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Gender and Sexuality

Categories: Sex, Gender and Sexuality

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Published: Jan 29, 2024

Words: 463 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Definitions and concepts, historical perspective on gender and sexuality, intersections of gender and sexuality, impact on individuals and society, current debates and challenges.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum.

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5 studies that offer fascinating conclusions about human sexuality

Christopher Ryan: Are we designed to be sexual omnivores?

“My hope is that a more accurate updated understanding of human sexuality will lead us to have greater tolerance for ourselves, for each other, greater respect for unconventional relationship configurations like same-sex marriage or polyamorous unions, and that we’ll finally put to rest the idea that men have some innate instinctive right to monitor and control women’s sexual behavior,” Ryan says . “And we’ll see that it’s not only gay people that have to come out of the closet: we all have closets we have to come out of.”

Below, read up on some more lines of research that suggest out-of-the-box ideas about our sexuality.

Question: Is bisexuality a sexual orientation, something that’s temporary or an outgrowth of the sexual fluidity we all exhibit? . Research: In a 2008 study , Lisa M. Diamond of the University of Utah presented the results of a decade-long assessment of nearly 70 women who identified as lesbian, bisexual, or sexually unlabelable. Five times over the course of the study, the women detailed their sexual identities, attractions, behaviors, and their social and familial relationships. . Results: Based on Diamond’s findings, bisexuality is not a “transitional stage that women adopt ‘on the way’ to lesbian identification” or an “experimental phase” for heterosexuals. Her results, instead, supported that, “Bisexuality may best be interpreted as a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes in which the specific balance of same-sex to other-sex desires necessarily varies according to interpersonal and situational factors,” she writes. .
Question: Which comes first—desire or arousal? . Research: In a study from 2004, described in this New York Times article , Ellen Laan, Stephanie Both and Mark Spiering of the University of Amsterdam examined participants’ physical responses to sexual images. . Results: The research indicates that we respond physically to highly sexual visuals before our mind even engages with them. In other words, desire doesn’t precede arousal—it’s the other way around. And we aren’t even aware it’s happening. .
Question: Do men and women respond differently to sexual images? . Research: The same New York Times article describes an Emory University study that tracked participants’ eye movements and brain activity while they looked at sexually explicit photos. . Results: Men and women didn’t have the same reactions, but they might not be the ones you’d expect. Men looked at the faces in the photographs much more than women did, and everyone quickly flipped past close-ups of genitalia. Brain activity was gender-dependent: in particular, men had a lot more activity in the amygdala than women did. .
Question: Does geography influence the body types we idealize and are attracted to? . Research: There’s a lot written about the effects of culture and media on the bodily standards we uphold. But the International Body Project , a survey of 7,434 people worldwide, aimed to investigate whether there were more base-level factors motivating our ideal body types, too. . Results: The researchers found that places with low socioeconomic status tended to value heavier female body types, while places with high socioeconomic status tended to favor thinner bodies—possibly because body fat acts as an indicator of status when resources are scarce. And the effect of media shouldn’t be underestimated: “Our results show that body dissatisfaction and desire for thinness is commonplace in high-SES settings across world regions, highlighting the need for international attention to this problem,” the researchers write. .
Question: Do men and women have different sex drives? . Research: A recent New York Times Magazine article describes a University of Wisconsin, Madison “ meta-analysis ” of more than 800 studies of our sexual habits conducted over 15 years. . Results: The researchers found that “the evidence for an inborn disparity in sexual motivation is debatable,” the Times Magazine piece reports. The study “suggests that the very statistics evolutionary psychologists use to prove innate difference — like number of sexual partners or rates of masturbation — are heavily influenced by culture. All scientists really know is that the disparity in desire exists, at least after a relationship has lasted a while.” Women’s desire does decrease, but not as a matter of course—as a result of monogamy in particular.

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Back to Dmytro Taranovsky's home page . Author: Dmytro Taranovsky Date: 2007-2012 Last Modified: July 10, 2012 (Last Small Change: September 17, 2015)

An Essay about Sex

List of Sections: The Nature of Sexual Feelings , Sex in an Ideal Society , Sex and the Law , Morality and Sex , Cultural Beliefs about Sex , Sex versus Drugs , Sex and Fundamental Rights

The Nature of Sexual Feelings

Sexual feelings are defined as feelings with a very strong localized physical pleasure component, or feelings that are closely connected/associated with such feelings. Evolutionary, sexual feelings are closely connected with reproduction; however, the connection is not ordinarily a part of the feeling. Sexual feelings are closely connected towards love and attraction, but these are not necessary for feelings to be sexual. As with all feelings, the essence and identity of sexual feelings lies in the understanding and perception of the feelings. As such, sexual pleasure cannot exist without an appropriate mental context. For example, otherwise pleasant feelings may be not truly enjoyable when the sex is coerced, and the victim may be confused over whether he or she enjoyed the encounter. It is also possible for a victim to enjoy the physical feelings, yet suffer much more from the emotional distress.

Sexual conduct refers to conduct with a sufficient nexus to sexual feelings. Throughout this essay, sex will be used to mean touching with intense sexual feelings, especially touching by another person. This differs somewhat from the standard usage. In particular masturbation, especially mutual masturbation, is treated as a type of sex. The term "sexual intercourse" is used in the conventional way.

As the definition suggests, sexual feelings are not special. The primary difference between sexual and non-sexual feelings is cultural, and the primary non-cultural difference is in the magnitude of the feelings. Consequently, the correct morality for sex is similar to morality for ordinary non-sexual massage. Although sexual feelings may be very strong, sexual behavior can quickly become a normal part of life, with the person's personality largely undisturbed.

Sexual feelings are likely to be stronger when equivalent stimulation is done by another person rather than oneself because with stimulation by another person, you lack a mental preimage of the feelings. Feelings are likely to be stronger when having sex first time (assuming that the physical behavior is equivalent to subsequent times) because of lack of mental constructs to deal with the feelings, and similarly for particular sexual behaviors/situations.

Physical feelings from comparable physical contact tend to be stronger in children partly because to some extent the strength of feelings is relative to other feelings experienced, and partly because of a reduced capacity to internalize feelings into routine mental constructs. (However, biological changes such as puberty may make analogous stimulation incomparable.)

The strength of sexual feelings can create a temporary mental state of altered reality. Basic properties of objects such as shape and color will be remain the same, but the perception will be different, the sexual experience will be the dominant feeling, and the physical world may appear less real.

Physical risks of sexual behaviors are not discussed here. The reader is encouraged to learn about the risks elsewhere, especially if the reader is planning on having sex. Here, it suffices to note that strong sexual feelings and interactions are often physically safe.

Most people in most situations sexually prefer a person of opposite sex. (By contrast, on average people tend to socialize with people of the same sex.) However, it is not possible for one to be sexually attracted to just males or to just females. Sexual orientation is a matter of degree, and your primary sexual orientation does not extend to all possible situations.

On an abstract level, homosexuality has the benefits of equality and inclusiveness. Specifically, in homosexual sex, (when desired) one partner can have approximately the same physical experience as the other. Furthermore, mutual attraction is possible even if there are more than two people. However, there are practical advantages to heterosexuality, such as are diversity (having two types of bodies may provide richer experience), certain biological adaptations, commonness of partners, cultural acceptance, and possibility of procreation.

Sexual feelings are on average pleasurable, but even then, they are not just pleasure. Sexual feelings contain other components and may even include significant pain.

Sexual urges are sexual feelings with a significant desire/suffering component: desire for sexual feelings, and suffering from lack of these sexual feelings. Sexual urges can be satisfied by creating these sexual feelings, usually through some type of genital massage (such as masturbation or sexual intercourse). Sexual urges are generally caused by sex-related thoughts and feelings and can be quite strong. For many people, sexual urges occur quite frequently. Although sexual urges involve suffering or something closely related to suffering, they may have pleasurable aspects as well. Suffering is necessary for pleasure to exist, and sexual pleasure is not an exception. When done in moderation, unfulfilled sexual desire and sexual abstinence can increase sexual pleasure.

Sex in an Ideal Society

Eventually, technological advances may make human biology irrelevant, but until then, sex as we know it will play an important role. Here is my vision of its role. The role represents both freedom and restraint.

On the one hand, sex is practiced openly, publicly, and casually. Sex is guilt-free. Most people are not shy about soliciting strangers for sex. Exchange of sex for money or favors is generally accepted. The right of everyone to have sex is respected both by law and private parties. Among other things, parents do not prevent children from having sex. A spouse does not get mad when the husband or wife has some casual extramarital sex. Sexual images are uncensored.

On the other hand, a majority are in (mostly) monogamous relationships. The family as we know it continues to be important. Sex is practiced in moderation, with people confident in declining it. The right to privacy and individual objections to sex and even (to a reasonable extent) sexual images are respected. Generally, no money is exchanged for sex--sex is generally enjoyable to both/all participants.

While humans will eventually transcend biological bodies, sex-like experiences will likely remain because of their emotional value. Future technology will overcome the limitations of wrong gender and of physical ugliness that currently prevent people from enjoying sex with each other.

Sex and the Law

Consent to sex.

The conduct has no unacceptable physical risks (including any physical pain that persists after the activity).
The conduct can be terminated immediately upon request.
The person is either aware of the feelings that the interaction will involve, or the feelings are introduced gradually and the person is not deceived about the feelings involved.
The conduct is not in exchange for money or other consideration, and the person knows that (see the next subsection about sex for money).
The person is not deceived about the benefits of the conduct, or about any suffering that occurs during the conduct.
The person is conscious and is readily capable of making and communicating an objection and knows or expects that an objection will be honored.
The person makes no objection to the conduct or all objections are honored.
The person affirmatively grants consent.
Physical risks should be acceptable in sex if they are acceptable in other activities such as sports. Which physical risks are acceptable strongly depends on the presence of informed consent (or partial informed consent) to such risks. Psychological risks are excluded here since psychological harm is caused primarily by thoughts, and the right to have harmful thoughts is protected by the core freedom of thought. In addition, the concept of psychological risk is too amorphous, and psychological risks of safe consensual sex are mostly cultural and unpredictable.
The second requirement refers to the technical ability to stop the conduct, and is usually satisfied for sex. By contrast, most mind altering drug use does not meet this requirement since drug effects ignore the user's request to become sober.
Given the strength of sexual feelings, even with the availability of immediate termination, an additional protection is needed, namely a basic understanding of what feelings to expect. The person has to understand the feelings well enough to decide whether they are enjoyable or otherwise evaluate the feelings. Understanding the expected feelings as if from memory is sufficient. Also, gradual introduction of feelings in a state where the person is ready to object is sufficient, as the person is given ample opportunity to evaluate the feelings. However, a person may not be deceived into painful sex through a misleading promise of pleasure at the end. Real moral or psychological understanding of the feelings is not required; as of 2012, very few people have such understanding.
Money can be a strong coercive force.
It is not acceptable to trick a person into having sex by fabricating various benefits of sex (such as "sex will make you rich", "sex will make your skin beautiful"). 'Benefits' is construed broadly to include moral benefits and benefits to third parties. Moreover, deception can be indirect.
Without an expectation that an objection will be honored and not trigger penalties, a person may be unlikely to object even to unwanted sex. Also, some psychological states make a person unlikely to object; if a person in such a state is unlikely to object to moderate pain, the person may be deemed incapable of objecting to sex. Also, a person may be incapable of objecting if he or she does not connect the sexual act with the other's intent; an example is when the person is deceived into believing that the sexual touching is unintentional.
This is the basic element of consent.
The requirement of affirmative agreement should be waived in the ordinary case where the person is expected to enjoy conduct and there are no special risks.
In defining legal consent, the key factor is what the person is consenting to. In case of safe sex, the consent is to the immediate feeling. The issue of informed consent arises in case of tangible harm that cannot be undone. Because safe sex involves no such harm, consent to sex is treated more like consent to an amusement park ride than a consent to surgery. No intelligence test is required for consent to safe sex.
Meeting the conditions of legal consent may require communication, explaining to the person certain aspects of the interaction.
It is difficult for a person having sex the first time or having a new sexual experience to know exactly how it will feel, which necessitates the right to introduce unexpected feelings gradually. However, sudden sexual conduct (even when an objection is immediately honored) can still be criminalized; without affirmative consent, touching should be started gradually. Conditions (2) and (3)--to the extent they are required by law--may not be construed so as to prohibit ordinary orgasm, including the first orgasm.
Videotaping and other recording of sexual interaction should be permitted if all participants are given a fair notice. In cases of sexual abuse, recording without notice should be permitted. Such recordings are, among other things, useful to secure a criminal conviction.
Although explanation of psychological risks and of cultural perception of the conduct should not be required, it is a nice thing to do anyway.
An affirmative 'yes' to sex should not ordinarily be required since much of clearly consensual sex is done without it. In addition, if one person is unsure of whether to have sex, a common practice is to introduce sexual touching/behavior gradually, letting the person decide on the limits as the interaction proceeds.
A person can be indirectly deceived about the benefits of sex from claims (even such as "everyone your age has had sex") that imply a special benefit without explicitly stating it. Moreover, even in the absence of a specific claim, deception can occur through the presence of a special trust to act only in beneficial (or otherwise special) ways. Doctors, parents, teachers, and police officers are commonly entrusted in this way. Religious deception should be handled carefully so as to protect both the right to persuade a person to a religion, and the right not to be deceived into sex. Deception about things other than the benefits of sex should not invalidate the consent to sex (provided the other conditions of consent are met). However, such deception (for example, slander about the person's other sexual partners) can in certain cases be treated as a separate offense.
The penalty for sex without legal consent should be determined on a case-by-case basis, some violations are much more serious than others. People should not be punished for activity that they non-negligently and in good-faith believed to be safe consensual sex.
The eight proposed conditions are sufficient but not always necessary for consent. However, since sexual feelings may be unbearably strong, the right not to have sex (including the right to terminate an ongoing sex) is fundamental, and as such must be honored. Forced sex is unacceptable even in the rare cases when it is enjoyable and beneficial to the victim (even if such enjoyment and benefit was the intended and likely result). Consent refers to choice and will and is different from desire (which refers to feelings). Thus sex may be consensual but unwanted (legal) or wanted but nonconsensual (unlikely, but still illegal and unacceptable). Also, consent cannot be given retroactively. Sexual stimulation may be a permissible side-effect of a necessary treatment for a physical illness. However, forced sex may not be used as a treatment for mental illness, even if it is "medically" necessary and the person is a danger to self or others.
Bondage role-playing should be permitted as long as the consent conditions are met. In such role-play, it is not necessary for word "No" to count as an objection provided that both of the following are met (a) given the totality of circumstances, the person does not appear to object, and (b) the person is clearly capable of giving a genuine objection.
Deprivation of sex should not ordinarily be used as punishment. However, some punishment, such as incarceration, properly involves physical segregation and the corresponding deprivation of sex.
Intoxicated persons should not be prohibited from having safe consensual sex. A later regret of sex is not very different from regret of a number of other choices the person may have made while being intoxicated.
A person should be allowed to make directions about possible sex in case the person becomes unconscious. The legal default should be no sex, except perhaps in narrow circumstances (such as some cases waking up one's sexual partner through sexual contact).
Laws about sex should ideally be written in age neutral terms.
Infant circumcision that is not medically necessary should be criminalized, without religious exceptions. Circumcision amounts to a permanent body mutilation. One's religion is not a legal excuse to harm other people.
Although infants cannot be meaningfully give consent, they can still give a positive or a negative response. Genital stimulation of infants by parents and other authorized caretakers should be permitted provided that the immediate response is positive and the stimulation is harmless or beneficial to the infant.
Corporal punishment (by parents, educators, and other people) must not be permitted. This is a matter of fundamental rights. The fundamental freedom from physical restraint includes the right to engage in safe consensual physical interaction (excluding commerce). This right applies to people of limited intelligence and experience (such as children) and to conduct that is traditionally regarded as immoral (such as sex). However, there is more to consent than lack of objection. In addition to the eight conditions, it is probably constitutional to require provision (but not understanding) of reasonable additional information clearly specified by the law. Parents must not be permitted to violate the children's fundamental rights, including the right to engage in safe consensual sex. Distribution of all information (including pornography) to all people is protected by the fundamental right of freedom of expression.

Sex for Money

Because sex for money is commercial, and because of the inherent risk of coercion, such sex is not (in my opinion) constitutionally protected. However, a ban on prostitution would be unwise. Instead, laws may require (using more specific phrasing than here) that (1) sex is consensual, (2) sex is physically safe, (3) the payment is fair, and (4) all involved parties receive appropriate information, and know what the compensation is. Part of the fairness involves the right to terminate the sexual conduct at any time without undue penalty. Non-monetary compensation may be used provided that it is not based on special authority of one person. Use of special authority as compensation should ordinarily be prohibited. For example, the government may not shorten someone's jail term in exchange for sex.

A contract to abstain from sex should not ordinarily be enforceable, as such contract is in tension with the fundamental freedom to physical interaction.

When both people and rational and informed, their relationship is (usually) mutually beneficial even if it involves monetary exchange. Informal use of sex in exchange for something is very common, and cannot, consistent with fundamental rights, be entirely prohibited. For example, a person may terminate a friendship (and its benefits) in part because of a lack of sexual satisfaction. Much of pornography production involves paying actors to have sex. Also, many people, including children, rely on money from sex to buy food and other necessities; these people cannot reasonably be expected to stop having sex for money.

Sex Education

Public nudity and indecent exposure.

In deciding to what extent to prohibit nudity, indecent exposure, and outdoor sex, the enjoyment of the participants should be weighted against the offense to the observers. In evaluating offensiveness, one should consider the offense from ugliness of the appearance, rather than the moral offense from violating cultural norms. Considerations of offensives should be significantly discounted because the viewer can avert his or her eyes, and because there is no right not be offended. Moreover, because the sole reason for prohibition is visual offensives, indecent exposure should be treated as pure speech, thus magnifying the value of the perpetrator's interests.

Nudity should be legal in most outdoor areas, including inside cities. Nudity is a natural state of the human body, and is comfortable for sunbathing and swimming. Nudity can be very beautiful, and is frequently used in art. The right to be without clothing is an important freedom that should be respected. The right to nudity should include the right to have an erection (erections can arise spontaneously and prohibiting them would cause anxiety and limit freedom).

Outdoor sex should be legal when it is done discreetly, "not in your face". While there are substantial offensiveness considerations, they are ordinarily outweighed by the liberty of the participants, as the right to have sex is part of the freedom from physical restraint and sex can be one of the most meaningful activities humans engage in. Current (as of 2012) laws may effectively require postponement of sex for hours (or worse) and otherwise impair sex.

Morality and Sex

Introduction.

In the section "Morality and Sex", I list various recommendations relating to sex. These recommendations are directed to the present society rather than a hypothetical society with correct views about sex. The reader should keep in mind that I am not perfect and can make mistakes.

The essay does not advise you whether to have sex. The decision whether to have sex is a personal manner, and it is ordinarily wrong to pressure people to have sex. Moreover, to the extent that sex is enjoyable and without impediments, people usually end up having sex, so it is unnecessary to advise here for people to have sex.

The main reason to have non-reproductive sex is that sex can be a source of happiness. In addition to directly causing happiness, sex can enrich one's experience and promote human bonds. (This essay does not discuss whether and when to have children.) I subscribe to utilitarian theory of morality. The good is to maximize happiness, with equal consideration of everyone's interests.

However, in receiving pleasure, there is a risk of other activities becoming less enjoyable, which decreases (and can even reverse) the net effect of the pleasure. The key is to have sexual pleasure in a meaningful and enriching way.

Sexual conduct has no moral significance beyond the feelings that it causes. (Here, the feelings include long-term feelings as well, such as suffering from a disease.) Sexual feelings have no moral significance beyond the significance attached to them by the mind. For example, when sexual feelings are perceived as pleasurable and without negative connotations, their presence (all other things being equal) is good.

Different societies have attached various moral and religious significance to sex. Examples include "sex is wife's sacred duty to the husband", "boys should be masculine and girls feminine", and "homosexuality is wrong". These beliefs are wrong, and ultimately, irrational. However, there are sufficient historical reasons for their prevalence.

Morality and Law

In ordinary cases, you should respect the law. In choosing to break the law, you should evaluate its effect on you and (with equal consideration of interests) on other people, and then apply a strong weighting towards compliance with the law. The weighting towards compliance is decreased if the law is routinely ignored and unenforced, or if the law is profoundly unjust or irrational or inconsistent with important freedoms.

A List of Suggestions

It is important to learn about sex.
Sexual relationships with love and commitment are likely to be more fulfilling than anonymous purely sexual encounters.
It is very difficult to learn how sex feels without trying it. It is difficult to know whether one would enjoy sex without trying it. A reasonable suggestion is to try sexual conduct to gain understanding and to see whether sex is something that you like.
Sexual relationships should ordinarily be non-exclusive. Do not pressure your partner to not have sexual relationships with other people.
Try to be open about your feelings and relationships. It is especially important to be open with your partner about your feelings. However, to the extent that you may be discriminated against because of erroneous beliefs other people have about sex, you should balance this factor against the natural benefits of openness.
You should ordinarily respect your commitments to keep someone's sexual interactions and preferences private. This is not an absolute rule, particularly in cases of sexual abuse. You can also discuss the relationships anonymously. Ordinarily, you have a right not to disclose you sexual preferences and activities, and ordinary you should not pressure other people to reveal their sexual preferences and conduct. It may be best to be assertive about your right to sexual privacy.
Relationships where one party does not like sexual conduct but accepts it as a debt of friendship are likely to be unfulfilling and problematic. Consider making such a relationship non-sexual. If you and your partner choose to continue the sexual relationship, then make sure you both understand the role of sex in the relationship, and consider whether using explicit compensation for sex is better.
Following your sexual orientation--even if it is considered unacceptable in your society--can lead to great joy and emotional fulfillment. If seeking counseling about sex, it is important that the counselor accepts your sexual orientation.
If you have strong deeply held beliefs against sex, then consider them as an important argument against sex since your enjoyment of sex may be marred by guilt and anxiety. You may want to delay sex until you resolve these (erroneous) beliefs. However, it is important to learn about sex, even if such learning is expressly contrary to your religion. If objecting to sex for moral reasons, then state your objection early. By waiting until the latest possible moment, you may find your morals compromised.
Sexual intercourse need not be the best way to achieve sexual satisfaction. Other possibilities include solo and mutual masturbation, which can be done in a variety of ways. (Masturbation tends to have much lower physical risks then sexual intercourse. In this essay, masturbation is treated as a type of sex.)
Sex is sometimes wrong. Here are some valid reasons against sex - you may not enjoy sex, especially if it is done in a wrong way or with a wrong person - a longer interval between instances of sex can make sex more enjoyable - sex may involve physical risks (direct injury, pregnancy, sexual transmitted diseases) - guilt and shame you may have about sex (however, it is important for you to resolve these feelings) - the society may discriminate against you (or your partner) for having sex - your partner does not consent, has valid reasons against sex, or believes that the particular instance of sex is wrong. A person's moral opposition to sexual conduct should be given due respect and not ignored. - your partner expects sex to imply commitment of a kind that you do not wish to make
Spiritual relationships can be stronger than even very strong (physical) sexual feelings. It is wrong to explicitly limit your relationships to (for example) people of a particular sex. While sexual attractiveness is frequently an important factor in one's relationships, other factors can be more important.

Morality of Adult-Child Sex

As the more powerful and knowledgeable person, you have a duty to ensure morality of the relationship.
Ensure that the relationship is consensual.
Chronological age of the child is not relevant per se. What is relevant are the child's understanding, the societal views of sex with children, and the child's sexual preferences and anatomy.
Avoid conduct with unacceptable physical risks. It may be best to avoid conduct with significant physical risks.
You may have to keep your conduct secret (even from the child's parents and counselors), and instruct the child to do the same. Even in the absence of criminal prosecution, both you and the child may be discriminated against if the relationship becomes known.
Since the relationship is secret, you will have to provide any necessary counseling to the child. Provide appropriate counseling before, during, and after the sexual conduct.
If you are in a position of authority over the child, some counseling may even be necessary to ensure that the relationship is truly consensual.
Do not have the relationship if you believe it to be wrong.
Convince the child that the conduct is morally right before doing it. Do not have sex with the child if you fail to convince the child that the conduct is right. If child later feels guilty and betrayed, serious psychological harm may follow, even if he or she enjoyed the sexual experience. Also, make sure that the child wants the sexual relationship. It make take time for a child to overcome his or her irrational opposition to sex.
Explain the nature of the child's sexual feelings to the best of your ability. Also, if appropriate, explain that other people are wrong in their condemnation of adult-child sex. A partial explanation may sound like "Genital massage is like ordinary massage. However, your feelings will be much stronger. It will feel very good. If it feels weird, just relax and enjoy it, or ask me to slow down. Contrary to what others may have told you, there is nothing wrong with these feelings or with such massage. It is harmless. If you don't like it, just tell me to stop. Do you want to do it?"
Do not deceive the child. Do not make false statements like [as of 2012] "Genital fondling is a standard component of therapeutic massage."
The risks of such a relationship include legal punishment and social discrimination, and for the child, harm from his or her erroneous beliefs related to the relationship. However, the existence of such relationships adds to the richness of the human experience, and such relationships are a source of joy for millions of children and adults worldwide.
If you pay a child to have sex, then - ensure that the payment is fair and that the transaction (sex plus payment) is in the child's best interests - ensure that the child understands what the payment is - ensure that the payment is concrete and is not part of any special authority you may have over the child - if necessary, explain to the child that getting paid to have sex is OK, and is consistent with human dignity, and is not like selling one's body, etc. - If you act as the child's parent, then paying the child to have sex with you is probably a bad idea. - Even if the above conditions are met, this does not necessarily mean that the conduct is right.
The above need not fully apply if the child is the one initiating sexual conduct, or if the child has sufficient experience.
Verify that your participation is consensual. If not, then it is child sexual abuse. For victims of sexual abuse, a good coping strategy is to try to make the best of the experience. Also, counseling with a qualified person is important (however, unfortunately, current reporting regulations may deny you the option of keeping the sexual relationship confidential).
In choosing whether to have sex, you are exercising your fundamental right to privacy, which is a part of your fundamental right to be free from arbitrary physical restraint. Your privacy is yours to keep or share. You have a right not to have sex, and if you do have sex, to set your limits, and to decide whether to allow recording of the sex for others to enjoy.
Be careful if the adult only appears to care about you sexually. Trust and emotional connection are important.
Do not accept alcohol, tobacco, or other recreational drugs from the adult. An adult offering you recreational drugs is probably disregarding your well-being; beware of such adults.
Verify that the interaction is physically safe; some adults are reckless about this.
Do not consent to sexual conduct that you do not want.
If you feel overwhelmed with feelings, then consider asking the other person to stop. Ponder and contemplate your feelings and then decide whether to proceed.
Do not tell other people (including parents and counselors) about your sexual relationship unless it amounts to sexual abuse, with the exception of those people who are likely to accept your relationship.
On the other hand, do not hesitate to discuss your feelings with the adult, and with other people whom you can trust to keep your secret.
Take time to think about what happened, but do not become obsessed with it. Sexual feelings are a healthy part of life, but should not be the dominant part.
If you like the experience and choose it continue, then take a positive exploratory attitude toward your new feelings. Societies are often irrational about sex. Sex is not a guilty pleasure, and it does not make you impure.
Be cautious and discreet about initiating sexual conduct with other people. Many people do not like it or have moral objections to it.
Legal issues aside, getting paid to have sex is OK. However, do not let what may be a sudden access to money by a corrupting influence over you; moral corruption hurts not only other people but yourself as well.

Cultural Beliefs about Sex

The belief that sex is evil.

Given the central role of sex plays in reproduction (and hence in societal survival), and given the intense feelings accompanying sex, sexual intercourse (whether or not it can lead to reproduction) is viewed as a special class of conduct, with its own moral rules and restrictions.
Human nature--and romantic love, in particular--has a tendency towards monogamy. This may cause sexual monogamy to be viewed as the best state. Moreover, human nature (for evolutionary reasons) has a tendency towards disapproval of sex between a marriage partner and a third person. This may cause the society to consider such relationships immoral. Treating sex outside marriage as evil may help to channel sexual energy towards raising families. The evolutionary tendency is to disapprove of extramarital sex by your spouse (especially if you are heterosexual male) but not yourself: Extramarital sex by your spouse may cause you or your spouse to spend resources to raise a child who does not have your DNA. However, with contraception and paternity testing, this reason is less valid today.
Sexual feelings are (in many cases) so exceptionally strong and pleasant that they impair the judgment and cause people to discount other moral considerations when seeking sex. Treating sex as immoral acts as a counterweight against the bias towards having sex. (Sex-related impairment of judgment may also be considered evil in itself.) Because of the strength of sexual feelings, people continue to have sex in the face of social opposition. Such defiance can increase the harshness of the societal intolerance as the society tries to take stronger measures.
Because genitals are concealed in many cultures, and because genitals look different from the rest of the body, genitals may appear very ugly (as if they are abnormal) to many people. This causes a visceral aversion to most forms of sexual conduct, especially towards "unnatural" sex. Homosexual sex may be seen as contrary to the traditional gender norms.

Opposition to Adult-child Sex

The primary mechanism of harm is moral conflict. The children involved often believe that they have done something wrong and therefore feel guilt or shame. This is reinforced by the society having a negative attitude toward sex (and by the need to keep sex secret). Moreover, if the child believes that the adult was wrong in choosing to have sex, the child may feel betrayed by the adult, and suffer from this feeling. Such harm is particularly strong if, for example, the adult is a priest who is otherwise preaching abstinence until marriage, or if the adult is a parent or a caretaker. The strength of both sexual feelings and sexual taboos magnifies the moral conflict.
Given the current legal and social climate, adult-child sexual relationships are usually secret, which denies the child of opportunity to discuss and resolve the issues with the relationship.
If the relationship becomes known, then the child may suffer from discrimination, as well as from the likely termination of the emotional relationship with the adult.
Additionally, some types of sexual interaction involve substantial physical risks.
On an individual level, people tend to follow the society in their beliefs, and are pressured by the society not to say that adult-child sex is often good for children.
Adult-child sex is viscerally viewed as horrible and immoral, and therefore harmful.
For children, having consensual sex with adults is correlated with being physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Statistically, adults who like sex with children are more likely to select children who have been abused: Protecting children from abuse often includes "protecting" them from sex, so children protected from abuse are less likely to have sex with adults. Since the predominant moral view is that adult-child sex is wrong, adults who have sex with children are more likely to do what they or the society think is wrong, and hence are more likely to harm the children. Also, sexual abuse can break a child's moral opposition to sex and can cause the child to learn that sex feels good, which makes the child more likely to have consensual sex.
When the relationship becomes known, the children involved are expected to behave like victims, and therefore they may behave that way, which leads to the appearance of harm (and can lead to actual harm as well).
The media often fails to separate consensual from non-consensual adult-child sex, causing the public to conflate the two. Non-consensual sex is often very harmful.
Most importantly, in the present society, notifying the public about the relationship would mean that the relationship will be terminated and the adult (and quite often, the child) punished or otherwise harmed. Consequently, the children are only likely to report the relationship if they view it as harmful or immoral, creating a strong sampling bias toward harmful cases.
Adults are supposed to supervise children, and therefore be in control of children. A child will not (or should not) say "No" to an adult. Children (especially victims of sexual abuse) may fail to object to non-consensual sex because they are not aware of their right to object. Correspondingly, adult-child sex is viewed as much more objectionable than sexual play between children. For example, many people believe that it is normal and morally fine for a 10-year old boy to masturbate, and at the same time support mandatory prison terms for adults who massage genitals of 10-year old boys.
Children do not really understand the meaning and moral implications of sex and therefore their consent is invalid. The view is that the children do not understand that sex is a poison for the soul, and thus adult-child sex is no more consensual than unknowing ingestion of poison.
Sexual desires can cloud children's judgment. A sexual urge can short-circuit their consideration of the moral elements of sex and of the physical risks.
Some sexual interaction involves physical risks which many children are ill-equipped to evaluate.
The typical limitations of children's judgment are (it is argued) universally applicable to all children. Alternatively, because sex with children is so wrong, rational and informed children will always say 'no', so all children who say 'yes' are deceived, seduced, or coerced into sex.

