Elizabeth Price Foley has
a long post at Instapundit about the coming end to bans on prostitution and polygamy. Really, once you've legalized gay "marriage," you've already gone well beyond polygamy: any sort of union between reproductive couples/triples/whatever is less a violation of the principle of marriage than what you've already approved. There's no longer any reason to mind consensual unions between
men and horses, if that's what they really want. We can wash our hands of it, once "gay marriage" is approved: go that far, and there is nothing beyond the Pale.
The funny thing is that all this is being done in the name of "equality." But as Foley recognizes, equality is the least likely result:
And the mother in me (which is inherently conservative) –with a teenage daughter– gets a little worried when I think of a world in which prostitution and polygamy are legal. The times, they are a-changin.’
Polygamy and prostitution are fine, as long as you don't care that much about your daughters.
28 comments:
They wanted it, they're going to get it.
Polygamy and prostitution are fine, as long as you don't care that much about your daughters.
Or your sons. Of which I have two, and they are the light of my life.
I continue to be astonished at the tacit assumption that morality is only of benefit to females.
If you love your sons, you want them to live a good life: one that strengthens their desire to be strong and good people and makes the world a better place. Why do we assume that men are little better than animals, and that their welfare as human beings is so easily satisfied by sating instinct and neglecting higher functions?
...morality is only of benefit to females.
I just had a post on the subject of why virtue is linked even to the potential of a heroic life, which should be of interest to men at least as much as to women.
Truly, men are harmed by the belief that they can partake of prostitution, but the harm is at a remove. They are harmed because they learn to think of these women -- this class of women -- as mere instruments of pleasure. But that is to say that they are harmed by harming; the harm they do is to think of another in a certain way. The other is the one who is harmed in the first place, both by being thought of and being used in that way. Quite possibly, she is harmed by learning to think of herself that way.
Of course, boys can be forced into prostitution too, in which case the harm to them is in the first place.
Cass touches it with a needle.
It's her gift.
Sorry for disappearing :p Busy week.
I think polygamy hurts men pretty directly: we've often talked about how it's a system in which younger or powerless men have less opportunity to marry at all. Or raise children. Not so good for the gene pool or for creating stable societies.
I was quite touched to see with both my sons that around their late twenties, they both very much wanted to have children. And they're both very good fathers who take great pleasure in their children.
The harm to men from prostitution is less obvious, I'll grant. But again, it never fails to horrify me to hear men complaining that women view them as walking wallets - clearly, this causes them pain as well as considerable anger not to be valued or loved for themselves (if this is indeed the case). That makes total sense to me. I would bitterly resent and dislike anyone who saw me solely as a means to their own ends.
So it seems very odd to me to see people viewing sex (which entails, by its very nature, arguably the most intimate access another human being will ever have to another, especially if you're on the receiving end of things) as a commodity that can or should be bought and sold with no damage.
Even weirder: most of the folks who talk this way strongly believe women can't separate sex from emotion, yet see no possible harm from treating us in a way that does *exactly* that.
Weird.
Cass,
Were that I were half as eloquent as you! Very well put.
Well, polygamy hurts some men in that way contingently: it would be possible to imagine a war that wiped out a substantial enough percentage of the male population that polygamy was viable as a way to ensure women had husbands (even if they had to share). A society might, under that contingency, positively benefit for a generation or so. But that's not the usual case.
We've talked about it several times in the past, and I think there are good arguments against the practice having to do with -- as the Church says -- the equality of the giving of yourself to your spouse. Yet I can't see how a court operating from today's logic could accept that argument in the face of consenting adults who wanted such a relationship. It's rooted in scripture and in a particular idea of the dignity of the soul that is not shared by everyone. It is a great reason for a Catholic not to take plural wives, but perhaps not for a Muslim not to do so if they (and the wives) wished it.
Truly, men are harmed by the belief that they can partake of prostitution, but the harm is at a remove.
That's interesting. Why do you think that? I've always assumed (maybe wrongly?) that it was harmful to a man to use a prostitute because it violates the nature of sex itself. But, I haven't really thought this through much.
As for polygamy, as an enforced system, it would be harmful to some men. But in those societies it is enforced through arranged marriages where the women have no real choice.
In the US, the people involved would have a choice. It would not be an enforced system, and I think it would be much less likely to have the same effects here that it does in cultures where it is forced.
In any case, I completely agree with Grim that accepting same-sex marriage eliminates any reasonable argument against any other arrangement, including both prostitution and polygamy, and it calls into question enforcing any sexual morals except those against rape.
