Philosophy of Sex

Le gouvernement socialiste qui dirige actuellement la France ne cesse de s'activer pour imposer des idéologies -développées et propagées par des groupuscules extrémistes -, au mépris de la volonté générale. Affranchis de la faculté humanisante de la honte, nos élus n'ont aucun mal à avancer une idée, pour nier ensuite l'avoir évoquée. Ainsi, Madame Najat Vallaud-Belkacem -ministre des Droits des femmes et porte-parole du gouvernement -affirme, en août 2011, l'importance à ses yeux de la théorie du genre, puis elle ose prétendre qu'une telle théorie n'existe pas. De même, le site du ministère de l'Education nationale affiche d'abord un lien vers un site militant, pourvoyeur de cette idéologie, pour ensuite l'effacer, aussitôt que la protestation devient trop audible.

Is sex work (specifically, prostitution) vulnerable to technological unemployment? Several authors have argued that it is. They claim that the advent of sophisticated sexual robots will lead to the displacement of human prostitutes, just as, say, the advent of sophisticated manufacturing robots have displaced many traditional forms of factory labour. But are they right? In this article, I critically assess the argument that has been made in favour of this displacement hypothesis. Although I grant the argument a degree of credibility, I argue that the opposing hypothesis -- that prostitution will be resilient to technological unemployment -- is also worth considering. Indeed, I argue that increasing levels of technological unemployment in other fields may well drive more people into the sex work industry. Furthermore, I argue that no matter which hypothesis you prefer -- displacement or resilience -- you can make a good argument for the necessity of a basic income guarantee, either as an obvious way to correct for the precarity of sex work, or as a way to disincentivise those who may be drawn to prostitution.

Pornography is an important phenomenon of human history and needs further research from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. The editor of Pornography -Interdisciplinary Perspectives, which is supposed to provide an extensive and interdisciplinary reader, is looking for contributions from colleagues working in film studies, gender studies, history, legal studies, media studies, philosophy, political sciences, psychology, sociology… to contribute to this important volume. Chapters are supposed to either deal with general or theoretical questions related to pronography or to provide specific case studies from a national or comparative perspective.

I explore how we negotiate sexual encounters with one another in language, and consider the pragmatic structure of such negotiations. I defend three theses: 1. Discussions of consent have dominated the philosophical and legal discourse around sexual negotiation, and this has distorted our understanding of sexual agency and ethics. 2. Of central importance to good quality sexual negotiation are sexual invitations and gift offers, as well as speech designed to set up safe frameworks and exit conditions. 3. Sexual communication that goes well does not just prevent harm; it enables forms of agency, pleasure, and fulfillment that would not otherwise be possible.

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of “posthumanism.” This essay examines some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. I explore the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behavior and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.

Based on the author's lectures in Hong Kong, for classes on the philosophy of love, this book defends a theory of love as consisting of four types (two rational, two emotional) that tend to be experienced in three manifestations (sexuality, marriage, and friendship). Like a typical textbook, every chapter ends with a list of questions for further thought and a list of recommended further readings. The first of twelve chapters is shown here as an example.

The Waters of Love is the third in a seres of three "philopsychy" textbooks on the general theme of self-knowledge. It can be purchased from Chinese University Press for US$16 at:

http://www.chineseupress.com/en/filters/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&categories=8&publisher_category=213&subject=&series=

This article takes up Adam Dziadek’s somatic approach to literature to explore the theme of erotic experience in two poems by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, ‘L’amour Cosaque’ and ‘Amore profane’. With the help of inputs from gender studies and the contemporary theories of the subject it has been possible to profile the ‘I’ of the poems as a deeply fragmented and sexually ambiguous subject, and, upon the evidence of the elusive autobiographical details woven into the text, as a subject suspended in a liminal space, between the real and the fictive world. After analyzing the body represented in the text, both perfect and decrepit, as well as traces of the poet’s carnality that interfere with the text and the reader’s sense of his own soma the article arrives at the following conclusion: in Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s lyrics the body seems to project its impressions and experiences onto reality, thus blurring the border between the inside and the outside.

Forthcoming Chapter in "Neurointerventions and the Law" with Oxford University Press ed. Nicole Vincent.
Feedback Appreciated

Abstract: Current legal arguments for gay rights use gay primarily to refer to individuals that have same-sex erotic desires. However, as this chapter argues using a thought experiment based on a neurointervention that would alter the orientation of one’s erotic desires, the term gay should be understood in a broader sense to include a more diverse group of individuals, including some individuals that do not have same-sex erotic desires. For this reason, the current restrictive use of the term gay presumed in legal discourse doesn’t capture the entire gay community that we should want to extend rights to. To rectify this problem with the way that arguments for gay rights are being framed, this chapter suggests that we expand the use of the term gay in legal discourse to encompass a more heterogeneous population than the one picked out by same-sex-attracted individuals, and it explains some of the advantages of doing so.

