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Forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy. Please cite that version of the paper, rather than this final
draft.
What is Intimacy?

People share things, Joel! That’s what intimacy is!

Why is it typically more violating to grab someone’s thigh or to stroke their face than it is to
grab their finger? Why is it worse to read someone’s dream journal without permission than it is to
read their bird watching field notes? Intimacy, I argue, is key to understanding these cases, and to
explaining many of our most stringent rights.
I present two ways of thinking about intimacy, Relationship-First Accounts and the Intimate
Zones Account. I argue that only the Intimate Zones Account lets us cohesively understand intimacy’s
importance, and the scope of our intimate rights. I characterize our intimate zones as meeting the
Hiddenness and Importance Conditions, and show how a feature’s meeting these conditions makes it
a locus of special vulnerability by which our persons can be fundamentally altered. This special
vulnerability explains why we must respect the intimate boundaries of others.

1. Introduction:

Intimacy is both one of the most longed for and repulsing facets of human experience. Desired

intimacy with desired persons is essential for our lives as social creatures. Undesired intimacy repels

and unnerves us as little else can. At its worst, it is a tremendous and life-shattering violation. Intimacy

with others shapes our persons, our personalities, and the trajectory of our lives. And yet, intimacy

takes so many different forms. There are intimate conversations, intimate sexual experiences, intimate

friendships, intimate therapy sessions. But it is not obvious what these all share. I argue that a common

thread runs through all these cases and more, and renders us vulnerable. And this vulnerability grounds

our stringent rights against intimate violations. In this paper, I give an account of intimacy that can

account for its multitudinal occurrences, explain why it make us vulnerable, and ground our intimate

rights.

Unfortunately, intimacy is massively undertheorized. It has played, of course, a central role in

arguments about privacy, sexual rights, abortion, care ethics, cultural appropriation, and humor.1 But

1 Julie Inness, James Rachels, and Jeffrey Reiman talk about intimacy when giving arguments about the nature of privacy
(Inness 1996, Rachels 1975, Reiman 1976). Feminist philosophers such as Maggie Little and Eva Feder Kittay discuss
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such arguments rarely make clear how they are conceptualizing intimacy, and more rarely still give

arguments for conceptualizing intimacy in this way. This is not a criticism of such arguments. We all,

of course, must take some concepts for granted in our work. Rather, this is an offering. By rationally

reconstructing what has been said about intimacy in the literature and in ordinary life, and making

clear the implications of such views, we are better positioned to investigate its importance.

There are two broad approaches to thinking about intimacy. As Pavel Nitchovski observes

about Julie Inness, she has a “general ‘relationship-first’ approach” (82, 2022). Accordingly, I name

the first class of views, of which Iness’s view is one, ‘Relationship-First Accounts.’ Though they have

not been all grouped together before, nor the view made explicit, many views running through the

background of arguments about privacy, abortion, and care ethics fit share common commitments

and assumptions.2

Relationship-First Accounts: An act is intimate in virtue of its being performed in

certain types of relationships, or from motivations which arise in those relationships.

I will argue that Relationship-First Accounts are not sufficiently unifying, nor informative.

They do not accurately predict which acts are intimate, nor can they adequately explain why some acts

are intimate and others are not. They cannot tell us why sharing a bed with a romantic partner is

intimate, but sharing a garbage disposal is not. Relationship-First Accounts also have trouble capturing

intimate exchanges that occur outside the contexts of relationships.3

intimacy in the context of pregnancy and care ethics (Little 1999, Feder Kittay 1999, 2011). Thi Nguyen and Matthew
Strohl argue that much cultural appropriation is wrong because it interferes with ‘the intimacy of groups’ (2019). Ted
Cohen discusses the role of intimacy in humor (1978).
2 See Feder Kittay 1999, 2011, Inness 1996, Little 1999, Rachels 1975, and Reiman 1976.
3 Nitchovski (2022) also argues that such approaches cannot capture intimate interactions which occur outside of

relationships.
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Imagine that Maria has been in a fight with her partner, and posts about it anonymously on

an online forum. She talks about why she fears she is incompatible with her partner, and in doing so

appears to be revealing something intimate. But as she is posting for the first time and is unfamiliar

with the commenters, the relationship she has with them is minimal at best. Relationship-First

Accounts cannot tell us why this forum disclosure seems intimate in a way that posting about one’s

dog’s favorite food is not. Nor can they explain what Maria’s posting on a forum has in common with

an act such as cuddling, and why what they share matters.

Unlike theorists who take intimate relationships to be primary, I argue that the intimacy of

such relationships stems from their exposure of intimate areas of our selves.

Intimate Zones Account: Certain zones of persons are intimate. Intimate acts are

those that expose intimate zones. Intimate relationships are relationships in which

intimate zones are exposed.

I will argue that intimate zones, not relationships, are most fundamental. This is not to say

that intimacy is identical to our intimate zones. ‘Intimacy’ describes our intimate zones, intimate acts,

and intimate relationships, and the way they relate. Intimacy is the whole phenomenon. Rather, the

claim is that to cohesively understand this phenomenon, and why it is so important to us, we must

build intimacy up from our intimate zones. That intimate areas of the self are primary allows us to see

how intimacy is self-shaping, and why it is imperative we have control over our intimate boundaries.

Having our intimate zones exposed without our consent is not just uncomfortable, but renders us

vulnerable to being fundamentally altered.

I have three goals in this paper. The first is to add structure to our thinking about intimacy, a

roadmap to possible unified theories. The second is to show that the Intimate Zones Account is
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superior to Relationships-First Accounts, that it better captures all the cases it should. And the third

is to defend a substantive account of what these intimate zones are. I argue that our intimate zones

are characterized by two features, their hiddenness and their importance to our conception of our

identity. I call these the ‘Hiddenness Condition’ and the ‘Importance Condition’ and together they

make up the Hidden Importance (HI) Thesis. Together, they show why intimate violations are

unique and severe.

2. A Concept of Intimacy

People use ‘intimacy’ and ‘intimate’ in a huge variety of ways. They’re used to describe

relationships, actions, and information. ‘An intimate’ can refer to a confidante. ‘They were intimate’

euphemistically refers to a sexual encounter. In the social sciences ‘intimate labor’ often refers to

sexual, reproductive, domestic, and care labor.4 How could all these cases share some common,

substantive core? We can think of this as the Capture Problem for an account of intimacy.

There is also substantial overlap between ‘privacy’, ‘intimacy’, and ‘closeness’, both in

conception and in usage. A couple whispering to each other might be said to be having ‘an intimate

moment’ by one observer, while another would fairly call it ‘a private moment.’ These sorts of

concepts don’t seem to be natural kinds and it’s reasonable to be skeptical that we can disentangle and

catalogue them. And given that there is a huge literature on privacy, if intimacy is to be a useful

concept, it is particularly important that it is meaningfully different from privacy. We can think of this

as the Distinction Problem for an account of intimacy. I tackle the Distinction Problem in section

6.15, once I have fleshed out part of the picture of intimacy. There, I show that some acts are private

without being intimate, necessitating that the concepts are distinct.

4 See Cohen (2002) and Salazr Parreńas and Boris (2010) for examples.
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The Capture Problem is, admittedly, more difficult. To begin, exactly capturing the current

extension of ‘intimacy’ is not my goal. Rather, I am interested in a conception of intimacy that can do

important explanatory work.5 I seek an account that can tell us why close and loving relationships,

secret sharing, and sexual acts are all paradigmatically intimate, and why sexual assault is a paradigmatic

intimate violation. It should be close to our common-sense conception of intimacy, so that it can

explain how we use this concept and why we already believe intimacy is so important. It should explain

why intimacy makes us vulnerable and shapes us, and how this gives rise to our stringent rights against

intimate violations.6

Having such an account of intimacy can then help us adjudicate the scope of our legal and

moral rights. It can explain why it is typically so much more violating when a stranger grabs our butt

than when they grab our elbow, and so why we require more robust legal protections against the

former. It also can adjudicate conflicts currently being hashed out in the political realm. Those who

push against mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic have co-opted the phrase “my body,

my choice” from the pro-choice movement. The concept of bodily autonomy alone cannot tell us

why forcing someone to continue a pregnancy is so much more violating than requiring someone to

wear a mask or to get a vaccine. Rather, we need to understand why pregnancy is intimate in a way

wearing a mask is not, and why that makes it much more grave to force on someone.

