what's wrong with prostitution, pornography, casual sex?

Teachers of traditional sexual morality have a problem with casual sex. One thing they will say – a man and woman who hook up after a wild night at the club are objectifying each other. They are using each other for selfish pleasure. The prudes will say that’s bad.

But human beings use each other all the time. When you go to the checkout counter, you use the person behind it to buy your groceries. You might make small talk and thank them afterwards, but essentially you are using the checkout clerk to get what you want. There’s nothing wrong with that – sometimes we have needs that put us into contact with other human beings. We often choose to keep those relationships light and professional, because we may not be suited for a closer relationship.

Aren’t casual sexual relationships, even prostitution or pornography, the same sort of thing? There need not be any disrespect or abuse to the other person. Just a mutual fulfilling of desires. (Put aside for a moment the various dangers of sex – assume that the couple takes precautions against pregnancy, disclose their sexual history honestly, get tested for STD’s, etc. Obviously kids in the throes of passion at the club will not do any of this, but that’s a separate issue.)

So what’s wrong with prostitution, pornography, and casual sex?

I know some religious folk here will make God-based arguments against them. That’s fine, you have every right to do that, but as a convinced atheist it’s not going to interest me much. I’m more interested in social and ethical reasons outside of God’s commands.

Nothing, I think all of them are awesome, as long as you are safe and get tested.

I got no problem with any of that.

But do you think they are AWESOME (which they are)?

Well, I suppose after Nietzsche killed God, we need a new opiate for the masses.

They can be awesome. They can be not so awesome, like everything else.

Tab - the masses seem to have plenty of opiates.

They even have opium.

Which is awesome.

I can tell you that I have had more fun with heroin than with prostitution, pornography or (for the most part) casual sex.

Opium which is awsome and banned, illicit, shadowy, mysterious, dangerous, and exciting without even going to the trouble of tinfoil, lighters and whatever. I dunno, how’d you feel Faust if images of opium use were used to sell everything from shoes to toothpicks. If every soap on TV, film at the cinema, every song, every book had underlying themes of opium use, even the so-called kiddie ones. Every magazine cover heralding 10 ways to get more high out of your opium, or how to spice up your drug habit. Or maybe viral-pictures of opium-tubgirl blowing a whole load of opium right out of her ass.

Call me Mr. Suspicious, but I think we’re either being conned or placated, though by whom and for what end I have no idea. Maybe it’s just a case of humanity sticking its communal head in the sand concerning the future. Except of course it’s substituted something less gritty as a receptacle.**

**I so wanted to say “except it’s sticking its communal head up a cunt instead” but that would have been blatently offensive, and quite frankly, beneath me.

What’s wrong with sex??? It just brings new people into the world.

There’s nothing wrong with that at all, especially considering how & why this is accomplished…

On a serious note, would any Humanists here be willing to tell me what happens when you have no love for your neighbor, your family, or yourself anymore?

Do you know what happens when Nothing is sacred anymore? → please, do tell! My ears are burning.

Tab - I think then that your problem is with advertising and marketing, and not with the opiates, figurative and literal, themselves. I mean, how would I feel if God was used to sel…oh wait, he is.

Well, how would I feel if cute little kids, puppies and kit…oh wait, they are.

Okay, how would I feel if the prospect of wealth and pow…oh wait.

If you’re getting conned, then get hip.

I am sure we are all grateful for your self-control and good taste.

Is this problem Tab’s fault or the Society that he lives in, including everybody?

Common sense and self control are not over rated, they’re largely not practiced.

Realun - If it’s a problem at all. Stuff is going to get sold. It’s going to get bought. In the US, everyone spends all their money and then some. Most of it is unnecessary crap. I’m not sure if it matters if what sells it is a titmouse or a tit - it’ll get sold, and bought.

I don’t watch much television. I don’t read many magazines. I listen to NPR on the radio, mostly. Not much sex there. I don’t think it’s that difficult to avoid sex as a selling tool. Either way, it’s just sex.

I realise that a lot of popular music is about sex, but sex is not patent in Bach, Coltrane and a lot of Johnny Cash. Or the Economist. Or James Joyce.

