This research explores the influence of religiosity on consumer perception of, and response toward, sexual appeals. The first study (survey, national sample; n = 423) examines the relationship between religiosity and consumer response toward sexual appeals using causal modeling. Study 1 finds that high intrinsic religiosity consumers exhibit more adverse ethical judgments toward the company’s use of sexual appeals and these judgments, in turn, result in inferior attitudes and purchase intent toward the advertised brand. (...) To confirm and expand on these findings, the second study (experiment, young adult sample; n = 216) examines the influence of intrinsic religiosity on consumer response toward both sexual and nonsexual appeals. The results show that sexual appeals elicit inferior (superior) ethical judgments, attitudes, and purchase intent among consumers high (low) in intrinsic religiosity. In contrast, nonsexual appeals elicit (un)favorable responses from consumers who are (low) high in intrinsic religiosity. (shrink)

The claimants brought civil suits against child care institutions and authorities for the sexual abuse to which they were subject whilst under the defendants’ responsibility. These cases were not initiated until the claimants were well into adulthood and began recognising the harms they had suffered, and as a result, their claims were time-barred at first instance. However, after A v Hoare (and Other Appeals), in which the House of Lords significantly altered the laws on limitation, their cases were (...) reheard and allowed to proceed. In this respect, AB and Others v Nugent Care Society; GR v Wirral MBC demonstrates the benefits of the ruling in Hoare; but at the same time, this note argues that the Court of Appeal utilises a problematic conceptualisation of the harm of sexual abuse and the case highlights the potential for inconsistency and uncertainty in such delayed claims following the decision in Hoare—which is not the panacea it initially appears to be. (shrink)

The relationship between sexuality education and religion is often framed antagonistically, especially when it comes to tensions between the teaching of sexuality education and the priorities of some religious communities. In this paper, we argue that this antagonism can be structured as much by the prevalent forms of engagement that display it (dialogue and debate), as it is by the antagonism between contrasting ethical systems. While we acknowledge the importance of debate and dialogue in the public sphere, we contend that (...) appeals to these discursive forms in schools and classrooms can limit possibilities for rethinking engagements across sexuality education and religion. This is because of the tendency within certain manifestations of dialogue (for example, dialogical models connected to liberal political projects) to err on the side of predictability, rationality and abstraction. To address some of these limits, we draw on the recent turn to conversation in educational thinking. We think through the significance of conversation in offering a mode of engagement for students, teachers and school communities that is conditioned by the dispossession of the self and is attuned to the unpredictable, affective and contextual landscapes of shared encounters. We conclude with some thoughts on the practical implications of conversation for rethinking the role of the sexuality education teacher, practices of parental consultation and processes of policy enactment in schools. (shrink)

Abortion has become such an indispensable part of contemporary experience that even Christians sometimes find it difficult to oppose. Since taking the life in utero has ceased to be regarded as a grave sin and is not always recognized as an unmitigated evil, those who wish to remain faithful to the Word of God struggle to find ways of speaking against killing of the unborn. Some of them, like Erika Bachiochi, seek to beat modern culture at its own game, by (...) representing Catholic teaching on human sexuality as a “right kind” of feminism. However, in her appeal to secular rationality, foregoing the metaphysical commitments of faith and replacing them with the consequentialist reasoning and data from scientific research, she thereby renders her alternative unviable and un-Christian. In response to this failure, I would like to present some Orthodox Christian considerations pointing toward a more wholesome and consistent way forward. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as an object' (...) is called upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

This case note reviews the guidelines issued by Morison J. in the Employment Appeal Tribunal at the end of the decision in Reed and Bull Information Systems Ltd v. Stedman [1999] I.R.L.R.299. The author argues that while the judge’s decision is to be welcomed in adopting an approach more sympathetic to victims of sexual harassment, it also raises a number of problems by placing a burden on the victim to place the harasser on notice that she does not welcome (...) his conduct. The guidelines are likely to be usefully applied in any jurisdiction that has rules forbidding sexual harassment. The author considers the guidelines from both a practical and a doctrinal angle and indicates that the right to be free from sexual harassment is one that the courts are reluctant to protect like other civil rights. (shrink)

A very liberal sexual ethics now holds sway in Western culture, such that mutual consent alone is widely seen as morally legitimizing almost any sexual activity between adults. It is further commonly assumed by both philosophers and nonphilosophers that arguing for some alternative to liberal sexual ethics requires appeal to ethical commands specific to some religious tradition or other. The purpose of this paper is to challenge that assumption by suggesting some purely naturalistic and independently-plausible premises that (...) can be used to argue for a much more conservative system of sexual ethics than is widely accepted today. (shrink)

A content analysis of 601 commercials was conducted in order to identify the appeals that characterize commercials aimed at children and teenagers. Our findings demonstrated that the use of appeals showed strong age differences and was highly gender-role stereotyped, particularly in commercials aimed at children. The most typical appeals in commercials aimed at male children were action-adventure, sports, and play, whereas commercials aimed at female children emphasized nurturing, physical attractiveness, friendship, and romance. Having the best, competition, and (...) achievement were the dominant appeals in commercials aimed at male teenagers, whereas romance, sexuality, and belonging to a group were emphasized in commercials aimed at female teenagers. (shrink)