5 This could be thought of as a Carnapian explication project. As Georg Brun explains, Carnap’s explication is done to
advance our theorizing. This new concept, the explicatum, must be generally useable in the same circumstances as the
original term, and “should be as fruitful as possible” (Brun 2016). It is not, however, an ameliorative project. As Sally
Haslanger argues, ameliorative analyses “elucidate ‘our’ legitimate purposes and what concept of Fness (if any) would
serve them best. . . Normative input is needed” (2005). My Intimate Zones Account does not require normative input.
Rather, though my account delivers results that I believe will be morally beneficial, its structure is motivated by facts
about human psychology, and does not rest on any moral assumptions. It explains why intimate zones are loci of
vulnerability. That loci of vulnerability are deserving of special protections is normative, though not especially
controversial, but this only explains why intimate zones deserve special protections. It is not required to explain what
they are.
6 I am more concerned with crafting an account of intimacy that can ground our negative rights, our right against

intimate intrusion, than I am with one that can explain positive rights to intimacy (if there are any).
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This account can also help us better regulate intimate labor. We can acknowledge that sex

work is typically different from much other work without being essentialist about sexuality. We can

see why sex often makes us vulnerable without relying on inaccurate (and often sexist) claims about

sex’s ‘natural role’. However, once we have a measuring stick to test for intimacy, we see that it is not

only sexual and reproductive labor that are intimate, but that work such as nursing, teaching, therapy,

and art are as well. Recognizing these similarities, and being guided by principles of fairness, we can

see that we ought to treat these similar labors similarly. This understanding can guide us to meaningful

social policy reform, informed by the unique way in which intimacy makes us vulnerable.

If some use of ‘intimacy’ appears not to be captured by my account, there are two ways to

respond. First, I can counter that if we correctly understand the case, it does involve revelation of

intimate zones. I’ll demonstrate how this works for less obvious cases in section 10. But of course, for

any potential counterexample I can translate into the language of intimate zones, another awaits in the

wing. And so while I do think anything that can plausibly be called ‘intimate’ is in fact a revelation of

intimate zones, it’s pertinent to address what should be done if some counterexample were to be

found. If there was a case that could not be understood in terms of intimate zones, I would have to

hold it to be a less fundamental sort of intimacy, that it is derivative or even parasitic on genuine

intimacy. And so it would not be protected by the special weight of an intimate right.

3. Intimate Zones Account

There is something intuitively appealing about the idea that intimacy exposes us. Robert Nozick

elegantly captures this when he writes “In intimacy, we let another within the boundaries we normally

maintain around ourselves, boundaries marked by clothing and by full self-control and monitoring”

(1989, 60). Literal nakedness is intimate, but metaphorical nakedness also captures this sense of

vulnerability, of exposure. George Yancy describes “being undone by the intensity of the intimacy”
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when he watches the film Moonlight. He says that by ‘intimacy’ he means that which “is inmost or

deepest within or farthest from the outside” (Yancy 2019, 66). To understand intimacy, we must

understand this sense of exposure, of a hidden core revealed. Intimate zones help capture this:

Intimate Zone: A feature of a person which renders them vulnerable. These are

features we are disposed to hide, which give insight into how we see ourselves.

Intimate Act: An act that exposes, or relies on the exposure of, at least one intimate

zone.

Intimate Relationship: A relationship characterized by the performance of intimate

acts.7

We can think of intimate zones as the building blocks of intimacy, from which intimate acts

and intimate relationships are formed. There are, of course, constraints on how “the building blocks

of intimacy” may be put together. Some of these constraints stem from of the meaning of ‘act’ and

‘relationship’. Some constraints come from the requirements of various act types. Having a

conversation, for instance, requires multiple parties. So for there to be an intimate conversation, at

least two people must be engaged in a conversation in which intimate zones are revealed. Likewise, an

intimate relationship entails the existence of a relationship, which requires there is some interaction

between the parties.

7 Or a series of acts which are not individually intimate, but are intimate when considered as a collective. A single
instance of sitting next to someone at a coffee shop is typically not intimate, but sitting next to someone every day for
years is likely to reveal intimate information through patterns, such as how they look when confused or joyful.
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4. Cases:

I now introduce some cases that motivate my account. There intuitively seems to be something

intimate happening in each of them, something that an account of intimacy should capture. However,

the relationships presented in them are minimal or nonexistent.

4.1 Minimal Relationship Cases

Dominatrix:

Suzanne is a dominatrix and Lizbeth is her client. She has monthly sessions with Lizbeth for

many years, and in these sessions she learns about Lizbeth’s patterns of sexual response. They talk

about Lizbeth’s desires, Suzanne’s boundaries, the origins of both of these, and they come to

genuinely like each other.8 Lizbeth prefers seeing Suzanne to other dominatrixes, and Lizbeth is one

of Suzanne’s favorite clients, for whom she has some genuine affection. However, though Lizbeth

enjoys their encounters, she would not wish to cultivate an outside friendship with Suzanne, nor

enter into a romantic relationship with her. And should Lizbeth stop paying Suzanne, Suzanne

would stop engaging in sexual activities with her, and would not see her socially.

Support Group:

Valencia is trying to treat her alcohol dependency. When she is craving a drink, she attends a

local AA meeting. She doesn’t agree with all of the group’s methods, doesn’t have a sponsor, and

doesn’t socialize with people before or after the meeting. She quietly enters as they start, and quietly

leaves as they end. However, she listens to other people’s stories during the meetings, and occasionally

8 It is not necessary for the case to be intimate under the Intimate Zones Account that there is some affection between
the parties. Rather, as will become clear in section 5.1, I include this in the description so we can see that even in
versions of Dominatrix where care is involved, the motivation account cannot adequately capture it without becoming
too wide in scope.
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shares her own struggles. She, like many others there, has opened up about the lowest moments of

her life. In most settings, she would find it too uncomfortable and painful to share these.

4.2 No Relationship Cases

Stranger on a Train:

Omar is traveling out of the country by himself for the first time. He is visiting Japan, but does

not read or speak Japanese. After hours on the train, he realizes he is traveling in the wrong direction.

Frustrated and exhausted, he begins to cry. A stranger on the train notices, and tries to help him. After

this stranger gives him directions, Omar opens up to them about how alone he has felt in his travels.

The stranger nods along kindly, and shares an embarrassing travel story of his own. They laugh

together, and spend the next hour of the train ride discussing why they love to see new places, what

they fear traveling alone, and what they have learned from their travels. They do not exchange details,

and never see each other again.

Memoir:

Author Roxanne Gay writes Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. This is the first time she publicly

shares her story of being raped at twelve years old, and the repercussions this has had for her life and

relationship with her body. Though it is easier to “write around what happened” because she doesn’t

“want to have to deal with the horror of such exposure,” she decides to tell her story anyway (2017,

39). The back cover describes the book as an “intimate and searing memoir.”