I guess it would be a good idea to give the full version of the argument, Tom, since people often don't know it. Someone could easily wander in here and think, "Why, this suggests that homosexuality is morally equivalent to bestiality -- how awful a thing to think!" I hear people say that a lot; what they don't realize is that the argument was really developed to capture things like masturbation (and not homosexuality per se), and that it is a rational, principled argument that has survived several significant cultural changes. Aristotle gave a version in ancient Greece, Aquinas in High Medieval Christian Europe, and Kant gave a pure-practical-reason version in the Enlightenment.
So it goes like this: two of the biggest challenges facing human beings in doing the right thing are pleasure and pain. Very often people will wreck themselves in pursuit of pleasures; very often people will do horribly wicked things to avoid pain. These twin experiences demand the greatest care from us, if we are interested in living moral lives, because they are so easily capable of overriding our moral reasons.
Sexual pleasure is one of the great pleasures, and therefore one of the aspects of human life in greatest need of rational principles to guide it. What does reason tell us about sex? Well, it tells us that sex exists for a good reason: human society would cease to exist in a generation without it. All the goods associated with human society would therefore also cease to exist. So, in that proper role, sex is a very good thing. Outside that proper role, it is problematic. This suggests a system of regulating sex via a marriage relationship in which sex is pointed toward this natural purpose, and the purpose is fully supported because children produced come to be in an environment that can properly support their education as members of human society.
That's roughly Aristotle's version of the argument. Aquinas' is more developed, because it incorporates a Christian value structure that is not the same as the ancient Greek value system. For Aquinas, there are three goods to be provided in marriage: the production and education of children for a role in human society that Aristotle was talking about, but also pleasure, and a third good unique to Christian thought: the union of man and wife as one flesh, so that there is a mystical union of the fully human nature rather than merely male or female nature. This is theological, from Genesis 1 ('male and female He created them') and Jesus' remarks on marriage.
Kant's version strips it back down to the rationally defensible goods: sex is to be controlled by this rational principle in order to ensure that we are living moral lives, which for Kant is only the life directed by reason. This is because Kant thinks of animals as kind of automatons, driven by instinct and never by thought. Thus, they do whatever they do robotically, as a response to stimuli rather than as a part of a rational creation of one's own. So on Kant's model, sex needs to be restricted to marriage, marriage can't be polygamous because that would create an unequal 'giving' of yourself to someone who wasn't equally 'giving' themselves to you, and sex needs to be ordered by the principle of procreation. To do otherwise is to give into animal instincts, which for Kant is to turn yourself from a free and thinking rational being into a mere thing.
So the reason that male clients are the least harmed by prostitution (i.e., the least harmed of all the parties to prostitution) is that they are still pursuing the natural function to some degree. Any children produced are harmed far more by being denied a family environment in which to be raised. The women are harmed by being used by the men as mere means for sexual expression. But the men are harmed mostly by doing wrong to others. They are suffering moral damage, but they are being damaged by damaging others (in this standard case -- leaving aside men as prostitutes, etc).
Now, the question of whether disposing of Aristotle's/Kant's/Aquina's procreative guiding principle leaves you endorsing bestiality as well as masturbation (and homosexuality) depends on whether you have another principle to replace it. I've yet to see one. Once you've said, "Look, nonprocreative sex is just fine as long as it's pleasurable," well, lots of things are pleasurable. (Also, the whole reason we needed a guiding principle to govern sex was that sex is pleasurable: that was the point of needing an ethical standard at all!)
The best you can do is to try to stand on some version of a principle of consent. This standard is hugely debatable: what exactly does consent require? The California law regarding "affirmative consent" that is verbal and not rescinded by anything nonverbal? That's one standard being pushed by academic feminists on campus; but ecofeminists are all about breaking down Kant's distinction between human animals and non-human animals especially in the moral sphere. This is not for sexual purposes -- they want us to regard animal life as something to which we are and ought to be morally committed as we are to fellow humans -- and I think their arguments are usually right in substance (if sometimes dodgy in form). But the effect then is to blur the idea that nonhuman animals couldn't 'consent' in some meaningful way to sex with a human: we can think of clear signs that animals might give to show that they were willing.
You could adopt the Dworkin approach and say that power relationships make sex impermissible: therefore, just as marriage makes all sex a form of rape because patriarchy makes marriage a power relationship, certainly the way we treat animals as property to be owned would be a fortiori a power relationship of the forbidden kind. But notice that this approach, though it bans bestiality, also bans marriage: you still end up running them into the same category, you just ban the whole category instead of blessing it.
So, maybe someone can come up with a principle that governs sex that doesn't point to the facts of human nature, but that also does not license bestiality (or ban it on the same terms as marriage). I used to think that you could divide out Aquinas' three goods, and pursue any of them. That's not workable for Christians, I've come to realize, for strong theological reasons. But if you do it, you still end up licensing bestiality as well as masturbation, etc.
Thank you for the explanation.
