Category: Love and Sex

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Some initial thoughts on the Male Malaise

  By Economic Justice, Feminism, Love and Sex

I heard a fascinating podcast on my drive to Philly: Ezra Klein talking to Richard Reeves who wrote Of Boys and Men in 2022. It’s perhaps the most detailed / data focused book on the problems of men. I have not read it yet but now will do so soon.   The main outlines of the “male malaise” are probably well known to you: boys do worse in school than girls, are less likely to go to college, and less likely to graduate. They are less likely to hold full-time jobs in their 20s or be on career tracks. As Reeves say, they tend to zig-zag more than women. And then there are the psychological issues: Men are less happy, lonelier, more likely to become substance abusers, more likely to commit suicide, and even more likely to die of COVID women. What is not clear to me is the causes… Continue reading

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What Multiple Orgasm Can Teach Us About Sex after Patriarchy

  By Love and Sex

Introduction This is one in a series of short essays that will ultimately wind up in one or more chapters of my book Civilizations and Its Contents: Platonic Reflections on Eros and the Culture Wars. You can find an overview of it here. My book is, for the most part, not focused on the details of our sexual practices. But for a few reasons, I became interested in the phenomenon of multiple orgasm about five years ago. My book *is* very much focused on how theories of sexuality support patriarchal views about the nature of men and women and how patriarchal sexual practices limit sexual pleasure for both men and women. It is widely believed that women have troubles with orgasm, yet at the same time, it is also widely believed that women are capable of multiple orgasms while men are not. Now, on the surface that seems contradictory. Are… Continue reading

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Patriarchy, homophobia and sexual fluidity in women

  By Love and Sex

It is commonly held that sexual orientation varies in degrees rather than kind. Some men and women are exclusively interested in sex with their own sex; some are exclusively interested in sex and love with the opposite sex, while many of us fall somewhere between these two poles, being little more or less interested in our own sex or the opposite sex. Kinsey claimed that his research found that that most men and women were not at the far poles of his seven point sexual orientation scale but somewhere in the middle Yet it appears that women tend to be more sexually fluid than men. The percentage of women who have had sex with women is higher than the percentage of men who have had sex with men. More importantly, it appears that women are far more likely than men to pursue sex with both men and women during some… Continue reading

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Learning from our bodies and failure

  By Language, Love and Sex, Philosophy

One of the endlessly appealing profoundly mistaken ideas found in science fiction is that idea that we human beings could take a pill or have a capsule or micro-chip inserted into our brains and then immediately have all kinds of faculties and capacities we previously did not have. This idea was prominent in The Matrix films, for example. But it certainly didn’t start there. I’m going to argue here that this idea is based on a particular kind of mind-body dualism that is ultimately rooted in ideas put forward by Socrates in some of the Platonic dialogues (although the extent to which Plato embraced these ideas is very much questionable). And I’m going to conclude that is a profoundly problematic idea that encourages us to think of our lives in ways that leads us to (1) misunderstand and become despondent about our bodies and (2) fail to understand how important… Continue reading

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Sex as a Relational Phenomena and the “Male Gaze”

  By Love and Sex

Central to the understanding of sexuality I’m developing in my book Civilization and Its Contents is that it is fundamentally a relational phenomena. What makes our actions sexual is just the physical acts we do. After all, many of those acts can be sexual or not depending on context. A female doctor examining the penis of a male patient is not a sexual act.  What makes an act sexual is that is  designed to elicit sexual desire and arousal on the part of ourselves and our partners. Two people are having sex not just because of what they do to each other but because what they do intends to express their own sexual desire and, in doing so, elicit sexual desire and arousal in their partners by their recognition of that intention–as well as by the pleasure one’s partner receives .[1] Now this general point about sexuality can be misunderstood… Continue reading

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The modern transformation of asceticism and the origins of the culture war

  By Abortion, Feminism, Love and Sex, Philosophy

Many of us have responded to the new threat to Roe v. Wade by reminding people that the aim of the right is not to protect unborn children but to control women. However, for some people, accustomed to living in a world in which they expect women to be treated as full participants in our political, social, and cultural lives,  that notion is odd. They don’t understand that control of women means and why it is so important in right wing thought. There are a number of answers but one is that policing abortion is part of the right-wing project of policing sexuality as a whole. And policing sexuality, especially female sexuality, is, for the  right wing mind, critical to ensuring that men carry out their responsibilities to have and take care of children and hold down a job. As is common in political and social life these claims rest… Continue reading

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It had to be us

  By Feminism, Love and Sex, Sexual and gender equality

Stop and think about it for minute: Every woman I know has said “me, too” in the last few days. In fact, it appears that every woman on FB has said, “me, too.” That’s a lot of awful treatment of millions of women. And it was not all done by Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, and three or four other guys. Most of us men have to be responsible for some part of it. Who else is there? Some of us may have only engaged in or tolerated the repulsive, slut-shaming that was common place when I was in college. Some of us may have asked for sex in ways that were unfair or pressured. (My book on sexuality got its start my junior year in college when I recognized that the sexual revolution gave men seeking unattached sex a new way to badger women into having sex that… Continue reading

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Why Women Don’t Report Rape

  By Criminal Justice, Feminism, Love and Sex, Sexual and gender equality

Defending Cosby Many people have long loved Bill Cosby, for his abilities as an entertainer, his attractive persona or, in some cases, his penchant for blaming young black people for their difficulties. And many—although fewer each week—of these people have been so deeply troubled by the multiple accusations of sexual violence against Cosby that they have rushed to his defense. Their responses to the accusations have echoed two themes that are quite common when women accuse men of rape. First, many of the accusers have themselves been accused of lying, of making up stories about Cosby. The motives attributed to these women are varied—some have been said to be gold diggers who either hope for an out of court financial settlement of the kind Cosby gave to Andrea Constand or who hope to parlay their accusation into a magazine or book deal. (The statute of limitations for both criminal and… Continue reading

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Civilization and its Contents: Platonic Reflections on Sex and the Culture Wars

  By Love and Sex, Philosophy

A précis of the book I’m hoping to finish in 2021. I’m going to start linking from this page to posts of of draft chapters soon. Comments always welcome! Civilization and its Contents: Platonic Reflections on Sex and the Culture Wars critiques the conception of human sexuality that underlie both left and right in the contemporary culture wars. It presents a radically new  account of sexuality and its place in human life, one that encourages various good ways of pursuing sex that bring pleasure and a connection to other people and in a way that recognizes and supports the fundamental equality of  men and women. The three philosophical essays of part one of Civilization and Its Contents set out the traditional view of sexuality in some detail and contrasts it with a very different view, inspired by Plato and Aristotle (although admittedly an unorthodox interpretation of them).  I show that extremes of left and… Continue reading