Relationship-First Accounts define intimacy in terms of relationships, and so are unequipped

to explain the intimacy in the above cases. One could reject that these cases contain intimacy despite

the intuitive pull that they do. Just because someone writes that a memoir is “intimate” does not make
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it so, of course. However, even if what occurs in these cases was not genuine intimacy, we’d want to

say something about why there was pseudo-intimacy in them, about why they appear so similar to

intimacy. Relationships-First Accounts have no obvious resources available to do this. In contrast, it

is very easy to see how each of these cases reveals an intimate feature of a person. Granting their

similarity, and that something special is revealed in each, is not only appealing because it conforms to

our intuitions, however. If we can identity something special they share in common, then this special

thing can explain why these exchanges and disclosures deserve robust protections.

5. Relationship-First Accounts:

Relationship-First Views take intimate relationships to be foundational. There is something

very natural about using relationships as the starting point in explorations of intimacy. Intimate

relationships very obviously impact us. We decide to share a living space with a partner, move across

country to be closer to our children, develop hobbies our friends share with us. They are often where

we feel intimacy’s force, how it changes us. And so it is easy to take for granted that we should begin

our investigation of intimacy here. But that intimacy is most apparent to us in intimate relationships

does not mean that intimate relationships are most foundational.

I separate these Relationship-First Views into two broad camps, the Motivation Account and

the Intertwinement Account. I argue that they cannot stand on their own if they are to capture all and

only intimacy, nor all and only intimate relationships. Rather, they must be supplemented with a

preexisting account of intimacy, and that is what I offer with Intimate Zones Account.

5.1 Motivation Account:

In Privacy, Intimacy, and Isolation, Julie Inness explicitly defines and defends an account of

intimacy. She lays out a model Relationship-First View, one she believes will provide a unified
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justification of privacy law. She is clear and careful, and though I believe intimacy and privacy come

apart, I take inspiration from her ambitious goals for an account of intimacy.

Inness sees two possible forms an account of intimacy could take. The first she calls

“behaviorist.” This is the view that “we might find some characteristic of the behavior constituting

intimate acts and activities that could identify them as intimate” (1996, 74). She rejects this view

because she thinks any particular behavior we might identify, such as a kiss, is only intimate in some

cultural and historical contexts. This is an insightful line of critique. Given the diversity of human

psychology, I am very skeptical there are any act types that are always intimate for everyone.

Inness argues we should instead embrace a motivational account of intimacy. She argues that

intimacy is that which draws its motivation, “meaning, and value from . . . love, liking, or care” (75).

As she puts it, “when I claim that an act, such as kissing another, is intimate, I am not discussing the

nature of the behavior; I am referring to the fact that the kiss expresses my affection for another” (10).

However, a dilemma is revealed when we explore the notion of care and affection required here. If

it’s too thin, she’ll have to say that anything done out of a mild sense of care is intimate. But if it is any

thicker, it will leave out cases like Dominatrix, Support Group, Stranger on a Train, and Memoir. I

begin by discussing the non-intimate acts her account lets in, and proceed by proposing and rejecting

two amendments that attempt to solve her scope problem.

Not all acts that express affection and draw their meaning from this are intimate. I might like

my coworkers, and want to express my affection in the form of bringing in a box of donuts. And this

is valuable not only because donuts taste good, but because it expresses my care. However, bringing

donuts into the office is not intimate.9 So if the account is to avoid being absurdly wide, the kind of

care or affection required must be more substantial.

9 There are variations on this case which could be intimate, however. If one of your coworker has confided in you that
they love chocolate old-fashion donuts because they used to get them with their beloved grandmother, then bringing in a
chocolate-old fashioned for them could be an intimate act. But the adjustment to the case which makes it intimate is not
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It is helpful here to look to what others have said about the emotional component of intimacy.

Jeffrey Reiman, in “Privacy, Intimacy, and Personhood,” offers an account that seeks to capture the

sort of feeling which must ‘animate’ intimacy. He says it consists of a “reciprocal desire to share

present and future intense and important experiences” (Reiman 1976, 34). My bringing donuts is not

motivated by a desire to share intense experiences with my coworkers. And so defining care this way

could prevent an Inness-like account from being too wide.

However, this definition would preclude the existence of intimacy in the cases discussed

above. In Stranger on a Train, Omar knows he’ll probably never see the stranger again, and is fine

with that. In fact, the fleetingness of the encounter could be what makes it so intimate. Because they’re

confident they’ll never see each other again, they don’t worry about the repercussions of what they

reveal. And certainly at least some casual, one-time sexual encounters are intimate. So desiring future

shared experiences is not necessary. Additionally, we can be motivated by a desire for shared future

experiences to do non-intimate acts. If my partner is extremely annoyed by my leaving condiments

slightly ajar, and I worry they might leave me over this, I can be motivated by a desire for a shared

future to develop a habit of better closing lids. But closing the lids of condiments is not intimate. The

reciprocity component will also leave out one-sided intimate disclosures, such as Memoir. 10 So the

future and reciprocity conditions must be eliminated.

What does that leave us with? Let’s try to shore up Inness’ Account with the pieces of Reiman’s

account of care that remain. Might intimacy be that which is motivated by care, where care is

‘reciprocal desire to share present and future intense and important experiences’?

adding more care, but that it relies on some special knowledge about the coworker, the previous exposure of an intimate
zone.
10 The reciprocity requirement also gives the verdict that pregnancy cannot be intimate, contrary to the experiences of

many pregnant people, because fetuses can’t desire shared future experiences. We then could not ground the wrongness
of forced pregnancy in its forced intimacy, as Maggie Little (1999) does.
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Such a definition would still leave out most intimate labor, and many other intimate

agreements. Because they would not continue to engage if Lisbeth were not paying Suzanne, neither

of them is sufficiently motivated by a desire to share an intense experience with the other. This is also

a problem for many familiar cases of personal intimate exchange. A person might agree to give their

partner a massage only on the condition that they’ll receive one in return. What’s genuinely motivating

them here is not the desire for a shared intense experience, but to get the knots out of their own neck.

But exchanging massages with a partner does seem intimate.

To see why there is a problem with drawing a tight connection between intimacy and care, let

us look to two final cases. Imagine that your sister has had a baby during the COVID-19 pandemic,

but due to lockdowns you’ve been unable to meet him. You’ve been unable to form a relationship

with him, unable to hold or feed him, unable to establish trust. But knowing that he is your sister’s

son, you can care deeply for him. This love could motivate you to do small things, like watch long

videos of him sent by your sister. It could also motivate you to sacrifice significantly, to run into a

burning building to save him. Love and care can be found where there is not intimacy, and intimacy

can be found where there is not love, nor care.

And it is not only that there can be intimacy where there is no care, but even where there is

malice and disregard. Torture illustrates this saliently. As David Sussman puts it, “the most intimate

and private parts of a victim’s life and body become publicly available tools for the torturer to exploit

as he will . . .the victim is in a position of complete vulnerability and exposure” (2005, 7). One could,

of course, deny that there is any intimacy in torture. But by recognizing it as intimate, we are better

positioned to understand its great wrongness, wrongness that is not grounded in pain and fear alone. 11

11Though Sussman focuses on the wrong of one’s agency being turned against oneself, of being made to be complicit in
one’s own violation, he gestures at the intimacy of this being an important wrong making feature of torture. He says “in
the most intimate aspects of his agency, the sufferer is made to experience himself not just as a passive victim, but as an
active accomplice in his own debasement” (2005, 23).
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I believe we only understand the importance of our intimate rights when the intimacy of egregious

violations, like torture and sexual assault, is recognized.12 That these are acts of forced intimacy is part of

what makes them such grave wrongs.

Inness is right that we can’t look to particular act types to identify the intimate, but must

instead look to psychological states. However, being motivated by care and affection is not the right

state to look to. Rather, I will argue that we must instead look to Hiddenness and Importance to

identify the intimate.