I think what I still don't really understand is this part:
So the reason that male clients are the least harmed by prostitution (i.e., the least harmed of all the parties to prostitution) is that they are still pursuing the natural function to some degree. ... The women are harmed by being used by the men as mere means for sexual expression.
To me, both parties seem to be pursuing (or not) the natural function to the same degree in that neither wants a child, or to raise a child that might come from the union, thus denying the natural function of creating and raising the next generation.
Also, while the man is using the woman for sexual pleasure, the woman is equally using the man for economic gain.
The difference isn't really clear to me.
To me, both parties seem to be pursuing (or not) the natural function to the same degree in that neither wants a child, or to raise a child that might come from the union, thus denying the natural function of creating and raising the next generation.
Ding ding ding!!!! :)
Couldn't agree more. I probably don't understand all the nuances of the "natural function" argument, but that a thing is natural doesn't make it benign in my view. Most natural phenomena have positive and negative aspects to them.
Tom's comment here really focuses the point:
Also, while the man is using the woman for sexual pleasure, the woman is equally using the man for economic gain.
I know it is very au courant (even, bizarrely, in conservative circles) to view sex as a purely recreational activity with no moral or emotional component whatsoever, but honestly, a lifetime of talking with male friends and family has left me extremely skeptical that that's actually the case, even for most men. My belief that men are actually just as easily hurt and capable of love as women doesn't make them seem less manly or strong to me - on the contrary, it makes me admire traditionally male stoicism all the more (and I suspect that's why we condition boys/men to ignore some emotions: because this requires effort/training and doesn't actually come naturally to men *or* women).
Are men better at compartmentalizing sex? Probably. But denial and distancing are different from complete disconnection.
raven: thanks for the kind words :) FWIW, I always find your comments very interesting and insightful. Often, you've made me see some aspect of a topic that I hadn't considered.
I think I am prone to view prostitution as less a choice that the woman is making freely, and more something that she is being forced into (whether by explicit threats of violence a la sex trafficking by organized crime, or by severe economic hardship, or by a weakening of her rational faculties associated with drug abuse, etc). So I tend to think of prostitutes as less morally culpable than the men who make use of them, as their choice to engage in the behavior is less free.
Of course, there are exceptions to this: there certainly are some women who very freely engage in what is sometimes called "sex work" because they enjoy it and are well paid. In those cases, they are fully culpable.
I'm with Tom. Not seeing a difference in the unnaturalness as between the man and the woman. It seems a very odd perspective to me--but I am less inclined than Grim to suppose essential differences between men and women on philosophical, spiritual, or ethical grounds.
I probably don't understand all the nuances of the "natural function" argument, but that a thing is natural doesn't make it benign in my view. Most natural phenomena have positive and negative aspects to them.
The argument looks to nature with reason, to try to understand and perfect through art what is partially done by nature. Sex is naturally pleasurable, but that's the very reason we need a rational standard to regulate it. Otherwise, we'll follow that natural pleasure to unwise places.
I mean, it's possible to address these kinds of challenges otherwise than with an outright ban on a practice. Drinking beer is naturally pleasurable, and should be done in the way that perfects nature: the way that obtains the good of enjoyment, of companionship, of nutrition, but avoids the harms of overconsumption.
So you can try to address sex through a moderation argument, but it's hard to make one where the probability of children is concerned. And it may be that the intimacy associated with sex makes it hard anyway: it may simply be that, for a lot of people, there is no 'moderate' way to engage in intimate relations with another.
...to suppose essential differences between men and women on philosophical, spiritual, or ethical grounds.
In this case, at least, the argument is not from an essential difference. It's from a supposition about the contingencies that brought them together. I tend to think of prostitution in the standard case as something men engage in freely, but women are often forced into. That has effects on how culpable they are.
breaking down Kant's distinction between human animals and non-human animals especially in the moral sphere. This is not for sexual purposes -- they want us to regard animal life as something to which we are and ought to be morally committed as we are to fellow humans -- and I think their arguments are usually right in substance (if sometimes dodgy in form).
Could you expand on this, Grim? Are you saying you agree that we are and ought to be morally committed to animal life as we are to other human beings? (And I'm not sure if there should be an "as" between "be" and "morally".)
Sure. I think Kant was wrong to suggest that animals are robotic or automatic in the way he conceived them. That mode of thought is a result of Newtonian physics, I think, which suggested a very strong kind of determinism was the rule in the physical universe. (We now believe that is not the case; somehow, physics is irreducibly probabilistic.)
Kant thought that only reason could even possibly get you past this determinism. In the Groundwork, he's not committed to free will being an actual capacity of rational beings. He just says that a rational being has to assume he is free when he chooses an action (since otherwise, what are you doing by "choosing"?).