Sex versus Drugs

Sex and drugs are often grouped together because both of them are considered by many to be immoral, both involve aspects that many find disgusting, both can be very harmful, both can involve strong pleasure, and both can cause an altered state of consciousness where normal concerns are suppressed. Such grouping leads some people to believe that since sex is moral, so are drugs. This belief is wrong.

drugs are harmful
drugs are addictive
drugs impair judgment to the point of making their users temporarily less human. Once the drug is taken, this impairment is not consensual, that is it continues regardless of whether the user wants it.
sex is not harmful
sex is not physically addictive (but all good things can be psychologically addictive)
sex is consensual
sexual desire tends to be self-limiting in that a person will want to spend only a small portion of his or her time having sex.

Sex and Fundamental Rights

This section is not a general essay on fundamental rights. Instead, it is a detailed explanation of fundamental rights related to sex. Fundamental rights are a difficult topic, and parts of this section are more abstract than other sections.

Fundamental rights are the indispensable rights of the people in the civilized society. Fundamental rights exist independently of the government or popular will, and laws that contradict them are illegitimate. Protection of fundamental rights should be written in the Constitution so that the rights can be enforced through judicial review, and whenever possible, existing Constitutions should be construed to protect all fundamental rights. The United States Constitution protects all fundamental rights through the guarantee of due process, "no person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" (with the exception of proportional representation for the Senate and for the presidential election).

A collection of rights

prohibitions on distribution of certain information and ideas (such as child pornography) to certain people (such as children) (excluding reasonable non-disclosure agreements).
prohibitions on safe consensual sex (excluding commerce)
prohibitions on recording of sex when all participants give consent
blanket prohibitions on nudity and sex in forests and other such public places, excluding cases with reckless disregard for the offensiveness of the conduct.
laws requiring reporting of the above activities
laws requiring parental notification or permission for exercise of children's fundamental rights
general prohibitions on condoms or sex toys

The first right is the core of the freedom of speech. Freedom of speech includes the right to communicate arbitrary information to an arbitrary person. (Note: Reasonable penalties for breaking reasonable non-disclosure agreements may often be imposed since the person has agreed to the penalty through signing the agreement, provided that appropriate safeguards are met.) Freedom of speech is a necessary component of any democratic society. Information is equivalent to an integer or a binary sequence that encodes information. Thus, information is logically separate from claims about information. False claims are not (at least not always) constitutionally protected.

The right to receive information includes the right to view the information in visual form. For the blind, an analogue of visual image is high-resolution tactile stimulation. This right is necessary due to the limitation of typical human cognitive skills. It is very difficult to fully appreciate a painting just by reading its verbal description or by viewing a binary sequence that encodes the full picture. Some argue that conceivably, some visual pattern will directly cause fatal brain hemorrhage or some other such severe harm. However, the right to view information in visual form should still be construed categorically since

It is very unlikely such harmful pictures actually exist.
Given the nature of the human brain, it is difficult to separate harm of understanding of the picture from harm that occurs independent of the understanding. In both cases, feelings can cause physical distress, and the government must not be permitted to censor visual display of a picture based on harm from its understanding. Thus, misery (and even suicide or physical illness) from falling in love based on a picture cannot be grounds to prohibit its visual display.
Categorical protection gives security and freedom that a partial protection lacks.

The third prohibition is invalid since the videotaping does no harm except through recording of information. To protect freedom of speech, the government is prohibited from arbitrarily suppressing information gathering. Thus, videotaping may not be prohibited unless an information source is privileged. However, a person is entitled to ownership of his or her body, and that right includes allowing collection of information about the body. This is particularly true for videotaping since it records only those pieces of information that are available anyway--the benefit of videotaping over remembering and telling is rather the easiness, reliability, and completeness of the recording.

The fourth prohibition is invalid since it serves no legitimate governmental purpose. The fact that the activity takes publicly is irrelevant if there is no overriding danger of unwilling persons being offended in a visceral way. Some amount and risk of visual offensiveness must be tolerated to protect fundamental rights. The government's sole interest is visual expressiveness of the act, and therefore the act receives substantial protection from the freedom of speech.

The fifth prohibition violates the right to privacy. The right to privacy is necessary to protect against discrimination by private people or misguided governmental officials. For example, by keeping sex private, a person may be protected from being fired from his or her job.

The sixth prohibition is invalid since fundamental rights may not be violated by any authority. Parental consent cannot be required for having safe consensual sex.

The right to manufacture, sell, and use condoms (consistent with general laws about business, safety, and manufacturing) is fundamental since a ban on condoms would be arbitrary but for the impermissible governmental interest in suppressing sex. A general ban on sex toys is similarly invalid.

The second prohibition is a particularly difficult one to analyze, and is the subject of the next section.

Freedom from Physical Restraint

The nature and scope of freedom from physical restraint.

Although freedom of communication is at the center of liberty, biological humans are more than just communicating entities. They have bodies, which are essential for survival, and thus protected through fundamental rights. Even if the issues of health are set aside, governmental control of human bodies would amount to a power too great and potential for coercion too strong to be acceptable. Thus, freedom to control one's body is (subject to certain restrictions) fundamental. This control implies freedom from arbitrary physical restraint, such as the right (again, with restrictions) not to have one's hands tied behind the back. The core scope of freedom from physical restraint is the right to choose the location and position of the body and its parts, both the location in itself, and the location relative to other people. This right (as explained below) in turn implies a right to engage in private physically safe consensual physical interaction.

However, while fundamental, physical freedom of the body is by itself too broad to be granted as an absolute right. The resolution to this dilemma is to analyze potential government interests and their effect on the liberty to determine the permissible legal grounds for restraint. Then, within the scope of these grounds, but not outside of them, governmental interests are balanced against the liberty of the person. The resolution is discussed below.

One legitimate interest is to prevent harm to other people. The harm need not be physical harm; for example (in some cases) unwanted sensory input can be prohibited. However, the relationship to harm must be sufficiently direct. For example, the government may not restrain person A because B threatens to kill C (or B) if A is not restrained.

The government also has an interest in protecting a person from causing physical harm to himself or herself, and it may (in some cases) restrain the person accordingly. This power is necessary to prevent victims from being coerced or deceived into committing suicide. However, the restrictions must be narrowly tailored. For example, when an activity is unsafe but for acceptable safety equipment (such as condoms), the government may not overreact and prohibit both the activity (on safety grounds) and the equipment since a more narrowly tailored regulation would be to require the equipment to be used. Moreover, if activity is protected, the government may not indirectly deter it by prohibiting the safety equipment (that would have been clearly legal but for the deterrence interest). If the danger is from a (human) third party, the government may (sometimes) restrict the person's location with respect to the third party (ex. prevent a meeting if the person is likely to be killed) and require other safety measures, but the government may not prohibit conduct merely because the third party is opposed to it, even in cases of clear and present danger (for example, A may not be prohibited from having sex with B even if C is likely to kill A because of the sex provided that the sex does not make it physically easier for C to kill A).

Especially with regard to children, the government -- in combination with parents/guardians -- has an interest that much (but not all) of the person's time is spent valuably (for example, for education). In pursuit of this interest, a reasonable limitation may sometimes be imposed on the timing and duration of interactions so as not to displace other valuable activities.

A restriction of interactions with other people as a natural consequence of incarceration or analogous punishment may also be imposed. However, the consequence must be a natural one. For example, in the absence of a physical danger, the government may not prohibit back massage as a condition of probation. Restraint to a certain body position (such as having hands tied) may not be used as punishment (as opposed to a reasonable restraint) because of unacceptable danger of cruelty and coercion.

The physical freedom includes a liberty interest in tools that enable the freedom. For example, the government may not prohibit walking canes to discourage the weak from walking, nor may the government prohibit sex toys to discourage sex.

Also, the government interests must be balanced against the significance of the restraint imposed. Safety regulations on sexual activity (ordinarily) must not be arbitrarily severe compared to generally applicable regulations (such as safety regulations in sports).

Human interactions are within the literal scope of freedom from physical restraint. Human interaction that goes beyond communication is central to the lives of biological humans. In consensual interactions, in so far as a certain movement of person B is intended by A, then with respect to harm to A, it is qualitatively similar to that movement being done by A. Thus, the government may not ordinarily prohibit the movement of B on the ground of harm to A beyond the government's capacity to prohibit A's movement on the ground of self-harm. (However, at least with respect to the policy, there are exceptions. For example prohibiting killing on request while permitting suicide is reasonable because it helps to ensure that the intent to kill/die comes from the victim.)

While physical harm provides a legal limitation on the freedom from physical restraint, consensual mental harm does not. The notion of mental harm is too amorphous and its scope too broad for the freedom from physical restraint to receive needed protection if there is a psychological harm exception to the freedom. While physical harm is clear, even profound mental changes can easily be morally unclear. While following certain rules prevents physical harm, the sources of mental harm are endless. Finally, mental harm comes essentially from thoughts, which are protected by the freedom of thought and thus outside of government regulation.

Appraisal of psychological consequences may not be required

Nor may the government require here an appraisal of the psychological consequences. Freedom generally implies freedom to act irrationally. The power to require an appraisal of certain consequences implies a power to suppress based on those consequences. It is one thing to require that certain (easily available) information be provided, but appraisal requires more. The requirement of appraisal implies a possible prohibition on the conduct if (1) the person does not understand the consequences stated, or (2) the person unreasonably disbelieves the stated consequences, or (3) the person is unreasonable in producing a decision based on these consequences.

These requirements are so flexible and open-ended that a hypothetical society of hyperintelligent beings could easily construe them so strictly as to effectively prohibit ordinary humans on Earth from giving informed consent to anything serious. For example, understanding the consequences may require an ability to research foreseeable consequences, as well as sufficient intelligence, linguistic ability, and background knowledge to understand the text. Properly reaching a decision may require integrating the moral value function over the space of possible consequences--something that few ordinary humans actually do.

In addition, the notion of being unreasonable is sufficiently ephemeral so as to permit the judges (even judges in advanced societies) to classify many true beliefs as unreasonable. For example, in a purely atheist society, evangelical Christianity may be misdiagnosed as schizophrenia (in particular, as bizarre delusions that cause significant mental distress).

Moreover, if the government could prohibit an action because of inability to understand the consequences, then presumably the government could prohibit the action when the consequences are unknown since in both cases, the person makes the decision without understanding the likely consequences.

Finally, psychological consequences are exceptionally difficult to predict, understand, and appraise, thus magnifying the danger of requiring informed consent to psychological harm. Informed consent is best described not in binary terms but as a matter of degree. The above is not intended to disparage the ordinary use of informed consent to balance interests, but merely its use as a qualification on a categorical right. The degree to which the consent is informed is important, for example, with regard to elective surgery.

Mental harm and physical harm

Finally, we address attempts to characterize psychological consequences as physical ones, thereby obviating the right to be touched in a psychologically harmful way. It is argued that all mental processes are physical processes in the brain and that therefore all psychological harm is brain damage. However, there is a qualitative difference between affecting brain through a physical injury, and affecting the brain through consensual sensory input. The government has a broad authority to regulate the former, but only a narrow authority to regulate the later. The difference is the mechanism by which the brain is affected. Moreover, while brain trauma can easily be characterized as harmful, the effect of sensory input is much more subtle and whether it is harmful or beneficial is usually a value judgment, not a medical one.

I do not believe that the right to choose sensory input is categorical. For example, the government may prohibit intentional self-inducement of brain seizures through flashing lights. However, such authority must be construed in a very narrow way. First the harm must be an inherent neurological harm and not a consequence of the person's or society's appraisal of the feelings or behaviors. Second, the government bears the burden of proving that the harm is inherent neurological harm. Third, even if the above conditions are met, the governmental action is subject to strict scrutiny review with respect to this harm. (Note: If technology creates new and qualitatively different types of sensory input, the government may have a broader authority with respect to these new types of input.) These conditions are necessary to deny governmental authority to prohibit on the basis of psychological harm. The burden of proof requirement is somewhat analogous to the requirement that a person must be proved guilty before being punished for a crime.

I am not aware of any case of consensual touching (with no direct physical harm) with normal persons where these conditions are met. Certainly, daily sexual stimulation to orgasm does not constitute such harm even if the orgasm is unusually powerful and even if the subject is a young child. (A conceivable exception is the presence of certain rare brain conditions; however, having a level of sexual desire comparable to that of a normal adolescent does not constitute such a condition.) Psychologists generally agree that masturbation in children is not inherently harmful to the brain (an exception is psychologists with a religious agenda). Millions of years of evolution have ensured that affectionate touch has a nurturing value, and that masturbation is not harmful. Moreover, the difference between self-massage of genitals and such massage (including oral stimulation) by an adult is primarily a mental one. (At the least, there is no proof of inherent neurological harm arising from the physical differences in the mechanism of touching.) Thus, guilt, anger, shame, powerlessness, and other such alleged dangers of consensual adult-child sex arise because of thoughts about the feelings rather than through involuntary low-level reactions to the signals emitted by the sensory neurons. Therefore, these consequences do not deprive the act of its constitutional protection.

An example of protected action

To illustrate the extent of the fundamental rights, here is an example of a protected action. A man performs oral sex on an ordinary seven year old boy about once a day. Sometimes, the boy performs oral sex on the man. Sometimes the man massages and penetrates the boy's anus with a lubricated finger. There is no unacceptable physical risk. The boy agrees to the sex because it feels good and recklessly disregards (or just does not understand) the usual warnings about possible psychological harm from adult-child sex. The parents of the boy object to the sex, but the boy chooses to do it anyway.

The example is deliberately sexual and involves a child since the conflict between fundamental rights and current practice is greatest in sexual behavior, particularly with respect to children.
Penetration is included in the right of relative positioning of one body relative to another.
The interaction would be protected even if the adult is the child's parent or caretaker.
The interaction would be protected even if there are additional (consenting) persons involved.
The interaction would be protected even if the boy had orgasms.
Videotaping of the activity would be protected if the boy agrees to it and understands the general nature of videotaping. An ordinary 7 year old is clearly capable of that. Specific understanding of the likely consequences of videotaping cannot be required.
Fundamental rights are (predominantly) rights to make choices. Full exercise of the freedom from arbitrary physical restraint requires a (conscious) choice to act in that way. There is a wide disagreement between people on the point at which the human organism (or its soul) becomes sentient, or starts to make choices, or even about the nature of human choices. I will not address the disagreement here other than to state the following: Most children are fully conscious and are capable of making genuine choices before their seventh birthday. While 7-year old children may understand less than adults, they are not living in a non-sentient or in a dreamlike state. Also, one's consistent inclination to choose in a certain way merely indicates a preference and does not make the choice less genuine. In the example, the choice of the boy to have sex can be inferred from the clear appearance of such choice.

Consent to orgasm

We conclude this essay on a more immediately entertaining topic. So positive is the experience of orgasm, that the issue of consent to orgasm is often overlooked. A ban on orgasm would be silly for practical reasons, but here we are concerned with orgasm as a fundamental right.

Orgasm presents special issues of consent because

Orgasm is involuntary, and thus it will continue regardless of the will of the person.
The feelings during the orgasm may be extremely intense, and conscious thought may be suppressed during orgasm.
For the first orgasm, the person may not know how it will feel.

However, the presence of a significant consequence does not automatically negate the fundamental right. Instead, a balancing of the interests must be performed. For the combination of the following reasons, an ordinary orgasm (including the first orgasm) is constitutionally protected:

Although orgasm is involuntary, the physical stimulation as an act is voluntary. Orgasm is not under control of another person and is thus different from forced sex. Moreover, withdrawal of consent during the orgasm will dramatically diminish the usual mental impact of the orgasm. Suppression of conscious thought during orgasm is to a large extent a voluntary consequence as the person concentrates on the feelings. Additionally, since orgasm often takes place in a relaxed environment (such as in bed), a person's reduced responsiveness to the environment is fine. After all, most people spend hours sleeping in bed.
Orgasm is a biologically natural and ordinarily a psychologically harmless event.
The intensity of the feelings is compensated for by the short duration of the orgasm.
For a majority of people, orgasm is an overwhelmingly positive experience.
The naturalness and usefulness of the orgasm as the sexual climax, and the pleasure and intensity of the feelings magnifies the person's interests in having an orgasm.
A person who previously had an orgasm can ordinarily appraise the feelings to decide whether to have an orgasm. This appraisal overrides the governmental interests against the orgasm.
For the first orgasm, the issue of consent is exacerbated because the person may not know how it will feel. However, the person has a special interest in having the first orgasm because (1) by having an orgasm, the person will learn how it will feel, (2) the first orgasm is necessary for any subsequent orgasms. Also, there is no unacceptable risk of unbearable pain.
The above analysis of orgasm is confirmed by the practically complete lack of legislation that ban orgasm in particular (as opposed to sexual stimulation in general).

Human Sexuality: Personal Reflection Research Paper

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Introduction

Personal reflection, critical thinking and value systems in sexual decisions, effect of environment and historical perspective on my sexuality, gender identity, attraction and love, reference list.

Even though it might not be explicitly expressed, sexuality is very important to every person. Whether a person is old or young, man or woman or from any background, sexuality affects every aspects of their lives. The field of sexuality has always attracted many scholars who try to explain issues that surround human sexuality; however, this topic is not openly discussed leading many people to be ignorant of sexuality issues. It is commonly agreed that sexual drive is one on of the major drives that influence our decisions. In fact, sexual drives come next to basic drives such as eating and sleep. Due to this, knowledge on human sexuality is very important. It allows one to understand experiences and objective decisions on sexual life. To me, the course on human sexuality was eye-opening; allowing me to understand some of the things that I assumed to be obvious.

Before this course, issues on sexuality did seem important. I took the issues as only worth of being experienced but not to be discussed. I took sexual identity and feeling as given but not based on rational decision s. My sexual decisions were not well evaluated; I relied on impulsive emotions to make such decisions. I did not have a plane of reference to gauge my sexual decisions. Today, as I reflect on my earlier experience I see the course as liberating for giving me knowledge to base my sexual decisions on. Gender and sexuality seemed synonymous and seemed to have just been acquired and which a person had no influence. Today I can reflect on influence of these forces to my identity and all other aspects of my life. Love and attraction were just clichés whose meaning seemed to be obvious. Issues relationship and romance seemed to be obvious and negative experiences from relationships seemed to be just an element of bad lack (Nevid, J.S. et al., 2005, 67). Today, due to the principle acquired in the course, I have understanding of these issues and also on their influence on my relationship. Today I understand how love intimacy start, develop and how they can be maintained. Today the forces of sexuality do not just influence me without knowledge but I understand every element of sexual experience and mould them to the right direction.

I have always appreciated the use of value system making ethical decisions. However, I could not have imagined how critical thinking could be applied in making sexual decisions. I considered decisions made on sexuality to be based on emotions and feelings that could not be based to reason. I also saw value systems and sexuality to be incompatible and in competition. The course has brought light to this issue. I have come to realize that value systems and critical thinking are compatible with sexual decisions and in fact, should always be used in such decisions. Indeed, sex is a need; however expressing one’s sexuality is based on personal choice (Diamond, J., 1997, p87). The decisions are not just based by the biological nature of human but rational decisions should be used. Before, I did not apply a lot of thoughts to my decisions but left them to instinct of conscience. I did not closely relate ethics with sexuality only basing May decisions on my conscience.

My value system is very important in my decisions on sexuality. They give me a base in which to arrive at my decisions and to evaluate sexual drives. I strongly believe in ethical action. It evaluates the ethical consequence of any actions and believes that any actions should be based on rational decisions. In sexuality, ethics are also important. Critical thinking acquired in the course has allowed me to evaluate the ethical consequences of my sexual drive (Craig, A. H., 2008, p99).

Every individual has value systems that influence their decisions. From the course, I have been able to appreciate value systems of other people. Knowledge of their value system helps me to understand the rationale through which they make sexual decisions. This however does not make me to be swayed but have helped me to respect my value systems. Also this knowledge has allowed me to be tolerant of other people’s sexual decisions. Although I may strongly believe in sex as reserved for marriage, I have no problem with other people who hold contrary opinions. I am now able to respect their decisions but at the same time respect my decision ns even more. In making sexual decisions, I now have very strong tools: value systems and critical thinking.

Romantic novels, magazines and movies were the main base of my knowledge on sexuality. Critical thinking has given me a tool to critically analyze the ideas presented before taking applying them. Critical thinking has given me the skills to ask questions that would lead to a better conclusion.

Environment and history has great influence on the perspective that we have on sexuality. Each person live in a certain environment interacting with other people in the environment, thus one have to be influenced by the perspectives held by other people. The value systems, culture and other aspects of life are acquired from the environment. Historical perspective e in very important in analyzing the perspective on sexuality held today (Nevid, J.S. et al., 2005, p78). To me, evaluating historical perspective helps to analyze whether the perspective on sexuality that I hold today is really mine or acquired other perspectives. Review of historical perspective help to appreciate the influence of culture and religion to attitude on sexuality and sexual behavior (Sharon, M. V. & Simon, L., 2006, p123). As the course progressed, influence of various cultures to my sexuality was evaluated. This enabled me to identify the cultures that have influenced my perspective on sexuality in a bigger way.

As I evaluate the influence of historical perspective and environment on my sexuality, I have realized that Christianity has great influence on me. My Christian parent made it clear that sex is sacred and reserved for marriage. My parents discouraged premarital sex mostly due to their Christian background. The perspective on sexuality has passed down though sermon, scripture and other Christian teachings. For example Paul advised those who could to life as celibate, Augustine also taught that indulgence in carnal pleasure was a great hindrance to spirituality (Nevid, J.S. et al., 2005, p56). Other sexual practice such as anal, oral and masturbation is viewed as sinful. Today I can appreciate the influence of environment and historical perspective but I am able to make my own stand on my sexuality.

Discussion on historical perspective and environment has made me to appreciate my sexual identity. Gender identity is very important and it entails the recognition f a person as either a male or a female. As I reflect on my life, I realize that I developed my gender identity depending on how I was treated (Craig, A. H., 2008, p33). The type of cloth worn to me by my parents had great influence to my gender. The type of games that I was encouraged to participate and the toys bought to me said very much on my gender. The kind of chore given to me during my earlier life suggested strongly on my gender. Remark made by my parent on me suggested the kind of life that I was supposed to live and also to my gender. As I now realize, the gender identity from my parent and environment is through the learning theory (Abramson, P. R., & Pinkerton, S. D., 1995, p113). This theory suggest that children acquire their gender identity by observing their parent, siblings, duties assigned, and perspective created in the media to gain their gender identity.

For a long time now, I have been in relationships. If I compare the relationships to a game, then love and attraction were the moist important element in the game. I have fallen in love in various time; engaging in intimacy and various decisions on relationship. From the course, I can now appreciate the opposite attraction as postulated by science. Indeed I am attracted to individuals of opposite sex who share so me qualities with me and that we have common interest.

Sexuality is a very important element in human lives. Sexuality dictates our relationships, career and other decision in our lives. It is mostly assumed that our sexuality has nothing to do with science but the course suggested otherwise. The skill of critical thinking acquired in the course in very important in making decision on sexuality. Knowledge on attraction and love, influence of environment and historical perspectives on our sexuality is important in appreciating our sexuality and making decisions on the same.

Abramson, P. R., & Pinkerton, S. D. (1995). With Pleasure: Thoughts on the Nature of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Craig, A. H. (2008). Human sexuality: personality and social psychological perspectives . Philadelphia: Sage Publication.

Diamond, J. (1997). Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: BasicBooks.

Nevid, J.S. et al. (2005). Human Sexuality in a world of diversity. New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Sharon, M. V. & Simon, L. (2006). Human sexuality . New York: Sinauer Associates.

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“History of Sexuality” by Michael Foucault
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Relevance of Gender to Global Justice: Gender, Sexuality, Nationality and Cultural Variations in Concepts of Justice
Gender Identity: Definitions, Factors, Comparison
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Yet despite the scientific uncertainty, drastic interventions are prescribed and delivered to patients identifying, or identified, as transgender. This is especially troubling when the patients receiving these interventions are children. We read popular reports about plans for medical and surgical interventions for many prepubescent children, some as young as six, and other therapeutic approaches undertaken for children as young as two. We suggest that no one can determine the gender identity of a two-year-old. We have reservations about how well scientists understand what it even means for a child to have a developed sense of his or her gender, but notwithstanding that issue, we are deeply alarmed that these therapies, treatments, and surgeries seem disproportionate to the severity of the distress being experienced by these young people, and are at any rate premature since the majority of children who identify as the gender opposite their biological sex will not continue to do so as adults. Moreover, there is a lack of reliable studies on the long-term effects of these interventions. We strongly urge caution in this regard.

We have sought in this report to present a complex body of research in a way that will be intelligible to a wide audience of both experts and lay readers alike. Everyone — scientists and physicians, parents and teachers, lawmakers and activists — deserves access to accurate information about sexual orientation and gender identity. While there is much controversy surrounding how our society treats its LGBT members, no political or cultural views should discourage us from understanding the related clinical and public health issues and helping people suffering from mental health problems that may be connected to their sexuality.

Our work suggests some avenues for future research in the biological, psychological, and social sciences. More research is needed to uncover the causes of the increased rates of mental health problems in the LGBT subpopulations. The social stress model that dominates research on this issue requires improvement, and most likely needs to be supplemented by other hypotheses. Additionally, the ways in which sexual desires develop and change across one’s lifespan remain, for the most part, inadequately understood. Empirical research may help us to better understand relationships, sexual health, and mental health.

Critiquing and challenging both parts of the “born that way” paradigm — both the notion that sexual orientation is biologically determined and fixed, and the related notion that there is a fixed gender independent of biological sex — enables us to ask important questions about sexuality, sexual behaviors, gender, and individual and social goods in a different light. Some of these questions lie outside the scope of this work, but those that we have examined suggest that there is a great chasm between much of the public discourse and what science has shown.

Thoughtful scientific research and careful, circumspect interpretation of its results can advance our understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity. There is still much work to be done and many unanswered questions. We have attempted to synthesize and describe a complex body of scientific research related to some of these themes. We hope that this report contributes to the ongoing public conversation regarding human sexuality and identity. We anticipate that this report may elicit spirited responses, and we welcome them.

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Sex and Sexuality

Sex has received little attention in the history of western philosophy, and what it did receive was not good: Plato denigrated it, arguing that it should lead to something higher or better ( Phaedrus , Symposium ), Aristotle barely mentioned it, and Christian philosophers condemned it: Augustine argued that its pleasures are dangerous in mastering us, and allowed sex only for procreation ( City of God , bk 14; On Marriage and Concupiscence ), while Aquinas confined its permissibility to conjugal, procreative acts ( Summa contra gentiles III.2; Summa theologica IIa–IIae). Immanuel Kant ( Lectures on Ethics ) considered it the only inclination that cannot satisfy the Categorical Imperative, and Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that sexual desire aims to capture the other’s freedom (1943: pt. III, ch. 3]). The Marquis de Sade (a philosopher of sorts) went to the opposite extreme, celebrating all types of sexual acts, including rape (1785; 1791; 1795). Only during contemporary times do philosophers, beginning with Bertrand Russell (1929) and including Sigmund Freud (1905), think of sex as generally good (see Soble 2006b and 2008, ch. 2 for this history; Belliotti 1993, Pt. I).

The philosophy of sex and sexuality includes conceptual issues about what sexual desire, sexual activity, and sexual pleasure are, and which of the three has conceptual priority. It also addresses the concepts of sexual orientation, preferences, and identity. Normative issues are paramount, too, especially the morality of sexual activity and sexual desire, where consent and objectification have taken pride of place. Normative issues also include whether some of the moral questions that confront sex are unique to sex, the nonmoral goodness (and badness) of sex, sexual perversion, and the value of sex.

1.1 Sexual Desire

1.2 sexual activity, 1.3 sexual pleasure, 1.4 sexual preferences and orientation, 1.5 sexual identity, 2.1 good and bad sex, 2.2.1 consent, 2.2.2 objectification, 2.3 sexual perversion, 2.4 sex and technology, 3. the value of sex, abbreviations for classic anthologies, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries, 1. conceptual issues.

The concept of sexual desire is a central concept in the philosophy of sex, one connected to other central concepts, especially sexual attraction, sexual pleasure, sexual motives, arousal, and sexual activity (all of which make an appearance in the discussion below). It refers to a biological capacity that human beings have to be attracted to others and to seek sexual pleasure and activity, and it refers to specific instances of desiring specific people or activities (when, e.g., X experiences sexual desire for Y ).

Five broad issues are prominent regarding sexual desire: (1) whether it is merely a biological drive, an intentional mental state, or both; (2) how it should be defined; (3) whether it is benign or malignant; (4) whether acting on it should be morally restricted to particular contexts; and (5) whether it admits of perverted forms. (Section 2 discusses (4) and (5).)

Definitions of sexual desire in terms of sexual pleasure seem to understand sexual desire as basically an appetite. On one such definition, “sexual desire” is “desire for contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces” (Goldman 1977, 268) or “sexual desire” is “the desire for certain bodily pleasures” (Primoratz 1999, 46; see also Halwani 2020; Soble 1991, 139–151 and 1996, 83). Thus, if X feels sexual desire, then X desires the touch of another person’s ( Y ’s) body and the sexual pleasure derived through that touch. An alternative definition avoids the conceptual involvement of another person, understanding sexual desire instead as desire for sexual pleasures, period. This accommodates cases in which the desire is not for the touch of another’s body: some cases of masturbation, voyeurism, and exhibitionism, for example.

These views have in common the idea that sexual desire is desire for brute bodily pleasures, possibly implying that sexual desire is merely a biological appetite. If so, they face the objection that they mischaracterize the nature of sexual desire, which should instead be understood as intentional through and through (Morgan 2003b). That is, whenever X sexually desires someone or something, X does so under a description: X desires Y because something about Y appeals to X . Even when X desires anonymous sex, X desires “the pleasure of anonymous sex” (Morgan 2003b). On the intentional view, sexual desire is no mere appetite but thoroughly infused with meaning.

Although the intentional view need not insist on the conceptual requirement of another person, its most common instantiation is the idea that sexual desire is interpersonal—that the agent’s sexual desire always seeks fulfillment with another person, or at least always ought to seek fulfillment with another person. Interpersonal sexual desire involves the “marshalling and directing of animal urges toward an interpersonal aim, and an interpersonal fulfillment” (Scruton 1986, 289) and might be thought to involve multiple levels of awareness: X desires Y , desires that Y desire X , desires to be aroused by Y ’s desire of X , and so on (Nagel 1969). Some have thought it should, additionally, be directed to love (Scruton 1986: 339; cf. Giles 2008, ch. 3). A normative view that sexual desire ought to be interpersonal or interpersonal in a specific way might be rejected as an account of what sexual desire is. To be an account of what sexual desire is, an interpersonal account would need to articulate a normatively neutral interpersonal view.

