Look, sex needs a yes from every partner (at least two total “yes” responses). You’re describing a “yes” and a “no.” Thus, no sex. In terms of the sex act, it literally doesn’t matter why one partner says no.
I agree ( possibly module details of exactly what constitutes consent). However, this is the kind of thing that’s hard to justify on utilitarian grounds. For example, why does this apply to sex but not other forms of touching?
To take an even more extreme example: what would you make of a Namboothiri’s complaint that a Dalit got within 96 feet of him without his consent and thus caused him to become ritually polluted?
In terms of utilitarian practicality, I’d say that prohibiting others from approaching within 96 feet of you is a far greater imposition on others than prohibiting others from having sex with you.
From a utilitarian point of view, it’s not that having sex must always entail the consent of all participants, it’s just that situations where no sex has worse consequences than nonconsensual sex (say, a person is given an ultimatum by sadistic pirates to rape a woman or have their village razed) are vanishingly rare and improbable.
Greater total distress between the participants, and the broader community if applicable, over time.
I don’t know if the Superhappies could relate to the idea of reproductive defensiveness, and while I understand what Eliezer was going for with the human sexual culture in Three Worlds Collide, I think it’s pretty unlikely that our culture will ever actually develop in that way.
Reproductive defensiveness is a lot like sexual pleasure in that it varies in degree from person to person, but is probably, in a general way, hardwired into our species. For women particularly, inability to exercise choice in picking a reproductive partner could mean the difference between continuation and extinction of a genetic line. And speaking as a man, I’ve felt a repulsion from having sex with a partner (a “don’t stick your dick in the crazy” response,) which was absolutely visceral. Having sex with the wrong partner can create disadvantageous social ties which can be positively ruinous for an individual.
Some cases are necessarily going to be borderline; an individual can be ambivalent regarding whether to have sex with a particular partner or not. But when one allows others to push the borders of their willingness to engage in sex, they’re liable to start down a slippery slope where it becomes more and more difficult to refuse sex they don’t want (particularly if they acquire a reputation which travels between partners.) I’ve very often seen people who gave in to pressure to have sex they didn’t want come away with long lasting regrets, whereas people who’ve gained long term satisfaction from sex they pressured a particular other person who didn’t want it into having seem much harder to find.
How is it difficult to justify on utilitarian grounds? If one were both a deontologist and committed to elegance in one’s theories, admittedly not the most common combination outside of ancaps, one might be in a poor place to say that one form of subjective harm must be resolved in favor of the offended party without saying so for all harms. But if you think that contingent facts matter, then you can just look at the world and see that rape produces these harms and ritual pollution does not. In fact, if you really squint you can just look and see that ritual pollution as such doesn’t exist at all, unlike the brain’s inborn mapping of me-ness onto a body.
As it happens, contingently, there do seem to be—even beyond sex—ways of touching people that very generally do, and do not, make them uncomfortable. The fact that there’s no remotely elegant way to distinguish between the two doesn’t mean not touching people in ways that make them uncomfortable is almost always a bad idea! Bad touching is bad! So this does in fact seem to apply to touching in general, with the caveats that 1) for a lot of kinds of touching a norm like “prior, verbal, enthusiastic consent is required” would be unweildly, and we can take consent as the default instead, and 2) that while there is basically never outside of contrived ethical thought experiments a really great reason to have sex with someone against their consent, there are commonly if unfortunately really great reasons to physically restrain or even kill people without their consent.
As it happens, contingently, there do seem to be—even beyond sex—ways of touching people that very generally do, and do not, make them uncomfortable.
What value of “very generally” are you using? IME there are ways of touching people which would likely make (say) a American freak the hell out but would likely be barely noticed by (say) an Italian.
EDIT: “IME” is nowhere near an unbiased sample of all human experience, so it is probably much more complicated than that. OTOH there’s a female American LWer who described how uncomfortable she was when someone had kissed her on the cheeks, but I have a very hard time imagining that happening with a female Italian. (EDIT 2: To clarify, in informal contexts in Italy, kissing a woman on the cheeks is roughly analogous to shaking a man’s hand—I could imagine a woman not wanting her cheeks kissed or a man not wanting his hand shaken, but it’d most likely be someone they’d already have some reason to dislike.)