According to sexual liberals, sexual activity is an activity like any other, properly governed by rules drawn from the set of justified moral rules governing all human activities, sexual and non-sexual alike. There are sexual liberals who claim that all sexual activity involving none of force, fraud, or taking advantage of the desperate circumstances of another is morally unproblematic. Here I shall argue that sexual liberalism ought not to be so permissive. Appealing to (...) considerations of autonomy and consistency, I shall argue that that sexual liberals ought to regard some sexual seduction involving none of force, fraud, or taking advantage of the desperate circumstances of another as prima facie immoral always, and as on-balance immoral at least sometimes. (shrink)

In this paper I first argue that we do not need to intend all the features of X in order to consent to X. I will present cases in which agents intend to consent to gambles, and intend to consent to have sex with people under certain descriptions, de re, rather than de dicto. Next, I argue that deception – even deception about features of a sexual act that qualify as “deal-breakers” for a participant – might not always have (...) the power to undermine sexual consent. In both sections I craft my arguments by appealing to a proposal about the scope of rights. I suggest that we may have intentions regarding our sexual experiences that do not map onto the rights that we actually hold pertaining to those sexual experiences. (shrink)

Current work on hooking up—or casual sexual activity on college campuses—takes an individualistic, “battle of the sexes” approach and underestimates the importance of college as a classed location. The authors employ an interactional, intersectional approach using longitudinal ethnographic and interview data on a group of college women’s sexual and romantic careers. They find that heterosexual college women contend with public gender beliefs about women’s sexuality that reinforce male dominance across both hookups and committed relationships. The four-year university, however, (...) also reflects a privileged path to adulthood. The authors show that it is characterized by a classed self-development imperative that discourages relationships but makes hooking up appealing. Experiences of this structural conflict vary. More privileged women struggle to meet gender and class guidelines for sexual behavior, placing them in double binds. Less privileged women find the class beliefs of the university foreign and hostile to their sexual and romantic logics. (shrink)

This article discusses the views of Immanuel Kant on sexual perversion (what he calls "carnal crimes against nature"), as found in his Vorlesung (Lectures on Ethics) and the Metaphysics of Morals (both the Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre). Kant criticizes sexual perversion by appealing to Natural Law and to his Formula of Humanity. Neither argument for the immorality of sexual perversion succeeds.

The major difference between “new” and “old” natural law approaches to sexual ethics is that for new natural law theorists the moral evaluation of sex acts is always determined with reference to that basic form of human flourishing which is called marriage; old natural law theorists determine the morality of sex acts also with reference to the natural purpose of the sexual faculties. Ultimately, the old approach relies implicitly on prior value judgments to distinguish biological facts that are (...) axiologically or morally relevant from those that are not. It also appeals to values to ground the wrongness of immoral sex acts. In its pure form, the old natural law approach to sexual ethics lends itself to a misunderstanding of the unitive aspect of marriage. More broadly, an accurate understanding of new natural law does not run afoul of the correct interpretation of “nature” in natural law. (shrink)

Psychoanalysts working in clinical situations are constantly confronted with the struggle between conservative forces and those which enable something new to develop. Continuity and change, stasis and transformation, are the major themes discussed in _The Work of Psychoanalysis_, and address the fundamental question: How does and how can change take place? _The Work of Psychoanalysis_ explores the underlying coherence of the complex linked issues of theory and practice. Drawing on clinical cases from her own experience in the consulting room Dana (...) Birksted-Breen focuses on what takes place between patient and analyst, giving a picture of the interlocking and overlapping vertices that make up the work needed in psychoanalysis. Some of the key topics covered include: sexuality; aspects of female identity; eating disorders; time; dreams; disturbances in modalities of thought; and terminating psychoanalysis. This book draws different traditions into a coherent theoretical position with consequences for the mode of working analytically. _The Work of Psychoanalysis_ will appeal to psychoanalysts and academics in psychoanalysis, psychotherapists, as well as postgraduate students studying courses in these fields. (shrink)

Knowing, either by the light of natural reason or by the light of Christian revelation, that homosexuality is a disordered condition is not sufficient for its being ethically permissible to direct self-identified homosexual persons toward just any treatment that aims to modify sexual orientation. For example, such an undertaking would be morally impermissible in cases where the available “treatments” are known to be both futile and potentially damaging to persons undertaking them. I, therefore, introduce this edition of Christian Bioethics (...) by reflecting on (a) the position of homosexuality in our current psychiatric nosology, (b) problems with drawing causal inferences from the outcomes of psychotherapy studies, and (c) the advantages and disadvantages of appealing to traditional categories of sexual orientation in this discussion, all with an eye toward more deeply elucidating core ethical concerns involving the intentional psychotherapeutic modification of sexual orientation. (shrink)

Described as a gem in Islam, intellect can lead all individual and social behaviours towards balance, appeal and godliness. Given the utmost importance of protecting intellect in this divine religion, everything from eating and drinking to reading, listening and entertainment is thus considered haram [ viz. remains prohibited] if it makes threats to the health of mind and soul. In general, narcotics and substance abuse in all forms can have crushing and all-encompassing effects, that is, inflict heavy blows on the (...) body, soul, mind, willpower and religion in a person and consequently destroy life in the family and society. The continuation of life as well as the stability and survival of this holy institution accordingly depends on many factors, including addiction tendency (AT) and sexual dysfunction (SD). It is also obvious that the balance and optimal use of sexual instinct on the accepted path of religion will be the key to the family health and strength. Altogether, the role of AT and SD on intention to divorce (ITD) in Indonesian Muslim couples ( n = 450) was investigated in 2022 in this study, wherein one partner had previously attended addiction treatment centres over the last 6 months. The study results ultimately demonstrated that AT could induce SD and consequently raise ITD among Muslim couples. Contribution: The study results confirmed the harmful impacts of AT on SD among Muslim couples, which could increase their ITD. In view of this, it was suggested to promote religious teachings in the family to benefit from their positive effects. (shrink)