The pleasure view of sexual desire, however, is not committed to understanding sexual desire as mere appetite. For example, if X wants to masturbate, X is not being led by blind instinct; X can be thinking, “I look forward to enjoying the sensations of rubbing my clitoris with my favorite vibrator as I fantasize about having sex with my neighbor.” In other words, “sexual desire can be focused or selective at the same time as being physical” (Goldman 1977, 279; Halwani 2020, 124–127).

The intentional view is plausible in that sexual desire can be quite complex and that its complexity is not captured well (or at all) by the pleasure view, given that human mentality infuses our most basic urges and appetites. But it depends on what we want the pleasure view to accomplish. If it is meant to capture the “essence” of sexual desire, the two are compatible with each other; if it is meant as a detailed description of the depth, complexity, and variety of the phenomenon, the pleasure view falls short. Given that definitions are not usually meant to convey the complexity of what they define, we should not expect a definition of sexual desire to be a full-blown theory of it, and we can agree that sexual desire is a complex phenomenon.

This does not mean that the pleasure view of sexual desire is correct, only that its aim or strategy need not be misguided. Indeed, depending on how it is stated, the pleasure view might be wrong. For example, if it conceptually ties sexual desire to sexual pleasure obtained through the touch of another person , sexual desire would then be necessarily interpersonal and might implausibly render many sexual desires as nonsexual, such as some masturbatory desires, voyeurism, and exhibitionism. Furthermore, the touch of another person ’s body implies that zoophiliac desires are nonsexual. Necrophiliac desires would also be nonsexual if “person” refers to a living person. A non-interpersonal definition—for sexual pleasures, period—avoids such implications (Soble 1991 and later editions of the essay, the last being 2013a; Halwani 2018b, ch. 5).

Even a non-interpersonal pleasure view might face difficulties stemming from understanding desire in terms of what it seeks (sexual pleasure). Calling the approach that defines sexual desire in terms of what it seeks the “object-based strategy,” Rockney Jacobsen raises difficulties with it (2017, 30). One is defining “sexual pleasure” (see below), which the object-based strategy needs to do to be complete (2017, 33). Second, Jacobsen rejects the idea that all sexual desires are for sexual pleasure, giving the example of a couple who has sex to have a baby, not for pleasure (2017, 33; see also 1993). Third, our sexual partners would in principle be dispensable if there are other ways to attain the pleasure. This third objection is not moral—that we use our sexual partners as mere instruments—but ontological: sexual pleasure cannot be the only or common goal to all sexual desires otherwise the agent would be indifferent between the available ways of attaining sexual pleasure. Since this is not true, Jacobsen concludes that sexual desire is not solely for sexual pleasure (2017, 33).

Jacobsen prefers the “feature-based” approach, which defines “sexual desire” in terms of “sexual arousal,” which is the state of being turned on (and that we often find ourselves in), manifested in erections, lubricated vaginas, flushed faces, and “tingling earlobes” (Jacobsen 2017, 35; cf. Shaffer 1978; see also Jacobsen 2006, 226–227). So when X sexually desires something (another person, an object, or an activity), X desires it because it has a feature that X expects to affect X ’s sexual arousal (Jacobsen 2017, 36). The feature-based strategy is supposed to be superior to the object-based one because it does not face the above-mentioned three difficulties.

The feature-based view, however, might pass the buck: either “sexual arousal” means what we usually mean by “sexual desire” (the examples of sexual arousal—erections, lubricated vaginas—might serve equally well as examples of sexual desire), or it does not. If the former, we would still need a definition of “sexual arousal,” much like we needed a definition of “sexual desire.” If the latter, we would need an account of what “sexual arousal” is, because if it is not the same as sexual desire, what exactly is it? Referring back to erections and lubricated vaginas will not do, because we may ask, “Why aren’t they states of sexual desire ?” So defining “sexual desire” in terms of sexual arousal might be convincing only if we can understand “sexual arousal” independently of “sexual desire” (Halwani 2018b, 170–171).

Jacobsen’s example of the couple having sex to procreate merits discussion. Jacobsen intends it to be a case of sexual desire but not for sexual pleasure. However, the example is under-described because the desire can be understood as the nonsexual desire for procreation. To better address such cases, it is useful to distinguish sexual motives—motives to engage in an activity to experience sexual pleasure—from nonsexual motives, such as to conceive a child, to make someone jealous, to exact revenge, and to pass the time. One can argue that if the couple in question indeed experience sexual desire for the act or each other, their nonsexual motive for procreation does not replace their sexual motive and can be added to it. Although people can have sex from purely nonsexual motives (e.g., many cases of sex work), once we postulate the presence of sexual desire, the motive of seeking sexual pleasure is present. Motives for having sex, like motives for nonsexual activities, can be mixed, involving sexual and nonsexual ones.

One reason for the insistence on the sexual motive in understanding sexual desire is that if sexual desire is partly a biological or physiological state (even if in human beings it is also a mental, intentional state), it exerts its pull even with the presence of nonsexual motives (see Dent 1984, ch. 2; see also Hamilton 2001, ch. 9; Webber 2009). Another reason is that without the motive for sexual pleasure, the idea of sexual desire becomes so broad as to refer to any desire for sexual activity, with the danger of obfuscation: we would have to understand a sex worker’s desire for sex with a client as sexual, whereas in fact it is solely financial.

Sexual desire’s pull supports pessimist views of sexual desire. Although pessimism and optimism have moral implications – some of which are addressed below – they are based in how pessimism and optimism perceive the nature of sexual desire. Pessimists consider sexual desire morally dangerous and threatening to our rationality (including Christian philosophers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Kant, and Schopenhauer [1859, ch. 44], and, among contemporary philosophers of sex Alan Soble, whose views in “Sexual Use” [2013b; 2017b; 2022c] imply with some certainty that he is also a pessimist). Optimism considers sexual desire as generally benign and as bringing people together (it commands a large majority of the philosophers of sex, including Bertrand Russell 1929, passim ; Irving Singer 2001, passim ; and Martha Nussbaum 1995, 1998), though it recognizes that it can be morally problematic (Morgan 2003a). The issue, then, between pessimism and optimism concerns not whether sexual desire can be morally problematic, but whether it is so by its nature (Soble, with Halwani 2017, 5–8).

Sexual pessimism can be deep. Jean-Paul Sartre’s version is that sexual desire aims to capture a person in their entirety through their body. To do so, the agent must also make him or herself pure flesh by allowing sexual desire to “clog” their consciousness (Sartre 1943 [1956, 504]). Thus, “I make myself flesh in the presence of the Other in order to appropriate the Other’s flesh” (Sartre 1943 [1956, 506]). Another version of deep pessimism is Kant’s, which considers sexual desire to be for the sexual parts or body of another person, not the person’s “work and services” (Kant 1930 [1963, 163]; see also 1797, 6:424–6:427; see below the moral implications of this view). Sexual desire sets aside another’s humanity and targets their flesh. This does not mean that in desiring Y , X would be as happy with Y ’s corpse or with Y unconscious as with Y alive (as Shrage and Stewart [2015, 6] claim); for X , Y -dead is not at all equally preferable to Y -alive. It also does not mean that during sex X treats Y as an object with no desires or interests of Y ’s own. Instead, X treats those interests as merely instrumental to the satisfaction of X ’s sexual desires (Halwani 2018b, ch. 8; Soble 2013b, 2017b; 2022c; see also Herman 1993; O’Neill 1985; Papadaki 2007). A phenomenology of sexual desire seems to support the above views, according to which in sexually desiring Y , X is attracted to the bodily, physical attributes of Y .

Sexual optimists claim that although sexual desire can be morally dangerous, it need not be and is usually not. They agree that it focuses on the body but do not see this as a problem. Sex intimately and pleasurably brings two (or more) people together. It is a force for good, establishing trust and strengthening human bonds. Unlike appetites,

sexual interest … [is] … an interpersonal sensitivity, one that enables us to delight in the mind and character of other persons as well as in their flesh… [S]ex may be seen as an instinctual agency by which persons respond to one another through their bodies. (Singer 1984, 382; see also Goldman 1977, 282–283; Russell 1929 [1970, passim ])

For the optimist, Soble notes, “Sexual pleasure is … a valuable thing in its own right, something to be cherished and promoted because it has intrinsic and not merely instrumental value” (Soble, with Halwani 2017, 8).

It is difficult to define “sexual act” or “sexual activity.” Various proposed criteria face difficulties (Soble 2006a). This is especially so when closely related concepts (e.g., “having sex”) do not have the same extension. In ordinary language use, and according to some studies, people distinguish between having sex and sexual activity; they count many activities as sexual but not as having sex, such as solo masturbation, cyber-sex, and even oral sex (Soble 2006a,: 15–16). Solo masturbation counts as sexual activity and as a sexual act, but not as having sex, though Soble has recently argued that solo masturbation is on a continuum with other forms of sexual activity, both physically and psychologically (2022a). There are a few criteria to define “sexual activity” (Soble 2006a). One criterion is reproduction: for an activity to be sexual it has to be or aim at being reproductive. This faces obvious counter-examples, such as same-sex sexual activities and heterosexual oral and anal sex (Soble 2006a, 18–19). Another criterion is bodily contact: sexual activities are those that involve contact with sexual body parts (though we need to figure out what these parts are). This fails as a sufficient condition (doctors sometimes have to touch patients’ genitals) and as a necessary one (achieving orgasm during a phone-sex chat) (Soble 2006a, 19–20).

Sexual pleasure is a third criterion: “Those activities … are sexual … which give rise to sexual pleasure” (Gray 1978, 191–192). But the production of sexual pleasure is not necessary because many acts do not produce such pleasure; and this criterion conceptually rules out non-pleasurable sex (Soble 2006a, 21–22). It might also not be sufficient: a man might see someone on the street and feel a twinge of sexual pleasure (Soble 1996, 130). The presence of sexual pleasure in this case does not suffice for the man’s experience to be sexual activity (perhaps if the man continues to look the experience becomes a sexual activity because of his intention to keep looking; Soble 1996, 130).

Another criterion is intention, though we need to figure out what the intention is for. One reasonable candidate is “the intention to produce sexual pleasure in oneself or in another.” But this is not necessary: two people who have sexual intercourse to procreate engage in a sexual act. The experience, if any, of sexual pleasure is a by-product of the action (Soble 1996, 132). This criterion is also not sufficient. Suppose that X intends to produce sexual pleasure in Y by “whistling ‘Dixie’,” but what X does is not a sexual act (Soble 2006a, 22).

Another criterion for defining “sexual activity” is sexual desire:

sexual desire is desire for contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces; sexual activity is activity which tends to fulfill such desire of the agent. (Goldman 1977, 268)

A “sexual act” (or “activity”, in Goldman’s terms) is activity “which tends to fulfill” sexual desire.

The definition sounds right: what else is a sexual act if not one that satisfies or “tends to” satisfy sexual desire? But it faces counter-examples. Consider a sex worker performing fellatio on a man: while fellatio fulfills or tends to fulfill the man’s sexual desire, it does not fulfill or tend to fulfill the sex worker’s sexual desire if she does not desire the client (as is often the case). Thus satisfying sexual desire is not necessary for an activity to be sexual. Whether it is sufficient depends on what we mean by “satisfaction” or “fulfillment.” If it means “the desire is no longer felt for the time being” or “the desire is gone,” satisfying sexual desire would not be sufficient. Taking a cold shower, a powerful sleeping pill, or even focusing on something else might get rid of the sexual desire, yet these activities are not sexual. If “satisfying sexual desire” means, “the desire achieves its goal” (which is sexual fulfillment), satisfying sexual desire by a particular activity would be sufficient for that activity to be sexual, but the definition becomes circular. The criterion of sexual desire, then, does not succeed in defining “sexual act”.

By the above criteria, a definition of “sexual activity” is hard to find. One crucial reason might be that what we commonly think is a sexual act does not depend on one criterion: behavior, intentions, contact with specific body parts, etc., play a role depending on the context. This reason motivates a disjunctive definition, according to which an activity is sexual if and only if it is done from a sexual motive, it tends to fulfill sexual desire, it involves contact with the genitalia (or sexual body parts) or one or more of the parties to the activity, or it behaviorally fits paradigmatic cases of sexual activity (this is just one example of a disjunctive definition). Whether such a definition succeeds depends on various factors, such as that each disjunct is itself philosophically unproblematic, the list of disjuncts is exhaustive, and the definition is not too unwieldy to be plausible or useful.

Another reason why a definition of sexual activity is hard to find (and one that might go against a disjunctive definition) is that there are many concepts closely related to each other that nonetheless commonly mean different things. “To have sex” or “to engage in sex” almost always refer to sexual activity with at least one more person, whereas “engaging in a sexual activity” and “having a sexual experience” do not have this reference, and they are not common expressions. Thus, defining these concepts is tricky if we want the definitions to agree with common linguistic usage, or if we rely on such usage to formulate these definitions. More worrisome, if we need to define these concepts for help with practical, moral, and legal issues, the rift between them and common language should give us pause.

“Pleasure” refers to various phenomena: (a) physical sensations, with specific bodily locations (e.g., scratching an itch); (b) enjoyment, as when one takes pleasure in solving a jigsaw puzzle or lying under the sun (enjoyment does not have a specific bodily location, though the same phenomenon can be experienced as sensation and as enjoyment (e.g., lying under the sun); (c) a “pure” feeling that is felt all over but has no specific bodily location, and that need not be focused on a particular activity, such as being elated (Goldman 2016, 88); and (d) an attitude, to be “pleased at something”; the belief that what one is pleased at is good (Goldman 2016, 83–90).

We thus have four types of pleasure: pleasure-as-sensation, pleasure-as-enjoyment, pleasure-as-feeling, and pleasure-as-pro-attitude. All four concepts can be relevant to sex, but the first two are especially important, because each can be a type of sexual pleasure, whereas the third is typically consequent to sexual activity and the fourth is an attitude about sex. (a) The pleasure of orgasm is an obvious example of the first, and (b) enjoying sexual activity is a usual experience that people undergo. (c) One can experience elation because of having had great sex, and (d) one can feel pleased at that (Halwani 2020, 111–122).

Moreover, one or more parties to the act might experience pleasure-as-sensation, yet not enjoy the activity itself ((a) and (b)). One can experience the pleasurable sensations of sex and enjoy the act, yet feel repulsion at the act later and be displeased with oneself at having engaged in the act ((c) and (d)). We can also see how each pleasure has its opposite when it comes to sex: one can feel painful sensations during sex (e.g., anal penetration), one can endure a sexual act (not enjoy it), one can feel nausea at what one has done sexually, and one can have a negative attitude at one’s sexual activity.

Although orgasm does not exhaust the pleasures of sex, there is something to the idea that the pleasure of orgasm is unique. As a sensation, it is unique in the way it feels and in its intensity, though this feeling might differ between men and women, especially since women seem to experience various types of orgasm (Meston et al. 2004, 174–176; but see Wallen and Lloyd 2011, 780–783). Moreover, it contrasts with other sensation-pleasures in its physiological aspects and ability to be produced through genital stimulation. For example, the sensation of having one’s ear licked is not as such a pleasure and depends on whom one thinks is licking it. But the sensation of orgasm is not like this, which makes orgasm a pleasure that cuts across social layers, a bodily sensation unmediated by social meanings or concepts; “the trait of female orgasm [is] a physiological trait or reflex, not a social trait” (Lloyd 2005, 48). Of course its frequency, significance, and meaning vary socially, culturally, and contextually (Blair et al. 2017; Janssen 2007; Mah and Binik 2002). This feature of orgasm might explain how we can speak of sexual desire across times and cultures as a unified phenomenon, even though sexual desires and bodily sensations are socially and linguistically mediated.

If the pleasure of orgasm is unique, why do people usually prefer sex with someone else to masturbating, given that masturbating produces orgasms, often more intense than partnered sex? This shows that orgasm is not the only pleasure sought in sexual activity, not that its pleasure is not unique. Touching, smelling, kissing, and licking, for example, are other goals of sexual desire (Soble 1996, 85–86). We can even claim that people prefer the pleasure of orgasm through the other goals just mentioned.

The discussion of sexual pleasure is important in itself and, as we have seen, for understanding “sexual desire.” For example, according to Igor Primoratz, “sexual desire is sufficiently defined as the desire for certain bodily pleasures, period” (1999, 46). But which bodily pleasures? One answer is pleasure-as-sensation: those “experienced in the sexual parts of the body, i.e., the genitals and other parts that differentiate the sexes” (Primoratz 1999, 46). More generally, and accounting for sexual pleasures not located in the genitals, sexual pleasure

is the sort of bodily pleasure experienced in the sexual parts of the body, or at least related to those parts in that if it is associated with arousal, the arousal occurs in those parts. (Primoratz 1999, 46)

To distinguish a sexual from a nonsexual kiss, we ask which of the two is associated with arousal, and we understand the notion of arousal as essentially linked to the sexual body parts.

Because the above view relies solely on sexual pleasure-as-sensation, it would have to understand the other two types ultimately in terms of pleasure-as-sensation. That is, what makes sexual pleasure-as-enjoyment sexual is its connection to arousal. This implies that “sensory pleasure is more fundamental when it comes to sex” (Goldman 2016, 95).

In most activities, the pleasure and the activity are intertwined—we do not watch a movie and then feel the pleasure. Instead, we enjoy the movie as we watch it. The pleasures here are pleasures-as-enjoyment. Things are different with sex because of pleasure-as-sensation, specifically, orgasm. Sexual pleasure-as-enjoyment supervenes on sexual pleasure-as-sensation, and it often culminates in orgasm, a result that comes at the end of the activity (though the orgasm as an end differs between men and women). We can then see why some prominent philosophers have considered temperance and intemperance to be about bodily appetites satisfied especially through touch (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1118a–1118b).

Sexual pleasures-as-enjoyment and as-feeling might thus be parasitic on sexual pleasures-as-sensations. The butterflies one feels in one’s stomach at the prospect of sex exist because of the expectation of sensual pleasure, and so does enjoying a sexual act. Sexual pleasure, especially as-sensation, stands out as a crucial motivation for having sex, and its concept supplies us with a good way of defining “sexual desire.”

Sexual pleasure need not be the primary motive for sexual activity, and people have sex for various reasons. Cindy Meston and David Buss identify 237 expressed reasons for why people have sex (though in a few cases they count the same reason more than once), including, in addition to sexual pleasure, finding the other person attractive, expressing love, feeling desired by the other, deepening the relationship, and trying new experiences (2007, 480). They are silent on how many of the nonsexual motives are mingled with the motive for sexual pleasure. This question is important because it gets to the issue of how primary the sexual motive is in having sex, given that not being attracted to one’s potential sexual partner, even being repulsed by them, might be powerful enough to trump other reasons for wanting sex (people might not have sex just to exercise, to boost their self-image, etc.).

Sexual orientation is commonly understood as a person’s standing sexual preference for men, women, or both. It is a basic preference, unlike, say, the preference for hair color or buttock size. It is also an organizing preference: other sexual preferences are built upon it (Stein 1999, ch. 2). A foot fetishist is either gay, straight or bisexual, before he is a foot fetishist, though it is an empirical question whether there can be sexual orientations for body parts (or objects) regardless of the gender or sex of the person’s body part (Stein 1999, ch. 2; Wilkerson 2013). It is unclear, however, how to distinguish orientations from mere preferences; saying that the former are basic whereas the latter are not seems to merely reflect common views of the distinction (Dembroff 2016, 12; Stock 2019, 315). Halwani (forthcoming) argues that, given the importance we attach to orientations, it is a necessary condition for a sexual desire to be an orientation that its fulfillment is needed for the well-being of the person with the desire, whereas preferences are not tied to well-being in such strong ways.

Mere sexual preferences vary tremendously, targeting people, objects, activities, and sexual positions, probably because they are a function of the person’s individual history and the available social and cultural options (on this variety, see Love 1992). Some preferences are considered perverted (e.g., coprophilia), some immoral (e.g., pedophilia), and some both. Yet with others it is not so obvious, such as sexual preferences for members of particular races or ethnic groups. Perhaps X ’s preference for Asian women is innocent, on a par with the preference for tall people. But it might also indicate an ethical fault if, say, racially ugly stereotypes inform it (Barn 2022; Halwani 2017b [2022]; Kershnar 2019; Zheng 2016).

Returning to sexual orientation, some philosophers have claimed that its popular conception relies on dubious assumptions (Corvino 2006a; Dembroff 2016).

(1) Is there a good reason to believe that there are only three sexual orientations? Some men are attracted to people with female features from the waist up but male features from the waist down (a penis), thus not easily accommodated by the above three-way division of sexual orientations. It is also unclear whether the many men who are attracted to both young boys and women—this is true of many cultures around the world, past and present—are bisexual. It is also possible that there are age- and species-orientations, such as pedophilia and zoophilia. Such potential orientations threaten to seriously expand the number of sexual orientations (consider that genuine zoophiles—people who have long-standing desires to have sex with nonhuman animals—will have as many sexual orientations as there are different types of animals to which they are attracted (Wilkerson 2013)). Whether we can maintain that there are only three (or two) sexual orientations depends on the answers to these questions and our tolerance for exceptions to the three. It also depends on the reasons for classifying people by sexual orientation (see Andler 2020; Dembroff 2016; Stock 2019).

(2) It is unclear why the gender/sex of the person with the orientation should be a component of the conception of sexual orientation. Under the popular conception, if a formerly straight man is currently a woman (after transitioning), they would now be a lesbian (assuming that their sexual desires for women does not change). But if we omit the person’s own gender from the conception, the person’s sexual orientation remains the same. Perhaps the answer to this issue depends on the political and moral gains reaped by conceiving of sexual orientation in one or the other way (Dembroff 2016; Stock 2019, 307–313).

(3) The lack of distinction between sex and gender makes it hard to classify cases such as this: X is attracted to Y who is anatomically male (sex) but who self-presents as a woman (gender). Assume that X ’s own gender and sex are male. Then, whether we claim that X is gay or is straight, we face obstacles: if X is gay, X would not be attracted to someone who appears as a woman. If X is straight, X would not be attracted to someone who is anatomically male. The popular concept of orientation leaves such cases unclassified (Corvino 2006a; Wilkerson 2013; but see Stock 2019, 303–307 for a way to accommodate gender attractions on the sex-based account of sexual orientations). The difficulty of such cases has led some philosophers to include both sex and gender as the bases of sexual orientation (Diamond 2022; Dembroff 2016). Perhaps the distinction between orientations and preferences is relevant here, such that gender-based attractions might be considered preferences, whereas sex-based attractions are orientations (or vice versa).

(4) Connected to the previous point is that the popular understanding of sexual orientation assumes a binary conception of sex/gender, albeit one that can include trans people. A straight woman is a woman, cis or trans, who is attracted to men, cis or trans (a cisperson is someone whose gender identity—e.g., being a man—matches their biological sex—being male). Thus, there is no room for people who are gender fluid or whose gender or sex identification exists outside the binary (Dembroff 2016).

(5) Both the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Human Rights Campaign understand “sexual orientation” as including emotional attraction. The former’s definition states,

Sexual orientation refers to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes. (American Psychological Association, Introduction to “Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality”, Other Internet Resources)

Thus, the APA believes that a man would be straight were he to be emotionally (even if neither romantically nor sexually) attracted to a woman. Yet it is possible that he is nonetheless sexually attracted to men, a result that leads to conceptual trouble. Perhaps keeping the conception of sexual orientation limited to sexual attraction so as to avoid such trouble is better (though adding romantic attractions is plausible, given that they usually include a sexual dimension) (Dembroff 2016).

(6) The popular conception of sexual orientation is not so crude as to rely solely on behavior, but it is silent about on what we should rely. Desires and fantasies are obvious candidates. But occurrent desires are not a good guide to sexual orientation: a shepherd can sexually desire sex with a sheep, but he need not be a zoophile, even were his desire for the sheep to recur. David—a straight guy—might desire oral sex from another man (Tom) or other men. Recourse to “enduring desires,” as in the APA’s definition, might not do the trick if the conditions under which David desires oral sex from other men recur. Other information, such as counter-factual information as to what the person would do under such-and-such conditions (e.g., Stein’s “ideal conditions”; 1999, ch. 2), is needed—if David prefers a woman’s mouth under ideal conditions, then he is straight. But stating these conditions is tough. What if David prefers the way that Tom performs oral sex? David might, under some conditions, still opt for Tom (Corvino 2006a; cf. Díaz-León, 2022).

Perhaps fantasies are a better guide if there is a good way to distinguish between fantasies that indicate the person’s sexual orientation and those that don’t (after all, David’s desire for Tom is a fantasy of sorts; Storms 1980). This might push us to ideal conditions again, to distinguish between someone’s real and “fake” fantasies. Or we might rely on initial sexual impulses: what sexually catches the eye of someone, without much thought: David does desire Tom’s oral skills, but what captures David’s sexual eye are women, not men.

(7) Philosophers and historians of sex are roughly divided into social constructionists and essentialists. Weak social constructionism claims that the concepts of “homosexuality,” “heterosexuality,” “natural sexuality,” and similar concepts are limited to a specific time period and geographical region. This version is weak because it is only concerned with how sexuality is conceptualized: there might have been homosexuals in ancient Greece, but the ancient Greeks did not think about them using the concept “homosexual.” Strong social constructionism—more in line with Michel Foucault’s views (1976)—claims that the very existence of homosexual and heterosexual orientations is geographically and temporally limited; our concepts of “homosexual” and “heterosexual” do not refer to anything when used to refer to other times and regions. Essentialists claim that homosexuals, heterosexuals, and bisexuals have existed in various times and cultures (see Card 1995, ch. 3; Corvino 1997, pt. III; Corvino 2006b; De Cecco 1981; Mohr 1992, ch. 7; Stein 1992, 1999, ch. 4; Wilkerson 2013).

Essentialism has difficulty accounting for the historical and cultural evidence: Were all the ancient Athenians who had sex with boys and women bisexuals? Possibly, but then why, in such social configurations, do we find a preponderance of bisexual men? If they were not all bisexuals, what were they? Neither “homosexual” nor “heterosexual” seems adequate. Perhaps then such men had an altogether different sexual orientation. Perhaps one option is to argue that most Athenian men were bisexuals, and their preponderance can be explained by the lack of social strictures that most people be straight, and their preferences for male youths, as opposed to male adults, can be explained by another set of social strictures, namely, that men should be sexually attracted to femininity. This explanation renders essentialism intact while allowing for a robust role for social factors to shape sexual desires. Related to this, essentialism has to be universally true for it to be true at all, for if it excludes some cultures and times, it concedes the truth of social constructionism. But if true of every single culture, it would be a very strong thesis, and the need for evidence becomes more urgent. Perhaps, then, some version of social constructionism is true. Our sexual desires are biologically rigid enough to target mostly members of our species, but not so rigid as to reflect only our three basic sexual orientations, though social constructionism would have to properly accommodate evolutionary biology’s “designing” us for procreation (Halperin 1990, ch.1).

Philosophers have only recently shown increased interest in asexuality and asexuals, even though non-philosophers had already started to address it (Bogaert 2012, 2015). Asexuals are not sexually attracted to others (they are thus not to be confused with incels, who are sexually attracted to others). According to Anthony Bogaert, this does not mean that they do not experience sexual desires, do not engage in sexual activity, or do not experience romance (see also Brunning and McKeever 2021; Eaton and Szustak 2022). Asexuals experience sexual desire and arousal because sexual desire is physiological and its (successful) satisfaction can yield physical pleasure (Bogaert 2012, 21, 74). They also sometimes masturbate for the sheer pleasure of it or to release tension, including while fantasizing, though the fantasies are disconnected from the asexual person who is fantasizing: they “view themselves as not being part of the sexual acts they are fantasizing about or viewing” (Bogaert 2012, 63).

Luke Brunning and Natasha McKeever accept the basics of Bogaert’s view; they understand attraction as an “involuntary way of being inclined toward things around us” (2021, 499). So to be sexually attracted to others is to experience them as “‘inviting’ certain forms of sexual engagement” (2021, 499). Asexuals, then, do not experience other people as sexually “inviting.” Understanding asexuality as lack of sexual attraction, not as lack of sexual desire or capacity to experience sexual pleasure, coheres with the above understanding of sexual desire as seeking pleasure, except that in the case of asexuals, feeling sexual desire is not triggered by sexual attraction (to anyone). It raises, however, the issue of the aptness of using the label “asexual” to refer to people who can experience sexual desire and pleasure. Bogaert argues that understanding asexuality in terms of (lack of) attraction helps us see it as a sexual orientation and it better explains the type of people under consideration—that is, as a type of person, asexuals experience lack of sexual attraction, not lack of sexual desire (2012, 22).

Whether asexuality is a sexual orientation is a complex issue. Stock claims that asexuality is not an orientation but an absence of one (2019, 300). Others argue that if orientations are patterns of attraction, asexuality is an orientation in that asexuals also evince a pattern. Moreover, their lack of sexual attraction is stable and identity conferring, which seems to assimilate it to an orientation (Brunning and McKeever 2021, 4). But the claim that asexuality is an orientation relies mostly on political and moral reasons, in that thinking of it as an orientation might secure asexuals social and legal protections (Brunning and McKeever 2021, 4; Eaton and Szustak 2022, 134).

The concept of “identity” is a philosophical minefield: identity can be descriptive or normative; public or personal; with explanatory power or inert. The distinction between first person and third person attributions of identity helps us see this. When Amy asserts that she is gay, she could be describing herself (informing someone of who she is); she could be asserting a political or cultural position, especially if the identity in question is threatened by the powers that be (“I am gay,” uttered as a way of resisting oppression); or she could be making sense of herself, either to herself or to others: “I am gay” helps Amy see herself or others see her more coherently. Third parties can make the same assertion about Amy in any of these ways.

The second and third ways are interesting because they allow both choice with respect to the identity and disagreement about its assertion. Amy can choose to adopt, be indifferent to, or reject the identity of being gay, and she can choose to use it (or not) to make sense of herself. She might fail to identify with her homosexuality because it is not important to her, because she does not find gay cultural ways appealing, because she does not think highly of gays, because she is ashamed, because she is religious, etc. This allows for healthy disagreements with Amy’s decisions. And Marcia, a straight woman, might be wrong to assert her straight identity in a climate in which gay people are oppressed, much like a person might be wrong to assert his white identity in a racist society, also allowing for disagreements with her (see Alcoff 2006, esp. pt. I; Andler 2021; Appiah 2005, ch. 3; Halwani 2006; Lance & Tanesini 2000; Ozturk 2017; Wilkerson 2007). In this way, it becomes an interesting question—albeit one that goes against everyday usage—whether one can be heterosexual and gay or homosexual and straight. Perhaps not, if being homosexual is necessary (but not sufficient) for being gay, and if being heterosexual is necessary (but not sufficient) for being straight.

