It's interesting to see people picking up on that line, "Some desires are worse than others," because it's also something that stood out to me and I don't know that I think it's the best framing. Lol it hit me on the raw a bit! I've written a lot, both nonfiction and fiction, about the way sexual desire works kind of like a language, in which the "words" (the desires and the acts) can mean a lot of different things; we use desire to "say" a lot of things, and desire can be expressed in many different ways that aren't immediately obvious.
Imho on some level all (? almost all?) of our longings are longings for God, or at least prepare us to encounter God, and finding ways to express those longings which help us to love others and love God is often better than just trying to have better longings. I know in switching from "desires" to "longings" I'm cutting some corners, but with sexual desire too, I've really found that for myself and many others, trying to have better desires is harmful whereas trying to express our desires better is healing and transformative. "Some desires are worse than others" will mean, for some people, "*Your* desires are worse than others," and imho that framing usually imposes shame without hope. It doesn't actually guide or educate desire.
I'm sure it depends a LOT on which specific desires we're discussing, but I want to at least suggest that "Some desires are worse than others" is a framework which has the potential to foster self-hatred rather than humility, chastity, self-respect, or self-gift.
"What kind of sex-ed goes beyond just consent to focus on willing the good of the other?"
I think the next move beyond "safe sex" and "consensual sex" should be "wise sex." This would incorporate the first two but would also focus on responsibility for the well-being of one's partner and oneself, and any others whose lives might be affected by this sexual relationship. For the latter, I'm mostly thinking of any children one might conceive or might already have, but it would also encompass things like not being the person a cheating spouse cheats with. Some people argue that it's not that person's problem because they're not the one who's breaking a vow; but they're still responsible for their choice to help someone else do it.
I want someone to write a book titled "I & Thou & Sex". Too often I worry that “Some preferences are better or worse than others" is code for targeting gay/lesbian/bi/trans folks. At the same time, sexual practices that treat folks as a means to your own gratification rather than a whole person, an end in themselves, is obviously (imo) unethical.
Then again, in a society where people are exploited in nearly every aspect of their lives, exploitation in the bedroom is unsurprising.
In the conversation Christine says, "Some desires are worse than others." I feel like this is one of the pillars of the sexual ideology she's attacking (provoking?) and it's one that can't be criticized. I have it stuck in my head how several years ago someone asked Dan Savage for his opinion about masturbating to images of random teenagers on Instagram, and he basically said that whatever you do in the privacy of your own mind is fine as long as you're not using child pornography. If some desires are worse than others, then a lot of people get offended and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
On "Where do you encounter 'permission to be unhappy' about the current sexual culture?" the answer for me (as I know it is for some of the other folks here) "In my church."
I wish there were more than that, though. Any time there's a sort of closed monoculture, there's a danger that things inside get twisted, and the true and the essential get confused with what is not important. (Hello, The Village!) And so you get, in the midst of the awesomeness that is Catholic doctrine in general, weird fights about skirts v. pants, etc.
BUT at the same time, the consent-focused culture of the secular modern world is riddled with its own problems. There was that movie a few years back about human beings on a long space journey--one fellow's pod is faulty, and he wakes up early. After a struggle with temptation, he opens another pod--that of a woman he deems to be beautiful--so that he doesn't have to die alone on this long journey. (And maybe, ahem, enjoy a few perks along the way.) So the unfolding drama (spoiler alert!!!!!) is ...
... that while she initially thinks her pod "malfunction" was an accident like his, she eventually discovers he woke her for his own comfort/pleasure/friendship. Eventually she forgives him, and they sort of live happily ever after (or at least as happily as two marooned castaways can). And it was this forgiveness that the commentators on the movie couldn't abide: basically, he opened her pod without her consent, which is the unforgiveable sin in our current secular sexual culture. And that's just--a little weird, that *the victim herself is supposed to not forgive.* That's an odd sort of prudishness, or at least it struck me that way.
All of that is a round about way of saying that one of the problems I see in the current sexual culture is this inability for the secular world and the church to talk to each other in a fruitful way. The church gives me a space to be unhappy about certain things that I believe to be damaging, humanly speaking, e.g., sleeping around. But as long as the church and the world aren't dialoguing with each other (for lack of a better phrase) on these topics, Catholics like me are stuck in a weird place where both spaces seem slightly twisted and out of joint.
