What I’ll say for now is we should try to hold in balance two truths. Sex is an intractable conundrum rather than a solvable problem. But that does not absolve us of the obligation to try to make better arrangements to minimize the chance that people are victimized by it. But we should attempt this in full recognition that there may not be a satisfactory way to render safe and tractable the will to domination and subordination that radical feminists rightly see as bound up in sexual desire without summoning up a will to purity and control—and vengeance—at least as destructive as the thing it opposes.It even be that sex is the safer, and less destructive, of the two impulses. After all, all of nature is founded on it: it is the flourishing of every higher species, and the waxing of every human nation.
A powerful scene in "The Great Divorce" concerns a soul in something like Purgatory, finding the will to master what is presented as a sort of seamy, pathetic Lust. When the soul relinquishes his Lust it's transformed into a vibrant Desire and becomes a powerful horse that he rides off on to find paradise and union with God. Later, Lewis watches a woman struggle with a passionately obsessive and jealous love for her son, and is asked to imagine, if Desire is the resurrected form of Lust, what will a mother's love become if she can let go of the corrupted version and let it die and be reborn?
ReplyDeleteBut more to the point of your post: Certainly sexual desire inevitably involves mastery and submission. It follows that a supervisor with even a trace of ethics or even simple humanity will not indulge sexual feelings for a subordinate who is trying to earn a living in his vicinity. He should know, without being threatened with firing or a lawsuit, that he's entitled to a co-worker's professional effort, not her body or heart. For that matter, the purely sexual part of the relationship, if there is one, threatens to be corrupted by the implication that he can command her sexual favors by commercial pressure. No one should even have to explain this to a man worth a fig. His self-respect should recoil from the possibility.
The rationality of your remarks is undeniable; there's no argument against what you say. The problem is that sex isn't rational, and it doesn't care about arguments. The heart, as they say, wants what it wants. Some give in and do wrong. Others do right, but thereby hurt in silence.
ReplyDeleteUltimately that's why this isn't a solvable problem. It's not that we can't come up with rational standards that should obviously be obeyed. It's that obeying means swallowing your heart. Not everyone is strong enough to do that, and those who are pay for it in a dearer coin than we readily admit.
Sex may not care about arguments, but ethical behavior doesn't care how badly someone would like to act on impulse. We'll never remove the strong feelings from any human endeavor, including the workplace, but that doesn't at all mean that it's nuts to expect people to get command of themselves and act right. I really want all the money in the bank, but I don't take it.
ReplyDeleteNo, of course. The point here isn't to remove ethical limits; it's just to recognize that the ethical limits aren't themselves a complete solution.
ReplyDeleteYour analogy is worthy, really. We need sexual longing in much the same way that we need greed. Attempts to rule these things out of order end up badly; socialism leads to starvation every time. That doesn't make greed good, or relieve the problems associated with sexual longing. We can't solve these problems just because we need the problematic thing.
Texan99 - I think you're drawing far too narrow a circle around what is considered harassment by the #MeToo crowd. I don't think anyone has disputed for a long, long time that the classic sexual quid pro quo demand between superior and subordinate is morally reprehensible, even if it was periodically excused. What's getting considered harassment now is a definition that is far more subjective, and usually involving people who don't share a superior-subordinate relationship. Is any comment on appearance harassment, or only the ones that a woman objects to? Is a clumsy request for a date, or a misunderstood conversation? It's clear from what's coming out that women have used these situations to their advantage in the past (otherwise why would there have been a conspiracy of silence around them), will they be reprimanded for using flirtation to advance their careers or obtain favorable treatment?
ReplyDeleteThere I agree with you completely. That part has gotten completely ridiculous. I'd love to see everyone get extremely serious about the quid pro quo and give the remainder of the nonsense a rest.
ReplyDelete"I don't think anyone has disputed for a long, long time that the classic sexual quid pro quo demand between superior and subordinate is morally reprehensible, even if it was periodically excused."
ReplyDeleteOf course, we seem to forget that the casting couch is old, old news, and that some women were perfectly o.k. with using the power at their disposal to get what they wanted- commodifying sexuality. The problem, as we've pointed out elsewhere here, is that the same folks that made commodifying sex ok, also want to make it wrong to commodify it.