Matthew Andler has recently argued, by trying to eliminate rival accounts, for a “cultural theory of queer sexual identity.” (“Queer” is an unclear concept, but in the hands of academics it generally means any gender identity, sexual orientation, or sexual identity that diverges, especially intentionally, from cisheterosexist ways of thinking and living; see Hall 2017 for discussion.) According to Andler, one has a queer sexual identity “in virtue of (i) being excluded from straight culture and (ii) being such that according to the constitutive norms of queer culture the individual ought to be included in queer culture” (2022, 124). Whether such an account succeeds depends on whether other accounts have been successfully argued against. It also depends on how monolithic and rigid we take such cultures to be, and so which of their aspects are exclusionary and which are not. Moreover, this account implies that there are no queer identities in those possible worlds in which gay and straight people exist but in which heterosexual cultures do not exclude queer people. It seems plausible that in such worlds there are queer identities (though “queer” would not have the same oppositional meaning as it does in the actual world).

The notion of sexual identity might help address the desired goals behind the claim that asexuality is a sexual orientation, for one can argue that even if asexuality is not an orientation, asexuals still have a sexual identity, and it is their identity that supports calls for their social and legal protections.

2. Normative Issues

“Good sex” and “bad sex” can refer to pleasurable as well as to morally, aesthetically, practically, and legally good or bad sex and to natural and unnatural sex (Soble 2008, 85–87; Soble, with Halwani 2017, 8–16).

It is unclear what aesthetic sex is (it is in need of philosophical exploration), but applying some common aesthetic concepts, such as “unity”, “coherence”, and “completeness”—concepts used in defining the aesthetic experience (Beardsley 1982, chs. 1, 5, 16; cf. Levine 2006; Singer 2001, ch. 5)—might be useful: a sexual act can be coherent, unified, and fulfills the parties’ expectations (this is Monroe Beardsley’s view of completeness; 1982, 85–86). Assuming these three are the only components of aesthetic experiences, sexual activity can provide an aesthetic experience to its participants. Other concepts, such as “beauty” and its opposites (e.g., “dullness”, “monotony”, “the disgusting”, “the insipid”) can also be relevant, though whether they retain their aesthetic sense when applied to sex is the question. This last point is as true, if not more, of “pleasure”: Is there such a thing as aesthetic pleasure, and can it be a property of sexual acts? (Shusterman 2021 provides historical in-depth treatment of the relationship between sex and aesthetics).

Sex can also be practically or pragmatically good or bad: a “sexting” politician can ruin his career, unprotected sexual intercourse risks contracting HIV, sex without contraception risks (undesired) pregnancy, and public sex risks arrest. Practically good sex does not lead to bad results and might have positive outcomes: a sense of rejuvenation, loss of calories, or a wanted pregnancy.

“Good sex” most obviously refers to pleasurable sex. A sex act can be good or bad depending on the amount and intensity of the pleasure or pain it provides (Vannoy 1980, ch. 3), though pain in sex can contribute to its pleasure (e.g., in bondage and sadomasochism). We must keep in mind the different senses of “pleasure” that can come into play, especially pleasure-as-sensation and pleasure-as-enjoyment.

2.2 Sex and Morality

Sexual activity is either morally permissible or impermissible. Natural Law philosophers (whose stance can be aptly described as conservative) think that sexual acts are permissible only in particular contexts, especially in marital or love relationships. Many take their cue from Aristotle and Aquinas to argue that our bodily organs have a telos that dictates to what ends we should pursue sexual activity. Edward Feser (2015), for example, defends “the perverted faculty argument,” according to which to flourish we must follow the procreative ends of our sexual organs, which include not only begetting children but also raising them to adulthood. Human beings who, for example, fornicate or have same-sex sex pervert this faculty. More recently, Feser (2022) has argued that advocates of his position of teleological essentialism approach sexual ethics from metaphysical bases so different from those of liberal philosophers that they are talking past one another.

Other Natural Law philosophers argue that our sexual organs must form a unity of the two partners in a way compatible with the end of procreation (see Finnis 1993, 2011; George 2003; George & Bradley 1995; Hsiao 2015; Lee & George 1997; Pruss 2000, 2012). The main reasons are the theory’s view of marriage, which, following Thomas Aquinas, is understood as a basic good, and its view of marital sexual acts as reproductive and unitive, as two-in-one flesh communions. Only marital sex—i.e., sex acts between married partners who do it from the specific motive of the good of marriage (what this means, though, is unclear)—is considered morally permissible, even good. Thus, although consent to the sexual act is necessary, it is not sufficient: the sex has to be done from the motive of marital unity.

Three prominent objections to the above Natural Law views are (1) that the view of marriage is both undefended and implausible; (2) that the connection between reproduction or biological two-in-one union and the morality of sex is unclear, and (3) that it is unclear why other goods, such as sexual pleasure, are ruled out as basic goods (Koppelman 2008; see also Biggar & Black 2000). Recently, Kurt Blankschaen (2020) has argued that Natural Law has the internal resources to not condemn same-sex sex because we can view the unitive aspect of sex as a genus with various species, one of which is procreation, much like the genus of tree bark is to protect trees, but such that some do so by photosynthesis while others do not.

Marriage need not be the only context to which sex ought to be confined. Non-Natural Law philosophers have considered love to be such a context (most importantly Roger Scruton 1986). A view confining sex to love need not insist also on only two partners to the relationship, or on being of different sex/gender. It requires only the presence of love. Other versions require only affection or a mutually respectful relationship (Hampton 1999; Nussbaum 1995). On such views, consensual casual sex between two strangers is impermissible.

Why must factors such as love and a mutually respectful relationship be present for the permissibility of sex? One prominent reason is that sex is somehow morally dangerous. Sex might make us treat our sexual partners as objects, and the power of sex might make us engage in sex with the wrong people, in the wrong circumstances, etc. So something is needed to minimize or erode this danger. Love or a respectful relationship minimizes these risks (Nussbaum 1995, 227–231).

Alan Soble, addressing Martha Nussbaum’s (1995) view that objectification and respect are compatible with each other, argues that love or a respectful relationship does not prevent lovers or partners from objectifying each other during the sex (Soble 2017b, 304–309; 2022c, 406–411; see below for discussion of objectification). Moreover, views about the ability of respect or love to curb sexual objectification might be too optimistic: if sex is so powerful or mind-numbing, being in a relationship might not attenuate its power or control it effectively (e.g., partners soon start eyeing people outside the relationship).

There are other normative questions besides the question of when sexual activity is permissible:

The answer to (1) is “Yes.” To give three examples, sexual acts can be done generously (e.g., paying extra sexual attention to one’s partner), caringly (e.g., expressing tenderness), or fairly (e.g., performing oral sex on one’s partner because the partner performed oral sex on one). Moreover, these generous, caring, and fair motives need not compete with the motive of sexual pleasure: knowing that one’s partner enjoys the extra attention, one lavishes it on them during the sex. Thus, sexual activity can be morally evaluated as good, not merely permissible (because consensual).

The language of virtue is relevant here, since acting generously, caringly, or fairly can express virtuous motives (see Halwani 2003, ch. 3, 2018a, 2018b, ch. 7; Morgan 2003a). Sexual activity, including consensual sexual activity, can also manifest various vices. Consider the following examples.

A student offers their teacher sex for a high grade (the teacher consents).
A guy has sex with another guy during a wake (neither is directly related to the dead person).
Lisa hates yet desires Nancy; she wants to sexually humiliate her; Nancy knows this but desires Lisa, and she does not care. They have sex during which Lisa heaps verbal abuse on the trembling-with-desire Nancy.
Omar is a handsome gay man who loves having sex with many guys to feed his ego. At the end of the day, all spent, he agrees to a seventh hookup because the guy is a catch. He tells the guy, “You are my seventh today, so I might not be very energetic”. The guy says, “This is actually a turn-on”.
Isabel has undesired sex with her boyfriend so as not to deal with his foul mood (he is not abusive, but accustomed to getting his way), even though she knows that she need not agree to sex every time he wants it.

Each case has the participants’ consent, yet each sexual act is bad in some aspect (though not all are seriously wrong) because it exhibits a vice: unprofessionalism, intemperance, maliciousness (and possibly cruelty and demeaningness; cf. Morgan 2003a), vanity, and cowardice, respectively. Thus, consent might not be sufficient for the act’s goodness, though perhaps it is for its permissibility (depending on the seriousness of the harm or vice).

(2) Sexual and romantic relationships provide the strongest cases for sexual obligations, because sexual activity is an expected and crucial aspect of (especially monogamous) relationships. Note that ordinarily threatening harm to someone unless they have sex is morally wrong, but threats to end a relationship unless the other party has sex (“Have sex with me or I will break up with you”) are not obviously wrong, further indicating that sexual obligations exist (Anderson 2013; Soble 2017a, 2022b; Wertheimer 2003, ch. 12).

The difficult question is whether there are sexual obligations outside such relationships. If having sex is a basic need, perhaps plausible cases involve a health caretaker alleviating the sexual needs of a patient. One can argue that although under the usual conception of “health care professional” (e.g., a nurse) there are no such duties, society should create a category of such professionals to meet these needs—if they are indeed basic.

Some philosophers have argued that there are positive rights to sex, especially for those who, due to disabilities, are unable to find willing sexual partners without having to pay them. The idea is that because sexual activity and pleasure with another person are crucial to a minimally decent life and not adequately substituted for by masturbation, those who are sexually deprived are entitled to some form of partnered sexual activity (Appel 2010; Firth 2019). Others have argued that not all sexually excluded people are disabled and not all disabled people are sexually excluded, so the issue of sexual exclusion cuts across that of disability (Earp and Moen 2016; Liberman 2018; Shakespeare 2022).

The argument for sexual positive rights has been met with resistance on two fronts. Some have raised concerns about women supplying sex for men given a history of sexism and misogyny, even if the men are disabled (Jeffreys 2008; [see DeBoer 2015 for replies]; Liberman 2022). Others have argued that such rights to partnered sex imply that some people’s rights to sexual autonomy will be violated, so there are no rights to partnered sex (Danaher 2020; DiNucci 2011, 2020; Liberman 2022; Srinivasan 2021, ch. 3). The most that is conceded is that if there are rights to sex, they are not to partnered sex, but to a bundle of services that can help people be more sexually included, such as validation of a group’s sexuality, sex education, sexual toys and instruments, including sex robots, and even professional assistance with masturbating or assistance with having sex with someone for those who cannot perform these acts on their own (the assistants themselves would not be part of the sexual act) (Danaher 2020, 2022; DiNucci 2017; Liberman 2022). It is unclear, however, once sexual partners are off the table, whether what remains (e.g., sex education) are proper objects of rights to sex .

Still, sexual obligations might exist even without corresponding rights, based in general duties of benevolence—attending to someone’s sexual needs would be similar to attending to someone’s hunger (Soble 2017a, 454–55; 2022b, 546). But it is unclear who would fulfill these obligations, what their fulfillment would amount to (is masturbating the beneficiary of the duty enough?), and whether the gender and sexual orientation of the parties matters or should matter. These are difficult issues, especially since the extent to which someone’s sexual needs are properly met does depend on their sexual desires and preferences: a straight man’s needs might not be met by a gay man, and straight women meeting men’s sexual needs is troubling given sexism and sex-based oppression. Moreover, if X ’s sexual need cannot be alleviated by X masturbating, how the needs are to be met is a pressing question, and so is determining the depth of a sexual need to see whether it gives rise to an obligation. Ultimately, such sexual duties might face the same crucial objection that the right to partnered sex faces, namely, that people’s right to sexual autonomy is so important that it is incompatible with the existence of sexual duties.

Even if we have no obligations to satisfy others’ sexual needs, we might nevertheless have sexual obligations to ourselves to develop or dampen certain sexual preferences. Pedophiles, for example, might have an obligation to change their preferences, not merely to refrain from acting on them. Other examples include obligations to change one’s preferences (or their lack) for, say, members of a particular race, ethnic group, age group, body type, etc. These are more controversial, however, because it is not clear that such preferences are bad to begin with (Barn 2022; Halwani 2017b [2022]; Kershnar 2019; Zheng 2016), and some might not be under our control at all (e.g., preference for certain age groups) or as easily changed as others are (e.g., for skin color).

(3) According to Alan Goldman, “[N]o conduct otherwise immoral should be excused because it is sexual conduct, and nothing in sex is immoral unless condemned by rules which apply elsewhere as well” (1977, 280). This is true at a general level because the same general moral features (e.g., harm) affect sexual acts. But it might be false at more specific levels: sexual violation of the body by a penis or an object makes the violation distinct. This has to do with how one experiences sexual bodily violations, thereby making sexual consent a crucial moral aspect of sexual relations (Wertheimer 2003, 107–112). Moreover, if Kant is right, the objectifying nature of sexual desire makes it unique. If virtue ethicists are right, actions can be right and wrong because they are sexually temperate and intemperate: seducing the ex-boss’s husband is vengeful or intemperate, depending on the motive (Carr 2007; Halwani 2003, ch. 3, 2018a, 2018b, ch. 7; Piers 1999; see also the essays in SE). The specialness of sex might be explained by sexual desire’s rootedness in biology and its being directed at the bodies of other human beings (Dent 1984: ch. 2 and passim ).

Whether one is conservative, liberal, or progressive about the permissibility of sexual acts, consent looms large. Most philosophers believe that informed and voluntary consent is necessary and sufficient for the moral permissibility of sex (Archard 1998; Mappes 1987; Miller & Wertheimer 2010; Primoratz 2001; Wertheimer 2003; but see Pateman 1988), though there are dissenters who debate consent’s sufficiency (see below).

Consent is crucial because (a) it transforms an otherwise wrong act into a permissible one (though not necessarily into a good act); (b) in heterosexual sex, men and women might importantly differ when it comes to sex; and (c) sexual violation is typically experienced as very harmful (Wertheimer 2003, 119–121).

(a) has been especially important to philosophers. Consent’s being morally transformative means that it changes an action’s moral status from impermissible to permissible. If John takes a book from Lisa’s library, the act can be one of robbery or one of lending (or gifting) depending on whether Lisa has consented. One issue here is whether consent to sexual contact is morally special or different from other types of transactions, including nonsexual bodily contact (Chadha 2022, 218–219). For example, is it especially important to consent to sexual penetration as opposed to, say, a shoulder massage or even a colonoscopy? Explanations of the importance of sexual consent that rely on our special relationship to our bodies, as opposed to our relationship to external objects like books (Gardner and Shute 2000), fail to distinguish between consent to sexual bodily contact and consent to nonsexual bodily contact. Perhaps evolutionary explanations are needed (Wertheimer 2003, ch. 2).

The claim that valid or genuine consent by all the parties to a sex act is necessary and sufficient for the moral permissibility of the sex act can put as follows:

X ’s sexual activity with Y is morally permissible if, and only if, Y validly consents to the sexual activity.

One crucial question is what it means for Y to validly consent. It seems that Y has to do something, to perform some action, that amounts to consent. On the “purely mental view,” the action can be purely mental, such as a thought to the effect that “I consent to this act.” But more than mere thoughts, decisions, or beliefs might be needed to explain what is wrong with cases in which X proceeds to have sex with Y even though Y , who consents, does not clearly communicate their consent to X . Hence we get the “communications view,” according to which X wrongs Y if there is no clear communication to proceed with the sexual activity (Chadha 2022; Dougherty 2015, 2018). An important issue here is what it would take for Y to clearly communicate their consent to X . Is enthusiasm, for example, necessary or sufficient to convey one’s consent? (Pineau 1989; Dougherty 2022)

Another crucial issue is what Y is consenting to exactly when Y consents to sexual activity. For the consent to be valid, the activity engaged in has to be the one consented to, not some other activity. This seemingly obvious point raises the thorny question of what constitutes a sexual act and how many acts of consent are needed for a compound or extended sexual act, one that is made up of parts (kissing, then oral sex, then penetrative sex, and so on).

There are additional elements of valid consent, the two most important ones being lack of coercion and lack of deception. Coercion undermines the voluntary aspect of consent, and deception undermines its informed aspect (Dougherty 2013; Mappes 1987). Other elements are being of sound mind and having the cognitive and emotional maturity to consent (Chadha 2022, 223). After all, we can imagine cases in which neither coercion nor deception is involved, yet one is too young or too inebriated to consent. If “informed consent” means simply receiving or having the requisite information, we might need additional criteria like maturity and soundness of mind. If it means something stronger, such as “properly processing the information,” perhaps maturity and soundness of mind are redundant. A final element of valid consent might be lack of exploitation, especially in unequal relationships, given that the stronger party might take advantage of the weaker one despite neither coercing nor deceiving the weaker one (Archard 1994; Mappes 1987; for criticism of Archard’s views, see Boonin 2022).

Is valid consent sufficient for a sexual act’s moral permissibility? The views discussed in 2.2 that restrict permissible sex to an affectionate, mutually respectful, or marital context take consent to be necessary but not sufficient. Moreover, if sexual desire by nature objectifies, as the Kantian view has it, then the consent of the parties is insufficient because consent to sex is consent to a wrong action (see 2.2.2).

A different reason for rejecting the sufficiency of consent is harm. Setting aside harm to third parties, if sexual activity leads to harm to one or more of its parties, then consent might not be sufficient. This view is especially plausible when it comes to women, given that many women engage in consensual sex that is motivated by nonsexual desires, such as not wanting to put their partner in a foul mood. According to one account, the harm is psychological, especially to their autonomy (West 1995). This implies that prostitutes are harmed because of their consent to undesired sex, an implausible implication. However, even if specific formulations of the view are implausible (such as West’s; see Soble 1996, 37–39; Wertheimer 2003, passim ), this does not negate the plausible claim that if sexual activity harms one or more of the consenting parties, the activity is wrong. One might object that this argument is paternalistic, telling people not to engage in sex when the sex is harmful (Soble 1996, 37–39). This objection is correct in that although harmful sex gives the participants a reason to not engage in it, it cannot be used to argue that social or legal forces should prevent this action (Wertheimer 2003, 130–131).

Despite disagreement about the sufficiency of consent, the necessity of consent is typically taken for granted by philosophers. But its necessity can be questioned. For instance, if we accept a “casual view” of sexual pleasure, “that sexual pleasure is morally like any other pleasure” (Benatar 2002, 192; see also Beckwith 2022), consent might not be necessary. For if sexual pleasure is insignificant, a person’s consent may be bypassed if there are cases, bizarre as they might seem, in which forcing someone, or not requiring their consent, to have sex with another person might be important or needed (to the former person, especially). This might occur with people with impaired abilities (see below), or even with minors if an ambitious parent thinks that it is a good idea for their child to experience some sexual activity (not necessarily intercourse) with another person (Benatar 2002, 194–195).

However, we need not accept a single view of sexual pleasure as casual or significant; we can instead argue that, depending on between whom the pleasure occurs, it might or might not be casual (Halwani 2022a, 48–51). Moreover, if, as seems to be the case, people’s considered beliefs about sex are that sex is significant (imagine claiming that incest or sex with animals is “cool” because sex is casual), the casual view of sex might very well be wrong, in which case the consensus surrounding the necessity of consent remains intact.

Why is sex significant? Sex is significant in that it involves one’s most important private space: one’s body. Suppose that X is a social person, always happy to have guests over at X ’s house. One day, X discovers that some people have entered X ’s apartment and used it to entertain themselves. X feels justifiably violated, indicating that the violation of private spaces is a serious wrong. If this is true of an apartment, it is true of one’s body, especially since sexual violation usually involves the insertion of something in the body. This explains why sexual violations are experienced as deeply traumatic (Wertheimer 2003, ch.5). Sex is significant because it pertains to one’s most important and private space (cf. Brogaard 2015, 188–190). Note that even if (or when) sex is significant, it does not follow that it must be experienced only in the context of love or mutually respectful relationship; it can be experienced casually as long as consent is secured.

John Gardner (2018) argues that consent might not be necessary to sex because we usually require consent to things that are done to someone, whereas sex, at least ideally, involves a mutuality that renders sexual activity a joint activity. Chadha (2020) replies that joint actions are made up of sub-actions, for each of which consent is necessary. Gardner could reply that sexual sub-actions are also joint, so consent to them is unnecessary. Moreover, even if some are not joint, that some are is enough to show that consent is not always necessary for sex. Still, it is unclear why joint activities render consent unnecessary. My participation in synchronized swimming or a musical duet still needs my consent.

People with severely impaired cognitive abilities raise complicated issues for sexual consent. Assuming that they desire sex but are unable to consent, or are unable to communicate it clearly, we are faced with the options of either denying them sex or re-thinking consent in their case, such as relying on the idea of advance consent (Bianchi 2022a; 2022b; Director 2019). Andrea Bianchi argues that for people with dementia we need to prioritize their well-being over consent because the issue of their quality of life is of “the upmost importance” (2022b, 365). She relies on the distinction between consenting to something and assenting with something, the latter of which, used in medical practices, describes “a person’s active willingness to engage in an act, specifically when they may lack the ability to fully comprehend it (e.g., the benefits and risks)” (2022b, 363–364). If Bianchi is right, only valid consent, not consent as such, would not be necessary for people with dementia to have sex, because assent is still a form of rudimentary consent. One difficulty with the argument is that valid consent might be seen as important for someone’s well-being as much as, if not more than, satisfying their desires is, so basing the argument on the priority of well-being might take us only so far.

Objectification is a perennial issue in the philosophy of sex. It originates in Kant’s moral philosophy, and many feminists have adopted the language of objectification to criticize, for example, pornography; though whereas Kant was concerned with the objectifying nature of sexual desire, feminists do not target sex as such, but only in the context of patriarchy, claiming that it involves the sexual objectification of women by men in certain contexts (see below; some claim that all heterosexual sex is poison under patriarchy, e.g., Dworkin 1987). Indeed, sexual desire might not be necessary for the claim that a woman is sexually objectified under patriarchy: a man need not sexually desire a woman to catcall her.

Sexual objectification is treating or considering a person only as a sex object. Casual sex, watching pornography, catcalling, ogling, and other examples all allegedly involve sexual objectification. The “only” is important because otherwise there is no basis for moral complaint given that we frequently treat each other as objects. It is unclear whether objectification can consist of mere mental regard or whether it must have a treatment component (ogling someone is interesting because it is unclear whether it is treatment or mere regard). Some philosophers (Langton 2009; Nussbaum 1995; Papadaki 2017;) define “sexual objectification” broadly enough to include mere regard (others, e.g., LeMoncheck [1985, ch. 1] do not). The inclusion of regard is wise because objectification seems to involve mere attitudes and perceptions (e.g., ogling, the regard found in watching pornography). X then sexually objectifies Y if, and only if, X treats or regards Y only as a sexual object.

The importance of objectification stems from a view of human beings as more than objects (LeMoncheck 1985, ch. 1; Papadaki 2017). If human beings, regardless of individual merit, have elevated moral status in virtue of having rationality, dignity, autonomy, or some such property, reducing someone to a lower level is wrong. But how common the actual occurrence of sexual objectification and how serious it is, are additional questions. It seems rare to treat our sexual partners as mere objects in any obvious and troubling ways: not only are we aware of their humanity, we are also attentive to it. Indeed, among the various ways of objectification—instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity (this is Nussbaum’s list [1995, 257]; cf. Langton 2009, 228–229)—only instrumentality is common. Others, such as ownership and denial of subjectivity, seem rare (Halwani 2017a; Halwani 2022b). Clear cases of sexual objectification include sexually-motivated rape and catcalling.

The Kantian view is that sexual desire objectifies by its nature and makes it impossible for the sexual partners to satisfy the Categorical Imperative: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means” (Kant 1785 [1981], 429). Equally problematic on this view is X objectifying X ’s self—usually through masturbation or allowing X ’s self to be objectified by Y . Kant considered duties to the self to be important and his treatment of objectification clearly includes duties to the self: when a human being has sex for the mere pleasure of it, he “surrenders his personality (throwing it away), since he uses himself merely as a means to satisfy an animal impulse” (1797 [1996], 6: 425; see also Kant 1930 [1963], 162–168; Soble 2017b, 309–313; 2022c, 411–415)]. The prohibition on allowing one’s own self to be objectified, in addition to the focus on the nature of sexual desire, is what sets the Kantian view apart from other views of objectification, especially feminist ones.

Sexual desire objectifies by its nature because when X sexually desires Y , X desires Y ’s body and body parts, especially the sexual ones, making it hard, if not impossible, to treat the humanity in Y as an end (Kant 1930 [1963, 164]). Only sexual desire among our inclinations is directed at human beings as “flesh,” not “their work and services” (Kant 1930 [1963, 163]). Although it is morally permissible to use each other for all sorts of purposes as long as they involve our “work and services,” sexual interactions are different. In almost every interaction with each other, we are interested in some ability, talent, or service that another can perform, an aspect intimately connected to their rationality. In these cases, either X does not desire Y ’s body (but Y ’s abilities, talents, or services) or X desires it but as a vehicle of Y ’s abilities. Only with sexual desire (and, Kant says, in the rare case of cannibalism; 1930 [1963, 162–63]) does X desire Y as a body, as an object . X wants to enjoy Y ’s body, not Y ’s beautiful voice, massaging abilities, or computer skills (and if X does want the latter aspects in the context of sexual desire and activity, X wants them insofar as they make Y more sexually appealing). Sexual desire renders people objects by reversing our normal relationship with their bodies. Their bodies become the objects, not the instruments, of our attention. Kant thought that only marriage can make objectification tolerable (Kant 1930 [1963, 163]), though his argument is implausible (see Soble 2013b, 2017b; Denis 2001; Wertheimer 2003, 130–135).

Consent is thus not sufficient for permissible sex because consenting to sex is consenting to objectification, to something wrong (Soble 2017b, 303–304). Kant’s view indicates also why including regard in a definition of “sexual objectification” is plausible: even though X and Y treat each other well during sex, they still regard each other as mere sex objects.

The phenomenology of sexual desire seems to confirm Kant’s point: The “other’s body, their lips, thighs, buttocks, and toes, are desired as the arousing parts they are, distinct from the person” (Soble 2013b, 302). During a good sexual act, even with one’s lover, at some point they focus on ass, cock, pussy, tits, etc. (Vannoy 1980, 14). Kant’s view that sexual desire and activity are different—perhaps even unique—from other ways we view and interact with other people seems correct, providing support for the conclusion that sexual desire objectifies.

Sexual desire seems also powerful: its pull is strong and its voice loud, insisting, and persistent, so much so that people do irrational and immoral things to satisfy it. This might be a gendered feature of sexual desire, more true of men than of women, though throughout history, and in today’s popular culture especially, women have often been portrayed as sexually insatiable (see Anderson & Struckman-Johnson 1998; Soble 2008, ch. 10). Of course, sexual partners normally observe limits on how they treat each other: they do not violate each other, treat each other literally as objects, and so on, exactly because they understand that they may not treat people in such ways. Thus, sexual desire operates within moral red lines.

The Kantian problem of objectification cannot be easily solved. Arguing that there is no objectification because human beings have no special moral status from which they can be lowered (Soble 2002, 53–63) does not meet Kant on his own grounds (as Soble insists in 2013b; 2017b; 2022c). Claiming that parties to the sexual act normally consent to it (Mappes 1987), that objectification is okay as long as the relationship is respectful (Nussbaum 1995, esp. 227–231), or that sexual partners attend to each other’s sexual needs (Goldman 1977, 282–283; Singer 1984, 382) also do not solve the problem because none addresses the nature of sexual desire (Soble 2013b; 2017b; 2022c).

Two other options are to accept the problem as a problem (but perhaps minimize it; Halwani 2017a; 2022b) or to argue that sexual desire among human beings is not always objectifying. This is not merely the idea, insisted on by the intentionalist view, that sexual desire in human beings is complex, because a Kantian view of sex can accommodate this point, but that

there is far more to sex than the desire to use another’s body in a degrading manner for your selfish pleasure. Even the elements in sexual desire closest to this are combined, at least in healthy people, with other elements of human emotion that radically transform their meaning. (Wood 2008, 227)

Kant’s view, however, can also accommodate this insight. For example, X might sexually desire Y because Y is, among other things, a kind person, such that X would not have desired Y otherwise. But once X desires Y , X desires Y ’s body and body parts. Sexual desire can be selfish while layered within other elements of human emotions, and the Kantian view need not be confined to a simplistic view of sexual desire such that it is crassly selfish or always acted on in a degrading “manner”; Kantian sex can be attentive to the other’s needs.

Nonetheless, the above idea that sexual desire can be combined with healthy emotions makes it possible that sexual desire is not always toxic, though how remains unclear. To succeed, sexual desire needs to be injected with healthy emotions, and not merely added to them, so that its very nature changes on particular occasions.

On the Kantian view, not all sexual activity is objectifying: sexual activity not stemming from sexual desire might not be objectifying. Even in those cases when sexual activity is objectifying, its seriousness varies: in consensual encounters it competes with other moral factors, whereas in (sexually motivated) rape it is very serious as sexual desire is the primary motive. (The motive is not to sexually objectify someone, as this is rare; instead, X regards Y in a way that is sexually objectifying.)

Moreover, sexual objectification might differ between men and women, especially if men and women experience sex differently. Men experience sexual desire more frequently and insistently than women, though both are similar in their enjoyment of sexual activity (Ogas and Gaddam 2011, chs. 3 and 4; Symons 1979, 179; Wertheimer 2003, 38–46). Thus, men might engage in more sexual objectification than do women given that men think about sex more, ogle others more, and are more easily turned on visually. Since during sexual activity both would sexually objectify each other roughly equally, men would sexually objectify women overall more than women would men. Men also consume pornography (straight and gay) far more than women do, so would engage in much more sexual objectification than do women (by viewing people on-screen, by viewing people as mere sexual objects, etc.). It is perhaps in this sense that pornography allows women (and men, as objects of other men’s desire) to be objectified.

Some feminists have argued that pornography objectifies women by dehumanizing them, and it dehumanizes them by depicting them as mere sexual instruments for men (Hill 1987), by depicting their pleasure as only for the men’s (Longino 1980), by endorsing this treatment (Longino 1980; Eaton 2007), or by sending the message that all women are like those depicted in pornography (Garry 1978). But these claims seem unconvincing. Pornography shows both men and women sexually enjoying each other, and it is difficult to prove that women’s pleasure is depicted as merely for the men’s (one might as well argue for the reverse) because the scenes themselves do not tell us anything (Soble 2002, 19–20, 28, 98, 196; 1996, 225–227). Nor does pornography seem to send messages about the status of women, whether about the depicted women or women in general. Doing so disables the viewer’s ability to imagine the scenes as he wants, thereby undermining its own purposes of titillating him (Soble 1996, 231–234). But pornography enables the sexual objectification of women by displaying them to the gaze of the male viewer (ditto for men in pornography, albeit the gay male gaze). This form of objectification seems innocuous, as long as it is not implicated in harm towards women, either individually or as a class (Gruen 2006; see also Eaton 2007).

A deeper form of objectification is found in the view that pornography constructs women’s sexuality in a bad way (MacKinnon 1993; Dworkin 1974, 1979). It eroticizes patriarchal ways of viewing women, so that sexual desire becomes infused with dominance (cf. Morgan 2003a, 388–390). The sexual desires of young men who routinely consume pornography become desires for the sexual domination of women. Women become socially constructed sexual beings for men, such that men desire them as pornography depicts them—as non-real beings: “objectification comes to define femininity, and one-sidedness comes to define mutuality” (MacKinnon 1993, 26; see Mason-Grant 2004). This view, however, implausibly neglects sexual desire’s biology, assuming that sexual desire can be fully socially constructed. Moreover, insofar as it is an empirical view, no proper evidence has been marshalled in its support (Diorio 2006; Tarrant 2014).