This book presents humiliation as a key harm of sexual violence against women, showing that humiliation manifests within the relation of self to itself, and that Foucault's critique of subjectivity provides resources for feminist conceptualization and countering of sexual violence and humiliation. Within feminist philosophy and theory, rape and sexual assault are often described as humiliating to victims, yet relatively few in-depth feminist philosophical accounts and analyses exist of humiliation as a harm of sexual violence against (...) women. This book provides such an account and analysis of both humiliation generally and sexual humiliation resulting from sexual violence more specifically. The book's elucidation of possibilities for countering sexual violence and humiliation, moreover, breaks with standard feminist approaches by critiquing rather than appealing to subjectivity. Through analysing specific instances of anti-sexual violence protest, it shows that cultivation of alternative modes of self-relation furthers rather than undermines feminist efforts to combat sexual violence. Throughout, the book draws upon concrete, recent and contemporary instance of sexual violence against women and feminist anti-sexual violence protest to illustrate and support its arguments. This will become a key text for feminist scholars and Foucault scholars in the humanities and social sciences, and for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. It will also be of interest to feminist anti-sexual violence activists. (shrink)

This collection features essays from top experts in ethics and philosophy of love that offer varying perspectives on the value of a contemporary secular virtue of chastity. The virtue of chastity has traditionally been portrayed as an excellent personal disposition concerning the ideal ordering of sexual desire such that the person desires that which is actually good for both the self and others affected by his or her sexual desires and actions. Yet, for roughly the past half century (...) chastity has been increasingly portrayed as an unnecessary ideal with few secular benefits that could not be otherwise obtained. Instead, chastity is sometimes portrayed as an odd kind of religious asceticism with few secular benefits. The essays in this volume ask whether there may be advantages to reconsidering a contemporary virtue of chastity. A recovered and reconceptualized concept of chastity can offer partial solutions to problems associated with externalized sexual desire, including sweeping patterns of sexual harassment, the high divorce/relationship-failure rate, and widespread pornography use. Sexual Ethics in a Secular Age will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in the philosophy of sex and love, virtue ethics, and philosophical accounts of secularity. (shrink)

When does a woman give valid consent to sexual relations? When does her consent render it morally or legally permissible for a man to have sexual relations with her? Why is sexual consent generally regarded as an issue about female consent? And what is the moral significance of consent? These are some of the questions discussed in this important book, which will appeal to a wide readership in philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Alan Wertheimer develops a (...) theory of consent to sexual relations that applies to both law and morality in the light of the psychology of sexual relations, the psychology of perpetrators, and the psychology of the victims. He considers a wide variety of difficult cases such as coercion, fraud, retardation, and intoxication. We can all agree that 'no' means 'no'. This book suggests that the difficult question is whether 'yes' means 'yes'. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib in her book The Rights of Others focuses on the tension between the universal claims of human rights and the localized democratic regimes which are based on the rule of majority. In Benhabib’s opinion the tension between these two is constitutive of existing democratic states and can be resolved only provisionally through democratic deliberations. The article looks to the theory of deliberative democracy for a way of conceptualizing sexual minorities politics which would appeal to human rights and (...) their universal claims. Along with Benhabib the paper recognizes the need on the part of all minorities to negotiate their rights within the ruling majority, which would hopefully enhance both learning processes within society and influence its changing self-interpretation. Benhabib’s contribution to the problem of cultural conflicts is all the more valuable that she not only remains within the critical theory paradigm but opens it up to the challenge of poststructuralism by taking advantage of some of its insights such as Jacques Derrida’s concept of iterations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical evaluation of representative positions in the feminst sexuality debate and to suggest that ethical considerations are essential to the complex task of political transformation which is the goal of both sides in the debate. This paper explores both a "rights view" of ethics and a "responsibilities view" and shows, through specific examples, how an appeal to ethics might take feminist sexual politics beyond the current debate.

In theological discourse of sexuality, queer theory has often been regarded as an extension of the project of gay and lesbian liberation, when it actually challenges an organizing value of the entire discourse, because it challenges any ascription of ultimate value to "sex," an imaginative formation of power relations. Rather than appeal to God to authorize the privileged status of sex, queer commentary suggests that theological writers should refuse assertions of the absolute importance of any particular formation of human imagination (...) as a basis of relation between self and God. The goal is to recognize the violence—symbolized and real—that enforces the worth of certain imaginations of intelligibly sexed personal identity and stunts the formation of alternative imaginations of intelligible personal identity. Critical account of this violence as sentimental-homicidal-suicidal opens space to confess a theological discourse of personal identities that is entirely beyond sex. (shrink)