Generally enough in any given person’s social context that they should have a decent but not infallible sense of what’s acceptable. Obviously there’s a great degree of cultural variation.
What about for a culture that permitted non-consensual sex?
If there are people who are genuinely not make uncomfortable by suddenly having sex with them, and you know this, then sure. (That such people could exist on a culture-wide level I find tremendously implausible, but LCPW and all that.) Of course what we usually mean when we talk about “cultures that permit non-consensual sex” is ones where a husband can rape his wife all he likes, or just rape culture more generally, which is obviously a different axis of variation than how much personal space people tend to have.
The OP was about people from two different social contexts (atheists vs Christians), so that doesn’t help that much. (And if you think that religion doesn’t count as a social context, there have been places where people from different religious backgrounds have even had different native languages.)
However, this is the kind of thing that’s hard to justify on utilitarian grounds.
Is it just me, or is non-consensual sex obviously a bad thing? And by bad, I mean orders of magnitude worse than how good consensual sex is. It would take an awful lot of happy sex to make up for non-consensual sex, and I support social policies that prevent non-consensual sex more than whatever the ratio is of happy sex that is of equivalent utility (you can’t just support preventing non-consensual sex, because “nobody has sex ever” prevents non-consensual sex).
what would you make of a Namboothiri’s complaint that a Dalit got within 96 feet of him without his consent and thus caused him to become ritually polluted?
Banning Dalits from going within 96 feet of Namboothiris has much more harm done to Dalits than Namboothiris’ feelings of ritual pollution. This isn’t the case with non-consensual sex. Furthermore, the feelings of ritual pollution can be avoided without Dalit cooperation, by the simple expediency of having Namboothiri-only isolated communities.
Is it just me, or is non-consensual sex obviously a bad thing?
“Obviously bad” isn’t a utilitarian justification.
Banning Dalits from going within 96 feet of Namboothiris has much more harm done to Dalits than Namboothiris’ feelings of ritual pollution. This isn’t the case with non-consensual sex.
To play the Devil’s advocate:
I expect you seriously underestimate the strength of Namboothiris’ feelings. To us it seems like pure religious madness, moreover we feel outrage at the extreme inequality existing because of ancient caste prejudices, so we tend to sympathise with the Untouchables and regard the traditional Brahmin rights as unjust. But it doesn’t seem that way from the Brahmin perspective.
Some of the unpleasantness connected with non-consensual sex is probably status related—being raped makes one lose a lot of status and we tend to avoid status loss. I wonder how much less serious problem would rape become in a society where the negative status effects were removed. We find it acceptable to solve the caste problem by rebuilding the society and changing the people’s values—even when many people are objecting; why not attempt the same approach to rape?
(Disclaimer: I think that caste society is unjust and I don’t actually wish to change our society to be more rape-tolerant. But I am no utilitarian. This comment is a warning against creating fake utilitarian explanations of moral judgements made on non-utilitarian grounds.)
Some of the unpleasantness connected with non-consensual sex is probably status related—being raped makes one lose a lot of status and we tend to avoid status loss.
I think that’s also culture-related: there might have been cultures where in certain cases being raped is less of a status hit than consenting to sex with the same person, in which case someone might falsely claim to have been raped to avoid the status hit.
there might have been cultures where in certain cases being raped is less of a status hit than consenting to sex with the same person, in which case someone might falsely claim to have been raped to avoid the status hit.
In many cultures including at least tradition Judeo-Christian ones adultery is a major sin and a betrayal of one’s husband but being raped is not the victims fault so she can’t really be blamed.
Yes, this did cause some adulterers to claim to have been raped, heck fake rape allegations happen to this day.
To take an even more extreme example: what would you make of a Namboothiri’s complaint that a Dalit got within 96 feet of him without his consent and thus caused him to become ritually polluted?
To steel man this:
Crap, I’m ritually polluted now, and as a result I’m going to suffer horrible social consequences, even though I personally think the whole “ritually polluted” thing is nonsense. If only that blasted Dalit hadn’t screwed things up for me!
For example, why does this apply to sex but not other forms of toughing?
Taboo “toughing.” I don’t know what you are referencing.
