Ethics

Ethics Study Guide

©2018 Achieve Page 74 of 116 Philosopher Lois Pineau wrote a feminist analysis of date rape in which she seeks to replace myths about female provocation and male self-control with a model of communicative sexuality. She claims in consensual sex, each partner tries to understand and promote the aims of the other. She argues that this basic understanding is not present in aggressive or coercive sex. According to Pineau, we should use a communicative model rather than a contract model for testing consent. In the contract model, if the person consented, there is no rape; however, the criteria for consent are varied, and the evidentiary standard for proving consent is low. Pineau’s position is that, from a woman’s point of view, communicative sex must be established to legitimize sex. The presumption is of non-consent; without communicative sex, the act is date rape. Pineau believes that sexual behavior functions like language, and that a communicative model will serve as a background for generating proof of criminal intent needed for legal involvement. She believes that the legal procedures for judging accusations of date rape are biased against the victim of the rape and argues that the process is biased because it makes faulty assumptions about the nature of sex, and the differences between the male and female sexuality. To put her argument succinctly, she is saying that the law implies that women want to be raped and lead men on. Pornography As a basic human drive, sex can be used toward unethical ends. Sex, in the form of sex work or pornography, can be exchanged for money in various places. Some feminists contend that this industry exploits women, and is a way of maintaining patriarchy. They also argue that prostitution is a form of male domination and oppression of women. Immanuel Kant proposed that some sexual Nagel’s Secular Philosophy Both Aquinas and Thomas Nagel (b. 1937) assumed that what is unnatural in human sexuality is perverted and that what is unnatural or perverted in human sexuality is simply that which does not conformwith, or is inconsistent with, what they each deem as natural human sexuality. Thomas Nagel denies Aquinas’ central idea, that in order to discover what is natural in human sexuality we should emphasize what humans and lower animals have in common. He thought in order to discover what is or is not natural, we should seek to find what humans and other animals do not have in common, allowing us to learn the ways in which humans and their sexuality are special. Nagel argues that sexual perversion in humans should be understood as a psychological phenomenon, rather than a matter of physiological and anatomical placement like Aquinas. He argues that human psychology sets us apart from the other animals, and therefore natural human sexuality must acknowledge this. Nagel proposes that humans mutually responding to each other with sexual arousal are natural to human sexuality. Unnatural or perverted encounters are those where mutual recognition of arousal is absent. Nagel disagrees with Aquinas that homosexual activities, as a specific type of sexual act, are unnatural or perverted, for homosexual sexual acts may very well be accompanied by the mutual recognition of and response to the other’s sexual arousal. 10.3 Other Sexual Issues Date Rape