5.2 Intertwinement Account:

There is something very natural about thinking of intimacy as a kind of merging, a coming

together, an intertwinement. People often speak about romantic love this way, and romantic love is

paradigmatically intimate. It is also apt to describe pregnancy this way. In “Abortion, Intimacy, and

the Duty to Gestate,” Maggie Little argues that forcing someone to carry a pregnancy is gravely wrong

not just because of the health or financial risks imposed, but because forced intimacy is so violating

(Little 1999). In highlighting the intimacy of pregnancy, she speaks of it as an “intertwinement.” I

think Little is right to emphasize the role of intimacy in justifying abortion rights. But for her argument

to helpfully generalize to cover other intimate arenas, we must have a better understanding of the

intimate. And understanding intimacy as ‘intertwinement’ will not work.

I live in a thin-walled apartment, and so there are many ways my life is intertwined with the

lives of my neighbors. Some of these ways are intimate. I might overhear a couple’s unsparing late

12 Nitchovski astutely observes that Inness’s account makes it hard to understand why abusive relationships count as
intimate. However, while his own proposed alternative account of intimacy does a good job capturing both good
intimacy and much of the bad, as well as intimate one-offs, it does not seem able to explain intimate violations. He
argues that intimacy requires taking the ‘intimate stance. As he puts it, “to take the intimate stance is to treat the other
(person, object, or thing) as though they are engaged in the cooperative activity of joint authorship over the narrative
one uses to make sense of oneself. In other words, to take the intimate stance is to treat the other as co-author in
answering the question ‘who am I?’” (iii, 2020). We very well may not treat those who violate us as if they are engaged in
cooperative activity.
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night arguments. But there are also non-intimate ways my life might be intertwined with theirs.

Imagine that, because of faulty wiring, every time my neighbor turns on their air conditioner, my

kitchen lights go out. Any time I’d like to cook a meal or eat a snack, I’ll have to think about how hot

it is outside, how hot they might be in their apartment, and decide if they’re likely to be turning on

their AC. They might think about typical meal times before they turn on their air conditioner. Our

lives are intertwined, especially if we’re both spending all day in our homes, but this is not a particularly

intimate kind of intertwinement. For an intertwinement to be intimate, we must be intertwined in

intimate ways. So while Little’s notion of intertwinement is very helpful for understanding how

intimate relationships work, to use it we must have a prior conception of the intimate parts of people

and their lives. That is, we must know what intimate zones are.

And as I’ve argued, there can be intimacy without an intimate relationship, and Little’s

Account does not capture such cases. Someone can expose their intimate zones, and be made

vulnerable, without there being any intertwinement. Though there is some mutuality between Omar

and the stranger on the train because they laugh together and listen kindly, it is a stretch to describe

this fleeting mutuality as ‘intertwinement’. And there is even more obviously no ‘intertwinement’

between Roxanne Gay and the reader of her memoir. The reader might take some lessons from the

book and apply them to their life, identify with Gay, and even find that the memoir changed them in

ways that are perceptible years later. And so Gay could be woven into their life. But unless the reader

reaches out and successfully makes significant contact with her, Gay will not weave them into her life.

There is an intimate exposure without any intertwinement. So though intertwinement is helpful for

understanding the richness of intimate relationships, even when it’s filled out with prior

understandings about intimate zones, intertwinement cannot capture all intimacy.

6. Hidden Importance Thesis

Now that I have argued that the Intimate Zones Account is better positioned to cohesively

explain intimacy, and capture its scope so as to explain our intimate rights, I develop my particular

theory of intimate zones. Though I hope to convince the reader this theory is right, someone could

accept the Intimate Zones Account without thinking I have correctly circumscribed these zones. I will

now argue that for a zone to be intimate, the Hiddenness Condition and the Importance Condition

must be met. I call this the Hidden Importance Thesis (HI Thesis).

6.1 Hiddenness

The first condition is Hiddenness. That there is some connection between intimacy and

hiddenness is intuitive. Prime examples of intimacy are secrets whispered under the cover of darkness

and sex had behind closed doors. Intimate decisions are those made with a partner or doctor, those

which we typically have a right to make away from prying eyes. There is a tension between something’s

being intimate and its being shouted from rooftops. But of course, sometimes the intimate is made

public. A blackmailer night expose a secret, a woman might share her abortion story in a speech about

the necessity of abortion access. So the tricky piece is not establishing that there is a Hiddenness

Condition, but specifying it correctly.

Hiddenness Condition: A feature X of a person is Hidden if and only if the person

is disposed to hide X, and would feel psychological discomfort at X’s being exposed

to a general audience.

It is not that intimate features must always be hidden, nor be hidden most of the time, nor

around most people. Rather, we must be generally disposed to hide this feature of ourselves. This

disposition can manifest in many ways. I might steer conversations away from this feature of myself.
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I might avoid activities which will reveal this feature. Importantly, a disposition to hide a feature X is

distinct from a disposition not to mention feature X. These dispositions will often come apart because

of norms of politeness. Cindy might be happy to talk about an award she won if asked about it, but

not be disposed to mention it without prompting because she does not wish to brag.

6.11 Hiddenness and the Individual

What we have a disposition to hide is different for different people. Imagine Malcom is

embarrassed about his love of Pokémon. He hides his collection of Pokémon cards when casual

friends visit his apartment, and when something reminds him of something that happened in an

episode of Pokémon, he keeps it to himself. In contrast, Lexie is very open about her love of Pokémon.

She has a Bulbasaur sticker on her laptop, and loves to tell people which Pokémon they remind her

of. For Malcom loving Pokémon is a Hidden feature, while for Lexie it is not. This means Malcom

and Lexie will have different intimate zones.

Because of this individuality, many kinds of ‘intimate labor’ do not actually reveal the intimate

zones of all who participate in them. Sex will not be intimate for all those who do sex work, for

instance. Importantly, however, this does mean we may not grant special protections to practices

which, for biological or sociocultural reasons, will commonly be intimate. We can likewise legally

protect ‘intimate rights’ even though these legal protections will not perfectly conform to everyone’s

intimate zones.

6.12 Hiddenness, Culture, and Social Relationships

However, though what is Hidden is specific to an individual, it is influenced by our cultural

and familial environments. Perhaps Malcom was teased by his middle school friends for liking

Pokémon, while at Lexie’s school everyone played the card game at lunch. Lexie could be more
 Gunkel 18

comfortable talking about Pokémon in professional contexts because she remembers the 2016

Democratic Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, telling young people to “Pokemon GO to the

polls.” It is not just our dispositions regarding revealing our hobbies which are affected by our cultural

environments, of course. How much of our bodies we feel comfortable showing when we go to the

grocery store and to the beach is affected by cultural norms. Whether we think it appropriate for a

casual acquittance to kiss us on the cheek, or give us a hug, or even shake our hand, will be affected

by the culture(s) in which we are immersed.

This is not to say, however, that X is a Hidden feature if and only if X is typically hidden in

our culture. Though our culture influences what about ourselves we hide, it is not the determinate

influence, nor is it explanatory. We may be very open about something which most of our fellows

hide. Most people in the contemporary United States are disposed to hide their nude bodies, and this

is so culturally salient that we have the term ‘private parts.’ Despite this, some nudists have no

disposition to hide their naked bodies. Though most nudists typically hide their naked bodies due to

legal concerns, or knowledge that they won’t be hired if they show up naked to an interview, exposure

does not make them feel the requisite psychological discomfort. This discomfort happens when we

do not want others’ eyes or thoughts on this part of us. We are fearful not just of the downstream

consequences of the exposure, but of the exposure itself.