EDIT: If the replies below are correct that this is a typo for “touching,” then the answer to your question is that non-consensual touching is also not allowed. But it’s not as big a deal because the misconduct is less harmful.
If the replies below are correct that this is a typo for “touching,” then the answer to your question is that non-consensual touching is also not allowed. But it’s not as big a deal because the misconduct is less harmful.
Yes it was a typo. As for your question, see my reply here.
(I had guessed it generically meant “interactions you’d rather not participate in”, and was going to answer: “Does it really just apply to sex? I want to sell you my empty water bottle for $2000. You don’t want to buy my empty water bottle for $2000 (and if I’m wrong about this, please PM me). Guess whose desire is going to stay unsatisfied, and why.”)
I agree ( possibly module details of exactly what constitutes consent). However, this is the kind of thing that’s hard to justify on utilitarian grounds. For example, why does this apply to sex but not other forms of touching?
To take an even more extreme example: what would you make of a Namboothiri’s complaint that a Dalit got within 96 feet of him without his consent and thus caused him to become ritually polluted?
In terms of utilitarian practicality, I’d say that prohibiting others from approaching within 96 feet of you is a far greater imposition on others than prohibiting others from having sex with you.
From a utilitarian point of view, it’s not that having sex must always entail the consent of all participants, it’s just that situations where no sex has worse consequences than nonconsensual sex (say, a person is given an ultimatum by sadistic pirates to rape a woman or have their village razed) are vanishingly rare and improbable.
And these “worse consequences” are? How would you explain them to say the super-happies from Three Worlds Collide or for that matter to the human culture from Three Worlds Collide?
Greater total distress between the participants, and the broader community if applicable, over time.
I don’t know if the Superhappies could relate to the idea of reproductive defensiveness, and while I understand what Eliezer was going for with the human sexual culture in Three Worlds Collide, I think it’s pretty unlikely that our culture will ever actually develop in that way.
Reproductive defensiveness is a lot like sexual pleasure in that it varies in degree from person to person, but is probably, in a general way, hardwired into our species. For women particularly, inability to exercise choice in picking a reproductive partner could mean the difference between continuation and extinction of a genetic line. And speaking as a man, I’ve felt a repulsion from having sex with a partner (a “don’t stick your dick in the crazy” response,) which was absolutely visceral. Having sex with the wrong partner can create disadvantageous social ties which can be positively ruinous for an individual.
Some cases are necessarily going to be borderline; an individual can be ambivalent regarding whether to have sex with a particular partner or not. But when one allows others to push the borders of their willingness to engage in sex, they’re liable to start down a slippery slope where it becomes more and more difficult to refuse sex they don’t want (particularly if they acquire a reputation which travels between partners.) I’ve very often seen people who gave in to pressure to have sex they didn’t want come away with long lasting regrets, whereas people who’ve gained long term satisfaction from sex they pressured a particular other person who didn’t want it into having seem much harder to find.
How is it difficult to justify on utilitarian grounds? If one were both a deontologist and committed to elegance in one’s theories, admittedly not the most common combination outside of ancaps, one might be in a poor place to say that one form of subjective harm must be resolved in favor of the offended party without saying so for all harms. But if you think that contingent facts matter, then you can just look at the world and see that rape produces these harms and ritual pollution does not. In fact, if you really squint you can just look and see that ritual pollution as such doesn’t exist at all, unlike the brain’s inborn mapping of me-ness onto a body.
As it happens, contingently, there do seem to be—even beyond sex—ways of touching people that very generally do, and do not, make them uncomfortable. The fact that there’s no remotely elegant way to distinguish between the two doesn’t mean not touching people in ways that make them uncomfortable is almost always a bad idea! Bad touching is bad! So this does in fact seem to apply to touching in general, with the caveats that 1) for a lot of kinds of touching a norm like “prior, verbal, enthusiastic consent is required” would be unweildly, and we can take consent as the default instead, and 2) that while there is basically never outside of contrived ethical thought experiments a really great reason to have sex with someone against their consent, there are commonly if unfortunately really great reasons to physically restrain or even kill people without their consent.
What value of “very generally” are you using? IME there are ways of touching people which would likely make (say) a American freak the hell out but would likely be barely noticed by (say) an Italian.