Sexual desire, as we have seen, is sufficient for objectification. However, it is not necessary. The guy catcalling a woman to feel part of the group is an example, and so are pornography directors and editors, who, by choosing the angle of the camera and the footage cuts, help sexually objectify the performers by presenting them to the viewer in particular ways; similar reasoning applies to, say, brothel owners. Indeed, women themselves might have few options other than to sexually objectify themselves, in a society that values women mostly through their sexuality (Jütten 2016; Marino 2022a, 2022b). This might be the most pernicious form of sexual objectification in that social forces direct or pressure (not necessarily force) women to adopt such self-identifications or self-presentations to lead better lives, though whether they are actually flourishing is harder to gauge.

Recently, the concept of “derivatization” has been used to examine sex and sexual practices (Parker 2017; Wolf 2016).

To derivatize something is to portray, render, understand, or approach a being solely or primarily as the reflection, projection, or expression of another being’s identity, desires, fears, etc. The derivatized subject becomes reducible in all relevant ways to the derivatizing subject’s existence. (Cahill 2011, 32; see also 2013)

This view might capture some central feminist problems with pornography, namely, the depiction of women’s sexuality as reflecting men’s sexual desires of women. However, “derivatization” seems not to cover all cases (or all cases well). Consider a closeted gay man who catcalls a woman only to impress his peers. He objectifies her but does not seem to derivatize her. If the reply is that he catcalls that particular woman because she represents not his desires but, say, society’s desires of what women should look like, then, given that for any sexual situation one can attribute derivatization to some party or other, “derivatization” stands in danger of being empty or too broad to be explanatory.

The most famous contemporary philosophical account is Thomas Nagel’s psychologically-based view of sexual perversion. “Natural” sexual desire involves a multi-leveled mutual awareness by two people of each other: X perceives sexual excitement in Y , Y perceives excitement in X , X perceives that Y is excited by X , and so on (1969, 10–12). Sexual desire is complex in that it includes X ’s sexual arousal by Y and X ’s feeling sexual because of Y ’s arousal by X , and so on with higher levels. Sexual perversions are then standing preferences for sexual activity that does not involve such multi-levels of sexual arousal. Since this view locates naturalness and perversion in the agent’s preferences, the sexual act itself need not mirror this structure; only the desires need have this complexity. Thus, it is inaccurate to accuse it of being sexless (Solomon 1974, 336) or to evaluate it by giving examples of non-complex sexual acts (Kupfer 2016, 333).

Although this view accommodates some perversions, such as zoophilia, pedophilia, and “intercourse with … inanimate objects” because they “seem to be stuck at some primitive version of the first stage of sexual feeling” (Nagel 1969, 14), it yields counter-intuitive results: masturbation does not fare well on this view, depending on whether it insists on the perception of the actual (not imaginative) embodiment of desire in another person (Soble 2013a, 85–87). It also misunderstands how perversions usually work: a coprophiliac does not normally desire sex with feces, but to incorporate feces in his sexual act with another, which could involve multi-levels of perception. Moreover, the account does not capture common intuitions about natural and perverted sex: it goes beyond the plausible idea that the arousal of one partner increases the other’s, to that of multi-layered arousal—an unintuitive idea. Similar views rely on the idea that natural sexual desire is interpersonal, such as that it culminates in love (Scruton 1986, ch. 10) and that it communicates attitudes and feelings (Solomon 1974; see Halwani 2018b, ch. 9 for discussion).

A non-psychological account of sexual perversion, one closer to folk biology, claims that only reproduction allows us to distinguish perversions from non-perversions (Ruddick 1984, 287; cf. Gray 1978). This does not mean that every act has to be reproductive, only that natural sexual desires “ could lead to reproduction in normal physiological circumstances” (Ruddick 1984, 288). Thus, a heterosexual couple having intercourse but not intending to procreate are not engaging in perverted sex: their desire is of the kind that, under “normal physiological circumstances,” could lead to reproduction (1984, 288).

The account might have implausible implications, however. Anyone who prefers (heterosexual) oral sex to intercourse would be perverted. Moreover, any heterosexual couple that incorporate fetish objects, urine, feces, and so on, in their sexual intercourse would be sexually natural (Gray 1978, 190–192; Primoratz 1999, 53–54). Indeed, coprophilia can sink all the above accounts: two people who exhibit inter-personal attitudes in the form of multi-level perceptions, and who have sexual intercourse of the reproductive type, communicating healthy emotions sincerely, yet use feces in their activity would counter-intuitively not be perverted on any of the above accounts.

Even though explaining perversion in terms of biology seems obvious, “perversion” is opposed not only to “natural,” but also to “normal,” and the natural and the normal do not fully overlap. Moreover, the concept of “perversion” could refer to many things: the immoral, disgusting, bizarre, and biologically abnormal, among others. Using only one of these to define “perversion” will probably fail. It might also be that the methodology of discussing this concept is flawed, failing to account for the concept’s social function (Miller 2010). Thus, some philosophers have proposed to get rid of the concept altogether (Priest 1997; Primoratz 1999, ch. 6; Ruse 1988, 197–201). Recently, however, a new account of perversion in terms of its inhibiting “shared joy, mutual exploration, self-affirmation, and union” was offered (Kupfer 2016, 351). But this view seems to set the bar too high for what counts as non-perverted.

A good account of perversion might have to be prescriptive, capturing the core of perversion but not necessarily capturing all our beliefs about it (it should explain why our beliefs are mistaken when they are). Furthermore, it will likely be a psychological account, a preference to have sex with or involving certain types of object that are anti-life, such as bodily waste and corpses, and that are biologically odd, such as inter-species sexual intercourse. Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology would have to play crucial roles.

The discussion of sexual exclusion and inclusion has led some philosophers to suggest that sexual needs can be met by sexual robots that can replace the need for partnered sex, especially if the technology is advanced enough so that sex with the robots provides an almost identical experience to sex with another human being (DiNucci 2017; McArthur 2017). This raises a few philosophical questions of its own. First, if the robots are sophisticated enough, they might be persons, which means that they, too, might have rights to sexual autonomy, which takes us back to the same issues with rights to partnered sex. It also raises the general question of how to morally interact with them (Nyholm 2022; Petersen 2017).

Second, there are feminist concerns as to what these robots would look like: if they are meant to “appeal to a stereotypical male gaze,” then “their use might encourage or exacerbate the objectification and dehumanization of actual women” (Liberman 2022, 458). Another feminist concern, regardless of the robots’ look, is that ease of sex with them, and their inability to genuinely refuse sex, might also entrench sexist attitudes toward women, especially that of male entitlement to sex (Danaher, Earp, and Sandberg 2017; Richardson 2005).

Issues with sex robots do not exhaust those of sex and technology. Another has to do with the effects on our lives of the use of dating and hook up apps, weighing their benefits and their costs. While such apps have allowed people to meet each other with more ease and to be selective in their choices, some worry that they allow them to be too selective, abetting lookism and racist desires (McArthur 2022a and 2022b; see also Klincewicz, Frank, and Jane 2022). Neil McArthur argues that the benefits are greater than the costs, many of which can, anyway, be fixed (2022a, 2022b).

McArthur also argues that technology has given rise to a new sexual identity—digisexuality. Digisexuals are “people for whom advanced technologies are an integral part of their preferred sexual experience, and who might not see the need for human sexual partners in order to have fulfilling sex” (2022a, 342). McArthur thinks that new identities are a good thing, because they allow like-minded people to find each other, and such identities can help usher in legal and social protections (if needed).

In addition to robots and apps, a third issue with sexual technology are “Internet-mediated haptic sex toys capable of remote transmission of tactile sensation” (Arrell 2022, 586). Such technologies have a large array of benefits, but they raise their own problems, such as third parties hacking the systems and thus having sex by deception or assaulting one or more of the parties to the systems, and partners claiming to be something other than who they are, such that even if one is not deceived that one is having sex with, say, John, who John says he is, is not who he actually is (Sparrow and Karas 2020).

Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (or, more generally, extended reality technologies) are, according to Robbie Arrell, more likely than androids to be the future because they are cheaper, multi-purposed, can be moved around and stored more easily, and they are but a short step from current pornography technology (2022, 595). Although these technologies have benefits, they raise the moral worries of deepfakes and the possibility of people coming to prefer sex through them than with real-life sex partners (Arrell 2022, 595–596).

What is the value of sex? How important (or valuable!) is this value? Procreation, love, and pleasure are obvious answers to the first question. Sex is usually the way to procreate, so sex is valuable insofar as procreation is valuable. But this value is instrumental, and it is contingent given technology’s ability to separate procreation from sex. There is also anti-natalism (Schopenhauer 1851, 1859, ch. 46; Benatar 2006, 2015), which implies that sex has negative value in its procreative aspect. The value of sex in regard to procreation is thus precarious.

Another instrumental value of sex is that X ’s sexual desire for Y can (help) cause X to love Y (Bertocci 1949, ch. 2). Here, sex’s value is contingent on love’s, and, despite sounding strange, the value of romantic love, especially in its early, passionate stages, is not obvious given its negative effects on the lover and others. Still, if sex leads to the settled stage of love (via the passionate one), it is valuable for that. Sex can also express love and affection for one’s partner and cement their relationship. Natasha McKeever argues that many goods of sex—pleasure, union, intimacy, and care—are shared with those of love, so sexual interaction enhances and strengthens the love (McKeever 2016; see also McKeever 2017, but see Vannoy 1980: ch. 1). Even if true, all this still makes sex’s value dependent on and instrumental to love’s, especially since the two are very different (Goldman 1977, 272–275; Soble 2008, ch. 9 [which adds marriage to the mix]; Vannoy 1980, 7–12).

Does sex have intrinsic value? If it does, it is probably sexual pleasure, as-sensation or as-enjoyment, a pleasure that provides people with a crucial motive for having sex, often with drastic consequences. So then how valuable is the pleasure of sex? Perhaps we should regard our appetite for sex like we do that for food to avoid obsessing about it (Russell 1929 [1970, 289]). But can we go further?

People spend much time pursuing projects and activities they enjoy or consider worthwhile. Some do so only when time, work, or family time permit, and some do so much of the time (they are, say, independently wealthy). Writing, pursuing Hollywood or Bollywood stardom, playing chess, swimming, traveling, and, of course, building a family are examples. Other than philosophical far-fetched examples of worthless pursuits (counting blades of grass, collecting bottle caps), most projects and activities have some worth, unless we are willing to condemn most human beings of having worthless lives. Perhaps some projects are more worthwhile than others (though how to argue for this is difficult), but almost all have some worth, and an intellectual one at that, including what many might consider to be mentally passive, such as watching reality television or reading junk fiction (Carroll 1998, esp. ch. 1 and 2).

Now consider X , whose life project is the pursuit of sexual pleasures. X says,

I am young, moderately good-looking, and, with current technology, I can easily sexually hook up with others. I enjoy sex, and it makes me feel good. In between bouts of sex, I can see friends, go to the gym, movies, whatever. But my deepest enjoyment—my life-plan, to use philosophical jargon—is to pursue the pleasures of sex.

Is there something we can say to prove X wrong, especially if X has the talent for something considered more important? Perhaps we can claim that pursuing sex is not as worthy as reading Russian literature, but even here we are on insecure ground.

One can argue that X is not using X ’s intellectual powers. But this underestimates the reliance on intellect in sexual pursuits or presumes that such use is unimportant. Alternatively, one can argue that X is not using X ’s intellectual powers deeply or in a theoretical way. But this would rule out many a life as good. One can argue that there are more important things in life than pursuing sexual pleasure. But X need not live without friends, family, and other important things present in normal lives. One can argue that sex objectifies, so it is wrong to make it central to one’s life. But unless one were a die-hard Kantian, the objectification involved in sex can be redeemed by other factors.

One can argue that sexual sensory pleasure “will not be at the center of a rational life plan,” and that these pleasures are “intermittent and short-lived,” their value ultimately depending “entirely on the interpersonal relationships into which they fit and which constitute their context” (Goldman 2016: 98). But it is unclear why the pleasures’ brevity and intermittency are problems. One can argue that someone who prefers masturbation to sex with others “could reflect a failure to understand the importance and value of sex and sexual pleasure” (Scanlon 1998, 175) because the importance of sex is its expression in relations with other people (Scanlon seems not to have in mind casual or promiscuous sex). But X can have affectionate sexual relationships with others, and friendships, etc., with different others. Even casual hookups have their bonding aspects. Finally, one can argue that sex “achieves a level of passion” with “no equal in other forms of interaction,” especially when it occurs between lovers

it defines a most significant moment of goodness between two people, where each achieves a most profound moment of affirmation and satisfaction that is inextricably tied to the endeavor to please the other (Thomas 1999, 59).

But note how the affirmation and satisfaction here can as easily apply to passionate yet love-less sex.

Thus, even if pursuing sexual pleasure is not as intellectually stimulating as reading classical Arabic poetry, it is not worthless, whether intellectually or non-intellectually, and it is on a par with many other pursuits that people undertake that are far from having intellectual depth. Moreover,

[I]sn’t being a provider of sexual pleasure an important and valuable attribute, one to be cherished? Maybe we should construct a theory of human dignity based on our sexual capacities … instead of looking for something “finer” beyond or above the sexual (Soble 2002, 58–59).

If X conducts X ’s life morally, and if X develops some talents or hobbies for those rainy days (sure to come) when X is no longer sexually desirable and X ’s friends are busy with other things, then X ’s life is not less worthwhile than most human lives. Claiming otherwise is philosophically haughty and pretentious.

The following anthologies are crucial resources for someone studying the field of the philosophy of sex. The following abbreviations were used above.

DLI: Desire, Love, and Identity: Philosophy of Sex and Love , Gary Foster (ed.), Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2017.
PHSE: The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics , David Boonin (ed.), Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
PoS2: second edition, Alan Soble (ed.), 1981.
PoS3: third edition, Alan Soble (ed.), 1997.
PoS4: fourth edition, Alan Soble (ed.), 2003.
PoS5: fifth edition, Alan Soble and Nicholas Power (eds.), 2008.
PoS6: sixth edition, Nicholas Power, Raja Halwani, and Alan Soble (eds.), 2013.
PoS7: seventh edition, Raja Halwani, Alan Soble, Jacob M. Held, and Sarah Hoffman (eds.), 2017.
PoS8: eighth edition, Raja Halwani, Jacob M. Held, Natasha McKeever, and Alan Soble (eds.), 2022.
PPSL: Philosophical Perspectives on Sex & Love , Robert M. Stewart (ed.), New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
PSL: Philosophy: Sex and Love , James M. Petrik and Arthur Zucker (eds.), Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2016.
PSLR: Philosophy of Sex and Love: A Reader , Robert Trevas, Arthur Zucker, and Donald M. Borchert (eds.), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
PS2: second edition, Robert Baker and Frederick A. Elliston (eds.), 1984.
PS3: third edition, Robert Baker, Kathleen J. Wininger, and Frederick A. Elliston (eds.), 1998.
PS4: fourth edition, Robert Baker and Kathleen J. Wininger (eds.), Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009.
RHPSS: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality , Brian D. Earp, Clare Chambers, and Lori Watson (eds.), Routledge: New York, 2022.
SE: Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue, and the Good Life , Raja Halwani (ed.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
SPP1: volume 1
SPP2: volume 2
Alcoff, Linda Martín, 2006, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self , Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195137345.001.0001
Anderson, Scott, 2013, “On Sexual Obligation and Sexual Autonomy”, Hypatia , 28 (1): 122–141. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01274.x
Anderson, Peter B. and Cindy Struckman-Johnson (eds.), 1998, Sexually Aggressive Women: Current Perspectives and Controversies , New York: The Guilford Press.
Andler, Matthew, 2020, “Sexual Orientation, Ideology, and Philosophical Method”, Journal of Social Ontology , 5 (2): 205–227.
–––, 2021, “The Sexual Orientation / Identity Distinction”, Hypatia , 3 (2): 259–275.
–––, 2022, “Queer and Straight”, in RHPSS, pp. 117–130.
Appel, Jacob M., 2010, “Sex Rights for the Disabled?” Journal of Medical Ethics , 36 (3): 152–154.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 2005, The Ethics of Identity , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Aquinas, 1259–1265, Summa contra gentiles , English Dominican Fathers (trans.), London: Aeterna Press, 2014.
–––, 1265–1274, Summa theologica , 60 vols., Blackfriars, 1964–1976.
Archard, David, 1994, “Exploited Consent”, Journal of Social Philosophy , 25 (3): 92–101.
–––, 1998, Sexual Consent , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Aristotle, 1999, Nicomachean Ethics , Terence Irwin (trans.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Arrell, Robbie, 2022, “Sex and Emergent Technologies”, in RHPSS, pp. 586–600.
Augustine, 419–420, On Marriage and Concupiscence , Peter Holmes (trans.), London: Aeterna Press, 2014.
–––, 413–426, City of God , Marcus Dods (trans.), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009.
Barn, Gulzaar, 2022, “The Ethics and Politics of Sexual Preference”, in RHPSS, pp. 421–436.
Beardsley, Monroe, 1982, The Aesthetic Point of View: Selected Essays , Michael J. Wreen and Donald M. Callen (eds.), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Beckwith, Francis Joseph, 2022, “Why Is Sexual Assault Special?: Transactional Sex and Sacred Intuitions”, in PHSE, pp. 191–202.
Belliotti, Raymond, 1993, Good Sex: Perspectives on Sexual Ethics , Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Benatar, David, 2002, “Two Views of Sexual Ethics: Promiscuity, Pedophilia, and Rape”, Public Affairs Quarterly , 16 (3): 191–201; reprinted in PoS5, pp. 325–336; PoS6, pp. 395–406; PoS7, pp. 437–448; PoS8, pp. 527–537.
–––, 2006, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296422.001.0001
–––, 2015, “Anti-Natalism”, in David Benatar and David Wasserman , Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong to Reproduce? , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 11–132. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199333547.001.0001
Bertocci, Peter A., 1949, The Human Venture in Sex, Love, and Marriage , New York: Association Press.
Bianchi, Andrea, 2022a, “Sexual Consent, Aging, and Dementia”, in RHPSS, pp. 286–296.
–––, 2022b, “Sexual Consent, Dementia, and Well-Being”, in PHSE, pp. 357–375.
Biggar, Nigel and Rufus Black (eds.), 2000, The Revival of Natural Law: Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Responses to the Finnis-Grisez School , Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Blair, Karen, Jaclyn Cappell, and Caroline Pukall, 2017, “Not All Orgasms Were Created Equal: Differences in Frequency and Satisfaction of Orgasm Experiences by Sexual Activity in Same-Sex and Mixed-Sex Relationships”, Journal of Sex Research , 55 (6): 1–15.
Blankschaen, Kurt, 2020, “Rethinking Same-Sex in Natural Law Theory”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 37 (3): 428–445.
Bogaert, Anthony, 2012, Understanding Asexuality , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
–––, 2015, “Asexuality: What It Is and Why It Matters”, Journal of Sex Research , 52 (4): 362–379.
Boonin, David, 2022, “Exploitation and Sexual Consent”, in PHSE, pp. 377–386.
Brogaard, Berit, 2015, On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brunning, Luke, and Natasha McKeever, 2021, “Asexuality”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 38 (3): 497–517; reprinted in PoS8, pp. 185–210.
Cahill, Ann J., 2011, Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics , New York: Routledge.
–––, 2013, “Why ‘Derivatization’ Is Better than ‘Objectification’”, in PoS6, pp. 335–357.
Card, Claudia, 1995, “Choosing Lesbianism”, in Lesbian Choices , New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 47–57.
Carr, David, 2007, “On the Prospect of Chastity as a Contemporary Virtue”, in SE, pp. 89–100.
Carroll, Noël, 1998, A Philosophy of Mass Art , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chadha, Karamvir, 2020, “Sexual Consent and Having Sex Together”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , 40 (3): 619–644.
–––, 2022, “Sex and Consent”, in RHPSS, pp. 218–234.
Corvino, John (ed.), 1997, Same Sex: Debating the Ethics, Science, and Culture of Homosexuality , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
–––, 2006a, “Orientation, Sexual”, in SPP2, pp. 728–731.
–––, 2006b, “Social Constructionism”, in SPP2, pp. 1026–1033.
Danaher, John, 2020, “A Defence of Sexual Inclusion”, Social Theory and Practice , 46(3): 467–496.
–––, 2022, “Is There a Right to Sex?”, in RHPSS, pp. 50–64.
Danaher, John, Brian Earp, and Anders Sandberg, 2017, “Should We Campaign Against Sex Robots?”, in John Danaher and Neil McArthur (eds.), Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 47–71.
De Boer, Tracy, 2015, “Disability and Sexual Inclusion”, Hypatia , 30(1): 66–81.
De Cecco, John, 1981, “Definition and Meaning of Sexual Orientation”, Journal of Homosexuality , 6 (4): 51–67.
Dembroff, Robin, 2016, “What Is Sexual Orientation?”, Philosophers’ Imprint , 16(3): 1–46; reprinted (partially) in PoS7, pp. 221–239; PoS8, pp. 141–160.
Denis, Lara, 2001, “From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 63 (1): 1–28. doi:10.2307/3071087
Dent, N.J.H., 1984, The Moral Psychology of the Virtues , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Diamond, Lisa M., 2022, “What Is Sexual Orientation?”, in RHPSS, pp. 81–101.
Díaz-León, Esa, 2022, “Sexual Orientations: The Desire View”, in Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Mind , New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 294–310.
Di Nucci, Ezio, 2011, “Sexual Rights and Disability”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 37 (3): 158–161.
–––, 2017, “Sex Robots and the Rights of the Disabled”, in John Danaher and Neil McArthur (eds.), Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 73–88.
–––, 2020, “Sexual Rights Puzzle: Re-solved?” Journal of Medical Ethics , 46(5): 337–338.
Diorio, Joseph, 2006, “MacKinnon, Catharine”, in SPP2, pp. 621–632.
Director, Samuel, 2019, “Consent’s Dominion: Dementia and Prior Consent to Sexual Relations,” Bioethics 33 (9): 1065–1071.
Dougherty, Tom, 2013, “Sex, Lies, and Consent”, Ethics , 123 (4): 717–744.
–––, 2015, “Yes Means Yes: Consent as Communication”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 43 (3): 224–253.
–––, 2018, “Affirmative Consent and Due Diligence”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 46 (1): 90–112.
–––, 2022, “Enthusiastic Consent to Sex”, in PHSE, pp. 271–285.
Dworkin, Andrea, 1974, Woman Hating , New York: Penguin.
–––, 1979, Pornography: Men Possessing Women , New York: Penguin.
–––, 1987, Intercourse , New York: Free Press.
Earp, Brian D., and Ole Martin Moen, 2016, “Paying for Sex—Only for People with Disabilities?” Journal of Medical Ethics , 42 (1): 54–56.
Eaton, A. W., 2007, “A Sensible Anti-Porn Feminism”, Ethics , 117 (4): 674–715. doi:10.1086/519226
Eaton, A. W., and Bailey Szustak, 2022, “Asexuality”, in RHPSS, pp. 131–146.
Feser, Edward, 2015, “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument”, in Neo-Scholastic Essays , South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, pp. 378–413.
–––, 2022, “The Metaphysical Foundations of Sexual Morality”, in PHSE, pp. 19–35.
Finnis, John, 1993, “The Wrong of Homosexuality”, The New Republic , November 15, 12–13; reprinted in PoS5, pp. 135–140.
–––, 2011, Natural Law and Natural Rights , second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Firth, Steven, 2019, “Whither a Funded ‘Sex-Doula’ Programme?”, Journal of Medical Ethics , 45 (6): 361–364.
Foucault, Michel, 1976, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Volume 1), R. Hurley (trans.), New York: Vintage, 1990.
Freud, Sigmund, 1905, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , J. Strachey (trans. and rev.), New York: Basic Books, 1962.
Gardner, John, 2018, “The Opposite of Rape”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , 38 (1): 48–70.
Gardner, John, and Stephen Shute, 2000, “The Wrongness of Rape”, in Jeremy Horder (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (Fourth Series), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 193–217.
Garry, Ann, 1978, “Pornography and Respect for Women”, Social Theory and Practice , 4 (4): 395–421; reprinted in PSLR, pp. 314–22; PS2, pp. 312–26; revised version published as “Sex, Lies, and Pornography”, in Hugh La Follette (ed.), Ethics in Practice , second edition, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001, pp. 344–355. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract1978446
George, Robert P., 2003, “Neutrality, Equality, and ‘Same-Sex Marriage’”, in Lynn D. Wardle, Mark Strasser, William C. Duncan, and David Orgon Coolidge (eds.), Marriage and Same-Sex Unions: A Debate , Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 119–131.
George, Robert P. and Gerard V. Bradley, 1995, “Marriage and the Liberal Imagination”, The Georgetown Law Journal , 84: 301–320. [ George & Bradley 1995 available online ]
Giles, James, 2008, The Nature of Sexual Desire , Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Goldman, Alan H., 1977, “Plain Sex”, Philosophy and Public Affairs , 6 (3): 267–287; reprinted in PoS2, pp. 73–92; PoS3, pp. 39–55; PoS4, pp. 39–55; PoS5, pp. 55–73; PoS6, pp. 57–75; PoS7, pp. 53–71; PoS8, pp. 37–54.
–––, 2016, “Pleasure”, in PSL, pp. 79–101.
Gray, Robert, 1978, “Sex and Sexual Perversion”, Journal of Philosophy , 75 (4): 189–199; reprinted in PoS3, pp. 57–66; PoS4, pp. 57–66; PoS7, pp. 73–84; PoS8, pp. 57–67. doi:10.2307/2025658
Gruen, Lori, 2006, “Pornography”, in SPP2, pp. 811–824.
Hall, Kim Q., 2017, “Thinking Queerly about Sex and Sexuality,” in PoS7, pp. 241–255.
Halperin, David, 1990, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love , London: Routledge.
Halwani, Raja, 2003, Virtuous Liaisons: Care, Love, Sex, and Virtue Ethics , Chicago: Open Court.
–––, 2006, “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics of Sexual Identity: Recasting the Essentialism and Social Constructionism Debate”, in Linda Martin Alcoff, Michael Hames-Garcia, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula M. L. Moya (eds.), Identity Politics Reconsidered , Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 209–227. doi:10.1057/9781403983398_14
–––, 2017a, “Casual Sex, Promiscuity, and Objectification”, in PoS7, pp. 401–420. [Originally published as “On Fucking Around”, in PoS6, pp. 441–460.] Revised in PoS8, pp, pp. 459–479.
–––, 2017b [2022], “Racial Sexual Desires”, in PoS7, pp. 181–199; revised with an appendix, in PoS8 (2022), pp. 285–328.
–––, 2018a, “Sexual Ethics”, in Nancy E. Snow (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtue , New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 680–699.
–––, 2018b, Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage: An Introduction , second edition, New York: Routledge.
–––, 2020, “The Sexual Pleasure View of Sexual Desire”, Philosophical Papers , 49(1): 107–135.
–––, 2022a, “The Ethics of Sexual Pleasure”, in PHSE, pp. 37–54.
–––, 2022b, “Casual Sex, Promiscuity, and Objectification”, in PoS8, pp. 459–479.
–––, forthcoming, “Sexual Orientations, Sexual Preferences, and Well-Being”, Social Theory and Practice .
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Introduction: Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality , American Psychological Association website, accessed January 23, 2018.
Philosophy of Sexuality , entry by Alan Soble’s in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
Philosophy of Sex and Love Blog , American Philosophical Association.
Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love
Various Philosophers on Sex , Shaun Miller’s blog.

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Sexuality vs. Gender: What's the Difference?

While often conflated, they're not the same thing—let's clear up the confusion

Ronniechua / Getty Images

Differences
Effects of Discrimination

Sexuality and gender are often assumed to be related concepts, but they are actually separate and distinct. Understanding the difference between sexuality vs. gender is important because, while both are important parts of an individual's sense of self, if you don't know what each one is, you may make incorrect assumptions.

For example, some people may assume that someone who is transgender is gay. But a transgender person's gender identity and sexual orientation aren't connected.

At a Glance

To better understand the differences between sexuality vs. gender, it's important to start by defining gender identity. Becoming more informed about these differences and the way that different identities can intersect can help you understand the impact of discrimination against gender-diverse and sexual minority individuals and the factors that can help mediate the negative effects of stigma and prejudice.

Understanding Sexuality vs. Gender

To understand the difference between sexuality vs. gender, it's helpful to know what each term means.

Gender is socially constructed and one's innermost concept of themselves as a man, woman, and/or nonbinary person. People define their gender identity in a variety of deeply personal ways that can include man or woman but can also extend to identities such as agender, genderfluid , gender nonconforming , and a variety of others .
Sexuality refers to who a person is attracted to and can include a plethora of orientations. While being gay, heterosexual, and bisexual are perhaps the most well-known sexual orientations, there are many others , such as asexual and pansexual .

While the terms are often conflated, recognizing the differences between sexuality and gender is important. Sexuality and gender are essential aspects of a person's identity and play a part in shaping a person's experiences throughout life.

What Is Gender and Gender Identity?

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines gender identity as "a person’s deeply felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or male; a girl, a woman, or female; or an alternative gender, which may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth."

Gender identity is personal and an inherent part of an individual's sense of self. While gender is often presented as a binary that only includes men and women, in reality, gender is a spectrum. People can define their gender in a variety of waysinc! This includes a combination of woman and man, a completely separate gender, or no gender at all.

The four types of gender applied to living and nonliving things are masculine, feminine, neuter, and common.

Gender Identity vs. Gender Expression

Gender identity is internal and may not always be obvious to the outside world. That's because gender expression —the way one presents themselves through their external appearance and behavior with things like clothes, hairstyles, voice, and body language—may or may not conform to their gender identity.

Gender Identity vs. Sex

The terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably, and people often assume that the sex one is assigned at birth dictates the gender one is. In reality, though, gender identity and sex refer to different things.

While gender identity refers to how one defines themselves, sex is biological and dictated by one's anatomy, hormones, and chromosomes.

Just like gender identity, sex is a continuum that isn't limited to male or female, as people can also be born intersex , meaning their bodies aren't biologically male or female.

What Is Sexuality?

Sexuality is another word for sexual orientation. The APA defines sexual orientation as "a component of identity that includes a person's sexual or emotional attraction to another person and the behavior that may result from this attraction.

Sexual vs. Romantic Attraction

It's important to recognize that sexual and emotional attraction may not always match for asexual and aromantic people. Someone may be sexually attracted to one gender but experience no romantic attraction, whereas they may be romantically attracted to another gender but not want to engage in sexual acts.

Sexual Fluidity

Sexual orientation can change at any point during one's lifetime, which is known as sexual fluidity . In particular, as people age and get to know themselves and their preferences better. This often gives them the opportunity to learn more about themselves and who they are attracted to, leading to the evolution of their sexuality. In fact, for some people, sexuality is fluid throughout their lives.

Effects of Sexuality and Gender Discrimination

Unfortunately, transgender people or those whose sexual orientation is something other than heterosexual often encounter discrimination and prejudice . In the past few decades, both gender identity and sexual orientation have become political flashpoints.