In some cultures, people tend to believe that it is very important to be sexually exclusive in romantic relationships and idealise monogamous romantic relationships; but there is a tension in this ideal. Sex is generally considered to have value, and usually when we love someone we want to increase the amount of value in their lives, not restrict it without good reason. There is thus a call, not yet adequately responded to by philosophers, for greater clarity in the reasons §why (...) it might be reasonable for a couple to adopt a policy of sexual exclusivity. This article argues that we cannot justify the demand for sexual exclusivity by a need to protect the relationship from the risk of one partner ‘trading-up’, or by appealing to jealousy. However, sexual exclusivity can be intelligible if it supports the romantic relationship and helps to distinguish it from other relationships. Nonetheless, sexual exclusivity ought not to be the hegemonic social norm that it currently is in some societies because this diminishes the potential value it might have and gives the idea of faithfulness the wrong focus. (shrink)

IN MANY CHURCH-BODY DISPUTES OVER THE MORAL STATUS OF SAME-gender unions, the last line of defense against the affirmation of such unions is often an appeal to homosexual orientation as inherently "disordered," rendering same-gender unions unacceptable regardless of the loving and just qualities they may embody. On the basis of a biblical anthropology shaped by the eschatological orientation of the scriptures and further enhanced by contemporary Trinitarian discourse, this essay engages and challenges this traditional view as it has been developed (...) in the theological ethics of Helmut Thielicke. In so doing, the essay raises a key metaethical question of the theological foundations that inform Christian sexual ethics in general. (shrink)

It is now a platitude that sexual objectification is wrong. As is often pointed out, however, some objectification seems morally permissible and even quite appealing—as when lovers are so inflamed by passion that they temporarily fail to attend to the complexity and humanity of their partners. Some, such as Nussbaum, have argued that what renders objectification benign is the right sort of relationship between the participants; symmetry, mutuality, and intimacy render objectification less troubling. On this line of thought, pornography, (...) prostitution, and some kinds of casual sex are inherently morally suspect. I argue against this view: what matters is simply respect for autonomy, and whether the objectification is consensual. Intimacy, I explain, can make objectification more morally worrisome rather than less, and symmetry and mutuality are not relevant. The proper political and social context, however, is crucial, since only in its presence can consent be genuine. I defend the consent account against the objection that there is something paradoxical in consenting to objectification, and I conclude that given the right background conditions, there is nothing wrong with anonymous, one-sided, or just-for-pleasure kinds of sexual objectification. (shrink)

What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous--and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the (...) Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law-unto-itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also examines the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond. (shrink)

In his 1992 text ‘Force of Law’ Jacques Derrida makes the radical claim that the aura of law’s legitimacy is always achieved by virtue of an ideological sleight of hand. I argue that the radicality of this claim does not lie in its abandonment of the rule of law, nor is this claim a call to political quietism. Rather, Derrida charges us with the responsibility of interrogating the moments of law’s force or ideology. Following this suggestion I argue that one (...) important way that the law has maintained its aura of legitimacy is on the basis of an ideological appeal to the presumed natural or transparent nature of sexual complementarity. Through a reading of Hegel’s use of the Greek mythological Antigone, I argue that one important way that the im possibility of the necessary encounter between law and the singular case has been covered over, is by way of an appeal to the presumed naturalness of heterosexuality. The conclusion of my analysis is that the illusion of law’s legitimacy is not necessarily achieved with reference to the feminine, nor by virtue of an appeal to the transparency of heterosexuality, but it is no coincidence that it has been achieved in this way so often in the history of political philosophy either. However, no matter how the illusion of law’s legitimacy is achieved, it will always require a sleight of hand; it will always be ideological and therefore political. This analysis therefore serves as an example of how deconstruction can be mobilized as much more than a philosophical meditation on the impossibility of justice; rather, it offers a mode of analysis of critical importance to social and legal theorists. Key Words: Antigone • Derrida • Hegel • sexual difference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related GenresAndrew WalkerDavid Konstan. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xiii + 270 pp. Cloth, $35.“Thus there begins to develop an erotics different from the one that had taken its starting point in the love of boys.... This new erotics organizes itself around the symmetrical and reciprocal relationship of (...) a man and a woman, around the high value attributed to virginity, and around the complete union in which it finds perfection.” So Michel Foucault asserts in a concluding chapter of his three-volume History of Sexuality (III, The Care of the Self [1984, trans. 1986] 232), a history that began as an effort to describe the emergence of sexuality as the subject of a distinct science in the late nineteenth century (I, An Introduction [1976, trans. 1978]) and that later broadened into “a genealogy of desiring man, from classical antiquity through the first centuries of Christianity” (II, The Use of Pleasure [1984, trans. 1985] 12). Here Foucault is commenting on the transition from pederasty to heterosexual love as the subjects of philosophical reflection on the nature of desire and its proper management. It is to this “new erotics” of heterosexual reciprocity that David Konstan’s title Sexual Symmetry refers: the notion that a new construction of sexuality emerged in the Common Era, a sexuality structured, not hierarchically as in the relationship between the erasts and the ermenos (with its predatory dynamic of subject and object, active and passive partners), but symmetrically, with an emphasis on the subjectivity of both partners who, although of opposite sex, are alike in age, social standing, and measure of amatory attachment, culminating in the Christian ideal of conjugal love and heterosexual fidelity. Konstan’s subtitle, Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, provides an index to the book’s focus on literary genres and to Konstan’s generic approach to his subject matter, first locating the ideal of erotic reciprocity in the five Greek romances that survive (chaps. 1 and 2) and then showing how this type of relationship differs markedly from the representation of desire in the (roughly contemporaneous) Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius (chap. 3), as well as in a wide variety of related literary genres that antedate the novel and contributed to its emergence as a literary form (chap. 4). In none of these, Konstan argues, do we find the type of erotic reciprocity enjoyed by the hero and heroine of the standard Greek romance. In later chapters, Konstan contrasts further still this idea of erotic reciprocity, as represented in the ancient texts, with the representation of desire in modern fiction (from Sidney’s Arcadia and Richardson’s Pamela to the contemporary Harlequin Romance, chap. 5), and he attempts (however briefly) to identify those aspects of the social milieu that might account for the emergence and appeal of “sexual symmetry” in Greek fiction (chap. 6).Konstan’s argument is summarized in his introduction, and the progression of each chapter is aided by subheadings which are listed in the table of contents. All Greek is transliterated, and all foreign-language texts, including modern [End Page 165] scholarship, are translated to make the work accessible for the nonspecialist. A single index collects words, themes, topics, and authors—both ancient and modern—discussed. The list of works cited runs for nearly thirty pages and contains more than seven hundred items. The book is suitable for comparativists curious about the antecedents of modern romance, and especially useful for classicists who desire a synoptic view of gender studies in the context of classical literature and culture. Few scholars, I suspect, will complete this book without encountering something new in the way of ancient text or modern scholarship—a fact which in itself is testimony to the impressive breadth of Konstan’s own reading and depth of his erudition.This is not to say that the work is without problems of its own, both of a technical nature and of a theoretical sort. For one thing, Konstan’s argument by its very nature demands a large measure of plot summary of the detailed... (shrink)