A film adaption of the Odyssey, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ (2000) attempts to display the bathing rituals that are described in Homer’s poem. The film presents the mundane rituals of the maids in Homer’s Nausicaa chapter as a highly erotised image; we see a vision of wet, attractive women – the Sirens, bathing in the river, singing in seductive union as they caress their perfectly formed bodies. It is their vocal unison of sultry, feminine tones that work alongside their womanly figures to seduce the male protagonists, creating a feeling of mutual pleasure and female sensuality. In terms of modern sexuality, the idea of females engaging in a mutually pleasurable activity is complementary to male arousal. Although these women are not technically engaging  in anything overtly sexual, their sultry actions hazes the men into a fantasy experience, a place where their senses are heightened as they take in the mere physical beauty and soft, low toned vocals of these women, all at the same time. It is then that they are interrupted by sexually hungry men, who do not hesitate, through their body language and facial expressions, to conceal their sexual desire for these women; as they are led by the Sirens into to act. There is a sexual demand - an expectancy about these men that contrasts so heavily from Odysseus, who despite his sexual arousal does not allow himself to appear desperate and consumed by their sex appeal.

In "Trans Women and the Meaning of 'Woman,'" Talia Mae Bettcher argues for a multiple-meaning position of gender terms in order to protect, legitimize, and validate trans individuals, despite the traditionally transphobic tendencies of our dominant culture. As Bettcher herself mentions, her multiple-meaning position is often criticized as just another form of semantic contextualism, and so dismissed as similarly flawed and ineffective. However, I will show that Bettcher's multiple-meaning position is a subtle yet profound model to change the way we think of gender identity in order to promote equality, fairness, and justice for a community of our citizens who are frequently abused physically, emotionally, and politically due to negative social preconceptions and the institutionalization of those biases. With that established, I will show that justice requires all feminists to broaden their cause to include the trans community, as we are all fighting the same gender biases bestowed on us by centuries of patriarchal rule.

In this essay, I draw on the views of the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and J. G. Fichte, as well as on my own experience, in developing a transcendental, phenomenological, and empirical account of prostitution that  implies prostitution is psychologically damaging and morally wrong.  Unlike many liberal accounts of prostitution that focus on consent, my account stresses the importance of sexual desire in sexual ethics.

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

ABSTRACT
Part I was merely a short, preliminary study of the FEELING accompanying male ejaculation. The conclusions, studies on orgasm and sexual techniques are here included in Part II
Part I consists of 10 questions and one unstructured expression and/or personal description by the respondent of the subjective experience of the ‘feeling’ undergone, experienced or ‘felt’ during or accompanying male orgasm and ejaculation. Part II deals with the senses, sense organs or how they function as a framework to the senses, emotions, feelings involved in ejaculation and orgasm.
A philosophical framework, the survey results, interpretations and conclusions or rather ‘suggestions’ and insights are now included.

Sex is an important part of human life. It is a source of pleasure and intimacy, and is integral to many people's self-identity. This chapter examines the opportunities and challenges posed by the use of AI in how humans express and enact their sexualities. It does so by focusing on three main issues. First, it considers the idea of digisexuality, which according to McArthur and Twist (2017) is the label that should be applied to those 'whose primary sexual identity comes through the use of technology', particularly through the use of robotics and AI. While agreeing that this phenomenon is worthy of greater scrutiny, the chapter questions whether it is necessary or socially desirable to see this as a new form of sexual identity. Second, it looks at the role that AI can play in facilitating human-to-human sexual contact, focusing in particular on the use of self-tracking and predictive analytics in optimising sexual and intimate behaviour. There are already a number of apps and services that promise to use AI to do this, but they pose a range of ethical risks that need to be addressed at both an individual and societal level. Finally, it considers the idea that a sophisticated form of AI could be an object of love. Can we be truly intimate with something that has been 'programmed' to love us? Contrary to the widely-held view, this chapter argues that this is indeed possible.

Asexuality is overlooked in the philosophical literature and in wider society. Such neglect produces incomplete or inaccurate accounts of romantic life and harms asexual people. We develop an account of asexuality to redress this neglect and enrich discussion of romantic life. Asexual experiences are diverse. Some asexual people have sex; some have romantic relationships in the absence of sex. We accept the common definition of asexuality as the absence of sexual attraction and explain how sexual attraction and sexual desire differ by giving an affordance‐like account of sexual attraction. Armed with that distinction, we show that asexuality is clearly different from celibacy or disorders of desire and that some existing philosophical theories of sexual desire struggle to accommodate asexual sexuality. We then build on asexual testimony about the diversity of non‐sexual attractions to answer two common objections levelled at asexual romance: that romantic relationships require sexual attraction or that sex in the absence of sexual attraction is insufficiently focused on someone as an individual. Finally, we describe some of the ways asexuality has been erased or denigrated in society, and the specific injustices and harms that result.