It’s not that having some fear of the legal consequences of exposure means the feature of

yourself is not Hidden. People who are disposed to hide their naked body because they think it private

will also typically want to avoid the legal consequences of public nudity. Rather, for it to be intimate,

they must be disposed to hide it even if they knew no legal trouble, economic recourse, or external

consequences would ensue. To meet the Hiddenness Condition, we must adopt the internal point of
 Gunkel 19

view in relation to the norm in question, and so be liable to feel shame about the norm-violating

feature itself.13 We can then be altered not only via a rational choice to change ourselves, but via shame.

6.13 Hiddenness Through Time and Place

Our Hidden features need not be static. A bisexual man’s coming out could make his sexual

orientation a non-Hidden feature of himself. Where his bisexuality was once something he only talked

about with his closest friends, as he becomes more inclined to mention that he is bisexual to

acquaintances or hold his boyfriend’s hand around town, this feature of himself becomes un-Hidden.

This can also go the other direction. After an openly trans* teenager faces transphobic abuse from her

family, she might decide to temporarily present as male again to avoid their derogatory comments,

turning her gender into a Hidden feature of herself.

One might worry that the Hiddenness Condition will rule out public displays of our intimate

features. That is, if we are sharing a feature X publicly, does that mean we are not disposed to hide X,

entailing X is not intimate? This objection rests on a misunderstanding of what it means to be disposed

to hide a feature of ourselves.14 Amy might be disposed to keep hidden the fact she was sexually

assaulted. The incident was deeply harmful to her, she considers its details very personal, and it is

painful to talk about. And yet, as the #MeToo movement unfolded, Amy came to believe that sharing

her story would help change a culture which enables sexual assault. So, despite her discomfort, Amy

shared her story on social media. Amy’s sharing this despite discomfort does not mean this is not a

Hidden feature of herself. Rather, the discomfort indicates it is a Hidden feature. Discomfort is

common when we are disposed to keep something Hidden, and yet choose to reveal it. This is the

“horror of exposure” Roxanne Gay identified in deciding to speak publicly about being sexually

13I am here thinking of the internal point of view as described by H.L.A. Hart (1961).
14Though there is significant disagreement about the nature of dispositions, there is wide agreement that being disposed
to X under Y conditions does not require always Xing under Y. A glass, because of its fragility, is disposed to break
when dropped even if it does not break many times it is dropped (Choi and Fara 2018).
 Gunkel 20

assaulted. When we reveal something we are disposed to keep Hidden, it feels as if we are overcoming

a desire not to share it, as if there is a psychological barrier we must surmount.

This does not mean that Amy’s being sexually assaulted will always be a Hidden feature of her.

Amy might be inspired to become an activist, to speak often about her sexual assault in order to effect

policy change. After doing this for some time, she might come to feel comfortable with sharing. Her

disposition to keep this feature Hidden could alter.

6.14 Hiding What?

A second concern one might have about the Hiddenness Condition is that it can’t capture the

intimacy of interacting with a person’s public features in very familiar ways. For instance, though faces

are very public, touching someone’s face is usually an intimate gesture. If a person is not disposed to

hide their face, how can we say someone’s touching it exposes a hidden feature? This problem only

arises when our features are carved up in sloppy ways. Though it is true that the look of our face is

not hidden, the feel of our face is. We would be uncomfortable at the exposure of the feel of our face.

And it is not only that we would be uncomfortable with someone being close enough to touch it, or

feeling entitled to put their hands on us, though violations of these relationship-building norms explain

part of the discomfort. We can know this because many of us would be uncomfortable if a scan was

used to make a 3-D printed model of our face, which was then available for anyone to touch.

Likewise, though what our face looks like at some time T 1 might be public, what our face looks

like through time is not. The public does not have access to the patterns of my facial expressions or

physicality. A pattern can be hidden even though a single instance of my instantiating the pattern is

not. Jenna’s touching her eyebrows once might be public, but her pattern of rubbing them when

stressed can remain hidden even so. That one of our features can be a pattern we engage in is a very

important detail. A 70 year old man who doesn’t much talk may still be known very intimately by a

spouse who has seen his intimate features revealed through 50 years of daily patterns.
 Gunkel 21

We also monitor our facial expressions more closely in public. Though my neutral expression

might be public, my expression of intense anguish is not. I, like most people, feel deeply uncomfortable

crying in public. When we describe features in adequate detail, we can see that it is too simple and too

quick to declare the face to be un-Hidden.

There is, I grant, something strange about speaking of intimacy so informationally. It does feel

a bit unnatural to describe the intimacy of having one’s face touched as someone getting information

about the feel of one’s face. However, we often speak of intimacy in terms of special knowledge. We

talk of “really knowing” someone. So though speaking of intimate information seems a bit awkward,

it is not discontinuous to conceive of the foundations of intimacy this way.

6.15 The Insufficiency of Hiddenness

Meeting the Hiddenness Condition alone is not sufficient for intimacy. There are some

features of ourselves which we are disposed to hide, which would make us uncomfortable if exposed,

and yet are not intimate. How we cut our toe nails is usually one such feature. We are disposed not to

cut our toenails in public, or even with friends. We would find it very uncomfortable should someone

make public a secret recording of us cutting our toenails. However, for most of us, we do not think

our toenail cutting technique reveals anything intensely personal about us. A secret recording of this

would not be nearly as violating as a secret recording of us engaged in an intimate act, such as having

sex or telling a secret to our partner. Acts like cutting our toenails, while being private, are not typically

intimate. Seeing that intimacy and privacy come apart helps us see one way accounts of intimacy can

go wrong. Features of ourselves that are Hidden, but not intimate, reveal the need for a second

condition on intimate zones.

6.2 Importance
 Gunkel 22

What this second condition should be is less obvious. We can begin our search from the case

that revealed the Hiddenness Condition alone to be inadequate. We saw that though cutting one’s

toenails is something one is typically disposed to hide, there is something about this act that seems

too trivial, too inconsequential, to play the role that intimacy place in our lives. And remembering that

we are seeking to describe why intimate violations are so serious, it is natural to posit an Importance

Condition. Figuring how to spell out this Importance Condition is the challenge. What features are so

central to our lives, that they are in need of special protection? I posit that they are the ones which are

related to how we see ourselves, which are related to our self-conception. This colors how we move

in the world, and our ability to act autonomously (Oshana 2005), a central feature of personhood.

Importance Condition: A feature X of a person is Important if and only if they

believe, fear, or worry X reveals a facet of their identity.

Important features are those we think make us who we are. This is a subjective condition. Our

believing something to be an identity-related feature of ourselves is enough for it to be Important.

This is not to say that we are always right about what features are part of our identity. Someone can

be a racist even if they do not themselves think of themselves as a racist. A man’s being a father could

be an objectively important part of his identity even if he neglects his child and does not think his

being a father defines him. We are not the sole authority on who we are. However, only aspects of

our identity which we think are important can make us uniquely vulnerable in the way intimacy does.15

15 Because how we see ourselves is what is important for vulnerability, the account side-steps many worries about the
nature of identity. Even if there is no fact of the matter about which parts of us are central (see Mogensen 2020), we are
vulnerable merely when we think some parts of ourselves are central. This is true even of Mogensen, who does not
believe there is a fact of the matter about which parts of him are central to his identity. The ‘identity’ concept I’m using
here would instead match onto some concept such as ‘personality’ for him, and will still lead to vulnerability in the
relevant manner.
 Gunkel 23

Intimacy makes us uniquely vulnerable because it makes us liable to shame. Where emotions like guilt

are felt about our actions, shame is felt about our person, our self (Lindsay-Hartz 1984; Niedenthal,

Price Tangney, and Gavanski 1994). We feel shame about characteristics we believe, fear, or worry are

tied to our selves, that might partially constitute who we are.

6.21 The Insufficiency of Importance, and Sufficiency of HI

The Importance Condition alone is not sufficient for intimacy. We believe many public

features our ourselves reveal a facet of our identity. But though my being a philosopher is Important,

it is not Hidden, and so it is not an intimate feature.

