Arguements in favor of cheap women
An anonymous reader asks:
“Why is it unrealistic, if you infact have the technological means to avoid reproduction? I suppose realistically there is always a risk, but it is similarly true that there is a risk involved in taking a trip on a plane for a vacation…”
Allow me to answer. This is a perfectly good question, but it rests on an assumption I would like you to question: the assumption that sex can be cheapened without cheapening the sex-partner. I humbly submit that it cannot be done. To will the end wills the means; likewise, to disvalue the end disvalues the means.
Even in the analogy you use, there is a hint of what I am saying. If sex were merely nothing more than something a man did for his own pleasure, like climbing aboard a plane to take a vacation, obviously my objection toward casual sex would be meaningless: for casual pleasures ought to be treated casually.
Indeed, we consider a man a fanatic, an oddity, a geek or a glutton, if he pays more attention to a simple, casual pleasure (like a science fiction paperback)than he should. A fan who takes a vow only to eat one fruit or only to read one author, forsaking all others, would be an odd duck indeed. Endowing an author with all your worldly good, and moving into his house would be even more extraordinary–I assure you that most authors do not want fans with THAT much affection.
But what bride does not insist on at least that much affection in the heart of her bridegroom, or far more than that? Answer: a bride whose price is rather low, who does not take her self, her love, her life, to be worth much consideration; namely, a bride who does not insist on a wedding ring before she bestows the pleasures of the wedding night on her casual beau.
And yet such girls are doing nothing other than acting on the advice of the current generation (whom we should call the generation of vipers). The vipers say that sex is a casual thing, and that sex has no real consequences. If sex is a casual thing, there is nothing wrong with servicing a nice older man in order to get a free movie, a ride in his car, or a new dress. It becomes a business matter. You become a harlot, or, as they say in the FIREFLY universe, a companion. All you give up is love and self-worth.
But sex and romance, love and marriage are nothing like a casual vacation. I am not saying that it will always be unrealistic to rely on birth control. I am saying it is unrealistic to assume, that merely because the cause-effect link between sex and reproduction is weaker in a society that has reliable birth control, that ergo there is no categorical link between sex and reproduction. The two are still related as means and ends, even if the cause and effect link will one day be utterly and reliably cut. Our biology and psychology are still established in such a way to recognize that link. The circumstances of reality, what I called the logic of the human heart, the laws of supply and demand, still obtain.
A girl for whom sex is cheap, a value of low priority, cheapens herself, places her self-value at a low value. Her feelings toward the opposite sex must be forced down to a low value: she feels contempt for men (because contempt is the emotion that inevitably accompanies an intellectual assessment of low value), and contempt for sex and romance (because sex is nothing more than mere entertainment to her). All the arguments in favor of cheap sex assume human life, human romance, motherhood, virginity, and girls themselves are of low value. It cannot logically be otherwise. That is the operation of the law of supply and demand. Oneman, or one society, cannot at the same time and in the same sense cherish romantic superlative emotion about something and also hold it to be of no particular interest or importance.
I am not trying to deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. I am not trying to argue that a duty can be deduced from a fact. I am arguing that the ‘ought’ is innate in the situation. The duty exist as a matter of plain fact, and it is bad logic to pretend it does not.
The pleasure one gets by stimulating the sex organs does not exist in a vacuum; it exists in a context. The context is that sexual organs are sexual organs, reproductive organs. Using them for selfish pleasure has a psychological cost, demeaning their utility as reproductive organs.
Darwinian evolution might not care, as you say, if the race lives or dies, but I assume anyone reading my words now is alive, and, if only tacitly, he has made a moral valuation of the preference of life over death. Humans require civilizations to live in large numbers, and laws and customs to live life at all. If one were arguing with a non-living object, like a rock, perhaps one would have to prove the advantage of life, health, sanity, and happiness over the alternatives, but no one in my audience need ponder those arguments, as they are all living beings. If someone wants to argue the advantages of single-parent households, or of abandoning children to strangers, one no longer is a member of the culture that values life and happiness.
“Common experience, if nothing else, shows that unwed women are as jealous of their rivals as wives for their husband’s mistresses…” Lots of animals have “casual sex”–look at bonobos, for example–so it’s clearly not true that “Darwinian logic” commands that animals be jealous…
I am sorry I was not clear here. Here I am speaking of the common experience of real people, not the hypothetical experience of the moral decisions that would be made by dwarf chimpanzees if they were intelligent enough to identify their own offspring.
No one can seriously argue that human females ought not to be jealous when their boyfriends cheat merely because dwarf chimpanzees are not jealous. Girls who act this way–as if they have no right to be jealous–get treated with profound disrespect. The dwarf chimpanzee strategy of raising children communally is a somewhat, ah, Spartan approach to the matter. Like plans to breed humans like horses, communal child-rearing involves the annihilation of human rights and human dignity. Likewise and by the same logic, communal mating rights hold a girl to be available to all comers, or a guy within his rights to sow his wild oats wheresoever he may.
This is the life-style of those free of jealousy: every trespasser is your guest. So why should Arthur mind if Lancelot is getting some hot Gwen on the side? Isn’t jealousy (as Bob Heinlein famously said) merely a sign of sickness and lowmindedness? One might as well ask why treason is a bad thing.
Black Widow spiders also kill their mates. As far as Darwinian logic is concerned, this would not be the best strategy for human beings, because human males, although their intelligence clearly drops during their mating season, are alert enough to take prudent steps to guard their own self interest. Marriage is a prudent step intended (and often successful) in guarding the self-interest and the general interest of individual men and of the human race.
The culture of Sterility, according to Darwin, will be outnumbered, everything else being equal, by the culture of Fertility. Good or bad, that is simply the fact.
And the laws of economics and the logic of the human heart still apply. You cannot adore something casually; you cannot dismiss the core value of your life without dismissing the related values.
All the arguments in favor of cheap sex are arguments in favor ofcheapening women. What amazes me is that the women let this happen to them. They were promised cheap sex would give them equality with men; all it has done is reduce them to exploited Barbie dolls in the estimation of the society. I can see why the men would be in favor of this particular brand of lawlessness, for the same reason I can see why Attila the Hun would be in favor of Trial by Combat. I am just not sure why Juliet or Penelope or even Princess Buttercup would be in favor of it.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