MERGING IS SEX OBVIOUSLY,  NORMAL MERGING IS KNOWING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BOTH BEINGS, NO YOU OR I = ONENESS,  THE TWO ANUs MERGE – IF ONE IS AN ATTACK, THEN THE ORIGINAL ANU BECOMES SMALLER, DUMBER AND WEAKER, WHICH IS WHAT IS GOING ON HERE. 

AND - OUR "REALITY" UNMASKED

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature."(Beauvoir 1989, 267)

This talk will introduce some of the recent philosophical work concerning sex, gender, and the relations between these two concepts. Not only is this work interesting, it also provides a good example of what exactly contemporary philosophers do, and how this differs from the way that scholars in other disciplines (sociology, medicine, history, economics, etc.) might study these same topics. To begin with, it will help to get a rough idea of what idea we will be talking about.

"Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality" is the translation of a Japanese 2005 bestseller, "Kanjinai Otoko." Soon after the publication, this book stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male “frigidity,” and its connection to the “Lolita complex.” Today, this work is considered a classic in Japanese men’s studies.

The most striking feature of this book is that it was written from the author’s first-person perspective. The author is a professor who teaches philosophy and ethics at a university in Japan, and in this book he talks about his own sexual fetishism, his feeling of emptiness after ejaculation, and his huge obsession with young girls and their developing female bodies. He undertakes a philosophical investigation of how and why sexuality took such a form within a person who had grown up as a “normal,” heterosexual man.

This may be the first case in which a philosopher delves deep into his own sexuality and poses an ambitious hypothesis about the formation of male “frigid” sexuality, which might actually be shared by many “normal” men in our society in a hidden way. Reading this book, female readers will come to know, for the first time, some hidden aspects of male sexuality which men have skillfully submerged in a deep layer of their psyches.

Table of Contents

Foreword to English Readers
Preface
Chapter 1: As Long as There’s a Miniskirt I Don’t Need a Flesh and Blood Woman!?
Chapter 2: Men Who Avert Their Eyes from “Male Frigidity”
Chapter 3: Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms?
Chapter 4: Delving into the Psychology of Men with “Lolita Complexes”
Chapter 5: Moving Beyond Being a “Frigid Man”
Epilogue: Further Thoughts on a Frigid Man – Year 2013

* You can read a newspaper article on this book entitled "Professor examines Lolita complex by first looking at his own experience" in Japan Times, May 5, 2017.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/05/national/social-issues/professor-examines-lolita-complex-first-looking-experience/#.WQ7-Xvnyipo

From "Preface"

"In this book I am going to write about the idea that men may not feel much sexual pleasure or satisfaction, and that it is because of this lack of feeling that they become absorbed in sexual fantasies involving things like miniskirts, uniforms, “lolicon” [a Japanese term for “Lolita complex”], and rape. In order to support this assertion I will speak extensively about myself. I intend to consider this issue not in terms of a general theory of male sexuality but rather from the point of view of my own specific case.

But I hope male readers read this text as if it were written just for them. I hope female readers read it with a sense of urgency, imagining that the man they are with may be subject to some of the same psychological workings it describes. I have resolved to speak with complete frankness; I intend to explore this unknown world without any fear or reservation. ....."

In this essay I look into the objectification involved in our sexual appetites, and Kant's perspective toward sex. I think that Kant has an unrealistic view of the process of objectification involved in having sex with someone or even in merely desiring them sexually. I hope to provide some idea of how we may morally, in a Kantian framework of the categorical imperative, find a way to justify sex outside of marriage without simply appealing to the granting of consent. There is something intrinsically objectifying about sex, but it is not such that it is impossible to morally justify, as I believe it is also possible to have sex with somebody whilst treating them as an end and without degrading or disrespecting humanity, them or ourselves.

Scholars have long noted the role of the media in the sexualization of children and adolescents. However, with the advent of new media technologies such as the internet and cellular phones, children and adolescents are no longer merely consumers of this sexual ideology, but also creators of digital content that performs this ideology. Such content can range from the relatively tame “girls making out” images found on sites such as collegehumor.com to sexually explicit photographs transmitted through cellular phones within a circle of friends that draws the attention of law enforcement. In this essay, I discuss the practice of adolescent sexting (the practice of sending sexually explicit text messages) by reviewing some of the more prominent cases covered in the media; next, I explore the legal aspects surrounding the practice of sexting; finally, I consider the ethical issues surrounding sexting, exploring the issue of harm to both the individual and society by rooting the practice within a culture that celebrates, yet remains suspicious of, adolescent sexuality.