To your second question - in my experience, it's really helpful to have rules outside of oneself. Rules obviously can be done poorly but when done well they serve as a protection, especially for people who are more vulnerable (and I would include having a less assertive personality as a vulnerability). I remember in high school, a friend of mine wanted to copy my homework, and I was able to appeal to the morality we were both expected to live by, which protected me because I don't think I would have had the gumption to say no on my own authority. At one job I had in college, I turned down sex more than once because my answer was a flat no for which I (being a really awkward person to begin with) could rely on my religion. It wasn't an evaluation of the man who asked me or a decision I could be persuaded from. It was just plain no and that was the end of it, no matter how awkward I was about it. I didn't need gumption or self confidence or am assertive personality - I had none of these. Anyway, the guy that asked me first actually became one of my best friends at that job and I think it helped that I drew a clear line, because there was no "will she or won't she" it was just no, so let's talk about other things, and there are a lot of other things that can be talked about.
But again, rules can be done badly, and a good set of rules has a good and defensible philosophy behind it. Rules should not be the be all end all of sex ed, but we should also understand that teenagers are not going to grasp concepts with fully formed adult brains. I'm all for willing the good of the other, but without a certain level of maturity, it's hard to make that practical. Should I say yes because that will make him happy, even if it's a sacrifice for me? How is that different than donating my ice cream money to refugees? If I say no, am I being selfish? I couldn't have navigated those questions as a teenager and I don't expect many others could, either.
I thought about a recent NYT Michelle Goldberg essay discussing the book. A quote from it:
"The problem — and I doubt Emba would disagree with this — is that many women are still embarrassed by their own desires, particularly when they are emotional, rather than physical."
My thoughts:
But isn't part of the problem that wanting romance and emotional connection before sex is seen as hopelessly naive, prudish, and conservative for this day and age? The irony is that sex positivity, as per the theorists, was supposed to be broad enough to include liberal as well as conservative choices. But that isn't how it worked in reality.
The one place where I see this being addressed, is not in a place many might think of or even be interested in.
It's in romance novels, and especially when they are on the conservative leaning side in terms of writing. Cultivating positive relationships as part of emotional intimacy, long before physical intimacy even becomes an issue, and that is even if the book even goest thre.
Maybe if more men and women were reading romance novels and not porn the reality would be different.
Great conversation - thank you for putting this together for us! I look forward to reading her book. It seems like it would pair well with sociologist Mark Regnerus' book "Cheap Sex".
Fascinating transcript; I look forward to listen to the whole. I read Emba's book a few weeks back, and have a review coming out in Liberty Fund's Law and Liberty magazine. I'll be sure to share the link via The Herring Review when it's out. https://herringreview.substack.com/.
It's interesting to see people picking up on that line, "Some desires are worse than others," because it's also something that stood out to me and I don't know that I think it's the best framing. Lol it hit me on the raw a bit! I've written a lot, both nonfiction and fiction, about the way sexual desire works kind of like a language, in which the "words" (the desires and the acts) can mean a lot of different things; we use desire to "say" a lot of things, and desire can be expressed in many different ways that aren't immediately obvious.
Imho on some level all (? almost all?) of our longings are longings for God, or at least prepare us to encounter God, and finding ways to express those longings which help us to love others and love God is often better than just trying to have better longings. I know in switching from "desires" to "longings" I'm cutting some corners, but with sexual desire too, I've really found that for myself and many others, trying to have better desires is harmful whereas trying to express our desires better is healing and transformative. "Some desires are worse than others" will mean, for some people, "*Your* desires are worse than others," and imho that framing usually imposes shame without hope. It doesn't actually guide or educate desire.
I'm sure it depends a LOT on which specific desires we're discussing, but I want to at least suggest that "Some desires are worse than others" is a framework which has the potential to foster self-hatred rather than humility, chastity, self-respect, or self-gift.
"What kind of sex-ed goes beyond just consent to focus on willing the good of the other?"
I think the next move beyond "safe sex" and "consensual sex" should be "wise sex." This would incorporate the first two but would also focus on responsibility for the well-being of one's partner and oneself, and any others whose lives might be affected by this sexual relationship. For the latter, I'm mostly thinking of any children one might conceive or might already have, but it would also encompass things like not being the person a cheating spouse cheats with. Some people argue that it's not that person's problem because they're not the one who's breaking a vow; but they're still responsible for their choice to help someone else do it.
I want someone to write a book titled "I & Thou & Sex". Too often I worry that “Some preferences are better or worse than others" is code for targeting gay/lesbian/bi/trans folks. At the same time, sexual practices that treat folks as a means to your own gratification rather than a whole person, an end in themselves, is obviously (imo) unethical.
Then again, in a society where people are exploited in nearly every aspect of their lives, exploitation in the bedroom is unsurprising.