However, Hiddenness and Importance together are able to capture the cases Relationship-

First Views could not. They explain why there is intimacy in Dominatrix, Support Group, Stranger on

a Train, and Memoir. Someone’s sexual desires, their alcohol dependency, their fear of being alone in

a new country, the assault which shaped their relationship to their body, these are all zones many will

be disposed to hide, and will see as part of who they are. It is not only such obviously significant

features that can be intimate zones. And the HI Thesis can explain this. A birthmark may come to

take on outsized importance in a person’s psychology and sense of self, and be kept hidden. What one

threw in the trash this week can even be an intimate zone. This sentiment is captured amusingly by

comedic documentarian John Wilson when he muses about his trash removal: “on Tuesday and Friday

every week, all the evidence of my shameful lifestyle is removed without any question.”16

6.22 Importance and the Body

Some might worry that the Importance Condition fails to capture the intimacy of the body.

We often feel as if our bodies are very private. We go to the bathroom and groom ourselves behind

closed doors. Some go to great lengths to hide their body’s “indecencies” from even romantic partners.

Midge, in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, wakes up before her husband every morning and sneaks out of

16 This is from How to With John Wilson, “How to Throw out Your Batteries.”
 Gunkel 24

bed to put on her makeup and do her hair, returning to bed before he wakes up so he never sees her

bedhead or bare face. However, the way one excretes waste or how one’s hair looks in the morning

are not obviously Important features about one’s self.

Though it is right that many of these particular bodily functions are not connected to our

personality, having a body itself is an important feature about us. We live our lives as embodied

creatures and this is tremendously connected to our identity, to our concerns. We feed ourselves

multiple times a day, seek out bathrooms on extended trips away from our homes, fear disease, know

others will make judgments about us based on the way we style our bodies, and know our existence

will be over when our body dies. And so even if our bed head is not specifically an important part of

us, it is a manifestation of something important about us: that we are embodied, that our bodies are

unruly and can communicate things about us that we cannot control. And so any uncontrollable

feature of our body can come to take on outsized importance in our self-conception.

Moreover, even if we don’t consciously believe that some bodily feature reveals an important

part of ourselves, we often worry it will be interpreted in such a way, and that perhaps such

interpretations might be right. We might worry that our leg hair or smell after a run will make people

think they’ve gotten insight into our personality, and have judged us to be fundamentally unhygienic

or gross. We might, knowing stereotypes people apply to fat bodies, worry that people will think our

fatness gives them insight into our personality traits; that they’ll conclude we’re lazy or uncaring. We

worry that a cancer or IBS diagnosis could inspire some to think that we should have taken better care

of ourselves, or are disgusting. We feel shame not only about what we believe is true, but what we fear

or worry might be true about us. Therefore, it is unsurprising that bodily features often meet the

Importance Condition, and are intimate.

6.23 Importance and Others’ Beliefs

As comes through the discussion of the Importance of bodily features, other people’s beliefs

influence which of our features meet the Importance Condition. And through this mechanism, our

culture and relationships influence which of our features are intimate.

Stigma and social oppression clearly affect what beliefs, worries, and fears we have. Stigma

can make seemingly minor features of ourselves into something that, as Erving Goffman argues,

‘spoils’ our identity. Others see a stigmatized feature as connected to, and ruining in some way, our

whole person. The characteristic takes on outsized social importance, and possessing it can mean we

are “disqualified from full social acceptance” (Goffman 1963). When the people around us respond

to a feature of our persons in such a way, it is nearly inevitable that it will meet the Importance

Condition, at least sometimes. Even if we steel ourselves, and do not believe the feature negatively

reflects on who we are, it is exceedingly difficult to never worry or fear that it does. And so for those

of us with more stigmatized features, fear and worry will tend to play a bigger role in determining

which features meet the Importance Condition.17

Others can also influence which features are Important in less socially systematic ways. So it

is not only our broader culture, but individual relationships and interactions, that can alter our intimate

zones. Imagine that you are having an online Zoom meeting from your home. Some of what is visible

in your background does feel intimate, such as a piece of art a friend made you for. However, right as

you’re logging onto Zoom, your dog knocks a pile of clothes onto the floor. You are disposed to keep

messes in your home Hidden, but don’t have another room from which to work. The mess in the

background is not itself intimate, at least initially, because you don’t think it reveals something

Important about you. After all, your dog just coincidentally knocked over the clothes and you had no

17 That stigmatized individuals are pushed into interpreting themselves through the lens society applies to their
stigmatized identities is similar to what W.E.B Du Bois gets at with his notion of ‘double-consciousness’ (1903).
 Gunkel 26

chance to clean it up. However, as the meeting drags on, you notice your colleague’s eyes dart across

the screen. It looks like they might have landed on the piles of clothes. You might initially be confident

that they would be wrong in accessing that the mess reveals anything substantial about you. However,

contemplating what they might be thinking could induce a change in you that makes the pile of clothes

intimate. You could start to fear that it does reveal something about you, that you could have picked

it up if only you had better time management, for instance. Our awareness of what others take to be

Important then, can affect what about us is Important through this mechanism.18 And so our intimate

zones are influenced by others through both the Hiddenness and Importance Conditions.

7. Difficult Cases and Intimate Wrongs

I am presenting the Intimate Zones Account, and the HI Thesis, as all-encompassing

enough to capture all genuine intimacy, to protect all of our intimate rights. But there is some

intimacy that might seem like it’s unable to be captured by the account, where it’s not obvious that

any intimate zones are being revealed. These are cases in which something is paradigmatically shared

only in intimate relationships, and yet doesn’t seem especially revealing. If the intimate zones

account couldn’t make sense of why these cases seem intimate to us, this would be a reason to doubt

it. In this section, I’ll turn to the case of pet names.

Pet names are used as a example of “interpersonal intimacy” by Thi Nguyen and Matthew

Strohl.19 They share that Nguyen and his spouse call each other by “odd pet names” (2019, 988).

And there is something seemingly intimate about having a goofy pet name for someone. Though not

confined to romantic contexts, we nearly invariably give pet names only to people we’re very close

with. A dear friend of mine calls me “Jamblies,” a term she invented accidently, when she misspoke

18 This is reminiscent of Charles Cooley’s influential concept of the ‘looking glass self’ (1902). This is one mechanism by
which others’ imagined perceptions of us can influence our self.
19 I thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to think about this case.
 Gunkel 27

while meaning to affectionately insult my “rambley voice.” This pet name encapsulates so much of

our friendship: our comfort and security and knowledge of each other, that I can poke fun at her

tendency to misspeak and she can do the same at my tendency to prattle on. Can the Hidden

Importance Thesis give us insight into the phenomenon of pet names, and why they strike us as so

intimate? Let’s take a look at five cases. Only one showcases what I call an ‘intimate violation.’ Three

showcase wrongs having to do with intimacy, wrongs that the account gives us the ingredients to

make sense of.

1. Pet Name Alex calls their wife, Beatrice, “smooshie.” Alex calls her this in public,

and Beatrice is comfortable with that.

It’s not obvious what could be Hidden here, given their public usage of the nickname. And

it’s not obvious how ‘smooshie’, let alone more common pet names like ‘honey’, captures anything

someone would see as related to their identity. So how might the HI Thesis make sense of the

intimacy that seems to be here?

Alex might call Beatrice ‘smooshie’ because the term sounds soft and squishy, and they

know a soft and squishy side of Beatrice. This side might be Important to Beatrice’s identity, and

also Hidden from the general view. Because dubbing Beatrice ‘smooshie’ is the result of an intimate

exposure of this softer side, giving her the nickname can be recognized as an intimate act.

