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Notes -
Major NYT opinion piece dropped this week. At the time of my clicking on it, it was under the headline "Born This Way? Born Which Way?" It is a tour de force of Current Thinking on all things sex and gender, covering trans issues as well as sexuality. Given that the title is so evocative concering the topic of my recent AAQC, I feel like I can't help but comment on the current state of affairs. Let's start with the history of thinking on sexuality, since that's the closest link.
And later:
Finally:
She words it differently, but the conclusion is basically the same as what I had said - it was
importantcritical to force people to believe in Dogmatic Position so that political victories could be won, but in the Year of Our Lord 2023, basically no one even bothers defending it anymore; they don't have to! The political victories have already been enshrined.Unfortunately, that's about all that the article really says about the "born this way" narrative and the political history around it. Fortunately, it hits on quite a few other notes that are highly related to things I've thought about and said for a while. The article opens:
And soon after hits the high note:
Man, I can't even blockquote it without thinking about how many domains this thinking touches on. I'm sure it's been remarked on here, and I feel like there was an SSC/ACT post or some other significant post here where people ruminated on life choices, regret, and the human condition of our walk through a garden of forking paths, where every choice we make closes off an infinity of alternate possible realities. Like, this is so core to the the human condition that it's hard to imagine subjects that it doesn't touch on. Nevertheless, I can't help but think about the hot button ones - abortion, consent, child sex, and economics.
Abortion
Commonly, in discussions of abortion, a divide appears concerning what sex is about, how important it is, whether it's sacred or whatever, etc. I feel like a common perspective that is expressed by pro-choice folks is that it is wayyy less important/sacred than they think their opponents think it is. This opinion piece talks of competitive swimming, but I recall people saying that sex is like a tennis game. It's just a fun recreational activity that a couple of people show up to do together; they both consent to playing tennis; they just have some amount of fun; then nothing particularly interesting happens. In the era of ubiquitous birth control, they think that sex is totally just like this.
This is used to argue that abortion should be totally fine, and the only people who disagree are some crazy folks who still think sex has some meaning or implies some responsibilities/consequences and apparently want to punish women for basically playing a game of tennis.
Consent to sexual relations
We start to see some cracks in the full-on sex-is-tennis position already when it comes to consent to sexual relations. Imagine your boss really loves tennis and decides that he wants to have some team-building out on the court. There's plenty of perceived pressure to play. Maybe you don't particularly like it, but you feel like you should just suck it up and play. It's not that bad. Maybe you could even learn to kinda like it. Besides, you likely have other parts of you job that you like even less (friggin' TPS reports are the worst). Lots of people might think this is kind of a stupid thing to be part of a job, perhaps somewhat unprofessional. Who knows? I hear that some people feel like they have to play golf to make that sale, and they don't seem to think it's terribly unprofessional.
Regardless of how annoying/stupid/unprofessional you think it is, basically no one would argue that it should be criminal. But we absolutely would if it was sex! It seems to be significantly different.
Child sex
When it comes to the question of whether children can consent to sexual relations, the dominant position is that it is just trivial that they cannot. I mean, sure, they can consent to playing tennis just fine, but sex is completely and totally different. Why? I've steeped myself in the academic philosophy literature on this topic, and while it's a thousand times better than the responses you'll get from regular Joe, it still comes in seriously lacking in my mind.
Westen doesn't take a super strong position on the topic, but likely grounds it in what he calls the 'knowledge prong' of what counts as valid consent. A person needs to have sufficient knowledge of... something... related to what sex is, what it means, what the consequences could be, the cultural context... I'm not exactly sure what. I don't think he did the best job of really digging in to details here. This is perhaps the most fruitful line of inquiry for future academic work for those who want to salvage a consent-only sexual ethic, but right now it's seriously lacking. Any work will definitely need to distinguish from tennis, because I see kids out learning tennis at our local courts somewhat regularly, and they can hardly be said to understand the risks/cultural context/etc. of tennis any more than could be said for sex.
Wertheimer, on the other hand, doesn't even attempt a theoretical explanation for why children cannot consent. Instead, he views it as simply an empirical question of whether, in a particular society, children tend to be, on net, harmed by sex. The opinion piece writes:
A disciple of Wertheimer might say that a large part of how children perceive sex, and whether they perceive it as harmful or not, may depend on the perceptions others have of it.
Of course, either of these approaches opens up all sorts of cultural engineering possibilities. If we team up the "sex is like tennis" folks with the "comprehensive sex education as early as possible" folks, it's easy to imagine how society could change to one where children learn the requisite knowledge and are not, on net, harmed by the sex that they do consent to. Some folks might cheer on this result, saying that society would be immeasurably improved to the point that it unlocks this new world of possible good things... but the "it is trivially true that children cannot possibly consent to sex" crowd would certainly disagree.
Economics
I don't have a better subtitle for this section, but my thoughts here are background shaded by the free market, Marginal Revolution style economics, which emphasizes that it's important to let people make choices, even ones that they end up deeply regretting. "Capitalism is not a profit system; it's a profit and loss system," they say. You have to let people choose to try things that may succeed and make them a boatload of money... but which may also fail and lose them a boadload of money. This is often justified by placing a possible governing agent in a position of ignorance - you just don't know ahead of time which choices are going to be spectacular failures and which are going to be spectacular successes. Pushing in an even more libertarian direction, many folks want to say that we should just let people do the most harmful of drugs, even though we can be 99.99% sure that it is destined to end in pain and hardship. The article wants to have a sense of this for individual gender choices. 'You know what? Even if they regret it, we need to let them choose, because we're in a position of ignorance.' The article begins concluding with:
Hits a bit different after a section on child sex, though.