Introductory courses dealing with sex, gender and sexuality are usually quite biased, going as far as to deny the reality of biology. Drawing on the Catholic tradition (Aquinas), this article presents an accessible argument aimed at restoring deliberative balance in the classroom.

Il volume viene realizzato con un contributo dell'Università degli Studi di Padova nell'ambito delle iniziative promosse dal Forum d'Ateneo per le politiche e gli studi di genere Copyright © giugno 2015 Il Poligrafo casa editrice srl 35121 Padova piazza Eremitani -via Cassan, 34

“Love hurts”— as the saying goes — and a certain amount of pain and difficulty in intimate relationships is unavoidable. Sometimes it may even be beneficial, since adversity can lead to personal growth, self-discovery, and a range of other components of a life well-lived. But other times, love can be downright dangerous. It may bind a spouse to her domestic abuser, draw an unscrupulous adult toward sexual involvement with a child, put someone under the insidious spell of a cult leader, and even inspire jealousy-fueled homicide. How might these perilous devotions be diminished? The ancients thought that treatments such as phlebotomy, exercise, or bloodletting could “cure” an individual of love. But modern neuroscience and emerging developments in psychopharmacology open up a range of possible interventions that might actually work. These developments raise profound moral questions about the potential use—and misuse—of such anti-love biotechnology. In this essay we describe a number of prospective love-diminishing interventions, and offer a preliminary ethical framework for dealing with them responsibly should they arise.

This paper has a double purpose. Firstly, it is meant to present an intellectual tool for analyzing the possibilities in the way relationships evolve; I call this tool the tree model of proximity. (The name comes from the fact that the development of this tool has been inspired by an Aristotelian idea, which has come to be referred to as the tree model of reality.) The tree model of proximity is a tool for modelling interpersonal closeness and understanding how closeness arises via consensual decisions. Secondly, this paper is an attempt to apply the tool to analyze a specific kind of relationship within the polyamorous conceptual framework: a metamour relationship, meaning a non-romantic bond between persons x and z, who are both romantic partners of person y. By focusing my analysis on metamour relationships, I wish to draw attention to them. I claim that although romantic bonds typically rouse more interest when discussing and defining polyamory, we should not underestimate the importance of non-romantic connections within the polyamorous network. Despite being less visible, these bonds are significant and constitutive of polyamory.

"The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality within philosophical, feminist, and lesbian traditions..."
  ("Editorial" by Michelle Iwen)

Abstract:
The 'traditional philosophical prestige' of seeing and touching, as analyzed by Emmanuel Levinas, comes to dominate the qualities of the other three senses. An investigation of the roles of these prestigious senses, along with the resultant privileged sense-organs of the hand and the eye, within phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and gender- or queer-theory suggests that the part of the prestige of touch will have been related to its function in the phenomenality of feeling. Yet the sense of taste seems to be as applicable, if not more so, to the phenomenal experience of selfhood based on feeling as theorized by Edmund Husserl and Jean-Luc Marion. The tongue, rather than the hand, is reconsidered as a sense-organ of touch in order to salvage the all but lost tang of the tangible. As such, the tongue and taste not only illuminate the shortcomings of binary gender theories based on either inner feeling or outer surface anatomy (or, either interior orifices or exterior appendages), but further discover a remarkable phenomenology of the body to be found in the writings of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig that moves beyond certain masculine tendencies lurking about the hand and observation (as described by Freud and Butler). The phenomenal experience of the other that yields either empathy (for Husserl), love/eros (for Marion), or hearing and heeding 'Thou shall not kill' (for Levinas) has much to learn from the orality of women's writing. The third body, as written by Cixous, can experience the self as selftaste (as considered by Derrida) and experiences the other as the taste of the other. It is, thereby, opened to a love or a justice (or an erotic justice) beyond the proclamation of Levinas that 'ethics is an optics' as well as any ethics as a mere haptics to be found in Husserl or Marion, where feeling seems always determined by the hand.

We respond to the commentaries on our target article, The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock. We start with specific issues raised by the article. These relate to the magnitude of human sex differences; the evolution and relative importance of pair bonding, paternal care, and polygyny in our species; and the distinction between the males-compete/females-choose (MCFC) model of human sexual psychology and the mutual mate choice (MMC) model. We then evaluate two competing theories of human sex differences and similarities: Social Role Theory and Attachment Fertility Theory. We conclude with some thoughts about how to present and teach evolutionary psychological research and theories without conveying an exaggerated impression of the scale of human sex differences.