We are not just lemmings jumping off a huge breast-shaped cliff. Unless we want to be.

Self-control is not a virtue in the West, the last time I checked. And I live here.

Consume others; eat them up. That is what we tell ourselves without cause or consequence.

I have objections to some variations of all three of these, but for some reason, I’m guessing my objections won’t amount to much with most of this group. And I’m not really up for trying to champion a lost cause. So let’s just chalk this up to being the token “feminazi” post registering dissent for forms of entertainment that are very often demeaning to women.

Faust, I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with your assertion that you can avoid being exposed to the “sex sells” mentality. You may be able to turn your eyes away from a commercial, but you can’t so easily escape having to interact with all those who didn’t turn away, who are bombarded with those messages, and who might look at you differently as a result.

I wish JT were still around; he always made a great case for what we’re teaching the next generation.

What makes a blow job degrading, the act-itself, or the fact that women love to please their men???

Think about this very carefully Feminisssts…

Anita - I don’t think I claimed that I can avoid the mentality - just the adverts. Most everyone I am exposed to on a daily basis are people with whom I disagree about something. People who I secretly wish didn’t vote, or even park near my car. People who I don’t want to have lunch with. But the list of reasons why I feel this way is very, very long.

Most people don’t think about sex enough, or are not thoughtful enough, or are too repressed and hung up, or yes, think about sex too much, or in a way i think is stupid - heck, I don’t like anyone.

I could tell you that in think most people are waaaaay too stupid to live, too susceptible to advertising - too susceptible to a lot of stuff.

Sex isn’t the problem. People who can’t think their way out of a paper bag are. People who spend more time planning vacations they will never take than examining their moral values is the problem.

Most people I know are Christians. That influence creates more problems - for me - than the sex industry does. But that’s just me.

I’ll go along with realun this far - most people sell their entire lives out for a pension and good health insurance. Your average hooker gives up a lot less of herself.

It seems our culture is heavily decomposed into two groups; the god-fearing idiots, who use the bible and conservatism to justify most moral assertions –

and the super-liberal hippy / emo / hipsters, who feed off of Margaret Mead’s assumption-driven dogma and like to say that “sex is just sex” and it’s only repression that can be damaging, not sex itself.

The simple fact of the matter is that the sex drive, like everything else about humanity, evolved. It evolved in complicated ways, but due to simple evolutionary pressures.

A woman carries a child, puts a 9-month energy investment into it. Doing this at all is a substantial danger to the mother’s life in an evolutionary environment. Thus, being pregnant and giving birth and raising a child with a mate carries substantial reproductive rewards to the mother.

This isn’t always the case for the father, who has an evolutionary pressure to spread his seed at least a fair amount before (and maybe during) any “settling down” happens to occur.

This results in a clear conflict of interest – on average – between male and female sex drives. This is observable in each and every culture – women being relatively reticent about sex, and men being relatively indiscriminate. It is also easy to see how this leads to a large potential for the build-up of emotion. This is already obvious on the woman’s side - if emotions are an evolutionary shortcut to efficient action, then a woman should have emotions that drive her to obtain and secure a reasonably long-term mate. Of course, this means that there will be the potential for significant pain should the woman’s desires be thwarted.

It goes both ways too. If a man is going to sacrifice his “seed-spreading” potential in return for increased likelihood of the children he raises having kids of their own, he’s damn well going to want to know that they’re really his kids. Not an issue for the woman, of course, but absolutely one for the man. The man should have significant pressure driving him to be sure that he isn’t wasting literally years of reproductive ability caring for some other jerk’s kid. Of course this implies that a cuckolded man will have a high likelihood of emotional pain.

If we can agree that what is bad is essentially hurting other people, and that the more good and less hurt caused, the better, then it’s pretty obvious that sex carries more potential danger than most other normal human activities. How about causal sex between strangers? Anyone who’s had causal sex and who is a good observer of humans can tell you two things: one, that causal sex can be done with minimal risk to emotions, and two, that this can’t happen nearly as often as most people would like you to believe, especially for women. It isn’t too hard to take reasonable precautions – but most people don’t, because they like to act selfishly, and to take reasonable precautions and thus to act responsibly would nullify the majority of options these individuals have for casual sex. What use morality when it’s inconvenient, after all?