Closing Thoughts
I don't have a nice tidy bow to put on this package. I have my personal beliefs1, but I don't have a nice clean way to just directly put together a story connecting these things in a way that will please any particular reader with their own inclinations on the various questions involved. Mostly, it just really stands out to me that lots of people have completely contradictory opinions, at their conceptual core, when we try to apply them to all of the above problem domains. I don't think it's "just the outgroup", either. I think we need careful work and reflection across problem sets to help people understand where their positions are sounding hypocritical and why there are serious, huge problems here that are fundamental to the human condition. Reductive slogans aren't going to work. "Shut up and mouth these politically-acceptable words or you're an X-ophobe," isn't going to work.
1 - If you must know, I think the transgender ideology is near incoherent philosophically and anti-science biologically; I think abortion is wrong regardless of whether sex is like tennis; I don't subscribe to a consent-only sexual ethic and therefore don't think the question is of all that much import for whether children should be able to have sex; I generally lean pro-profit-and-loss capitalism and less drugs.
You can’t explain why they can’t consent to sex without reference to natural law, but even a tiny bit of natural law renders it trivial.
Go find a pair of eight year olds of the appropriate genders and explain sex to them in graphic detail(please do not actually do this), then ask if they want to have some. The reaction will be shock and disgust. And it should be disgust, an eight year old who wants to have sex is mostly because there’s something wrong with him to begin with. It’s simply contrary to the nature of a little kid. The logic of the German cannibalism case would seem to apply if you take even a tiny bit of natural law into account.
I had my first boner at the ripe old age of 5 after watching a Bollywood dance number on TV. It certainly confused the fuck out of me, but soon enough I was humping my pillow because it felt good. I found out what sex was and fervently desired it well before I was at the legal age to have it.
At any rate, appeals to "natural law" would also rule out homosexuality, since the only thing worse than kissing girls to most young boys at that age would be kissing boys. Some might consider this a feature, not a bug, but I'm not one of them.
Show off!
Did you, though? In America, we have this weird legal duality wherein sex isn't illegal so long as you and the partner are both below the age of majority or both above. Normal caveats about state by state variation and allowances for 17/18 or 365 days age difference limits.
I'm not sure I can think of another activity like this. What is something else that's legal to do with other minors, but not when crossing the minor-age of majority threshold?
To be CRYSTAL clear: I am totally in favor of maintaining these age of majority laws and am zero percent consent-only in sexual ethics. The Trans movement, beyond its anti-scientific stance, has insane flirtations with the "minor attracted persons" predators.
I did show it off to my parents, as I was gravely concerned by the new turpidity of an organ I'd only ever used for pissing. Sadly I can't recall their reaction, heh.
In India? Absolutely:
This isn't really enforced all that often, usually, it's a threat applied by the parents of two horny teens to stop them from engaging in such non-sanskari* activities when they should be studying for the all important NEET exams 🙏. If the cops do get involved, unless one of the parties has some serious political pull, the degree of enforcement involves raking the boy over the coals for a bit, maybe a bit of slapping. I've never heard of a girl be prosecuted for this, regardless of what the law says. In more rural areas, getting married before the age of 18 is common enough, and nobody gives a shit.
But, according to the letter of the law, my pining for the hot MILFs I saw outside my school when I was what, 12? constitutes an urge to commit rape. Wouldn't have been me dragging them to court, if they'd been so kind as to oblige.
*roughly translatable to something that offends social sensibilities or cultural orthodoxy.
Oh God, that reminds me of the first time I got an inconvenient erection. I was 8 or 9 and my brother was 11 or 12 and I was getting dressed because our family was hosting a barbecue. I'd just finished putting my shoes on when my brother came into my room sporting a pants teepee and a look of confusion. It was something he'd just learned about in school - "a totally natural thing called an erection, and your penis does it so you can have sex with a lady." Since I read encyclopaedias for fun, he figured I would know what to do about it. He was mistaken.
"Is there a lady you are going to have sex with?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. I started thinking more intently about it, when suddenly our problems multiplied - now my pants were tenting too! Like all good farce it didn't stop there though - my mum's voice sang out down the hallway, our guests had arrived! We both froze for a second before I realised what to do - the teacher said it was totally natural right? So it's only a big deal to us because we've never seen it before!
We did absolutely nothing, and walked out into the crowd of guests both sporting massive erections, and didn't even notice how everyone gawped at us with eyes like dinner plates and desperately leaned away from us when we tried to hug them. Our dad, for reasons known only to him, waited until we'd made everyone present uncomfortable before taking us aside and explaining a few things.
That's some grade A Wagyu levels of cringe! If it's any consolation, I'm sure it hurt the onlookers far more than it did you haha.
I'd attribute this to the still insufficiently explored neurological process seen after paternity that makes dads suddenly far more fond of groan-inducing jokes, bad puns*, and gives them a keen sense of schadenfreude where they can reasonably expect the momentary discomfort won't actually harm their offspring.
*I can only pray that I haven't ever knocked up an ex who then hid it from me, because the former two are already well established.
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I did not know that about Indian law.
Continue fighting for freedom boners, brother.
Don't take Indian law too seriously, we Indians certainly don't!
I'll fly the flag at full mast, in every sense of the term ;)
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