nor offers an apology for everything Kant says about sexuality. Rather, it aims to show that a reconsidered Kant-based account can utilize his many worthwhile insights (...) and that making Kant’s account of sexuality more consistent with his own basic philosophical commitments results in a compelling approach to the complex and complicated phenomena of sexual love, sexual identity, and sexual orientation. (shrink)

A review of Loose Women, Lecherous Men, by Linda LeMoncheck.

This article is about Eroticism as a key-concept in the psychological understanding of the human mind. The meaning of the term can be defined as follows: Eroticism is the way humans experience sexuality as a self-sufficient mental activity. Sexuality underlies different social rules in varying cultural contexts and may lead to different ways of thinking, but there is no evidence that cultural diversity actually leads to fundamentally different ways of feeling. The constant disposition for recreational rather than procreational sex makes (...) eroticism a medium of human creativity. In this sense, eroticism is considered a central factor in the process of hominisation. The crucial cognitive competence which makes for the uniqueness of our species is due to the transformation of sexuality into eroticism and its disposition for social learning. In the animal kingdom, sex contributes to the welfare of the horde, while in human society eroticism contributes to individual self-recognition and paves the way to moral awareness. Methodologically, I plead for a cooperation of psychological and anthropological research, each utilizing and combining the complementary aspects of both approaches. (shrink)

Irigaray's early work seeks to multiply possibilities for women's self-expression by recovering a sexual difference in which male and female are neither the same nor opposites, but irreducibly different modes of embodiment. In her more recent work, however, Irigaray has emphasized the duality of the sexes at the expense of multiplicity, enshrining the heterosexual couple as the model of sexual ethics. Alison Stone's recent revision of Irigaray supplements her account of sexual duality with a theory of bodily multiplicity derived from (...) Butler, Nietzsche, and certain German Romantics; but to the extent that Stone maintains the primacy of sexual duality, her revision fails to address the claims of multiplicity on their own terms. In this paper, I interpret a passage from Marcel Proust's novel, Sodom and Gomorrah, in order to develop an alternative theory of sexual difference in which sexual duality is affirmed in relation to a third, unsexed but sexual force which multiplies the possibilities for sexual pleasure beyond heterosexual coupling. Proust's emphasis on sexed ``parts'' rather than sexed morphologies is generative of maximally diverse combinations, all of which are equally natural and equally enhanced through artifice. (shrink)

Furthering the dialogue with J. Wentzel van Huyssteen over his way of reconciling Christianity and science while reflecting on human uniqueness, I offer a philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of transsexuality. The focus of my analysis is the implications of transsexuality for the metaphysics of reductive naturalism. Envisioning a pluralistic ontology of the sexed human body, I propose to account for human sexuality within the general framework of normative pragmatism. The context of my reflections is a theology of sexual diversity, (...) which I believe van Huyssteen has good reasons to endorse. (shrink)

Transsexuality has been subject to careful reflections in many disciplines outside philosophy. I first contextualize my philosophical approach by relating to the existing scholarship on transsexuality. Focusing on matters of sexual identity, I then propose a characterization of what might be considered the philosophical dimension of transsexual identity. Paying particular attention to the propositional consciousness of transsexuals, I develop the main thesis that transsexuality helps philosophers of sex to forcefully establish the contingency of sexual identity in terms of the underlying (...) biology of the sexed human body. I eventually argue that sexual identity is a cluster concept, which is constituted by sex, gender, sexual practice and desire. In this sense the following argument against “foundationalism” in philosophy of sex emerges: none of the four aspects of sexual identity can function as basic, prior to any normative commitments regarding the nature of human sexuality. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to philosophy of sex. The history of philosophy of sex is depicted (from Plato to Herman Schmitz) to set up the background against which the philosophy of sex by Herman Schmitz is analyzed. This leads to the discussion of topics like masturbation, the ontology of the sexed human body, and same-sex marriage.

This is a slightly edited version of a talk given by Mrs Claire Rayner, a journalist and broadcaster, to a conference on human sexuality held under the auspices of the London Medical Group in the spring of this year. Mrs Rayner's lively presentation conveys the problems and anxieties which people face in this area, even in this so-called `permissive' age.

A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality offers an historical sociological analysis of ideas about expressions of sexual desire, combining both primary and secondary historical and theoretical material with original research and popular imagery in the contemporary context. While some reference is made to the sexual ideology of Classical Antiquity and of early Christianity, the major focus of the book is on the development of ideas about sex and sexuality in the context of modernity. It questions the widespread assumption that the (...) anxieties and fears associated with old sexual mores have been overcome in the late twentieth century context, and asks whether the discourses of Queer sexual politics have successfully fractured the binary categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality. A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality will be of interest to students in the fields of sociology, sexual history, gender studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

The evolutionary theory of sex implies a theoretically principled account of the causal mechanisms underlying personality systems in which males pursue a relatively high-risk strategy compared to females and are thus higher on traits linked to sensation seeking and social dominance. Females are expected to be lower on these traits but higher on traits related to nurturance and attraction to long-term relationships. The data confirm this pattern of sex differences. It is thus likely that these traits have been a focus (...) of natural selection rather than the traits of gregarious/aloof and arrogant/unassuming hypothesized by Depue & Collins. (shrink)