Even if you like casual sex but restrict yourself to doing it only when you have a reasonable and high degree of confidence that you aren’t hurting the other person, there’s another risk, also quite potent, and equally poo-pooed by all the selfish / liberal nutjobs. Causal sex forces habits in people, and different habits in different people. The habit of causal sex is very strongly correlated to low self-esteem and destructive behavior in women. The evolutionary reasons for this are completely obvious - females are much more likely to resort to casual sex if they can’t get a real, long-term mate. And this must necessarily be accompanied by a lowering of standards, and a lowering of self-esteem, since any airs of “I’m too good for you” will no longer be productive. They’re no longer women; they’re whores.

Meanwhile, the men who engage in causal sex habituate themselves to a lifestyle in which they can spread their seed in substance. If there is any evolved subconscious scale that weighs whether or not causal sex is more in your best interests than a relationship – and there is every reason to believe such a “scale” exists – then the more casual sex a man has, the more that scale will think “why enter into monogamy when I can spread my seed so much more efficiently this way?” History is full of amusing examples of men who are popular and desirable, and can’t hold a relationship together, as they’re always chasing the next thing – and other men who hold together fantastic relationships, and who, interestingly, probably wouldn’t have many options if they weren’t ensconced in marriage already. And how many of us DON’T know a guy who was cheated on, and then becomes highly promiscuous for the next few years? Or the girl who was cheated on and develops terrible self-esteem and insecurities that persist over a few more years? Casual sex usually doesn’t have the same impact that infidelity does, but I feel guilty thinking about the girls with whom I’ve had casual encounters where, in retrospect, those were clearly not in her best interest. It’s true that she gave consent - but that by no means rids me of my moral obligation, even though I acted as if it did at the time.

Certainly there are plenty of contrary historical examples as well, but the supporting examples are so much more ridiculously numerous than the contrary ones that it is unreasonable to deny the existence of a link. Many popular observations about men and women are completely in accordance with these mechanisms; Ladder Theory, a girl bringing along the ugly friend, a guy ignoring or teasing the girl he likes, Pick-Up Artistry, etc.

I’m by no means one of the religious nutjobs, and I by no means advocate pure monogamy, no sex before marriage, etc. My beliefs are this: most intelligent people today consistently underestimate the potential sex has to profoundly affect an individual, both in the immediate and in the long-term. They think about the matter culturally, not practically or observationally. Culturally, as long as someone consents, it’s ok, and you’ve satisfied your obligations. Practically, morally, that isn’t the case at all. When having sex with someone, there is a high average potential for hurt in the short-term and engendering damaging behavioral patterns in the longer-term. You can’t be scared of sex before you have it, of course – but you should absolutely be considerate enough not to jump into it until you have a good idea of whether or not you’re fucking up (heh) the other person thereby. And in whether or not you’re fucking up yourself.

Again, Twiffy - then it is not the casual sex itself, but how you approach it. But the OP wasn’t that specific. I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I think what counts is the individual decisions that individuals make, and not some monster, “Sex”.

You people may call/label me whatever you like for this, but I have always had a trouble with this thought:

If a female has sex before marriage, then isn’t she a “slut” by definition of the word??? → sloven

And the correlation to “anus” is interesting, considering the huge what-to-do about anal sex nowadays.

I agree, but meh. Is it the gun that kills someone, or the person wielding the gun? Who cares? Just don’t shoot people.

I think debating sex vs. the approach to sex is not really the way to go. The upshot is this: we shouldn’t be repressed about sex, because it’s often a fun, wonderful, thing. Nor should we allow ourselves to be blind to the fact that sex often has a large potential for damage. When you approach sex, just like when you approach friendships or relationships or whatever, be perceptive about the states of others, aware of the possible dangers, and be considerate and moral, rather than just self-interested.