EDIT: “IME” is nowhere near an unbiased sample of all human experience, so it is probably much more complicated than that. OTOH there’s a female American LWer who described how uncomfortable she was when someone had kissed her on the cheeks, but I have a very hard time imagining that happening with a female Italian. (EDIT 2: To clarify, in informal contexts in Italy, kissing a woman on the cheeks is roughly analogous to shaking a man’s hand—I could imagine a woman not wanting her cheeks kissed or a man not wanting his hand shaken, but it’d most likely be someone they’d already have some reason to dislike.)
Generally enough in any given person’s social context that they should have a decent but not infallible sense of what’s acceptable. Obviously there’s a great degree of cultural variation.
Would you consider that an acceptable justification for the treatment of Dalits? What about for a culture that permitted non-consensual sex?
See Yvain’s parable of the salmon and Vladimir’s reply.
If there are people who are genuinely not make uncomfortable by suddenly having sex with them, and you know this, then sure. (That such people could exist on a culture-wide level I find tremendously implausible, but LCPW and all that.) Of course what we usually mean when we talk about “cultures that permit non-consensual sex” is ones where a husband can rape his wife all he likes, or just rape culture more generally, which is obviously a different axis of variation than how much personal space people tend to have.
The OP was about people from two different social contexts (atheists vs Christians), so that doesn’t help that much. (And if you think that religion doesn’t count as a social context, there have been places where people from different religious backgrounds have even had different native languages.)
Is it just me, or is non-consensual sex obviously a bad thing? And by bad, I mean orders of magnitude worse than how good consensual sex is. It would take an awful lot of happy sex to make up for non-consensual sex, and I support social policies that prevent non-consensual sex more than whatever the ratio is of happy sex that is of equivalent utility (you can’t just support preventing non-consensual sex, because “nobody has sex ever” prevents non-consensual sex).
Banning Dalits from going within 96 feet of Namboothiris has much more harm done to Dalits than Namboothiris’ feelings of ritual pollution. This isn’t the case with non-consensual sex. Furthermore, the feelings of ritual pollution can be avoided without Dalit cooperation, by the simple expediency of having Namboothiri-only isolated communities.
“Obviously bad” isn’t a utilitarian justification.
To play the Devil’s advocate:
I expect you seriously underestimate the strength of Namboothiris’ feelings. To us it seems like pure religious madness, moreover we feel outrage at the extreme inequality existing because of ancient caste prejudices, so we tend to sympathise with the Untouchables and regard the traditional Brahmin rights as unjust. But it doesn’t seem that way from the Brahmin perspective.
Some of the unpleasantness connected with non-consensual sex is probably status related—being raped makes one lose a lot of status and we tend to avoid status loss. I wonder how much less serious problem would rape become in a society where the negative status effects were removed. We find it acceptable to solve the caste problem by rebuilding the society and changing the people’s values—even when many people are objecting; why not attempt the same approach to rape?
(Disclaimer: I think that caste society is unjust and I don’t actually wish to change our society to be more rape-tolerant. But I am no utilitarian. This comment is a warning against creating fake utilitarian explanations of moral judgements made on non-utilitarian grounds.)
I think that’s also culture-related: there might have been cultures where in certain cases being raped is less of a status hit than consenting to sex with the same person, in which case someone might falsely claim to have been raped to avoid the status hit.
In many cultures including at least tradition Judeo-Christian ones adultery is a major sin and a betrayal of one’s husband but being raped is not the victims fault so she can’t really be blamed.
Yes, this did cause some adulterers to claim to have been raped, heck fake rape allegations happen to this day.
To steel man this:
Taboo “toughing.” I don’t know what you are referencing.
EDIT: If the replies below are correct that this is a typo for “touching,” then the answer to your question is that non-consensual touching is also not allowed. But it’s not as big a deal because the misconduct is less harmful.
I think it’s a typo for “touching”.
I read it as a typo and that they meant to say “touching”
Yes it was a typo. As for your question, see my reply here.
Ah, that makes sense.
(I had guessed it generically meant “interactions you’d rather not participate in”, and was going to answer: “Does it really just apply to sex? I want to sell you my empty water bottle for $2000. You don’t want to buy my empty water bottle for $2000 (and if I’m wrong about this, please PM me). Guess whose desire is going to stay unsatisfied, and why.”)