In the conversation Christine says, "Some desires are worse than others." I feel like this is one of the pillars of the sexual ideology she's attacking (provoking?) and it's one that can't be criticized. I have it stuck in my head how several years ago someone asked Dan Savage for his opinion about masturbating to images of random teenagers on Instagram, and he basically said that whatever you do in the privacy of your own mind is fine as long as you're not using child pornography. If some desires are worse than others, then a lot of people get offended and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
On "Where do you encounter 'permission to be unhappy' about the current sexual culture?" the answer for me (as I know it is for some of the other folks here) "In my church."
I wish there were more than that, though. Any time there's a sort of closed monoculture, there's a danger that things inside get twisted, and the true and the essential get confused with what is not important. (Hello, The Village!) And so you get, in the midst of the awesomeness that is Catholic doctrine in general, weird fights about skirts v. pants, etc.
BUT at the same time, the consent-focused culture of the secular modern world is riddled with its own problems. There was that movie a few years back about human beings on a long space journey--one fellow's pod is faulty, and he wakes up early. After a struggle with temptation, he opens another pod--that of a woman he deems to be beautiful--so that he doesn't have to die alone on this long journey. (And maybe, ahem, enjoy a few perks along the way.) So the unfolding drama (spoiler alert!!!!!) is ...
... that while she initially thinks her pod "malfunction" was an accident like his, she eventually discovers he woke her for his own comfort/pleasure/friendship. Eventually she forgives him, and they sort of live happily ever after (or at least as happily as two marooned castaways can). And it was this forgiveness that the commentators on the movie couldn't abide: basically, he opened her pod without her consent, which is the unforgiveable sin in our current secular sexual culture. And that's just--a little weird, that *the victim herself is supposed to not forgive.* That's an odd sort of prudishness, or at least it struck me that way.
All of that is a round about way of saying that one of the problems I see in the current sexual culture is this inability for the secular world and the church to talk to each other in a fruitful way. The church gives me a space to be unhappy about certain things that I believe to be damaging, humanly speaking, e.g., sleeping around. But as long as the church and the world aren't dialoguing with each other (for lack of a better phrase) on these topics, Catholics like me are stuck in a weird place where both spaces seem slightly twisted and out of joint.
To your second question - in my experience, it's really helpful to have rules outside of oneself. Rules obviously can be done poorly but when done well they serve as a protection, especially for people who are more vulnerable (and I would include having a less assertive personality as a vulnerability). I remember in high school, a friend of mine wanted to copy my homework, and I was able to appeal to the morality we were both expected to live by, which protected me because I don't think I would have had the gumption to say no on my own authority. At one job I had in college, I turned down sex more than once because my answer was a flat no for which I (being a really awkward person to begin with) could rely on my religion. It wasn't an evaluation of the man who asked me or a decision I could be persuaded from. It was just plain no and that was the end of it, no matter how awkward I was about it. I didn't need gumption or self confidence or am assertive personality - I had none of these. Anyway, the guy that asked me first actually became one of my best friends at that job and I think it helped that I drew a clear line, because there was no "will she or won't she" it was just no, so let's talk about other things, and there are a lot of other things that can be talked about.
But again, rules can be done badly, and a good set of rules has a good and defensible philosophy behind it. Rules should not be the be all end all of sex ed, but we should also understand that teenagers are not going to grasp concepts with fully formed adult brains. I'm all for willing the good of the other, but without a certain level of maturity, it's hard to make that practical. Should I say yes because that will make him happy, even if it's a sacrifice for me? How is that different than donating my ice cream money to refugees? If I say no, am I being selfish? I couldn't have navigated those questions as a teenager and I don't expect many others could, either.
I thought about a recent NYT Michelle Goldberg essay discussing the book. A quote from it:
"The problem — and I doubt Emba would disagree with this — is that many women are still embarrassed by their own desires, particularly when they are emotional, rather than physical."
My thoughts:
But isn't part of the problem that wanting romance and emotional connection before sex is seen as hopelessly naive, prudish, and conservative for this day and age? The irony is that sex positivity, as per the theorists, was supposed to be broad enough to include liberal as well as conservative choices. But that isn't how it worked in reality.
The one place where I see this being addressed, is not in a place many might think of or even be interested in.
It's in romance novels, and especially when they are on the conservative leaning side in terms of writing. Cultivating positive relationships as part of emotional intimacy, long before physical intimacy even becomes an issue, and that is even if the book even goest thre.
Maybe if more men and women were reading romance novels and not porn the reality would be different.
Great conversation - thank you for putting this together for us! I look forward to reading her book. It seems like it would pair well with sociologist Mark Regnerus' book "Cheap Sex".
Fascinating transcript; I look forward to listen to the whole. I read Emba's book a few weeks back, and have a review coming out in Liberty Fund's Law and Liberty magazine. I'll be sure to share the link via The Herring Review when it's out. https://herringreview.substack.com/.