Social and Political Effects

A case revolving around whether people who were not heterosexual had the right to marry went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the judges' ruling led to marriage equality. Many states have passed or are debating laws about issues involving transgender people, such as whether to prevent transgender men and women from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The fact that issues surrounding the rights of gender-diverse and sexual minority people are up for debate contributes to a climate where discrimination is still common against anyone who isn't straight and cisgender . Research shows gender diverse and sexual minority individuals suffer from physical and psychological abuse, bullying, and persecution in a variety of contexts, including school, the workplace, and health care.

People can become preoccupied with an individual's gender expression or sexual orientation if it doesn't conform to social norms, and they may make their lack of support clear by doing things like using incorrect pronouns to refer to the individual.

In fact, a 2019 report of the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer ( LGBTQ ) youth in American schools, found that over half of LGBTQ+ students were verbally harassed and that over one-fifth were physically harassed due to their sexual orientation or gender expression.

Mental Health Effects

This kind of prejudice and discrimination puts gender-diverse and sexual minority individuals at an increased risk of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. On the other hand, an individual's journey to determining their sexuality or gender identity is personal. Suppressing one's true gender or sexual identity can lead to mental health issues as well.

Discrimination continues to be a serious problem for people with diverse identities, but there are things that can help. Studies have shown that the mental distress triggered by discrimination can be mediated by:

Social and familial support
Contact with other sexual minorities or others who are gender diverse
Expectations of acceptance

Taking steps to combat discrimination based on sexuality and gender can be beneficial. LGBTQ students in schools with gay-straight alliances, LGBTQ-inclusive curriculums, and supportive educators felt safer and experienced a greater sense of belonging at school.

Both gender identity and sexual orientation are important to parts of a person's overall identity. But it's important to recognize they are not the same thing and knowing the differences between sexuality vs. gender is critical.

In each case, social constructs surrounding sexuality and gender continue to result in prejudices that negatively impact gender-diverse and sexual minority individuals. This may be one reason why many people continue to conflate these constructs.

People must recognize that for individuals, sexuality and gender are not inherently linked. Never make assumptions about a person's sexual orientation based on gender or vice versa. Instead, people need to feel free to explore and define their gender identity and sexual orientation in the way that feels best to them. In doing so, they can be the truest version of themselves.

American Psychological Association Divisions 16 and 44. Key Terms And Concepts In Understanding Gender Diversity And Sexual Orientation Among Students . 2015.

Human Rights Campaign. Glossary of Terms .

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on National Statistics; Committee on Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation . (Becker T, Chin M, Bates N, eds.). National Academies Press (US); 2022.

Morris BJ. History of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender social movements . American Psychological Association.

Adams C. The difference between sexual orientation and gender identity . CBS News. 2017.

GLSEN. The 2019 National School Climate Survey: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Youth in Our Nation's School: Executive Summary . 2020.

Moleiro C, Pinto N. Sexual orientation and gender identity: Review of concepts, controversies and their relation to psychopathology classification systems . Front Psychol . 2015;6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01511

By Cynthia Vinney, PhD Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

The Anthropology of Sexuality

A series of locks are locked against a chain link fence.

In this unit (to accompany SAPIENS podcast S6E7), students will explore sexuality through the lens of anthropology and investigate the influences of cultural, social, and historical factors on human sexual behavior and identity. Students will use an anthropological framework to examine the challenges of studying sexuality, including researching in diverse cultural settings.

Investigate how cultural, social, and historical factors influence human sexual behavior and identity.
Indicate the challenges of studying sexuality within an anthropological framework, including conducting research in diverse cultural settings.

sexual evolution - Earth is brimming with organisms that sexually reproduce—even stinkhorn fungi do it.

When Did Sex Become Fun?

A man with black hair and a beard sits on a sofa in the dark and looks at the illuminated screen of a cellphone he holds in his left hand.

Dating Apps Can Gauge Attraction but Not Chemistry

On a paved city street fenced off and lined with people, three people wearing colorful clothing stand and hold signs. These read: “Monogamy is not for everyone,” “I love my girlfriend’s boyfriend,” and “Sharing is Caring.”

What Is “Natural” for Human Sexual Relationships?

A computer-rendered graphic depicts a group of people in torn clothes and furs with black smudges on their faces and bodies. They gather in front of a rock overhang, with one sitting in front and poking at a pile of wood near which are dangling pieces of meat.

Dismantling the “Man the Hunter” Myth

A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.

Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class

A person with blonde hair wearing a pink blazer stands at a podium with several microphones on it and a sign that reads, “Protect Children’s Innocence.” Several people in suits stand behind, with a large white domed building in the background.

Two Myths Fueling the Conservative Right’s Dangerous Transphobia

A child wearing a plaid shirt and a beanie looks up and holds the hand of an adult wearing jeans and a plaid shirt but whose head isn’t visible. They stand next to a cholla cactus.

Monogamy. Grandmas. Milk. The Evolution of Childhood Is Very Strange.

Amid a political rally where red, black, and green colors are prominent, a smiling woman wearing glasses, a khaki shirt, and a black headscarf holds aloft a sketch of a person’s face that says, “Khan Is Hope.”

The Rise of Aunties in Pakistani Politics

A person stands inside a moving flame of yellow light while sparks fly out in all directions. A second person stands on the left side holding an umbrella against the sparks.

A Call for Anthropological Poems of Resistance, Refusal, and Wayfinding

A silhouetted woman sits in a chair in the center of a dark room looking directly at the camera. Close-up images of another woman are projected onto screens on the three walls surrounding her.

Spotlighting Black Women’s Mental Health Struggles

In a dusty, sepia-toned scene, a person wearing a headdress and long dress stands in the middle of a dirt road while a person operating a rickshaw passes them. A building, car, trees, and a distant mountain range fill the background.

Imphal as a Pond

A person wearing a snorkel, wetsuit, and flippers floats underwater as sunlight streams into the ocean. In the background, another diver swims near the surface.

A Freediver Finds Belonging Without Breath

A child in a puffer coat squats in front of a memorial of flowers and various pictures of an owl, placing a piece of paper among the other objects.

What a Community’s Mourning of an Owl Can Tell Us

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How Allocating Work Aided Our Evolutionary Success

Clear water streams down moss-covered rocks amid thick, luxurious vegetation with broad tropical leaves and bright red and yellow flowers.

Coastal Eden

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Nameless Woman

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Being a “Good Man” in a Time of Climate Catastrophe

Behavior involving acts or parts of the body that are considered sexual.

Explore the study of sexuality from an anthropological perspective and discuss with students how it focuses on investigating sexual experiences in different cultures and the social and cultural constructs of sexual practices and identity.
Relativized sexuality is the idea that sexual experiences are not the same across all cultures and identities. Discuss with students how people have different lived experiences based on their cultural identity and other characteristics.
Samoan culture began rapidly changing in the 1830s when many Samoans were converted to Christianity by missionaries. Discuss with students how cultural practices and views continued to change throughout the 19th and 20th centuries as outside influences impacted and interacted with the Samoan people. Explore how it is possible that the current culture of Samoa no longer aligns with Margaret Mead’s interpretations of Samoans’ view of sexuality.

Baxi, Pratiksha. 2014. “Sexual Violence and Its Discontents.” Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 139–154.

Maksimowski, Sophie. 2012. “A Brief History of the Anthropology of Sexuality, and Theory in the Field of Women’s Sex Work.” University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology 20 (1): 1–13.

Schneider, Luisa T. 2020. “Sexual Violence During Research: How the Unpredictability of Fieldwork and the Right to Risk Collide with Academic Bureaucracy and Expectations.” Critique of Anthropology 40 (2): 173–193.

Why is sexuality relative? Provide examples as you discuss with your peers.
What are some of the challenges with studying sexuality through an anthropological framework today?
What, if any, are some ethical concerns for studying sexuality?
Why can it be so challenging to discuss the topic of sexuality?
Consider the idea that sexuality is relative and explain what this says about sexual violence in different cultures.
How do culture, history, and social influences impact human sexual behavior and identity?
Create a discussion post to reflect on Mead’s work as it relates to adolescence and sexual experiences. Consider how different cultural, social, and historical factors may influence sexual experiences across cultures. Respond to two or more peers.
In a three-to-five-page essay, compare two frameworks of studying sexuality. One framework should be anthropology. For instance, compare sexuality from an anthropological lens and either a biological, sociological, or psychological lens.
Develop a study using methods from anthropology. Explain the details of the study, including your research question (i.e., what you are trying to answer), the method(s) you will use to conduct your research, and the challenges you may face during the research process. Refer back to unit materials for guidance.

Slides: “ The Anthropology of Sexuality”

Article: Jennifer Hasty’s “ Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Anthropology ”

Video: La Trobe University’s Sex, Gender and Sexuality an Anthropological View

Video: Marc Breedlove’s TEDx Talk “ Prenatal Influences on Sexual Orientation ”

Video: Deepak Modi’s TEDx Talk “ Science Behind Sexuality ”

Chelsea Wheeler, Freedom Learning Group

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Studying Sex: A Content Analysis of Sexuality Research in Counseling Psychology

Using a sex positive framework, the authors conducted a 61-year (1954–2015) content analysis of sexuality research in the flagship counseling psychology journals, the Journal of Counseling Psychology and The Counseling Psychologist . Given counseling psychology’s core strengths- and multiculturalism-related values, this study aimed to uncover which human sexuality topics were published most, whether publications aligned with a sex positive, neutral, or negative discourse, what methodologies were used, and differences in how populations were investigated across race. Researchers used an integrative approach to content analysis and human coding ( Neuendorf, 2011 ). Results highlighted that out of 188 articles meeting criteria, a slight majority (38.05%) focused on sexual orientation, identity, and minorities topics. Only 4.78% utilized a sex-positive perspective. Quantitative and conceptual pieces were most published, and publications disproportionately focused on primarily White populations. When people of color were included, the discourse was sex negative. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Outside of a special issue on sex counseling ( Jacobs & Whitley, 1975 ) in The Counseling Psychologist over four decades ago, sexuality research in counseling psychology (CP) has been scant. While counseling psychologists have made important contributions to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual (LGBTQIA) research ( Atkinson, Brady, & Casas, 1981 ; Rostosky, Riggle, Horne, & Miller, 2009 ; Shelton & Delgado-Romero, 2011 ), sexuality research has been otherwise limited in the field of CP. This mirrors psychology’s overall commitment to sex research. Via the search term “sex research” on Springer Link, with the content type set to “articles,” other fields, including medicine (166,944), biomedical sciences (82,859), life sciences (76,949), and social sciences (41,839), dedicate more measureable attention to sexology than psychology at large (40,399). Despite values that presuppose a natural alignment with sexuality research in general, and sex positive sexology specifically, there are gaps in the type of sexuality research counseling psychologists conduct and publish in The Counseling Psychologist and the Journal of Counseling Psychology . The published research also differs in methodology and discourses engaged, based on race.

This content analysis described sexuality research in CP and explored gaps in the extant literature. While the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Public Interest Directorate has focused on sexuality, as it relates to sexual orientation ( APA, 2011 ), HIV and AIDS (APA, n.d.), prevention of sexual abuse/assault/trafficking ( Taskforce on Trafficking of Women and Girls, 2014 ), and sexualization of girls ( APA, 2010 ), these interest areas overwhelmingly contribute to sex negative, preventative sexual health discourses, which focus on disease prevention and risk aspects of sexuality (Arakawa, Flanders, Hatfield, & Heck, 2013; Lewis, 2004 ). There is no APA division dedicated to sex and psychology, yet counseling psychologists endorse values that could shift sexuality research towards more eudaemonic, or sex positive, discourses. For example, across race and ethnicity, people of color are more likely to be the subjects of preventative discourses than eudaemonic discourses ( Lewis, 2004 ). One goal of this study was to determine whether this was also the case in CP journals, where our value of multiculturalism proposes to guide our research. Another goal sought to determine the methodologies and samples in CP’s sexuality research. The current analysis described the sexuality research published in the two flagship journals of counseling psychology, The Counseling Psychologist ( TCP ) and the Journal of Counseling Psychology ( JCP ) ( Reimers & Stabb, 2015 ) through July 2015. As there has been no previous content analysis of all sexuality research in CP, there were no limits to the year-span of the search.

Sexuality research, or sexology , encompasses terms such as sex, sexuality, and sexual health, often used interchangeably. The definitions of these terms have shifted over time, with little consensus among researchers. The World Health Organization (WHO) published the first international definition of sexual health the same year the aforementioned Major Contribution was published, making a national, if not global, statement about what sexual health was and was not ( Edwards & Coleman, 2004 ). In addition to the right to accurate information about sex and sexual pleasure, three elements were at the WHO (1975) definition’s core: (1) a capacity to enjoy sexual and reproductive behavior in accordance with a social and personal ethic; (2) freedom from fear, shame, guilt, false beliefs, and other psychological factors inhibiting sexual response and relationships, and (3) freedom from organic disorders, diseases, and deficiencies that interfere with sexual and reproductive functions (p. 191). This sex positive definition of sexual health aligned well with the research published in the 1975 Major Contribution, and it resonates with what the CP field, by professional identity, proposes to endorse today.

WHO (2006) later advanced sexology definitions by delineating between sex, sexuality, and sexual health in sexuality research. Sex is distinguished from sexual behavior, as the birth assignment of male or female based on genital markers ( WHO, 2006 ). Sexuality is characterized by its role as a central organizing construct for humans that reflects not only the attitudes, behaviors, and values aligned with one’s sex, gender, and sexual identities, but also by eroticism, pleasure, intimacy, reproduction, desire, and the like. Importantly, this definition of sexuality attends to who one is on a biopsychosocial level with respect to other intersecting social identities and contexts. This inclusive definition emphasizes one’s right to make choices regarding their bodies and their abstention from or involvement in intimate relationships and sexual behaviors. Thus, sexuality research encompasses both sex and sexual health. These defining, comprehensive terms made for appropriate search stems to guide this inquiry within counseling psychology journals.

Counseling Psychology Values and Sexuality Research

Counseling psychologists are distinguished and guided by their core values. For many counseling psychologists, it is difficult to view any social condition without attending to those aspects that comprise the core of their professional, and often personal, identity ( Packard, 2009 ). Several of the values, including the focus on a) strengths, b) healthy development across the lifespan, c) respect for diversity, d) the influence of sociocultural context, e) considerations of the whole self, and f) social justice ( Packard, 2009 ), can serve as a useful framework when examining human sexuality research ( Author, Author, & Author, 2016a ). As early as 1954, CP journals published sex research, but at what point did the values that represent the counseling psychologist identity begin to inform these studies? Inversely, despite early inquiry in the field, it is important to determine the extent and manner in which counseling psychologists studied sex at all. The two flagship journals, TCP and JCP, point to an initial space for literature review and analysis.

A CP values-based perspective of human sexuality research engenders one to consider the good, the positive, and the strengths associated with healthy sexuality. Sexual health and wellness, as it relates to one’s quality of life, are then key points of analysis. Importantly, this attention to eudaemonic sexual health is considered vital to counseling psychologists in addition to the prevailing discourses on prevention, not in lieu of them. Essentially, the values of CP encourage the amplification of balanced, holistic accounts of sexuality, not just the risk-related aspects. Further, CP values require an exploration of healthy sexual and gender development in nuanced ways. Since holism and development across the lifespan are important components, this means counseling psychologists’ publications should exemplify how sexual health can be promoted across the varying stages of a person’s life with respect to the biological, psychological, cultural, and social impact it may have for them and others. Holistic and multicultural foci attune counseling psychologists to the broad areas of eudaemonic sexual health such as sexuality, gender roles and expression, and relational functioning, especially for marginalized cultural groups. Counseling psychologists are uniquely positioned and equipped to address issues around sexual pleasure ( Syme, Mona, & Cameron, 2013 ). CP’s strengths-based background may encourage a sex-positive framework; therefore it is imperative to uncover whether CP publications represent this framework.

Sex positivity, as a theoretical framework, acknowledges pleasure, freedom, and diversity ( Williams, Thomas, Prior, & Walters, 2015 ). The framework is comprised of eight dimensions of sex positivity: (1) “Positive” Refers to Strengths, Wellbeing, and Happiness; (2) Individual Sexuality is Unique and Multifaceted; (3) Positive Sexuality Embraces Multiple Ways of Knowing; (4) Positive Sexuality Reflects Professional Ethics; (5) Positive Sexuality Promotes Open, Honest Communication; (6) Positive Sexuality is Humanizing; (7) Positive Sexuality Encourages Peacemaking; (8) Positive Sexuality is Applicable across all Levels of Social Structure. This eudaemonic discourse emphasizes sexual pleasure and sexual functioning, as an important component of human life ( Lewis, 2004 ). An explication of these dimensions follows, to clarify how this study determined which manuscripts aligned with sex positive or preventative discourses.

The first dimension of sex positivity elucidates a near perfect alignment with CP’s value of strengths. This dimension encourages empowerment of participants or clients, particularly those who are marginalized and sexually diverse, to see and use their strengths in the development and expression of their sexual identities ( Williams, Thomas, Prior, & Walters, 2015 ). The second dimension normalizes the fluidity and unique experience/expression of sexuality among individuals, across the lifespan and across culture. This dimension calls for appreciation and respect of those differences, as all people across cultures, levels of wellness, and sexual praxis are seen as human and deemed valuable in a sex positive lens, on par with CP’s values of multiculturalism and inclusion. The third dimension reinforces that positive sexuality can be explored through many methodologies and research paradigms, to answer myriad questions related to sex. They borrow the term “theoretical polyamory” ( Shannon & Willis, 2010 ) to encourage the use of various theories to inform sex research. Building on the prior dimension, the fourth dimension states that research, training, and practice around sex and sexuality is done ethically and comprehensively, with respect for diversity. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselor, and Therapists ethics code ( AASECT, 2014 ) that guides sex positive practitioners are to be met at the level of the highest aspiration to do good and benefit those with whom we work. The fifth dimension notes that sex positive scholarship promotes open communication as it relates to sexuality, including disclosures about STI status, preferences, desires, and behaviors. An emphasis on freedom of ideas and language in sexual communication intends to create a safe space for developing and maintaining a healthy sex life.

Connected to language, humanization is the crux of the sixth dimension, which promotes that all people are treated humanely, even when their behaviors may be “problematic, even atrocious” (p. 9). Even people who offend are still people first. Furthermore, it is important to avoid derogatory terminology and language when describing people who are marginalized by sexual identity or STI status. Sex positivity and social justice are inextricably linked. The seventh dimension suggests that peace making serves as the intention behind our interventions and scholarship, which includes a shift from “war” and “fight” paradigms aligned with preventative discourses to “bridge building,” understanding, and peaceful outreach (p. 9). Relatedly, the eighth dimension acknowledges that interpersonal, familial, community, and societal contexts are inextricably linked to sexuality and serve as important sites of inquiry and influence ( Williams, Thomas, Prior, & Walters, 2015 ). With these established tenets of sex positivity available to inform sexuality research, the scope of sexuality studies in counseling psychology can now fill several gaps.

Studies of human sexuality run the gamut from LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual) concerns to sexual decision-making. Several disciplines conduct sex research, including sociology, gender studies, public health, nursing, and medicine. There is also a specific field dedicated to sex research: sexology. The field of CP, with its emphasis on strengths-based perspectives, prevention, and multiculturalism, is especially poised to conduct important research of human sexuality, a subject area that has been wrought with taboo and stigma. The purpose of this study is to determine the scope, methods, topics, and populations of sexuality research published in TCP and JCP . While counseling psychologists present their research in myriad journals, JCP and TCP best represent the values of CP, as flagship publications ( Reimers & Stabb, 2015 ). The journals selected for this content analysis are known to reflect the prevailing “zeitgeist, values, beliefs, and perceptions” of CP ( Reimers & Stabb, 2015 , p. 802). This study answered the following research questions: (a) Which human sexuality topics were published most? (b) How many of these articles aligned with a sex positive, neutral, or negative discourse? (c) What methodologies were used in human sexuality studies?, and (d) Were there differences in how populations were investigated (methods or framework) across race/ethnicity?

This content analysis examined the sexual health discourses, methodologies, topics, and participant demographics in sex research within CP literature from the inception of the journals until July 2015. The study employed human coding, where the first author conducted the initial search and coding in 2013. In 2015, the second author conducted a follow-up search of JCP and TCP . The research team performed a tertiary literature review, with each team member rechecking both journals. Search terms included sexual*, condom*, HIV, AIDS, and contraception, which resulted in 190 articles ( JCP , n = 91; TCP , n = 99). These search term stems were selected based on the aforementioned WHO’s (2005) definitions of sex, sexual health, and sexuality, which mark sexuality (sexual*) as an encompassing, comprehensive term for sexology research topics. Terms such as condom, HIV, AIDS, and contraception were added through review of other search terms within the selected articles. Upon review, two articles (Stracuzzi, Mohr, & Fuertes, 2011; Zea, 2010) were excluded because they were duplicates of previously identified articles. The remaining 188 articles ( JCP , n = 90; TCP , n = 98) were coded by sexual health discourses (sex positive [eudaemonic], neutral, or negative [preventative]), methodology (qualitative, quantitative, or conceptual), racial/ethnic makeup of the participants, and human sexuality topics. The first author made the final determination on categorization, after discussion among the group.

The analysis of these articles followed Neuendorf’s (2011) six recommendations for content analysis preparation: theoretical backing; a plan for the scope of investigation; review of past research and development of measures; defining the population of messages to be analyzed; immersion in the message pool; and decision to use human vs. computer assisted coding. This content analysis used a sex-positive theoretical framework ( Williams, Thomas, Prior, & Walters, 2015 ), clearly articulated above. In the plan for this investigation’s scope, the researchers employed an integrative approach to content analysis that described the message content (sex research) and combined “message data with data about the message source” ( Neuendorf, 2011 ; p. 278). For this study, the message data were related specifically to descriptions of the article topics, discourses employed, and demographics investigated. These data represented what the article intended to convey and about whom. The message sources were the flagship journals of CP, and the associated CP values were data about the message source, because they represent who we are or aspire to be through the content of our publications.

The first author’s comprehensive review of the sex research in counseling psychology journals resulted in a code book to guide the secondary and tertiary reviews, meeting criteria for Neuendorf’s (2011) third recommendation. Taking an availability-based approach, we addressed Neuendorf’s (2011) fourth and fifth recommendations by reviewing and including all sex research published in the flagship journals from their inception until the point of manuscript preparation in July 2015. Finally, the selection and use of human coding met criteria for recommendation six.

Whereas an article may have been assigned to multiple topics, they were trichotomously coded by discourse. The researchers initially coded article discourses as eudaemonic and preventative, following Lewis’ (2004) descriptions. We later expanded coding to positive, neutral, or negative, based on a description of those types of discourses outlined in the only other sex research content analysis conducted to date (Arakawa, Flanders, Hatfield, & Heck, 2013). The Arakawa, Flanders, and Heck (2013) article made the case that there is a spectrum from sex positive to sex negative, not a dichotomy. Their categorization highlighted that some articles about sexuality may encompass both or neither positions, as it relates to the purpose of their study and the results. Our findings concurred with their assessment of the literature and our coding process reflects this.

While preventative discourses typically aligned with the sex negative code, and eudaemonic discourses typically aligned with sex positive codes, there was some variation that required greater specificity in the coding process and inclusion of the neutral category. For example, an article about the sex therapy process could be sex negative, neutral, or positive: the history of sex therapy would be coded as neutral, whereas an article about using sex therapy to eliminate dysfunction would be sex negative.

Arakawa, Flanders, Hatfield, and Heck (2013) operationalized sex positive articles as those “focused on such topics as, but not limited to: positive attitudes toward sex, sexual desire, sexual fantasy, sexual excitement, sexual pleasure, sex and happiness, orgasm, sex and intimacy, sexual satisfaction, positive and/or healthy relationships” (p. 311). Sex-neutral articles included topics such as “identity formation, prevalence of various sexual identities, or sexual behavior, or comprehensive sex education” (p. 311–312). Sex-negative articles included those that used preventative discourses or emphasized disease or problem models. They included “mental health problems, sexual dysfunction associated with sex, the dangers of sex, sexual stigma or shame, risky sexual behaviors, STIs, HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, homophobia, sexual harassment, trafficking in women, forced prostitution, biphobia, transphobia, negative attitudes, and sexual violence/abuse” (p. 311). Eight original article topic codes were inductively developed for the research team to follow, by reviewing and grouping article topics by theme. After collapsing topics, based on lack of occurrence, recurrence, or similarity, six topic codes remained. The final categorization is detailed in Table 1 .

Content Analysis Codebook

STI – Sexually transmitted infections and sexual risk	These articles include research on HIV, AIDS, and other STIs, as well as pregnancy prevention. Sexual behaviors identified as influencing the risk to contract these STIs or have an unwanted pregnancy, such as condom use are included.
SO – Sexual orientation, identity, and minorities	These articles include research on people who identify as LGBTQIA, as well as heterosexual identity development and issues associated with conversion counseling or attempts to change sexual orientation.
SA – Sexual abuse, objectification, or victimization	These articles include research on survivors of sexual abuse, incest, and sexual assault. They also include articles on sexual objectification, aggression, rape, and molestation, perceived or perpetuated.
SF – Sexual functioning, satisfaction, and pleasure	These articles include research on sexual functioning, including sexual dysfunction disorders found in the DSM, sexual satisfaction, and sexual pleasure. Reproduction related topics are also included.
SH – Sexual health communication, attitudes, and values	These articles include research on sexual communication among partners and attitudes and values people hold and/or share about sexuality.
SC – Sexual counseling, education, and therapy	These articles include research on sex counseling and therapeutic interventions for sexual issues, as well as sex education prevention interventions and outreach.
E – Eudaemonic Discourse	These articles include topics related to sexual pleasure, satisfaction, improving sexual functioning, and advocating for the sexual rights of LGBTQIA and other marginalized groups. They align with the elements of a sex-positive framework.
P – Preventative Discourse	These articles include topics that relate to prevention of sexual health risks, such as contracting an STI, treating an STI, preventing sexual victimization, and preventing unwanted pregnancy.
Qual – Qualitative Research	These articles include studies that employ qualitative methodologies, such as consensual qualitative research, grounded theory, and case studies.
Quan – Quantitative Research	These articles include studies that employ quantitative methodologies, such as quasi-experimental design, cross-sectional survey research, and scale development.
Mixed – Mixed Methods Research	These articles include studies that employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.
Conc – Conceptual Research	These articles include literature reviews, commentary, and introductions to special issues.
APOC – All People of Color	These articles have samples made entirely of POC.
PPOC – Predominantly People of Color	These articles have samples made of more than 50% POC.
AW – All White	These articles have samples made entirely of White people.
PW – Predominantly White	These articles have samples made of more than 50% White people.
N/A – Not applicable	These articles do not have a sample, because they are conceptual or theoretical.

After organizing based on discourse and topic, we coded methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, or conceptual). Articles were assigned to only one methodology. Conceptual articles, such as literature reviews, commentary, and introductions, were included following the Reimers and Stabbs’ (2015) content analysis example that determined the subject of inquiry, sexuality, was often discussed in theory as much as it was studied empirically.

All articles were reviewed to determine the racial/ethnic makeup of the samples in qualitative and quantitative studies. Articles were coded as all People of Color (APOC), predominantly People of Color (PPOC), predominantly White (PW), and all White (AW). Where more than half, but not all, of the sample were People of Color, articles received a PPOC code. Where more than half, but not all, of the sample were White, articles received a PW code. Conceptual articles received a not applicable (NA) code for this stage of assignment.

Research Question I

The first research question asked: Which human sexuality topics were published most in the two main CP journals? One hundred and eighty-eight human sexuality research articles were found within the Journal of Counseling Psychology ( JCP ) and The Counseling Psychologist ( TCP ) between 1954 and July 2015. There were six main topic areas found, with the overwhelming majority of articles falling under sexual orientation, identity, and minorities ( n = 78; 41%). Several TCP Major Contributions (1991, 1998, 2004, 2010) contributed to this number of publications. Some articles related to more than one category, so the total numbers equal more than 188 (See Table 2 ).

Human Sexuality Topics Published in JCP and TCP

Topics	Number	%
STI - Sexually transmitted infections and sexual risk	32	15.61
SO – Sexual orientation, identity, and minorities	78	38.05
SA – Sexual abuse, objectification, or victimization	51	24.88
SF – Sexual functioning, satisfaction, and pleasure	13	6.34
SH – Sexual health communication, attitudes, and values	7	3.41
SC – Sexual counseling, education, and therapy	24	11.71
Total	205

Articles about sexual abuse, objectification, or victimization ( n = 51; 27.13%) and sexually transmitted infections and sexual risk ( n = 32; 17.02%) made up the second and third most published. These topics were relatively highly published because of special issues on sexual objectification ( Szymanski, Moffitt, & Carr, 2011 ) and HIV ( Hoffman, 1991 ). Very few STI articles mentioned diseases outside of HIV/AIDS. The sexual risk research was limited in pregnancy prevention studies as well.

Research Question II

The second question statedasked, “How many of these articles aligned with a sex positive, neutral, or negative discourse?” Articles that aligned with the sex negative discourse made up a large majority at 70.21% ( n = 132). These articles largely included topics about sexual minorities, followed by sexual functioning, sexual abuse and victimization, HIV, and sex counseling and therapy. Neutral articles, those including topics about sexual identity and sex education, represented 25% of the sample ( n = 47). Articles contributing to sex positive discourses on sexual health were few (4.78%, n = 9) and reported on sexual health and sex counseling.

Research Question III

The third research question asked, “What methodologies were used in human sexuality studies?” Of empirical studies, quantitative methods represented the majority ( n = 91; 48.40%). There were 77 (40.96%) conceptual articles, including commentary, introductions, and reactions, as well as literature reviews and intervention descriptions. Eighteen qualitative studies and two mixed methods studies were also found. The Journal of Counseling Psychology published the large majority of the quantitative articles ( n = 78), while The Counseling Psychologist published the large majority of the conceptual articles ( n = 76).

Research Question IV

The final question asked, “Were there differences in how populations were investigated (methods or framework) across race?” The four categories for organizing the racial and ethnic demographic data were all White (AW), predominantly White (PW), predominantly People of Color (PPOC), all People of Color (APOC; See Figure 1 ). Eighteen studies did not specify the racial or ethnic demographics of their samples. They were not included in the count, although it could be reasonably assumed that those samples were all White or predominantly White, based on the historical context in which the articles were published (1958–1987). Five conceptual articles were written specifically about People of Color, but as they did not include a sample, they were not included in the count.

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Demographics of Sex Research Studies. This bar graph illustrates the number of studies in the content analysis that included the outlined demographic categories.

A total of 94 articles had samples with explicitly stated racial demographics. One study had exactly 50% People of Color (POC) and White people. Studies with PPOC ( n = 5; 5.31%) and APOC ( n = 7; 7.45%) were nearly equal. There were also six AW participant studies (6.38%). Studies with PW participants were the most frequent ( n = 75; 79.79%). PW studies were published over ten times more than any other subject group. The APOC studies focused on sex negative, preventative discourses exclusively, with topics such as sexual abuse, sexual objectification, HIV, and pregnancy prevention. Methodologies included two qualitative studies and five quantitative studies. Among the six AW studies, four aligned with sex negative discourses. Topics included sexual abuse and sexual identity. The remaining two articles were neutral, with topics related to sexual orientation. Methodologies represented across these six AW articles were an equal split of quantitative and qualitative.