In response to three papers about sex and disability published in this journal, I offer a critique of existing arguments and a suggestion about how the debate should be reframed going forward. Jacob M. Appel argues that disabled individuals have a right to sex and should receive a special exemption to the general prohibition of prostitution. Ezio Di Nucci and Frej Klem Thomsen separately argue contra Appel that an appeal to sex rights cannot justify such an exemption. I argue that (...) Appel’s argument fails, but not for the reasons Di Nucci and Thomsen propose, as they have missed the most pressing objection to Appel’s argument: Appel falsely presumes that we never have good reasons to restrict someone’s sexual liberty rights. More importantly, there is a major flaw in the way that all three authors frame their positive accounts. They focus on disability as a proxy for sexual exclusion, when these categories should be pulled apart: some are sexually excluded who are not disabled, while some who are disabled are not sexually excluded. I conclude that it would be less socially harmful and more productive to focus directly on sexual exclusion per se rather than on disability as a proxy for sexual exclusion. (shrink)

We recognise certain acts as ‘sexual assault’, ‘sexual violence’, or a ‘sexual offence’, often to offer strong moral condemnation or to prescribe legal sanction. A common feature of these attacks is that they impose nonconsensual sexual contact; they are sexual attacks. While there has been extensive discussion of consent to sexual contact and of the conditions under which consensual contact is sexual, there has been little investigation into what it is for nonconsensual contact (...) to be sexual. The purpose of this article is to examine the conditions under which an attack (nonconsensual contact) is sexual. I first argue that an account of sexual attacks is important, not least because the question has pressing moral and legal implications. I then consider and reject three accounts, one appealing solely to intuitions, one appealing to the body parts involved, and one appealing to the assailant’s mental state. Finally, I develop my own account. I propose that an attack is sexual if and only if it carries a sexual expressive significance, and thereby conveys a sexual meaning. (shrink)

This article explores the life and work of Emma Goldman to formulate a radical critique of intimacy. Goldman’s theory of sexual freedom and revolutionary love offers a feminist vision that challenges contemporary debates concerning uses of the language of feminine desire. Goldman appealed to ideals of feminine instinct and feminine desire in order to challenge the conventional meanings attached to femininity in her day. Her views on marriage, love, sexuality and the feminine are analysed alongside her writings on her (...) own personal experience, in order to illuminate the continuing paradoxes feminists face in regard to definitions and experiencesof femininity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christ's Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi:A New Argument in Favor of the All-Male PriesthoodPaul Gondreau"One must be allowed to think about and discuss the issues.... [And on the issue of women's ordination] the discussion is still with us, it is still alive, and cannot be stifled [ersticken] by a paper [ein Papier]." So declares Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 2020, where "a (...) paper" refers to an apostolic letter, Pope St. John Paul II's 1994 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which definitively rules out the admissibility of women to priestly ordination.1 No doubt the archbishop was drawing inspiration from Cardinal Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who a month earlier had opined that arguments against women's ordination were becoming increasingly "weaker" (schwächer).2 In his capacity as president of the German bishops' conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing [End Page 805] of Limburg also pronounced on the issue in even more unabated terms; after insisting in June of the same year that Catholics can "continue to talk about the issue of women's ordination," he went further in an interview with the German magazine Herder Korrespondenz six months later: "There are well-developed arguments in theology in favor of opening up the sacramental ministry to women," he asserted, after declaring his desire for "change" (Veränderung), a change that he opined could begin with ordaining women as deacons before ordaining them as priests and bishops.3 Two years later, Bätzing remained adamant, going so far as to declare to speak in the name of the faith of the entire Church on this issue: "The sensus fidelium, that is, the sense of the faithful," he stated, "has moved on" (geht weiter).4 Since the deposit of faith, of which the sensus fidelium is expressive, does not and cannot "move on," that is, change, Bätzing's appeal to the sensus fidelium marks a curious—if also audacious—move, to say the least.It appears we are destined ever "to think about and discuss" the issue of women's ordination, no matter if the Holy Father himself, in the person of the John Paul II, should seek to quell this discussion in the strongest and most authoritative of terms: "In order that all doubt be removed regarding [this] matter," writes the Polish Pontiff, "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful" (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis §4).As regards John Paul II's assertion that his judgment is to be "definitively held" by all Catholics, it is worth recalling that, even if one high-ranking German churchman (Hesse) might esteem Ordinatio Sacerdotalis as [End Page 806] tantamount to ein Papier das erstickt, "a paper that stifles," another, Joseph Ratzinger (in his role as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], before becoming Pope Benedict XVI), holds up John Paul II's apostolic letter as expressive of the infallible teaching of the Church's ordinary magisterium and as "belonging to the deposit of faith." As such, the letter requires all Catholics, asserts Ratzinger, to offer their "definitive assent" to the Holy Father's pronouncement.5John Paul II and Ratzinger may as well have been talking to the wind. If Archbishop Hesse and his disparaging attitude—dismissing a papal apostolic letter as a paper that "stifles"—serves to indicate what "definitive assent" looks like, and if Bishop Bätzing can find that the deposit of faith (represented by the sensus fidelium), particularly as it concerns women's ordination, is able to "move on," it is no wonder that we find the issue "still alive." And recall Hesse and Bätzing hardly stand alone among German prelates in their willingness to ignore Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, as Cardinal Marx and the much touted German "synodal way" show (the archbishop of Luxembourg, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, could also be added to the list).6 Further, when Hesse asserts, "one must be allowed to think about and discuss [women's ordination]," there is little doubt that, for him and those... (shrink)

