But today, Dr. Bialek me, many people experience “much more unexpected interaction in a sexual context than during dinner.” Because of our reluctance to recognize a shared set of norms for sex that go beyond the bare minimum of consent — let alone the fact that we haven’t even gotten that bare minimum right — our current sexual culture can be painful. loosen.
It is easy to see how too strict social regulation has caused damage in the past; the sexual revolution happened for a reason. Yet we can recognize the benefits we have gained—less embarrassment, greater acceptance of sexual minorities, a recognition of the value of women’s sexual agency—while acknowledging the problems that persist or have worsened. Are there any norms we could create or reclaim today that could paradoxically make our romantic landscape freer for all?
This enjoyment of dinner rests on a clear set of social norms: widely shared, community-regulated insights about what we hope a gathering will look like and how attendees should behave. For sexual encounters, setting these standards will require heated debate, and our view of what sex means in our society must be corrected together.
We will have to make substantive claims about what we think a good sexual culture looks like, but we will also have to be willing to acknowledge the ways in which certain definitions can exclude exclusion and how some norms have negatively affected women and others. We will have to be open to negotiation and open to hearing voices excluded from such conversations. And we will have to have these debates in public.
Nevertheless, some new insights may be in order. Maybe even casual sex is important, an act like no other. Perhaps some porn-inspired practices—those that cause degradation, objectification, and harm—shouldn’t be mainstreamed. We may have a duty to others, not just to our own desires. We need standards that are more robust than “anything goes between two consenting adults.”
It’s time to raise the standard for what good sexual encounters look like and hold ourselves and our peers accountable for it. Good – that is, ethical – sex isn’t just about getting permission so we can do what we want. The ideal we might strive for instead is to want our partners’ well-being too — and to stop ourselves from having sex if we can’t or aren’t sure our partners are.
This can lead to less casual sex, at least in the short term. But given the clear dissatisfaction with the current landscape, that might not be too bad.