The results from this study demonstrate that out of all six main topics of sexuality research in counseling psychology, articles about sexual orientation, identity, and minorities make up the majority. This category contains 53% more articles than those in the next main category: sexual abuse, objectification, and victimization. Representative of the Society of Counseling Psychology’s (SCP) stated values of multiculturalism and inclusion, this focus on sexual minorities is one way that researchers in the field attempts appear to publish research congruent to said values. Despite a focus on studying sexual minority populations, few eudaemonic, sex positive studies have been published. Further, none of the articles focused on consensual non-monogamy, polyamory or kink ( Author, Author, & Author, 2016a ). Articles contributing to the sex negative, preventative discourses in sexual health make up the majority of the field’s foci, as sex positive articles represent less than five percent of research published in the flagship journals. Although prevention is also a value of the Society of Counseling Psychology, the enhancement and enrichment of sexual experiences has mental health benefits that require additional exploration ( Bridges, Lease, & Ellison, 2004 ). The only other sexuality research content analysis found similar results. Although Arakawa and colleagues (2013) surveyed a sample of journals within sexology at large and medicine, sex positive articles represented just seven percent of the articles published in their sample. The type of journal was significant, in that sexology journals such as The Journal of Sex Research and Archives of Sexual Behavior published more sex positive research than the medical journals, The New England Journal of Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology . However, counseling psychology’s percentages aligned more with the medical journals than the sexology journals’ trends toward sex positivity.

This study also found that counseling psychologists largely rely on quantitative methods to empirically investigate human sexuality, or they conceptually synthesize, review and address other human sexuality research. As such an intimate and integral aspect of living, expanding methods of inquiry can contribute to sex positive discourses more vividly. Finally, there is a glaring difference in the number of studies sampling predominantly White (PW) people. Greater than ten times more articles with PW samples have been published, and this estimate is conservative given that some articles published prior to the millennium did not specify the race or ethnicity of their samples. None of the studies with APOC or PPOC samples were sex positive, thus we miss a chance to extend multiculturalism beyond merely including POC. Choosing sex positive investigative frameworks with racial minorities relocates the discursive trend toward risk to pleasure and strength in a humanizing manner: a social justice opportunity.

Implications for Research

Although seven percent of the articles reviewed for this content analysis contribute to eudaemonic, or sex positive, discourses, only one explicitly stated that they were guided by a sex positive framework ( Syme, Mona, & Cameron, 2013 ). As counseling psychologists undertake sexuality research, sex positivity exemplifies a value-congruent match for guiding this inquiry. Since 1981, counseling psychologists who identify as sexual minorities and some LGBTQIA allies contributed the most to sexuality research published in the flagship journal with their important work ( Atkinson, Brady, & Casas, 1981 ; Rostosky, Riggle, Horne, & Miller, 2009 ; Shelton & Delgado-Romero, 2011 ), much of it within the past decade. Still, there is more to be done as it relates to talking about sexual behavior, attitudes, and pleasure through a positive lens.

In the two flagship journals, counseling psychology researchers conceptualize and write about sex differently based on the identities of their samples. LGBTQIA people are receiving more attention in sex research in the past decade than they have in forty years. Yet, despite an increase in published research on one marginalized group, LGBTQIA samples, along with people of color, are overwhelmingly examined through risk and medical models ( Tolaymat & Moradi, 2011 ; Wang & Heppner, 2011 ; Simoni, Martone, & Kerwin, 2002 ). Arguably, sexuality research in counseling psychology misses the mark when it comes to marginalized groups, and when the focus turns away from prevention, the literature becomes even more scant for people of color. If counseling psychologists are to embrace sex positivity, attention to diversity must underscore the research more broadly. The current oversight presents a challenge to the multicultural paradigm, in that it ignores pleasure and sexual functioning among marginalized groups ( Lewis, 2004 ). Sexual stereotypes, myths, religious beliefs, and health concerns may limit the pleasure and subsequent sex-related mental health benefits of People of Color ( Bowleg, 2004 ), and counseling psychology continues to perpetuate foreclosed discourses around positive sexuality among racial/ethnic minorities. Undertaking research that presents both sides of the sexual health coin for racial/ethnic minorities is an important future direction for counseling psychologists, using a variety of methodologies and a strengths-based focus, in addition to emphasized commitment to multiculturalism and social justice. Although the scope of this study did not investigate other social locations, people with disabilities are also minimally considered in sex research, and lower social class is presented as a demographic or risk-variable, rather than an identity to explore further.

Qualitative and mixed methods studies offer especially useful options for explicating many sexuality topics. Like most journals, counseling psychology journals have privileged quantitative methods. Sexuality literature reviews and conceptual works add considerably to the body of research, but extending on the recommendations of these articles through qualitative inquiry gives voice to the lived experiences of sexuality across, race, class, gender, ability, and the lifespan. It also provides an opportunity for participants to articulate the positive aspects of sex that remain under-investigated in counseling psychology journals. A qualitative approach can also help researchers uncover how cultural messages differ and influence sexuality within international populations as well. For example, in a qualitative study on heterosexual Black men of Caribbean descent ( n = 11), participants identified pleasure as an important part of their definition of sexual health (Crowell, Delgado-Romero, Mosley, & Huynh, 2016). Future studies should explore sexual experiences of racial, gender, class, ability status, and other minorities through a sex positive lens, employing a wider range of research methods.

Implications for Practice

With the exception of the 1975 special issue, the TCP and JCP are especially lacking in research about sex counseling, therapy, and other interventions to enhance sex. Counseling psychologists have an opportunity to bolster sex positive sexuality research as scientist-practitioners in a way that medical journals have yet to (Arakawa et al., 2013). Sex positive research can inform sex therapy, and sex therapy requires the strengths-based, developmental perspective that counseling psychology programs integrate into their trainings. Current training deficits include the actual presence of human sexuality coursework ( Author, Author, & Author, 2016b ). Increasing production and publication of sexuality research in counseling psychology journals, then, also provides literature upon which programs can develop the courses that better prepare trainees to intervene on sexual issues. This challenge is further explored in this special issue ( Author et al., 2016b ).

Furthermore, at a baseline level, counseling psychologists need to be able to use a sex-positive framework when talking about sexuality with clients from initial assessment, including open-ended questions about how clients identify, the nature of their sex lives, as it relates to the presenting problem, sexual health promotion practices, such as condom use, and changes in desire, arousal, and ability to reach orgasm. To increase the comfort level of trainees and licensed practitioners when talking about sex, extensive treatment of human sexuality and sex therapy should be intentionally integrated into continuing education opportunities presented by SCP during convention, the Great Lakes Convention, and the National Multicultural Summit. An intersectional, multicultural perspective should inform both the science and practice. Additionally, developing internships and post-doctoral fellowships that focus on sex positive sex therapy may be a new direction for counseling psychology practitioners. The Society of Counseling can develop a Special Interest Group for members interested in furthering sexuality practice within the division.

Limitations and Future Research

The present study examined sexuality research in the two main counseling psychology journals in the U.S. It could be that counseling psychology sexologists publish their research in other journals that specifically focus on sexuality or ethnic minorities. However, the findings of the present study highlight the foci, samples, and methodologies that have received the greatest attention in the top CP journals while noting those that have been ignored. Errors in categorization were checked thrice through secondary and tertiary reviews by the co-authors and the research team; however, there may be remaining errors given the human coding process ( Neuendorf, 2011 ).

Future research should utilize sex positive frameworks to explore and examine topics such as sexual pleasure, behavior, functioning, and attitudes among all groups. For example, exploring difference in the topics and framework of sex research across gender. Continuing to study sexual minorities, researchers should begin to include sexuality in other marginalized groups, including people of color, people with disabilities, and people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds. An intersectional approach would bolster the studies, rather than isolating specific aspects of one’s possible identities, and a eudaemonic perspective should inform these inquiries, rather than a preventative perspective. Counseling psychologists who study sexuality should collaborate to develop a sexual health course syllabus to implement sexuality research into the model program. Increasing mixed methods and qualitative research about these topics would improve the scientific basis for these trainings. Training programs, such as practica and internships, would benefit from more direct dialogues about human sexuality with trainees, using sexuality research as an evidence-based framework. Additionally, sex positive sexuality research, and training informed by this research, should attend to topics like kink and polyamory, as these areas continue to be excluded from the published research in our flagship journals.

Sexuality research encompasses a broad scope of empirical and conceptual literature. As a behavior that can indicate and improve psychological well-being, sex is a shared experience across race, class, gender, ability, and sexual orientation. The field of counseling psychology needs an intentional focus on sex positive sexuality research. The present study highlights the need for a eudaemonic discourse in the study of sexuality, specifically among racial and ethnic minorities, a population that has historically been the source for risk and deficit models. It is important to note that focusing on pleasure does not mean ignoring risk, but rather provides a context for which sexual behavior occurs. Furthermore, a sex-positive focus could be a way to minimize the stigma and promote humanity. Counseling psychologists are uniquely positioned to lead in sex-positive research with diverse samples, utilizing culture as a context for understanding sexual health and well-being.

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Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

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Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality was first published in 1905. Freud expanded it several times in later editions, and it reached its final form in 1924. The book occupies a major place in Freud’s body of work, but it was controversial when it first appeared. Freud pointedly blurs the line between perversions and normal sexual behaviors, and he develops a radically new and surprising theory of human sexuality—in particular, of childhood sexuality. The essays present some of Freud’s most famous ideas, including the stages of psychosexual development, polymorphous perversity, drive theory, and the Oedipus complex. Finally, the book makes contributions to Freud’s thinking about aggression, ambivalence, sublimation , and more.

In 1953, the multivolume Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Freud appeared in English with a translation of the Three Essays by James Strachey. This version remains definitive, although though there is a long history of disputing some of Strachey’s translations of key terms. Strachey’s annotations and footnotes explain the position of the Three Essays in the overall development of Freud’s thought. Strachey’s notes also explain the development of the book over time, describing its expansions and revisions between 1905 and 1924.

Most English editions reproduce Strachey’s translation including his notes. (Some e-book editions rely on an outdated, although sometimes elegant, English translation from 1915 by A. A. Brill.) This guide relies on the Basic Books edition of Strachey’s translation published in 2000. Still in print, it is also available for free at the Internet Archive. Citations refer to the page numbers in that edition.

The first essay, “The Sexual Aberrations,” analyzes various perversions to challenge commonplace ideas about human sexuality. These commonplaces are, first, that infants and children do not have sex lives because the sexual impulse only arrives with puberty and, second, that sexual instincts are naturally directed to the opposite sex and procreation.

Freud discusses “inversion,” or homosexuality, to demonstrate that the sexual instinct does not contain an innate sexual object (such as the opposite sex). Freud looks at various theories about inversion that were prevalent in his day and finds fatal problems with each of them. Next, under the category of the sexual aim, he discusses the perversions proper, like fetishes for feet or other body parts, and so on. Freud concludes that the sexual instinct is itself various and nonunitary, but that its primitive and partial components come together or amalgamate to produce various macro-level sexualities. In some cases, the result is an amalgamation that we call normal. In other cases, the result is a perversion.

Freud then turns to the topic of neurotics and their sexual lives. He writes that the sexual instinct is key to the formation and maintenance of a neurotic’s symptoms because sexual libido is what charges or gives energy to the neurotic’s symptoms. As a result, the neurotic’s sex life, he writes, is in some way really nothing more than the (unhappy) experience of their symptoms.

In the second essay, “Infantile Sexuality,” Freud turns to early childhood, which he argues plays a pivotal role not just in the development of adult sexual preferences but in human psychological development as a whole. Infantile sexuality is fundamentally autoerotic in nature and “polymorphously perverse” (115). Freud argues that the whole variety of neurotic and normal psychological structures emerge from the process of psychosexual development that begins with oral satisfaction and thumb-sucking and proceeds through the other so-called erotogenic zones, including the anal, arriving finally at genital sexuality. He discusses key ideas like the incest barrier and penis envy in this section.

In the final essay, “The Transformation of Puberty,” Freud discusses the changes ushered in by puberty following the latent stage—itself begun at around age five. In a normal case, the adolescent will discover an attraction to the opposite sex and begin to break away from the emotionally incestuous confines of the family unit. While some adolescents make the transition to adult sexuality in the normal way, others do so differently, leading to what we call perversions and to various neurotic formations that may not at first seem like they are related to sexual life.

Throughout the book, Freud emphasizes that perversion, neurosis, and normality are continuous and often overlapping categories. Drawing on an enormous wealth of observations about both neurotic and normal psychological experience, he connects his theory of psychosexual development, elaborated for the first time in this book, to the framework for psychoanalysis that he had already developed, in which repressed childhood experiences are found to be the causes of present-day psychological formations. To summarize most briefly, this is the book that made sex fundamental to Freudian theory.

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Gender and Sexuality

The academic inquiry has sought to understand the two essential aspects of human identity: gender and sexuality (Secules et al., 2021). For many years, gender and sexuality have been topics of social discourse and academic inquiry. Such notions are firmly entrenched within society’s fabric, cultural beliefs, and individual experiences contributing to shaping their relationships with themselves and others. Exploration into various grades or elements surrounding sex identity, including the social-cultural backdrop developing historically and then forming disagreements nowadays, will be carried out by me through writing the rest part of this write-up. Throughout this document, I will investigate numerous theoretical frameworks governing notions of gender and sexuality.

Furthermore, I will evaluate various perspectives relating to these themes–taking note not only of positive aspects but also potential shortcomings while acknowledging any additional critics’ viewpoints. A thorough appreciation of how gender identity impacts society necessarily involves recognizing it as an inherently complex concept with far-reaching implications. Considering the complexities involved in comprehending the meaning of gender and sexuality on both societal norms or individual identity, it is impractical for any one theory to be considered uniformly practical when studying this concept providing a quick introduction to the historical evolution and societal perception changes surrounding sex and gender is going to be my starting point. Then we will examine various theoretical constructs that have been applied in interpreting those themes; some notable ones being feminist philosophy, transformative opinion & social constructivism. Moreover, part of my exploration process would involve discussing contemporary issues regarding sexuality; these include aspects such as seeking tolerance for people who identify themselves as lgbtq+ and permitting individuals freely express their genders by their preference through transgender transition surgeries, among others. This research paper’s primary focus is to provide a complete understanding of how gender and sexuality matter across a sociological theory by investigating its impact on individuals’ lives within societies. In analyzing multiple perspectives and theories, one can attain an enhanced grasp of these intricate concepts, allowing us to create a more inclusive social order.

In other cultures, gentleness might be associated with masculinity while aggression with femininity; however, these associations are socially constructed based on location & history. Masculinity may be associated with aggression and dominance in some cultures or gentleness and sensitivity in others, but both relate to social expectations of gender(Alsarve & Johansson, 2021). Cultural norms shifting across time and location can heavily influence what constitutes being masculine or feminine. Cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity vary between different periods and societies. Marginalizing people that break from traditional gender norms has been a typical result of the social construct behind it. Exclusion from employment and education opportunities, along with discrimination in housing and healthcare, are among some of the discriminations faced by individuals who identify as transgender.

Two solid social identities that can intersect are gender and sexuality, shaping an individual’s experiences. An individual’s social experience may vary based on both gender and sexual orientation as two key components that affect this type of interaction between broader society and these core human traits (De Neef et al., 2019). As opposed to people having distinct classifications, being at an intersectional point regarding factors like sex identity or sexual preference can result in unique societal benefits/drawbacks. Oppression is manifested differently depending on factors like race, gender, and sexuality all intersecting with each other–in relation to members identifying under both queer or non-heterosexual identities as well as who are persons of color. Experiences with discrimination and marginalization vary greatly among white members of the LGBTQ + community compared to those identifying with a different race or ethnicity within this group. High rates of murder and assault disproportionately affect black transgender women. Tackling discrimination against people who identify as LGBTQIA requires taking an interdisciplinary view since doing so would help understand how sexual orientation intersects with other characteristics (like Gender or Race), thereby influencing one’s life chances. Folks from traditionally stigmatized populations often witness this ‘intersection’ firsthand; LGBTQ+ people facing poverty challenges (e.g., lack of access to healthcare) serve as just one example. Individuals facing marginalization due to financial hardship or physical impairments could encounter unique barriers when seeking gender- or sexuality-oriented assistance. Obtaining adequate and necessary healthcare can prove challenging for those in the low-income category who are part of the LGTBQIA+ community.

Discrimination faced by those who identify as transgender or LGBTQ+ regarding healthcare/workplace/housing access highlights the unfortunate consequences resulting from traditional societal expectations about one’s sexual persuasion. While individuals’ sexual orientation describes their emotional and physical attraction toward others, it is essential not to confuse this aspect with one’s internal sense of being male or female. Sexual orientation labels include heterosexual/straight (sexes are opposite), homosexual/gay/lesbian (same sexes), and bisexual (both same & different) (Lippa, 2020). Misalignment between a person’s gender identity/sexual preference & societal conventions leads to mistreatment/discrimination. Individuals belonging under the banner of the LGBTQ+ community may have difficulty acquiring accommodation or securing employment, while someone identifying themselves as transgender may suffer from facing prejudice when seeking medical assistance specifically dealing with matters relating o their transitional journey.

Analyzing the experiences of individuals and groups involves considering the role that power and privilege play in constructing gender and sexuality. Despite significant progress made over the years on this front through affirmative action policies or programs, women undeniably continue to contend with gender disparities even today Persistent gender pay gap signifies the presence of discrimination against women despite notable progress. Marginalization of certain groups due to power dynamics contributes significantly to shaping gender identity, thereby further resulting in oppression & stereotypes, exemplified by fewer opportunities for female advancement into high-level executive employment roles laying bare society’s systematic prejudices. Similarly, the past has seen LGBTQ+ people receive substantial discrimination and social isolation owed to their gender identity or sexual preference (Madrigal-Borloz, 2021). The impact of violent actions towards members of the LGBTQ+ community cannot be ignored throughout history, implying that using laws regulating sexual interactions contributed negatively gives an understanding of how some policies act exclusively favoring groups interested in imposing social disadvantage. In addition, accessing healthcare, housing, and employment can be challenging for many LGBTQ+ individuals. Acknowledging marginalized groups’ experiences means being aware of how power works within social hierarchies- this awareness promotes an equitable & inclusive society. The role played by power in reinforcing social hierarchies must be acknowledged while marginalized groups’ experiences are recognized to create equity among all individuals. Eliminating oppression suffered by women and LGBTQ+ individuals may begin with undermining patriarchy as a structure and other oppressive societal institutions. To tackle discrimination faced by women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, power dynamics must be recognized along with efforts toward equality.

With numerous views and arguments, gender and sexuality are intricate themes that require careful consideration. Our exploration in this article involves numerous elements regarding this particular matter – namely, issues surrounding social constructions that define genders, effects generated by sexualities or identities toward health goals, current endeavors highlighting justice movements for individuals belonging to all spectrums within LGTBQ+There are several areas affected by gender/sexuality which include proving differences between academic growth rates for students. While advances toward accepting gender-identity diversification took place recently, plenty is still needed before people are treated equally, no matter their sexual orientation. Challenging traditional gender roles & promoting acceptance of diverse sexualities are essential for creating a more equitable & just society that respects all individuals regardless of their identities moving forward. The pursuit of creating a just society that esteems each citizen equally, irrespective of sexuality or gender, requires our relentless drive towards shaking up social traditions regarding gender while amplifying awareness of varied sexual preferences.

Alsarve, D., & Johansson, E. (2021). A gang of ironworkers with the scent of blood: A participation observation of male dominance and its historical trajectories at Swedish semi-professional ice hockey events. International Review for the Sociology of Sport , 57 (1), 54–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690221998576

De Neef, N., Coppens, V., Huys, W., & Morrens, M. (2019). Bondage-Discipline, Dominance-Submission, and Sadomasochism (BDSM) From an Integrative Biopsychosocial Perspective: A Systematic Review. Sexual Medicine , 7 (2), 129–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esxm.2019.02.002

Lippa, R. A. (2020). Interest, Personality, and Sexual Traits That Distinguish Heterosexual, Bisexual, and Homosexual Individuals: Are There Two Dimensions That Underlie Variations in Sexual Orientation? Archives of Sexual Behavior , 49 (2), 607–622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01643-9

Madrigal-Borloz, V. (2021). The price that is paid: violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and poverty. Elgar Online: The Online Content Platform for Edward Elgar Publishing , 171–191. https://www.elgaronline.com/display/edcoll/9781788977500/9781788977500.00022.xml

Secules, S., McCall, C., Mejia, J. A., Beebe, C., Masters, A. S., L. Sánchez‐Peña, M., & Svyantek, M. (2021). Positionality practices and dimensions of impact on equity research: A collaborative inquiry and call to the community. Journal of Engineering Education , 110 (1), 19–43. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20377

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Gender and Sexuality

Other essays.

Sexuality refers to God’s anthropological design and pattern for the procreative relationship between male and female and to the experience of erotic desire within that design. Gender refers to biological differences in male and female embodiment and the different cultural ways in which the creational distinctions between male and female are manifested. The creational narrative of Genesis 1–2 provides the Christian with the foundational truths behind these distinctions: God created humanity, male and female, in his image for one another. To deny any part of this teaching is to subject God’s purposeful design to the desires of humanity. While much of modern culture desires to deny these distinctions and to untether gender from sexuality, the New Testament reaffirms the Old Testament’s teaching on this topic and brings the male-female distinction to its culmination in the Christ-Church relationship.

A Christian framework for gender and sexuality begins with understanding that each find their origin, structure, and purpose within God’s will for creation. Gender and sexuality, from a Christian perspective, are enchanted realities imbued with divine meaning and purpose. But as the drama of Scripture unfolds, gender and sexuality become impacted by sin. Yet, in light of redemption, the original design and purpose of gender and sexuality are reaffirmed and heightened as the New Testament explains their ultimate telos —to reflect the Christ-Church union. The assumption that gender and sexuality are ordered by God, and for God, stands in stark contrast to modernity’s view that divinizes gender and sexuality, understanding both to be ordered to, and determined by, consent and human will alone.

Sexuality and Gender in God’s Design

When speaking of sexuality and gender, what is meant by these terms?

Sexuality can have broad and narrow meanings. In a broad rendering, sexuality refers to God’s anthropological design and pattern for the procreative relationship between male and female. In a narrower scope, sexuality refers to the experience of erotic desire. Accordingly, in Scripture, sexuality is a constitutive part of human nature and human experience shaped by God’s will for creation; it is not the singular defining aspect of human identity itself.

Gender can also have broad and narrow connotations. More broadly, gender refers to biological differences in male and female embodiment. Narrowly speaking, gender refers to the creational distinctions between male and female manifested in culture (e.g., baby girls adorned in pink; baby boys adorned in blue). Gender should be understood as the cultural reality resulting from God making men and women biologically sexed and distinct. Christians need to understand that as partakers of God’s good creation, we are to acknowledge and participate in culturally-appropriate gender distinctions. This is because each culture discovers culturally-defined ways to reflect the biological and created difference of men and women. This means Christians should abide by the gender norms set by their culture insofar as what the culture dictates does not transgress God’s moral law for upholding the sex distinction between male and female (Deut. 22:5; 1 Cor. 11:3–16). For example, cross-dressing is sinful because it violates the creational boundaries between male and female that come to be expressed in culturally-appropriate gender norms. We ought to care about the gender distinctions our culture holds up since gender distinctions are a common grace mechanism for acknowledging the innate differences of males from females.

Sexuality and gender are first made known in the creational accounts of Scripture. In Genesis 1:26–28, we read of God creating man and woman in His image. Equal in their dignity, but different in their design and calling, the man and woman are then commissioned to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion.” Genesis 1 communicates both the identity of male and female, and that this identity is oriented toward a procreative union meant to populate the earth. Seen through this light, gender and sexuality are substantive pillars in fulfilling what theologians refer to as the cultural mandate.

In another rendering of humanity’s origins, we read in Genesis 2 that it is not good for man to be alone; that a helper was needed. This helper is both similar and dissimilar; similar in her humanity, yet dissimilar in her design. The man and woman—as counterparts—are intended to form a complementary union. In 2:24, it is written that “Then a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This language is at once both figurative and literal; figurative in that it describes the establishing of a distinct family unit; literal in that it testifies to the bodily union for which male and female anatomy are designed. This sexual pattern is the archetype for the Bible’s expectation for human sexual arrangements.

Several axiomatic truths related to gender and sexuality are found in the Genesis 1–2 narrative.

God created . A Christian understanding for gender and sexuality begins with a foundational assumption about the universe itself. The Triune God is a God of order, not chaos, and random combination. Christians believe that the Triune God alone brings reality into existence. Reality and human experience are not self-creating or self-constituting. Christians confess that the God who creates the cosmos is the holy, sovereign, and just God who orders all aspects of reality—including sexuality and gender. Gender and sexuality are not evolutionary quirks; both find their origin in the creative will of God.
God created humanity. A Christian understanding for gender and sexuality also begins with a foundational assumption about human nature. God is the creator of humanity, and as such, has the right to speak authoritatively over our lives. We are his subjects, and sexuality and gender are constitutive aspects of God’s rule over humanity. We are not self-creating or self-constituting. Sexuality and gender, then, are not plastic and endlessly malleable to fit human preference. Rather like the body, Christians believe that gender and sexuality are purposefully ordered to fit God’s will for humanity (1 Cor. 6:13). This means obedience and a commitment to living in line with God’s creative will is where holiness and human flourishing form an intersection.
God created humanity in His image. Genesis speaks of God making man and woman in His image. Theologians debate all that being made in God’s image entails, but in general, we can say that we image God in our relational dimension, our structural design, and our functional capacity. While exercising caution to not reduce sexuality and gender as the defining marks of bearing God’s image, it is appropriate to assume that they contribute to the entirety of what it means to bear God’s image. Humanity existing in male and female iterations implies that our sexual design and gendered existence are participants in the fundamental nobility and dignity that human beings are said to possess because of being made in God’s image. To be made in God’s image means that no part of our humanity is purposeless or irrelevant to God’s creative intention.
God created humanity male and female. When God created humanity, He did not make us sexless monads. He made humanity in male and female forms. This means that gender, and gender identity—if such a construct is at all intelligible—is an embodied reality. Male and female self-conception are not constructed from psychology alone. Male and female, according to the biblical portrait, are fixed, bodily realities; meaning they are not interchangeable or eradicable. They are objectively known; such that the identity of who we are as sexed humans is not a mystery. Lastly, male and female imply substantive differentiation. This differentiation is observed down to the chromosomal, anatomical, reproductive, physiological, and emotive levels. This physical difference starkly manifests itself in the anatomical design of male and female, which makes procreation possible and the fulfillment of the cultural mandate actionable.
God created male and female for one another. God commands sexual activity to be experienced exclusively within the marital relationship of one man and one woman. The sexual distinction in Scripture bears witness to the sexual and procreative union that male and female bodies are capable of engaging in. In Scripture, sexual union ratifies the marriage covenant, signifying the existence of the marriage union intended to be permanent, monogamous, and exclusive (Gen. 2:24; 1 Cor. 6:16). Notice in Genesis 1:26–28 that the creation of man and woman in Genesis both is structural and dynamic. As male and female beings made in God’s image, their design is ordered toward a particular purpose—filling the earth, subduing it, exercising dominion. More specifically, that purpose is accomplished by male and female design—that the act of being fruitful and multiplying hinges on, and springs from, their respective sex distinction. In this account, general revelation parallels with special revelation. As each of us knows, sexual intercourse is capable of producing children, and this reality is exclusive to only one reality, male-female complementarity.

The Bible and Creation’s Manifold Witness of Gender and Sexuality

At least in contemporary debates on these issues, Christians are often tempted to treat our vision for sexuality and gender as ethical matters relevant and pertaining to Christians only. This is not a biblical way to approach such subjects. Such a view is a truncated account for explaining why Christians’s convictions on such matters are not only Christian, but universally applicable. The Bible casts a vision for sexuality and gender that is true on both special and general revelation grounds. As biblical scholar Richard Bauckham writes, “biblical commands are not arbitrary decrees but correspond to the way the world is and will be” (see God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives , 70). When Christians discuss gender and sexuality, they must understand that the design for gender and sexuality in Scripture is the design that all humans are obligated to live within, even if they do not appear most the natural or easiest in light of sin. What Christians believe about sexuality and gender is not an “in-house” argument for debate among Christians only. The Bible understands gender and sexuality as creational realities that determine whether a society will organize itself in subjection to God’s authority or in rejection to God’s authority.

As ethicist Bernd Wannenwetsch writes, “The Christian doctrine of creation is precisely such a way of explaining why there are aspects of reality that are invested with normative moral significance” (see “Creation and Ethics: On the Legitimacy and Limitation of Appeals to ‘Nature’ in Christian Moral Reasoning,” in Within the Love of God: Essays on the Doctrine of God in Honour of Paul S. Fiddes , 209). This means that the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality are not sectarian. These teachings are not built on fideistic decrees or fiat. Instead, the Bible speaks to created reality in both a sinful and redeemed state—because the Lord Jesus reigns over creation and unites both creation and redemption in His gospel (see see Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics ) . Gender and sexuality do not require an exclusively Christian epistemology for their authority or intelligibility, but insofar as sin warps human perception, the Bible’s teaching do require explanation in line with the full drama of Christian doctrine. A vision for gender and sexuality that fails to satisfy the demands set forth in Genesis will be subject to endless redefinition, which is why revisionist accounts of gender and sexuality—such as same-sex marriage and gender fluidity—retain no coherent limiting principle.

Sexuality and Gender in Revolt

The five axioms above are the backdrop that explain Scripture’s prohibition on sexual practices and gender displays that transgress God-ordained creational distinctions and creational boundaries. Sin’s impact demonstrates how each of the axioms are assaulted.

Concerning axiom one, a culture of unbelief either rejects God’s existence or God’s authority. Man’s agency, in this paradigm, is the measure of all that is. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the never-ending redefinition of sexual morality and ensuing gender confusion. Since there are no binding rules, sexuality and gender are a matter of personal will and preference. Sexuality and gender are self-chosen, issuing from the autonomous self. Since humanity is not bound by a code of objective and universal morality, what Christians consider sexually immoral or out of step with God’s intent for gender expression, is shorn of all taboo and prohibition— whether pornography (Ps. 101:3; Matt. 5:28; Col. 3:5) , bestiality (Lev. 18:23, 20:15–16; Exod. 22:19), polygamy (Gen. 2:24), lust (Matt. 5:28; Mark 7:20–23) , adultery (1 Cor. 6:9–11), orgies (Gal. 5:19–21), non-monogamy (Matt. 19:1–10), rape (Deut. 22:23–29; Ezek. 45:9; Mark 12:31), pedophilia (Matt. 18:5–6), homosexuality (Rom. 1:26–27; 1 Cor. 6:9–11), fornication (Gen. 2:24; Deut. 22:28–29; Eph. 5:3; 1 Thess. 4:1–8), incest (Lev 18:8–18; 1 Cor. 5:1–5), prostitution (Hos. 4:14) cross-dressing (Deut. 22:5; 1 Cor. 11:3–16), effeminacy (1 Cor 6:9–10), androgyny (Gen 1:27–28;), illicit seduction (Gen. 34; Prov. 7:6–23), transgenderism (Gen. 1:27–28), and sexual abuse (Deut. 22:25–27; Mark 12:31).
In axiom two, humanity denies that it is a divine creation born of an intelligent and divine will, or inscribed with any inherent, fixed meaning. Any sexual arrangement is thus allowable insofar as consent is present; and any gender expression is permissible insofar as it comports with a person’s self-perception. Since humanity may or may not be the creation of a divine being, saying that a particular sexual arrangement or gender expression is prohibited is simply a product of social convention.
With axiom three, humanity divests itself of any particular calling in light of being made in God’s image. Since we are not special creations endowed with a mission to exercise dominion, we subsist by vain expressions of human autonomy and self-seeking justification. Our liberation from God’s constraints becomes our abolition.
In axiom four, humanity denies that male and female are objective and fixed realities. Instead, gender fluidity and suppression of sexed realities paint a portrait of gender and sexuality that is endlessly malleable and psychologically grounded. This allows such sins as transgenderism.
In axiom five, the beauty of male-female complementarity is denied, meaning that the creational guardrails for sexuality are nullified. This licenses such sexual sins as homosexuality. It is not that homosexuality is worse than all other sins; but that it narrates through vivid and graphic portrayal an expulsive rejection of God’s authority concerning creational design and boundaries.