The reasons for judgment by the Supreme Court of Canada on the appeal in Mabior (2012 SCC 47) fail to address or resolve a number of significant questions. The reasons acknowledge the fundamental role of sexual consent in protecting sexual autonomy, equality, and human dignity, but do not use the law of consent as a tool to assist the Court in crafting a fresh approach to the issue on appeal. Instead the Court adopts the same general approach to (...) analysis of the elements of aggravated sexual assault committed by fraud it used in 1998 in Cuerrier. Fifteen years later, it should be possible to re-conceptualize the problem in a more straightforward manner that reflects Charter values, fundamental common law principles, recent developments in sexual assault law, and the limitations and uncertainties of current HIV treatment and diagnosis. -/- Ironically, the two pronged legal test ultimately proposed by the Court -- non-disclosure of HIV-positive status and a “realistic possibility of transmission,” is likely to give false confidence to individuals who adhere to a regime of anti-retroviral treatment, use good quality latex condoms, and routinely conceal their HIV-positive status from their sexual partners. Research shows that HIV viral loads fluctuate widely in response to a myriad of factors. An inevitable consequence of reliance on the Mabior test will be accused who are shocked to find themselves charged under s. 273, charges that would not apply had they disclosed their HIV-positive status to their sexual partner(s). There are further practical consequences. Non-disclosure will tend to increase the risk of transmission because non-HIV-positive sexual partner(s) will not fully appreciate the actual hazards of improper condom use. As a direct result, careless sexual practices will be more common. And finally, the decision will not contribute to reducing the social stigma that haunts the lives of those who are HIV-positive -- even those who are skilled at deceit. That stigma will not be reduced or eliminated by a ruling that can be seen as tacitly validating stigmatization and fear by appearing to permit infected individuals to pretend they are not HIV-positive when they know or suspect this to be false. Deceit harms the human dignity of the deceived and deceiver alike, and does nothing to build authentic social trust and cohesion. For all these reasons, the problem on appeal in Mabior requires a different approach. This article proposes one. (shrink)

_Eros and Economy: Jung, Deleuze, Sexual Difference_ explores the possibility that social relations between things, partially inscribed in their aesthetics, offer important insights into collective political-economic relations of domination and desire. Drawing on the analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, this book focuses on the idea that desire or libido, overlaid by sexual difference, is a driving force behind the material manifestations of cultural production in practices as diverse as art or economy. Re-reading (...) the history of capitalism and aesthetics with an awareness of the forces of sexual difference reveals not just their integral role in the development of capitalist markets, but a new understanding of our political-economic relations as humans. The appearance of the energies of sexual difference is highlighted in a number of different historical periods and political economies, from the Rococo period of pre-revolutionary France, to the aesthetics and economics of Keynesian Bloomsbury, to our contemporary Postmodern sensibility. With these examples, Jenkins demonstrates that the very constitution of capitalist markets is affected by the interaction of these forces; and she argues that a conscious appreciation and negotiation of them is integral to an immanent, democratic understanding of power. With its unique application of Jungian theory, this book provides important new insights into debates surrounding art, aesthetics, and identity politics, as well as into the quest for autonomous, democratic institutions of politics and economics. As such, this book will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of Jung, psychoanalysis, political economy, cultural studies and gender studies, as well as those interested in the field of cultural economy. (shrink)