7.1 Intimate Violation

2. Spying A stranger secretly puts a camera into Alex and Beatrice’s home, and

witnesses the softer side of Beatrice that way. The stranger calls Beatrice “smooshie”

next time they see her in town.

The spying is an intimate (violating) act because it (unwillingly, unwittingly) exposes

Beatrice’s intimate zones.. The Intimate Zones Account helps us identify exactly where the intimate

rights-violations occur. It also allows us to distinguish this sort of case from nearby cases which,

while sometimes wrong for other reasons, do not violate intimate rights. Let’s take a look at three of

them.

7.2 The Threat of Intimate Violation

3. Catcaller: Beatrice is walking alone at night. She is on the phone with Alex, who

uses her nickname when they say goodbye. A man overhears. He wolf whistles and

yells “Come say hello, smooshie!”

In Catcaller, the usage of the nickname isn’t responsive to Beatrice’s intimate features.

Rather, because pet names are a common marker of intimacy, they can be used to pretend some

intimacy already exists between the parties, communicate that intimacy is desired, or even to assert

power. It is tempting to think that the wrong committed in Catcaller is an intimate one. But it is

better to understand it as a threat of intimate wrongs. Alone at night, Beatrice might very well be

afraid that the catcalling might escalate. Catcalling is sometimes succeeded by being followed down

the street, or even sexual assault, and women are well-aware of this. Someone who catcalls a woman

alone at night demonstrates that they either don’t care if a women is made afraid, or like causing that

fear. This makes it eminently reasonable, and prudent for staying safe, to find them threatening. The

threat of intimate violence is a grave wrong, and so we can strongly condemn this even though an

‘intimate violation’ does not occur. In parallel, the reasons physical violence is wrong make the
 Gunkel 29

threat of physical violence wrong, but we wouldn’t call a threat to hit someone an act of physical

violence.

7.3 Undermining Intimacy

4. Crush: Alex develops a crush on a friend and starts to call her “smooshie”.

Beatrice overhears the nickname usage and is hurt.

Beatrice is wronged in Crush, but there is no violation of her intimate rights. It is our own

intimate zones that make us uniquely vulnerable, and give rise to the special protection of intimate

rights. Our intimate rights are rights over ourselves, not rights over how people behave with others.

Alex would wrong Beatrice if he slept with someone else without Beatrice’s consent. But she doesn’t

have an intimate right against him doing this, as she does have an intimate right to refuse to

continue to have sex with him. Alex wrongs Beatrice, and does so in a way that has to do with

intimacy. He takes a nickname that made her feel special and taints it. In doing so, he can undermine

her trust in him. And as I argue in “Shame, Self-Shaping, and Intimate Rights” (redacted,

manuscript), because intimacy makes us vulnerable, we typically only choose to expose our intimate

zones when we trust, at least in the domain of exposure, those to whom we expose ourselves. So

when Alex undermines Beatrice’s trust, he’s likely to undermine her comfort revealing her intimate

zones, and thus undermine the continuing of their intimate relationship.

7.4 Undermining the Perception of Intimacy

5. Overstepping Friends: After overhearing Alex use the nickname, Alex and

Beatrice friends’ begin to call Beatrice “smooshie.” They occasionally persist even
 Gunkel 30

after she reminds them she only likes it when Alex calls her that. The friends have

not witnessed the softer side of Beatrice.

As Nguyen and Strohl put it when talking about what Nguyen shares with his wife: “Are

their friends allowed to witness, use and transmit those pet names and that funny dance? There is no

independently grounded fact of the matter; it simply depends on where the couple decides the

boundary should be” (988). Beatrice’s asking her friends not to use the pet name makes it wrong for

them to use it. But their usage isn’t wrong only because of the request to avoid it. Rather, their usage

can also undermine the symbolism of the pet name. The non-intimate utterances can have a

swamping effect on the intimate ones. Others might not realize that when Alex uses the pet name, it

is different, and an intimate act. And so others’ perception of the intimacy shared between Alex and

Beatrice can be undermined. And for Alex and Beatrice too, the association with intimate exposure

might weaken. They might instead come to more heavily associate it with feelings of annoyance, as

their friends overstep bounds, or even use it to make fun of the couple.

Though I’ve focused here on pet names, this pattern applies broadly. Many things that are

shared paradigmatically in intimate relationships, from inside jokes to mannerisms to a couch, are

not intrinsically intimate. But even when there is no revelation of anyone’s intimate zones, my

Intimate Zones Account and exploration of how intimacy builds can help us better understand why

they’re associated with intimacy, and why they can make people vulnerable to special sorts of harms.

8. Exposure and Vulnerability

Now that we can see how Hiddenness and Importance make for an intimate zone, let’s turn

our attention to how these zones can make us vulnerable. Recall that I have defined an intimate act

as “an act that exposes, or relies on the exposure of, at least one intimate zone.” And recall in

“Support Group,” Valencia attends a meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous. Given that “Anonymous”
 Gunkel 31

is in the name of the group, and members do not share their last names with each other to partially

conceal their identities, in what sense are Valencia’s intimate zones ‘exposed’?20 And what if Valencia

introduced herself with a fake name, and wore a disguise to the meeting? Understanding why these

count as exposures is helpful for seeing why intimate exposure makes us vulnerable, and thus why

our intimate rights are so stringent.

Valencia’s intimate zones can be exposed even if they are not revealed to be Valencia’s

intimate zones. In parallel, imagine that a tornado rips the wall off of Valencia’s room, leaving the

room visible to passersby. A passing stranger might be unaware the room belongs to her as they

peer inside. Her room is exposed even though its being her room is not.

Recall that when we discussed Hiddenness and Importance, shame came up in relation to

both conditions. And as I argue elsewhere (redacted, manuscript), shame can warp us. Though I

don’t have space here to fully develop and defend the view, I’ll sketch it enough that the reader can

see how shame could be the sort of thing to, in conjunction with Hiddenness and Importance,

explain why intimate violations are so serious. Shame can subvert our rational decision making

processes about how we’d like to change, instead making us feel so badly that we can become

desperate to change the feature we see as responsible for the feeling. And shame about our intimate

features, because they meet the Importance Condition, threatens to alter us not only in some

incidental way, but along axes we see as important to who we are. I call this the ‘shame-warping

thesis’.

Even when we don’t share our real name or show our face to someone, their reactions still

have the power to induce shame in us. If Valencia shares her rock bottom moment in an AA

meeting, and someone reacts with “you’re a disgusting human being!”, she might feel shame even if

20I’m grateful to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to explore what “exposure” requires, particular in light of
this example.
 Gunkel 32

she’s wearing a disguise and introduced herself as ‘Veronica’. Others’ interactions with our intimate

zones can be tremendously affecting even if they don’t know who we are. We can be exposed and

altered even when our name and face are concealed. As long as we feel others’ eyes on our intimate

features, we can have the psychological reactions characteristic of exposure.

9. Other Candidate Conditions

The reader might be suspicious that there is an additional condition (or conditions) necessary

for a zone to be intimate. Though I cannot present a counterexample to every possible additional

condition, there are two possibilities particularly worthy of address.

9.1 Positive Regard Condition:

Psychologists Karen Prager and Linda Roberts stipulate that intimate interactions require

“positive involvement” which “precludes attacking, defensive, distancing, or alienating behavior”

(2004, 45). Though Prager and Roberts reject a requirement of positive affect, this is reminiscent of

Inness’s Motivation Account. Does intimacy require, if not positive feelings, some kind of positive

involvement? That is, should I also include a ‘Positive Regard Condition’?

Intimate violations typically preclude positive involvement, and so an account of intimacy that

is to capture them cannot have this condition. Sexual assault, reading someone’s diary without consent,

torture: the performances of these actions display a total lack of regard for the violated. The violated

is not seen as a collaborator. The assault can certainly distancing and alienating. Yet they intimately

expose the victim and leave them uniquely vulnerable, and this makes them gravely wrong. To add a

Positive Regard Condition would undermine the goal of giving an account that can explain the unique

significance of intimate violations.