In all five axioms, what is at the root of humanity’s assault on God-defined expressions of sexuality and gender? God’s authority over sexual desire and sexual relationships, and God’s design for how gender is conceived and expressed, is cast off. As it is with every issue of ethics and morality, the idea that any objective standard exists and is binding begins and ends with whether God exists and whether He intends to hold individuals accountable for their actions.

Sexuality and Gender in Redemption

While this essay has strived to present an argument for the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality that is true on both general and revelation grounds, it would be incomplete if it failed to examine how sexuality and gender are understood within the horizon of the gospel.

The New Testament reaffirms the vision for gender and sexuality taught in Genes is. The gospel offers the promise of the Holy Spirit’s guidance to live lives of holiness; the gospel does not create a radically new or disjunctive expectation for sexual morality and appropriate gender expression. In Matthew 19, Jesus affirms that the creational pattern for male and female set forth in Genesis 1–2 remains authoritative and binding for humanity. In Acts 15, the earliest church leaders confirmed that obedience to Old Testament law was not expected for Gentle Christians, but Christians were expected to uphold the same standard of Old Testament sexual morality inaugurated at creation. The pattern for sexual relationship and gender expression laid out for the early Christians thus validates the pattern begun in Genesis. Furthermore, New Testament prohibitions on sexual practices (e.g., homosexuality, incest) are echoes of the Old Testament’s sexual ethic. This ethic is grounded in God’s moral law and cannot be discarded or excused as pertaining only to Israel. The New Testament makes clear that sexual rebellion and rejection of appropriate gender boundaries renders culpable before God’s judgement (1 Cor. 6:9–11).
The gospel brings fulfilling clarity to the vision for gender and sexuality taught in Genesis. The storyline and arc of the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality is one that relies upon narrative climax. In Ephesians 5:22–23, Paul explains that the union of husband and wife is meant to foreshadow the most visceral union in the cosmos—the Christ-Church union. Nowhere is the explanation of the Christ-Church union meant to overwhelm, supplant, or eradicate the underlying validity of male-female complementarity set forth in Genesis. The story of the gospel’s relationship to created nature—which includes our sexuality and gender—is that created nature would be led in the direction it was always intended (see Wannenwetsch, “Creation and Ethics,” 210). Though sexuality and gender remain creationally intelligible despite the fall, as Christians, we believe that both are ultimately designed to reflect the union of Christ and the church.
The gospel empowers Christians to live in accord with the biblical vision for gender and sexuality taught in Genesis. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ calls us to glorify God with our bodies because they were purchased by Him (1 Cor. 6:20). This purchase comprises the whole man (2 Cor. 5:17). We are called to honor the Lord Jesus and to submit to Him our sexual desires as well as our conduct (Matt. 5:28; Gal. 5:19–21; Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:1–8). We are to flee all forms of sexual morality (1 Cor. 6:18; Eph. 5:3–5; 1 Thess. 4:1–8). We embrace appropriate gender norms so as not to scandalize or give offense with impropriety of gender expression (Deut. 22:5; 1 Cor. 6:9; 11:3–16; 1 Tim. 2:9). Christians believe that we are not our own, and that we owe every facet of our existence—our gender expression and our sexuality—to Jesus Christ (Col. 1:15–20).

Essays on Sexuality for College Admissions

Hello all! With the upcoming admissions season coming along, I’d like to start a discussion about writing an essay about your sexuality (if not for me, for others in the future). While it can potentially be a shallow essay that shows nothing about your character (like other topics), can essays about sexuality be moving? Even if they are common according to “experts”, does that mean they must inherently be avoided? Finally, what makes an essay about sexuality strong? I understand that many people have strong opinions on writing about your sexuality as your main topic, but that does not mean that essays about sexuality will never be compelling. What I am curious about is what makes about what has become a “cliche” topic in the eyes of many cc users stand out, and looking at what has caused the belief in many that the topic is overused.

oh please no.

Do a search on CC for essay sexuality & you will get 100+ pages of results. Adolescence/young adulthood is when most humans come to terms with sexuality (in general & in particular). It can be a big part of the teen years for many students. If there are challenges in that arena- from orientation to harassment to violence- that can be one of the bigger life aspects that a student has dealt with. Result: many, many essays on the topic.

Of course they can be moving or compelling. Of course they don’t have to be avoided. What makes an essay about sexuality shallow or strong is the same thing as makes any college admissions essay shallow or strong: what does it show about the applicant? Will it say to the AdComm reader ‘oh, this person should definitely come be a part of our community’. Because an admission essay is never really about the topic- it’s a vehicle for a student to show something interesting about themselves.

And that is a big part about why sexuality issues are so hard to do well: it is definitionally so personal that it is hard to write well about something so close in time and in heart that it is rare to have meaningful perspective. To make it original and fresh for an AO who is reading literally hundreds / thousands of essays, is harder again.

So please. If you want to write an essay about your sexuality, focus on you not the story. Show, don’t tell. Consider that the person reading it has probably read hundreds of essays about teenagers coming to terms with some aspect of sexuality and really just wants to get a sense of whether you are somebody who would be good to have on campus.

The problem is that your sexuality isn’t what the adcoms want to learn about you. It’s not, “Oh, here’s an ABC person!” It’s about the attributes they want to see, the qualities they want in their class, and more. And "compelling"isn’t about sad or the trials or uncertainties you endure(d) or how you came to your conclusions. Not that story.

Try to remember, it’s an essay in the college app, not an essay for English, where the teacher assigned you to write something “revealing.”

@collegemom3717 Are you saying it should always be avoided? The very first thing you said was “Oh please no”, but then seemed to backpedal, saying they could be compelling. This seems to be the general CC consensus. I understand that there are a lot of cliche “I struggled because I am gay” essays, but does that mean that essays on sexuality should be completely avoided? When you google anything related to writing essays on homosexuality, the overall response is very negative, but these all appear like they are all about coming out. Just like other essay topics, there are wrong and right ways to write about this topic. You have seemed to highlight the wrong ways: focusing on a story, just trying to talk about your sexuality, and writing a sob story. While there is a large pile of these cliche essays, instead of always pushing others away from writing about it, promote the RIGHT way of writing about it. What makes an essay about sexuality strong? There are successful ones that may focus on daily interactions or stereotypes, but still make it obvious that woe is not me! You claimed sexuality is “definitionally so personal”, but I have found that sexuality really is not something so deeply personal as you claim it is. If a writer is successfully able to keep the topic seem light, is it still something that will emit an “Oh please no” from you? And truthfully, if one is not able to talk about their essay topic openly, should they write it all? Maybe this is the most important question to think about when debating your essay topic, especially if you want to write about your sexuality.

@lookingforward I definitely understand that. This is not a ruveal! Instead, should someone talk about how it impacts their daily interactions? How they OVERCAME an issue, rather than discussing the issue itself? Even if an essay on being LGBT is cliche, that does not mean its doomed from the get-go. Just like an essay about cultures, it can still be an amazing essay.

Colleges want to learn what makes you a unique addition to their campus-- how you will contribute to the campus community. We’re in a time when your sexuality doesn’t do that-- lots of kids are homosexual, lots of kids are bi, lots of kids are transgender. I realize it’s part of who you are, just as my 5’4" height is part of me. But colleges aren’t looking for that . You can write a great essay, but it won’t tell them what they want to know.

So can you use the essay?: Sure, you can use any essay you want.

But in the opinion of the people here, will it help your application? Probably not.

Really? This is all you’ve got? Honestly a very trendy, P.C. topic. The previous poster said it well…this is a contribution to a community? Most people could care less what others do behind closed doors.

College apps are a bunch of what appear to be individual pieces that together form a greater picture. It’s all colleges will have to base their decision on, so I’d make sure it’s unified. Each piece should contribute something to whatever you want that picture to be. Writing about your sexuality isn’t bad, but I’d consider if it’s the best use of that space. Is there something more relevant to your overall story that you can show there?

You asked about this on another thread. This is just not relevant to what adcoms look for. They hope to be inclusive, but are looking for attributes in candidates, the qualities that they know work for them. That’s so far beyond descriptors or basics of identity. It’s really up to the applicants to look for and understand what those qualities are.

Imagine applying for, say, state Scholars Bowl, where the reviewers don’t know you, the competition is high, and you need to write something about why you belong on the team. Would you expect to get a spot with an answer about your sexual identity and that journey? Or would you try to understand the assets, skills, attitudes, and energies the team needs, and present something that shows that, in some nice narrative? Shows, not just tells.

It matters whether your response shows them you get it. It’s not as simple as contributing a different perspective or some experience only some others had. Think this through carefully. For the competitive holistic colleges, your essay can show much about your understanding of their wants and how you match that. Or not. Any one piece of the app or supps that stumbles can affect chances.

As I said: the same things that make any essay strong. And, I agree that an essay about sexuality can be moving / powerful / interesting / whatever. However, I am also saying that that a lot of students try and it is hard to achieve.

Your post & comments read as though you want somebody to say “of course! writing about your sexuality can be a great topic for a college essay”.

How you write an essay and what you can tell about yourself through the essay is more important that the topic of the essay. That said, sexuality is not an uncommon essay theme. When you write your essay keep in mind that the idea is to tell something about yourself that can’t be find elsewhere on the application and that will make admissions officers want to have you on campus.

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As a Teenager in Europe, I Went to Nudist Beaches All the Time. 30 Years Later, Would the Experience Be the Same?

Image may contain Princess Antonia of Luxembourg Sandro Botticelli Art Painting Adult Person and Wedding

In July 2017, I wrote an article about toplessness for Vogue Italia. The director, actor, and political activist Lina Esco had emerged from the world of show business to question public nudity laws in the United States with 2014’s Free the Nipple . Her film took on a life of its own and, thanks to the endorsement from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, and Willow Smith, eventually developed into a whole political movement, particularly on social media where the hashtag #FreeTheNipple spread at lightning speed. The same year as that piece, actor Alyssa Milano tweeted “me too” and encouraged others who had been sexually assaulted to do the same, building on the movement activist Tarana Burke had created more than a decade earlier. The rest is history.

In that Vogue article, I chatted with designer Alessandro Michele about a shared memory of our favorite topless beaches of our youth. Anywhere in Italy where water appeared—be it the hard-partying Riviera Romagnola, the traditionally chic Amalfi coast and Sorrento peninsula, the vertiginous cliffs and inlets of Italy’s continuation of the French Côte d’Azur or the towering volcanic rocks of Sicily’s mythological Riviera dei Ciclopi—one was bound to find bodies of all shapes and forms, naturally topless.

In the ’90s, growing up in Italy, naked breasts were everywhere and nobody thought anything about it. “When we look at our childhood photos we recognize those imperfect breasts and those bodies, each with their own story. I think of the ‘un-beauty’ of that time and feel it is actually the ultimate beauty,” Michele told me.

Indeed, I felt the same way. My relationship with toplessness was part of a very democratic cultural status quo. If every woman on the beaches of the Mediterranean—from the sexy girls tanning on the shoreline to the grandmothers eating spaghetti al pomodoro out of Tupperware containers under sun umbrellas—bore equally naked body parts, then somehow we were all on the same team. No hierarchies were established. In general, there was very little naked breast censorship. Free nipples appeared on magazine covers at newsstands, whether tabloids or art and fashion magazines. Breasts were so naturally part of the national conversation and aesthetic that Ilona Staller (also known as Cicciolina) and Moana Pozzi, two porn stars, cofounded a political party called the Love Party. I have a clear memory of my neighbor hanging their party’s banner out his window, featuring a topless Cicciolina winking.

A lot has changed since those days, but also since that initial 2017 piece. There’s been a feminist revolution, a transformation of women’s fashion and gender politics, the absurd overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction in New York, the intensely disturbing overturning of Roe v Wade and the current political battle over reproductive rights radiating from America and far beyond. One way or another, the female body is very much the site of political battles as much as it is of style and fashion tastes. And maybe for this reason naked breasts seem to populate runways and street style a lot more than they do beaches—it’s likely that being naked at a dinner party leaves more of a permanent mark than being naked on a glamorous shore. Naked “dressing” seems to be much more popular than naked “being.” It’s no coincidence that this year Saint Laurent, Chloé, Ferragamo, Tom Ford, Gucci, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and Valentino all paid homage to sheer dressing in their collections, with lacy dresses, see-through tops, sheer silk hosiery fabric, and close-fitting silk dresses. The majority of Anthony Vaccarello’s fall 2024 collection was mostly transparent. And even off the runway, guests at the Saint Laurent show matched the mood. Olivia Wilde appeared in a stunning see-through dark bodysuit, Georgia May Jagger wore a sheer black halter top, Ebony Riley wore a breathtaking V-neck, and Elsa Hosk went for translucent polka dots.

In some strange way, it feels as if the trends of the ’90s have swapped seats with those of today. When, in 1993, a 19-year-old Kate Moss wore her (now iconic) transparent, bronze-hued Liza Bruce lamé slip dress to Elite Model Agency’s Look of the Year Awards in London, I remember seeing her picture everywhere and feeling in awe of her daring and grace. I loved her simple sexy style, with her otherworldly smile, the hair tied back in a bun. That very slip has remained in the collective unconscious for decades, populating thousands of internet pages, but in remembering that night Moss admitted that the nude look was totally unintentional: “I had no idea why everyone was so excited—in the darkness of Corinne [Day’s] Soho flat, the dress was not see-through!” That’s to say that nude dressing was usually mostly casual and not intellectualized in the context of a larger movement.

10 Years In, Amal Clooney Still Channels Bridal Fashion for Date Night

But today nudity feels loaded in different ways. In April, actor and author Julia Fox appeared in Los Angeles in a flesh-colored bra that featured hairy hyper-realist prints of breasts and nipples, and matching panties with a print of a sewn-up vagina and the words “closed” on it, as a form of feminist performance art. Breasts , an exhibition curated by Carolina Pasti, recently opened as part of the 60th Venice Biennale at Palazzo Franchetti and showcases works that span from painting and sculpture to photography and film, reflecting on themes of motherhood, empowerment, sexuality, body image, and illness. The show features work by Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois, and an incredible painting by Bernardino Del Signoraccio of Madonna dell’Umiltà, circa 1460-1540. “It was fundamental for me to include a Madonna Lactans from a historical perspective. In this intimate representation, the Virgin reveals one breast while nurturing the child, the organic gesture emphasizing the profound bond between mother and child,” Pasti said when we spoke.

Through her portrayal of breasts, she delves into the delicate balance of strength and vulnerability within the female form. I spoke to Pasti about my recent musings on naked breasts, which she shared in a deep way. I asked her whether she too noticed a disparity between nudity on beaches as opposed to the one on streets and runways, and she agreed. Her main concern today is around censorship. To Pasti, social media is still far too rigid around breast exposure and she plans to discuss this issue through a podcast that she will be launching in September, together with other topics such as motherhood, breastfeeding, sexuality, and breast cancer awareness.

With summer at the door, it was my turn to see just how much of the new reread on transparency would apply to beach life. In the last few years, I noticed those beaches Michele and I reminisced about have grown more conservative and, despite being the daughter of unrepentant nudists and having a long track record of militant topless bathing, I myself have felt a bit more shy lately. Perhaps a woman in her 40s with two children is simply less prone to taking her top off, but my memories of youth are populated by visions of bare-chested mothers surveilling the coasts and shouting after their kids in the water. So when did we stop? And why? When did Michele’s era of “un-beauty” end?

In order to get back in touch with my own naked breasts I decided to revisit the nudist beaches of my youth to see what had changed. On a warm day in May, I researched some local topless beaches around Rome and asked a friend to come with me. Two moms, plus our four children, two girls and two boys of the same ages. “Let’s make an experiment of this and see what happens,” I proposed.

The kids all yawned, but my friend was up for it. These days to go topless, especially on urban beaches, you must visit properties that have an unspoken nudist tradition. One of these in Rome is the natural reserve beach at Capocotta, south of Ostia, but I felt a bit unsure revisiting those sands. In my memory, the Roman nudist beaches often equated to encounters with promiscuous strangers behind the dunes. I didn’t want to expose the kids, so, being that I am now a wise adult, I went ahead and picked a compromise. I found a nude-friendly beach on the banks of the Farfa River, in the rolling Sabina hills.

We piled into my friend’s car and drove out. The kids were all whining about the experiment. “We don’t want to see naked mums!” they complained. “Can’t you just lie and say you went to a nudist beach?”

We parked the car and walked across the medieval fairy-tale woods until we reached the path that ran along the river. All around us were huge trees and gigantic leaves. It had rained a lot recently and the vegetation had grown incredibly. We walked past the remains of a Roman road. The colors all around were bright green, the sky almost fluorescent blue. The kids got sidetracked by the presence of frogs. According to the indications, the beach was about a mile up the river. Halfway down the path, we bumped into a couple of young guys in fanny packs. I scanned them for signs of quintessential nudist attitude, but realized I actually had no idea what that was. I asked if we were headed in the right direction to go to “the beach”. They nodded and gave us a sly smile, which I immediately interpreted as a judgment about us as mothers, and more generally about our age, but I was ready to vindicate bare breasts against ageism.

We reached a small pebbled beach, secluded and bordered by a huge trunk that separated it from the path. A group of girls was there, sharing headphones and listening to music. To my dismay they were all wearing the tops and bottoms of their bikinis. One of them was in a full-piece bathing suit and shorts. “See, they are all wearing bathing suits. Please don’t be the weird mums who don’t.”

At this point, it was a matter of principle. My friend and I decided to take our bathing suits off completely, if only for a moment, and jumped into the river. The boys stayed on the beach with full clothes and shoes on, horrified. The girls went in behind us with their bathing suits. “Are you happy now? my son asked. “Did you prove your point?”

I didn’t really know what my point actually was. I think a part of me wanted to feel entitled to those long-gone decades of naturalism. Whether this was an instinct, or as Pasti said, “an act that was simply tied to the individual freedom of each woman”, it was hard to tell. At this point in history, the two things didn’t seem to cancel each other out—in fact, the opposite. Taking off a bathing suit, at least for my generation who never had to fight for it, had unexpectedly turned into a radical move and maybe I wanted to be part of the new discourse. Also, the chances of me going out in a fully sheer top were slim these days, but on the beach it was different. I would always fight for an authentic topless experience.

After our picnic on the river, we left determined to make our way—and without children—to the beaches of Capocotta. In truth, no part of me actually felt very subversive doing something I had been doing my whole life, but it still felt good. Once a free breast, always a free breast.

This article was originally published on British Vogue .

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Feds say Army soldier used AI to create child sex abuse images

A U.S. Army soldier stationed in Alaska used artificial intelligence to generate child sexual abuse material in a criminal case that underscores the lengths that online predators will go to exploit children, federal prosecutors said this week.

Seth Herrera, 34, used AI chatbots to create pornography of minors whom he knew, the Justice Department said. He also viewed tens of thousands of images depicting violent sexual abuse of children, including infants, according to court records.

“Criminals considering the use of AI to perpetuate their crimes should stop and think twice − because the Department of Justice is prosecuting AI-enabled criminal conduct to the fullest extent of the law and will seek increased sentences wherever warranted,” said Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

The FBI issued a public service announcement earlier this year about child sexual abuse material, noting all such images and videos, including those created through AI, are illegal.

The arrest comes as federal officials warn about a rise in sex abuse content through AI, which allows offenders to create images and videos on an exponentially larger scale, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The technology poses new challenges to law enforcement targeting the content, but it may also serve as a tool to quickly and accurately identify offenders and victims, the DHS said.

Court papers detail child pornography chat groups

According to a memo in support of pre-trial detention filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, Herrera joined online messaging groups devoted to trafficking the abusive content. The soldier, stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, saved “surreptitious recordings” of minors undressing in his home and then used AI chatbots to generate exploitative content of them, according to federal court documents.

He also used images and videos of children posted to social media to create sexually abusive material, according to the memo.

Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a search warrant of Herrera’s home, where he lives with his wife and daughter, according to court records. Three Samsung Galaxy phones contained tens of thousands of videos and images that depicted rape and other sexual abuse of children as young as infants, the memo said, dating back to at least March 2021. Herrera stored the material in a password-protected app disguised as a calculator on his phone, prosecutors said.

Herrera also sought out sexually abusive content that depicted children roughly the age of his daughter, according to the memo, and six kids lived under the same roof as he did in the military base fourplex.

Court records say he admitted in an interview to viewing child sexual abuse content online for the past year and a half.

“Absolutely no child should suffer these travesties, and no person should feel immune from detection and prosecution for these crimes by HSI and its partners in law enforcement," said Katrina W. Berger, executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations.

Herrera was arrested Friday and is charged with transportation, receipt and possession of child pornography. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. His initial court appearance was expected Tuesday.

A public defender listed in court records for Herrera did not immediately return USA TODAY’s request for comment Monday.

Combating sexual predators in age of AI

The arrest is the latest to sweep the nation as federal law enforcement agents grapple with the use of new technology by sexual predators.

“Federal law prohibits the production, advertisement, transportation, distribution, receipt, sale, access with intent to view, and possession of any CSAM (child sexual abuse material), including realistic computer-generated images,” according to an FBI public service announcement.

Officials say they have also been able to use the new technology to catch offenders. In 2023, Homeland Security Investigations used machine learning models to identify 311 cases of online sexual exploitation. The three-week-long mission, dubbed Operation Renewed Hope, led to the identification or rescue of more than 100 victims and the arrests of several suspected offenders, the HSI said.

Suspected production of child sexual abuse content, including AI-generated material, can be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by calling 800-THE LOST or online at www.cybertipline.org. It can also be reported to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

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Indiana man tried to poison wife's Coke with drugs 'so he could have sex' with stepdaughter, court papers say

An Indiana man who admitted he spiked his wife's Coca-Cola with cocaine and other drugs in hope of killing her and running off with his stepdaughter was sentenced to four years in prison, court documents say.

Alfred W. Ruf, 71, pleaded guilty Monday to aggravated battery posing a risk of death. A charge of conspiracy to commit murder was dismissed as part of a plea deal, court documents say.

Authorities began investigating the case in 2022 after Ruf's wife, Lisa Bishop, told police conducting a welfare check at their Richmond home that she had been hospitalized several times and believed Ruf was trying to kill her, a probable cause affidavit says.

Ruf came clean to his wife and confessed "because he felt bad," the affidavit alleges.

Bishop gave officers a pill bottle containing a white powdery substance and told them that Ruf had been putting the powder into her drinks without her knowledge, the filing says. Bishop also gave officers a Coke can she drank out of and cut open. At the bottom was the powdery substance, according to the affidavit.

Bishop was taken to a hospital, where she tested positive for cocaine, MDMA — commonly known as molly or ecstasy — and benzodiazepine, a class of depressant drugs, the affidavit says. She denied using drugs.

An attorney for Ruf said that the pair had a volatile marriage and that Bishop had run Ruf over with a car and "beat him bloody" about a year before his arrest.

The probable cause affidavit says that Bishop and Ruf were known to officers and that police were frequently called to their home because of domestic violence issues.

"She wasn't prosecuted. Maybe none of this would have happened if some prosecutorial action had been taken when she did those things," attorney John L. Tompkins said Wednesday. "It was a mutually destructive relationship, and it's just unfortunate. And what she did to him doesn't excuse what he did."

The affidavit alleges Ruf told detectives that his wife's daughter from a previous relationship would give him a white powdery substance to put in Bishop's drink.

"Alfred stated that the substance would then make Lisa go to sleep for approximately thirteen hours or so," it says. "Alfred stated that he would do this to eventually kill Lisa."

The affidavit says the daughter and her friend "would call him and tell him to give the substance to Lisa." The daughter and her friend would then come to the house and give Bishop "more of an unknown substance."

Ruf told investigators he was in a sexual relationship with the daughter and friend, the affidavit alleges. But Tompkins said that wasn't true.

Ruf alleged that the daughter mentioned a life insurance policy Bishop had and instructed him to "get mom out of the picture," the filing says. The daughter's friend is alleged to have hinted at wanting to marry him "after they took care of Lisa."

According to Tompkins, the daughter has denied being involved in the attempted poisoning.

Ruf told authorities he gave Bishop the powdery substance about 12 times from the beginning of September 2021 to the end of December 2021. Ruf said he took his wife to the hospital about six times because of reactions she had to the drugs, according to the affidavit.

Bishop told police that she had been suffering from headaches, drowsiness and lightheadedness but did not know what was wrong with her, the filing says. In one incident, Bishop said, she felt she was going to pass out and cut open a can of Coke she had drunk from.

When she saw a powdery substance at the bottom, she confronted Ruf, who admitted drugging her, the filing alleges.

"Alfred kept going back and forth about what his intentions were for giving his wife the substance," it says. "He would state that he knew it would kill his wife. ... But then Alfred would explain that he would give his wife the substance just to make her pass out so the other two females would come over so he could have sex with them."

Ruf was sentenced to four years in prison, followed by five years of probation.

When Ruf was arrested in 2022 , police said they were still investigating two other suspects, WXIN-TV of Indianapolis reported. The daughter and her friend have not been arrested or charged.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Yale University
Thursday, September 19
Little Richard or Minister Richard W. Penniman? Black Religion, Sexuality, and Rock 'n' Soul: ISM Fellows Lunch Talk with Ahmad Greene-Hayes

Little Richard or Minister Richard W. Penniman? Black Religion, Sexuality, and Rock 'n' Soul: ISM Fellows Lunch Talk with Ahmad Greene-Hayes

Thursday, September 19, 2024 12pm to 1pm

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About this Event

406 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511

Exploring the religious life of Richard Wayne Penniman (or Little Richard), the paradigmatic, loud, raucous, flamboyant rock 'n' roll preacher-musician, is a significant undertaking for a multitude of reasons. For one, Little Richard's musical style and gendered performances played a pivotal role in shaping the cultural landscape of the 1950s and beyond, as he invented his own sound while paying homage to the Black church women who raised him in Macon, Georgia, such that he was ultimately able to inspire the likes of Elvis Presley and other white mainstream artists. Delving into his religious experiences provides valuable insights into how Black religion sits at the crux of the music and cultural dynamics of the era, such that the history of Southern gospel music functions as a foray into larger discourses about the sacred and the secular which shaped Richard’s worldview. More to this point, Little Richard's unending transformations are another compelling component of his life as he often oscillated between conservative and progressive political, social, and theological values. For instance, his decision to leave his thriving music career in the late 1950s to become a preacher and attend seminary, only to return to secular music later, raises intriguing questions about the interplay between Black religious conservativism, celebrity, and sexual identity. More importantly, Richard’s life functions as a stained-glass window into the complex negotiations that Black queer subjects make in order to manage the demands of Black religious life and culture in the wake of slavery, the Black social reform movement, and Black Protestant churches’ demand for respectability in the service of the Black (heterosexual) family. This talk revisits Richard’s life over the course of the long twentieth century to show how his life disrupts these assumptive logics and offers us insights into Black queer religious self-fashioning.

This event is free, but registration is required . Lunch will be provided.

Open to Yale Community only.

Ahmad Greene-Hayes , Ph.D., is assistant professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School and a member of the Standing Committee for the Study of Religion and the Standing Committee on Advanced Degrees in American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. A social historian and critical theorist, Greene-Hayes is an accomplished scholar and teacher, and his research interests include critical Black Studies, Black Atlantic Religions in the Americas, and race, queerness, and sexuality in the context of African American and Caribbean religious histories. He is the author of Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion-Making in Jim Crow New Orleans , which is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press in the Class 200: New Studies in Religion series in early 2025, and he has published essays in the Journal of Africana Religions, Nova Religio, GLQ, and the Journal of African American History, among others. Greene-Hayes has held prestigious fellowships from Yale’s LGBT Studies program, the American Society of Church History, and Princeton’s “The Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities, and Cultures,” to name a few. In 2022, he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College, and in 2023, he was inducted into the historic Society for the Study of Black Religion. Dr. Greene-Hayes is a steering committee member for both the Afro-American Religious History Unit and the Religion and Sexuality Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and he served as an advisory board member for the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network from 2019-2024. In conversation with his research, he has consulted and collaborated with the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University, the African American Policy Forum, Black Women’s Blueprint, and a host of other nonprofit organizations, churches, and other community institutions. While at ISM, he will be working on his current book project exploring the life of Little Richard through the lens of Black religion and sexuality.

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Critic’s Notebook

When Your Child Is an Animal

The charged cultural conversation about pets and children — see “Chimp Crazy,” “childless cat ladies” and more — reveals the hidden contradictions of family life.

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By Amanda Hess

Amanda Hess is a critic at large who writes about internet and pop culture.

“Monkey love is totally different than the way that you have love for your child,” Tonia Haddix, an exotic animal broker, says at the beginning of “Chimp Crazy,” the documentary HBO series investigating the world of chimpanzee ownership. “If it’s your natural born child, it’s just natural because you actually gave birth to that kid. But when you adopt a monkey, the bond is much, much deeper.”

“Chimp Crazy” arrives in a summer of cultural and political obsession about the place of animals in our family lives. When JD Vance became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, his 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies” resurfaced, positioning them as adversaries of the traditional family. New York magazine published a special issue questioning the ethics of pet ownership, featuring a polarizing essay from an anonymous mother who neglected her cat once her human baby arrived. In the background of these stories, you can hear the echoes of an internet-wide argument that pits companion animals against human children, pet and tot forced into a psychic battle for adult recognition.

These dynamics feel supercharged since 2020, the year when American family life — that insular institution that is expected to provide for all human care needs — became positively airtight. The coronavirus pandemic exaggerated a wider trend toward domestic isolation : pet owners spending more time with their animals, parents more time with their children, everyone less time with one another — except perhaps online, where our domestic scenes collide in a theater of grievance and stress.

When a cat, a dog or certainly a chimp scampers through a family story, it knocks it off-kilter, revealing its hypocrisies and its harms. In “Chimp Crazy,” Haddix emerges as the avatar for all the contradictions of the domestic ideal of private home care: She loves her chimp “babies” with such obsession that she traps them (and herself) in a miserable diorama of family life.

Haddix, a 50-something woman who describes herself as the “Dolly Parton of Chimps,” believes that God chose her to be a caretaker. She was a registered nurse before she became a live-in volunteer at a ramshackle chimp breeding facility in Missouri, where she speaks of a male chimp named Tonka as if she is his mother. Haddix also has two human children; she just loves them less, and says so on television.

As she appoints herself the parent to an imprisoned wild animal, she asserts an idealized form of mothering — one she describes as selfless, unending and pure. “Chimp Crazy” is the story of just how ruinous this idea of love can be, for the woman and the ape.

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