In 1998 Ghia Van Eeden was sexually assaulted by a serial rapist who had escaped from police custody due to the negligence of the South African police authorities. Claiming that the State owed a common law duty of care to potential victims to protect them from violent crimes, Van Eeden sought damages for the harm she had suffered. In a path-breaking decision, the Supreme Court of Appeal (S.C.A.) found that a duty of care did indeed exist and that its execution (...) had to be considered in line with the constitutional requirement to protect women's right to be free from violence and the constitutional obligation to develop the common law so as to promote the spirit, purport and objects of the South African Bill of Rights. Examining the Van Eeden decision in terms of its substantial development of the circumstances in which the State may be judged liable for a wrongful omission, this note positions the S.C.A.'s decision in the context of the evolving case law of the Constitutional Court on sexual violence and ultimately questions its practical significance for addressing the prevalent abuse of women in South Africa. (shrink)

This essay provides an account of humiliation as a manifestation of the relationship one has to oneself. This account elucidates two important insights: first, that all sexual violence and not only public gang rape humiliates and, second, that appeals to the neoliberal notion of resilience undermine feminist efforts to counter sexual violence. The first part of the essay provides an overview of the idea of a relation of self to self and its significance, presents humiliation specifically as (...) a manifestation of the self‐relation, and then turns to feminist analyses of sexual violence and its effects in order to illustrate how sexual violence against women humiliates. The second part of the essay illustrates that, given the nature and function of humiliation, neoliberal discourse generally and that of resilience more specifically reproduce the individuation and exclusion that characterize humiliation and are thus detrimental to feminist efforts toward countering sexual violence against women. I conclude by encouraging feminist anti‐sexual violence efforts that at least counter individuation and at best promote collective and inclusive solidarity. (shrink)

Anna Doyle Wheeler was a nineteenth‐century, Irish‐born socialist and feminist. She and another Irish‐born socialist and feminist, William Thompson, produced a book‐length critique in 1825, Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women: Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery: In Reply to a Paragraph of Mr. Mill's Celebrated “Article on Government,” to refute the claims of liberal philosopher James Mill in 1820 that women did not need (...) to be enfranchised. In so doing the Appeal undermined the philosophical credibility of Mill's liberal utilitarianism. The Appeal exposed the hypocrisy of the language of contract (whether social, sexual, or marriage) by showing that men's freedom and claims to rights presupposed the unfreedom and sexual subjugation of women. The article argues that the Appeal was an original formulation of feminist political theory that still retains its relevance in the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

Is it possible to be a socio-biologist and a feminist? Socio-biology has been accused of being a macho ideological arsenal, which seems to exclude in advance any possibility of amending it. However that was the project of several female researchers (in particular S. B. Hrdy and P. A. Gowaty), who suggested adopting the science’s theoretical framework in order to change it from within. This has been expressed in a change of focus: an appeal to take account of female strategies and (...) their evolution as well as the "sex war" at work in process of reproduction. This opening out of socio-biology’s theoretical framework has not been undertaken in the name of the privilege of a "female perspective" but it has without a doubt been nourished by the researchers’ marginal position in their discipline as well as their political involvement. "Male" contributions, such as W. G. Eberhard’s work on the "female’s cryptic choice", are also part of this movement though they do not claim allegiance to it. Similarly, a critical study has been carried out on the vocabulary of socio-biology: not in order to exercise a "politically correct" ideological tyranny but to improve the efficiency of the conceptual tools introduced by the science. Today some feminists think feminism should incorporate socio-biology’s results but resistance still remains strong. Though many feminists think feminism has more to bring to biology than the reverse, many biologists consider that feminism is just an ideology that should remain apart from scientific work. (shrink)

I argue on utilitarian grounds that while traditional constraints on heterosexual activity, including the prohibition of pre-marital sex and divorce may be justified by appeal to purely secular principles, no comparable prohibitions are justified as regards homosexual activity. Homosexuality is in this respect.

This chapter contains sections titled: Defensible Taping The Public Appeal Sexual Appeal The Allure of Taping Motivations for Release The Complications of Releasing a Sex Tape When Trust Fails A Failed Career Move Why We Still Tape Notes.

This paper explores the concept of "inorganic sexuality" in the work of Italian writer and philosopher Mario Perniola. The main objective is to develop the controversial and original aspects of Perniola's thought within his aesthetic theory of feeling. Perniola elaborates the so-called "thing that feels", namely a feeling in which the neutral and impersonal dimensions of the things flow into organic life and vice versa. This perspective, as will be clarified, by dissolving the vitalist and spiritualist drives of the subject, (...) enlarges the horizon of aesthetic feeling by welcoming what is commonly left outside of it: the inorganic and material world, in its surprising aspects, but also in its uncanny and disturbing ones. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to show the significance and the value of neutral sexuality, which opens up a space of experiences beyond the traditional metaphysical oppositions such as masculine/feminine, organic/inorganic, alive/dead, real/virtual, gender/sex. (shrink)

Throughout his excellent book One Body, Alex Pruss relies upon the view that there is a requirement of universal love: each and every one of us is required to love each and every one of us. Although he often appeals to revealed truth in making arguments for his various theses, he supports the requirement of universal love primarily through a philosophical argument, an argument that I call the “argument from responsiveness to value.” The idea is that all persons bear (...) a sort of nonrelational value, and because this value gives every agent reasons to respond to it positively, each and every person is bound to love each and every person. The aim of this paper is to criticize this argument. Pruss’s argument has two important gaps, one concerning the sort of reasons that the value of persons gives and one concerning whether the required response is the response of love. (shrink)