His examples of why rationality might provide a kind of freedom are examples of the kind we are discussing. An animal can pursue pleasures, because it has instincts and senses. A human can recognize the pleasures to be had, but elect for reasons not to pursue that pleasure (or at least, not right now or only in a moderate way).
I think Kant is vastly underestimating the higher animals' access to reason. I wrote about this a few years ago. The ecofeminists are making versions of the argument I am also making, which is that there is a lot more overlap between the minds of the higher animals and our own minds than the Enlightenment thinkers recognized. That suggests we can engage animals as moral actors in a way.
So we don't end up saying that they are just the same as people, but rather that there is some overlap insofar as they have access to the order of reason. And it turns out some people have less access, e.g., people with certain kinds of brain damage. So there's a wide frontier of overlap, rather than the clean break Kant thought existed. That should have some ethical/moral consequences.
Hi, Cass,
I think the way 'natural' is being used here refers not to natural phenomenon, but to natural law. E.g., when the Catholic Church says that homosexual acts are unnatural, they aren't saying they don't occur among other animals or in nature generally, but rather that they are against natural law. This goes back, probably through Aquinas, to Aristotle, I think (and Grim can correct me!).
Wow -- I started composing that reply back at Cass's 12:30 reply. I had to take a short break and hit 'post' when I got back. Then whoosh the rest of the comments showed up.
Well, you're not wrong, but the reason it's supposed to be against natural law is the one given above: that we can infer from nature what the function of the act is, and then use reason to ensure that we're doing it in an artfully perfected way.
Sometimes people make the dubious argument that building a house is a violation of nature, for example. That's not true: human nature is such that one of our basic needs is shelter. Now you can make do with such shelters as you can find in nature, but you can much more properly use art to structure the materials found in nature (because where else would you find materials?) so that they perform the role of shelter more perfectly. Thus, far from being a violation of natural law, building houses is an expression of the right relationship of reason to nature on this model.
Cass brings up a point I've been thinking about recently:
I know it is very au courant (even, bizarrely, in conservative circles) to view sex as a purely recreational activity with no moral or emotional component whatsoever, but honestly, a lifetime of talking with male friends and family has left me extremely skeptical that that's actually the case, even for most men.
My experience tends to agree with hers, even though I have known a number of men and some women who have insisted that sex can be a purely recreational activity. I have serious doubts about that. I think there are many ways to compartmentalize and discount certain aspects of experience when there are benefits to doing so, and in many ways we are not fully aware of our own experiences, so much happens subconsciously. I tend to think they are repressing something.
However, I've never been anyone else, and so there's no way to prove my point, even to myself.
I'm not sure it matters that much, either. We know some people (whom we call sociopaths) can murder without much or any emotional involvement. I hope they don't think that their lack of emotional involvement in the act means it is moral for them to kill for fun.
Grim: I think I am prone to view prostitution as less a choice that the woman is making freely, and more something that she is being forced into (whether by explicit threats of violence a la sex trafficking by organized crime, or by severe economic hardship, or by a weakening of her rational faculties associated with drug abuse, etc).
This makes sense, and thanks for clarifying the natural law issues.
Also, I agree with your views on animals. I don't think we have to consider animals as if they were human, but I also don't think they are mere automata.
I can't imagine freely choosing to be a prostitute for a whole slew of reasons:
1. I would be ceding control over my own body to someone else, and that bothers me profoundly.
2. I find the idea of being aroused/affected by complete strangers for money to be downright weird, and the idea of utterly disconnecting sex from arousal/intimacy to be even weirder. That's kind of the point of sex for me.
3. Physical fear - I would never let a man who views women as objects to be bought and sold for his physical pleasure anywhere near me - that person doesn't consider women to be fully human (unless, of course, he has no objections to being used in similar fashion :p). How could I trust a person who thinks he's purchased the right to use me sexually to respect boundaries I set?
4. I think it would kill something in my soul.
But yes, I do think some women freely choose prostitution just as some men do. My personal opinion is that it's a desperate sort of choice that I can't imagine a person with a healthy sense of self to desire, but that may well be a function of my admittedly limited experience.
Thanks for the expansion, Grim.
One last note before I run off.
I think Grim's assumption that women prostitutes would be the vast majority of prostitutes and that in some way they would be coerced into the activity makes more sense of his comment in the post that "Polygamy and prostitution are fine, as long as you don't care that much about your daughters" than the assumption that he believes morality only benefits women.
With those assumptions, it is less a problem for the men, who we can teach to be moral and who have free will in the matter in any case, and more of a problem for the women who will likely be at least to some degree unwilling victims of the practice, regardless of their morals.
Also, on polygamy, in the US it wouldn't just be the historical norm of one man with multiple wives, but could well be a woman with multiple husbands, or even communes of people all married together.
Cf. Paint Your Wagon.
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