To take an example that is less theoretically loaded, we can look to fights between loved ones.

Surely a couple can have an intimate fight in which both parties become defensive. Someone might
 Gunkel 33

even be prone to becoming defensive when their intimate zones are being discussed. Because our

intimate zones are loci of vulnerability, it is unsurprising that discussion of them might breed

defensiveness. However, though positive regard is not necessary for an act to be intimate, this does

not mean it is unimportant to intimacy. Rather than characterizing what is intimate, positive regard

tells us when intimacy goes well.

9.2 Entitlement Condition:

Though we are disposed to hide our intimate features, we are not always entitled to hide them.

To see why someone might think there is an Entitlement Condition on intimate zones, consider the

following case.

Karl the Kidnapper: Karl has kidnapped someone and is keeping them trapped in his

basement. Unlike some other kidnappers who only worry about the legal consequences

of their victims being discovered, he is very self-conscious about being a kidnapper,

and so keeps it Hidden. Being a kidnapper is integral to Karl’s self-conception, so

having someone in his basement also meets the Importance Condition.

According to the Intimate Zones Account, Karl’s having someone in his basement is intimate.

This understandably will strike many as odd, and as reason to add an additional condition. Because

kidnapping someone is obviously wrong, and keeping this fact hidden interferes with the victim’s

rescue, one is not entitled to hide this fact. That someone is trapped in one’s basement is simply not

the kind of thing one is allowed to keep to oneself. By adding that one must be entitled to keep a

feature hidden for the feature to be intimate, such cases would be ruled out.

It is a bit awkward to call having a person in one’s basement ‘intimate information,’ but that

is in part because of the conversational implications of calling something ‘intimate.’ When you assert
 Gunkel 34

that something is “intimate,” you’re often communicating “mind your own business.” And this would

be clearly inappropriate to utter if someone was inquiring into your having a kidnapping victim. But

that this would be an inappropriate conversational move does not mean that the fact isn’t intimate.

Similarly, we have an obligation to reveal a shameful secret if a villain will otherwise murder a

crowd. And there are many non-fictional examples of our being obligated to reveal intimate features.

Though we are prima facie entitled to hide our health conditions, there are some jobs which legally

and morally obligate us to disclose them, such as being a commercial airline pilot. That they are

intimate, even though we must disclose them, explains why such disclosure requirements can be so

discomforting. Leaving off an Entitlement Condition helps us see that requiring such employment

disclosures makes people vulnerable, and is a pro tanto wrong. It is more accurate to see that this

vulnerability is outweighed by other considerations, rather than to think that there is nothing to

outweigh.

Finally, adding an Entitlement Condition passes the buck. Rather than our intimate features

being loci of vulnerability because of our psychology, and this vulnerability grounding our intimate

rights, the story would be much less informative. To say we have intimate rights because we are entitled

to keep our intimate zones hidden would leave us wondering: but why are we entitled to keep these

features hidden? Rather than claiming that we are entitled to keep the intimate hidden, we should seek

to understand why the nature of our intimate features make us vulnerable, and so typically entitled to

control them.

10. The Objection from Self-Centeredness

There is something a little strange, I grant, about building intimacy up from exposure of the

self. This concern is helpfully developed by Candace Vogler. In “Sex and Talk,” she states that her

purpose is “not to argue against the thought that intimacy is sometimes a matter of reciprocal self-
 Gunkel 35

expression and self-scrutiny . . . but to contend, first, that not all intimacies are affairs of the self”

(1998, 328-9). Vogler parodies Nozick’s views about the self-expressive nature of intimacy. She quips

that “Nozickian romance is made of autobiographies” (1998, 361). Such an intimate encounter is quite

silly to imagine: each party listing facts about themselves and their history. However, our intimate

zones are not revealed only by our listing facts. Someone’s shyness, for instance, tends to be revealed

by their seldom speaking rather than by an utterance of “I am shy.” Our self is often revealed through

our actions and patterns. And so our selves are often revealed more naturally, and not solely by

awkward listings of biographical facts.

But there is something deeper to this line of criticism. It is not only that autobiographical

revelations would be comedic and strange, but that there is something morally objectionable about

approaching intimate interactions this way. It seems too self-centered. It seems to risk encouraging

what Mark Johnston calls the ‘pornographic attitude’ in our intimate interactions. Johnston defines

the ‘pornographic attitude’ as “the change of attentive focus from the appeal of other things and other

people to their agreeable effect on us” (2001, 201). It’s right that there is something morally troubling

about exclusively focusing on ourselves during intimate exchanges. But this again tells us about how

to do intimacy well, not what intimacy is. Though intimacy reveals our intimate zones, we should not

spend all our time being intimate with others thinking about our own zones. Not only does this take

us out of the moment, but it can distract us to the point we don’t give uptake to the intimate exposures

of others. This disrupts intimacy building. Deeply intimate relationships require two people get to

know each other’s intimate zones, not solely spout off about their own.

12. Conclusion

In this paper, I have developed the landscape of possible views about intimacy. It is my hope

that adding this structure will make investigations into intimacy easier, more fruitful, and more
 Gunkel 36

common. Whether or not the reader is persuaded by the Intimate Zones Account, I hope the reader

is persuaded that we think clearly and systematically about intimacy, and that it requires our attention.

Intimacy is powerful. It’s vital for human flourishing. It can be powerfully transformative or

deeply violating. But without a philosophical account of intimacy’s nature, how this is possible is

obscured. That intimacy makes us vulnerable helps us understand this valence. Being vulnerable to

others is required if they are to really know us, if we are to build loving relationships. But being

vulnerable to others also risks the worst sorts of abuses. Not only might we be subject to violence, or

to our secrets being used to exploit us, but we also risk others’ judgments about the deepest and most

sensitive parts of ourselves wriggling their way into our heads.

Relationship-First Accounts describe something important. They tell us about some kinds of

intimate relationships, close and loving ones. And they do give us important insight into why these

are worthy of protection. However, there is intimacy outside of such relationships, and we need to

understand the full nature of intimacy if we are going to understand how it makes us vulnerable and

what policies are appropriate to govern intimate interactions in our personal and professional lives.

What is so deserving of protection in loving relationships can be found elsewhere, and must be

protected there as well. The Intimate Zones Account lets us see this. Intimacy, whether in loving

relationships or in encounters between strangers, reveals Hidden and Important features of persons.

It is my conviction that the Intimate Zones Account can explain the stringency of our intimate

rights, and settle disputes about their scope. Perhaps, I grant, I have been too ambitious in claiming

that it is a complete theory of intimacy, that intimate zones are at bottom of it all. Maybe my

conception of intimacy is so far from our everyday conception that it is only fit to be called intimacy*.

Whether the Intimate Zones Account describes intimacy or intimacy* does not matter as much to me

as its being helpful for understanding and protecting our rights.

Intimacy lets others deeply know us, and so makes us vulnerable to being shaped by them.

Given this, we must have control over how and when we reveal our intimate zones, and not just with

whom we are in loving relationships. This ought to guide us in our investigations not only of abortion,

surrogacy, and sex work, but also of therapy, teaching, and art. Intimacy’s importance has been

gestured at in many of these arenas, but a theory of intimacy in hand can help us make new progress

with them.

Intimacy is very risky. But many tremendously rewarding activities are risky. It would be a

grave mistake to always run from such risks, or to prohibit others from accepting them. But these

risks must guide us in our pursuits. And we must remember that others can reasonably weight these

risks and their rewards differently from us. In such deeply personal and risky matters, we must abide

by others’ decisions about their boundaries.

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