If We Were Kin is about the we of politics-how that we is made, fought over, and remade-and how these struggles lie at the very core of questions about power and political change. While reigning frameworks in the study of politics leave forms of identification sedimented in the background as a priori identities or prop them up front as a part of a mechanistic and calculated game, political identification cannot be captured by these frameworks and is a far more significant (...) and profound political process than they allow. While this book stakes a wider claim about the centrality of identification to politics, it attends most closely to its deeper registers, and in particular to attempts by political actors within racial and gender justice and queer and trans liberation movements to get people to shift or reshape their foundational identifications. Drawing on the political thought of Sylvia Rivera, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and grassroots LGBTQ activists in Southerners On New Ground, I identify a distinct lineage of calls which challenge the atomized and hierarchical racial formations that structure political life in the United States and advance powerful visions of political relationships rooted in mutuality and shared freedom. As I trace through activist archives, political speeches, and original interviews, these appeals demand not only a rethinking of fundamental assumptions in the study of politics, but provide critical resources for understanding the way power works in struggles to constitute a we, how commitments towards or away from racial justice are cultivated through battles over identification, and the dangers and possibilities of identificatory appeals. (shrink)

In our culture, intelligence, emotions and embodied intuitions continue to be seen as separate categories. The body is regarded as a medium of identity as well as social and sexual appeal, but neglected as the ground of embodied existence and silent knowledge, or the full understanding of the human condition. Prevailing educational and pedagogic practices also still separate the mental and intellectual capacities from emotions and the senses, and the multifarious dimensions of human embodiment.

This chapter contains sections titled: Female Porngasm is More Interesting to Study than Male Porngasm Most Porn is Designed to Activate and Appeal to Men's Short‐Term Sexual Strategies Most Female Porngasms are Fake Our Study Results But Female Porn Stars Do Love the Sex! Correspondence Bias Error Management Theory Conclusions Notes.

Although sexual difference is widely regarded as the concept that lies at the center of Luce Irigaray's thought, its meaning and significance is highly contested. This dissensus, however, attests to more than merely the existence of a recalcitrant conceptual ambiguity. That is, Irigaray's discussion of sexual difference remains fraught not because she leaves this concept undefined but because the centrality of sexual difference in fact marks a complex and unstable nexus of phenomena that shift throughout her work. (...) Consequently, if Irigaray is indeed the preeminent thinker of sexual difference, this is not in virtue of her recurrent appeal to a monolithic, readily digestible concept but rather somehow despite the absence of precisely this gesture. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference in Irigaray's work by identifying her persistent, though largely unexamined, commitment to transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, I attempt to show that the complex of phenomena of sexual difference emerges in L'oubli de l'air and The Way of Love as a modulation of Heidegger's own revision of transcendental phenomenology. In this sense, the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference does not mark the centrality of a concept but Irigaray's amplification of this Heideggerian gesture. (shrink)

In 2001, three non-Aboriginal men in their twenties were charged with the sexual assault of a twelve year old Aboriginal girl in rural Saskatchewan. Legal proceedings lasted almost seven years and included two preliminary hearings, two jury trials, two retrials with juries, and appeals to the provincial appeal court and the Supreme Court of Canada. One accused was convicted. The case raises questions about the administration of justice in sexual assault cases in Saskatchewan. Based on observation and (...) analysis of the record, this paper: (1) examines relationships between legal errors dealing with availability of the defence of “belief in consent” and interpretation of the “all reasonable steps” provision, the need for retrials, and apprehended race-gender-age bias and discrimination; and 2) proposes incremental and systemic remedies to address the weaknesses in police, prosecutorial and judicial policy and practice highlighted by this case. (shrink)

Biological sex should be “acknowledged” and “accepted”—but which responses to gender dysphoria might this preclude? Trans-identified people may factually acknowledge their biological sex and regard transition as purely palliative. While generally some level of self-deception and even a high level of nonlying deception of others are sometimes justified, biological sex is important, and there is a nontrivial onus against even palliative, nonsexually motivated cross-dressing. The onus is higher against co-opting the body, even in a minor and/or reversible way, to make (...) a false communication concerning one’s sex. Hardest to defend is the destruction of sexual–reproductive functions and causally downstream functions such as lactation: due to the transcendent nature of sexual–reproductive functions, an appeal to the “principle of totality” here is misplaced. This is not to say that social, and milder medical, transition is absolutely excluded even for severe unmanageable dysphoria, nor that subsequent to any transition, detransition is necessarily required. (shrink)

Bodily sensations, such as pain, hunger, itches, or sexual feelings, are commonly characterized in terms of their phenomenal character. In order to account for this phenomenal character, many philosophers adopt strong representationalism. According to this view, bodily sensations are essentially and entirely determined by an intentional content related to particular conditions of the body. For example, pain would be nothing more than the representation of actual or potential tissue damage. In order to motivate and justify their view, strong representationalists (...) often appeal to the reliable causal covariance between bodily sensations and certain kinds of bodily conditions or to the corresponding biological function that these bodily sensations are supposed to fulfill. In this paper, I argue on the basis of recent empirical research that arguments from reliable causal covariance and biological function cannot motivate the introduction of corresponding intentional content. In particular, I argue that bodily sensations are caused by a heterogeneous class of physiological and psychological factors and their biological functions are too diverse to be reduced to the representation of a particular bodily condition. Responses are available to strong representationalists, but they either require substantial alterations to their core assumptions or incur a significant empirical burden. (shrink)