College Sex - Philosophy for Everyone: Philosophers With Benefits (31 page)

PA RT IV

SENIOR YEAR

Sex and Self-Respect

ROBERT M. STEWART

CHAPTER 14

MEANINGFUL SEX AND MORAL RESPECT

College Sex Today

In the title essay of his book
Hooking Up
and his novel
I Am Charlotte Simmons
, Tom Wolfe presents a dismaying picture of American college students’ sexual attitudes and practices.
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Wolfe’s essay and subsequent novel provide a portrait of college sexu- ality largely consistent with recent empirical accounts. Indeed, they are based on first-hand research that the author undertook on the cam-

puses of several major American universities, living with students, attend- ing social events, and interviewing many people directly familiar with current college mores. Many freshmen at these institutions are on their own for the first time, confronted with important choices in a permissive environment that provides opportunities for sexual adventure well beyond what they might have had in high school.The decisions young adults make at this stage can have consequences for the rest of their lives.Wolfe’s novel presents these choices in a way that is arguably more vivid and compelling than any non-fiction work. Love and the strengthening of a long-term commitment are no longer part of most sexual liaisons on most college campuses. Experimentation and status-seeking – apart from mere physical pleasure and release – are now the major motivations for sexual relations. The overall impression that Wolfe creates is that sexuality has become coarsened and cheapened, rendered ugly and substantially empty among

the current generation of college students.This is by no means, of course, a sudden development, but one that has taken place over several decades; nor is it unique to college students, for it begins in earlier grades and represents a broader societal trend in countries such as ours. But the special circumstances and privileged status of most students at the more prestigious colleges and universities, Wolfe suggests, appear to facilitate what more conservative Americans would consider widespread immoral- ity and a loss of self-respect among many of these students, the elite opinion leaders of the future. A “brave new world” in which sexual activ- ities have little more meaning than do athletic activities looms on the horizon.

These two alleged aspects of casual sexuality – its devaluing of sexual experience to the point of virtual meaninglessness and lack of respect for self and others – will be the focus of this essay. That the practice of hook- ing up can often be self-destructive and abusive of others should be nearly as obvious as that it violates the standards of Judeo-Christian morality. But for the many who reject traditional sexual ethics, and so tend to discount the possible detrimental effects of these casual attitudes about sex, some other kind of ethical case must be made against such attitudes. Broadly stated, the idea that the ethos of hooking up robs the sexual experience of most of its potential value and the participants of much of their dignity is what we will examine, beginning with the claim of meaninglessness.

Meaning and Sexuality

This will require, as a preliminary, a broader account of the relevant idea of meaning and its relationship to our sexuality in general. What gives sexual experiences and relationships meaning, and how is meaning to be explicated in a sexual context? Is this kind of meaning objective or sub- jective? Is it absolute or relative? How might it increase the value, i.e., the moral value or value of some other kind, of sexual activity? Is it a matter of sexual engagement serving some external purpose, or a question of the intrinsic qualities of the experience? What sorts of purposes, or which intrinsic qualities, might these be? Could purposes such as obtaining or giving sexual pleasure, or developing or displaying sexual skills, give meaning? Might experimentation and exploration, self-discovery, and even esteem or acceptance be reasons for sexual involvement that provide

meaning, or do they possibly give it value in some other way? Could it be that love and perhaps procreation are, as widely believed, the only things that give sex genuine meaning, in the final analysis? Or might it even be that the sense of meaningfulness in sexual relations (and possibly all other human activities) is essentially an illusion?

Implicit in these questions is a distinction between meaning and val- ue.
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While these terms are sometimes used interchangeably – and there is no reason to deny that, in one of its many senses, “meaning” is indeed the equivalent to “value” or “worth” – it is useful to contrast “value” with (other kinds or senses of) “meaning” in the present discussion. Something has value or worth, at least of the kind that concerns us here, if and to the extent that it contributes to human wellbeing, flourishing, happiness, or fulfillment. Meaning may thus be one source of value. What, then, is meaning? There are several senses of “meaning” that are relevant here. First, there is the idea of importance, significance, or what matters; this also concerns value – having a high degree of worth. Second is the idea of portending, the meaning of something is what it leads to, presumably a consequence of positive or negative importance, i.e., what something is a sign of. This relates to a third sense, meaning as purpose: what impor- tant aim or outcome activities and events might somehow be directed toward, often on a grand or even cosmic scale, perhaps as a result of col- lective choice or as a matter of fate, destiny, divine plan, or at least natu- ral teleology (purpose or end). The idea of having a place or a role in, of connecting to something greater, e.g., than oneself, is implicit in this sense. And fourth, there is the notion of meaning as representation – what something signifies, expresses, or stands for. Texts, works of art and music, occurrences, actions, and even human lives might have a meaning in this fourth sense; in the latter case, biographical narrative involving an account of personal growth or decline, redemption or fall, “what a life is about,” can be given, again relating to purpose and intentionality.

All of these senses of “meaning” arise in contexts of questions about meaning in life, and all involve a notion of signifying or significance, as well as the idea of some connection, typically intentional, to things of substantial value. In these senses of the term, “meaning” is not itself value but a relationship of some kind connecting with value, causal or intentional. Meanings may be either objective in the sense of involving connections that exist apart from individual ascriptions, interpretations, or intent; or subjective in that they do not have reality independent of a person’s intentions or way of looking at things. All meanings are relative to some structure: any meaning presupposes a context of intentionality

or causality within which it is possible.These contexts may be theoretical, linguistic, conventional, or perhaps natural, at least if we interpret nature as purposive or normative. Value judgments implicit in such structures may themselves be either objective or subjective, i.e., factually independ- ent of the opinions of an individual or just expressive of his personal attitudes. Moreover, meanings are relative insofar as things have meaning to or for people, for some but perhaps not all.

If finding meaning thus involves interpreting natural or human events, actions, activities, and practices as intentionally or otherwise causally connected to values, then the objectivity of meaning depends on the real- ity of such patterns of connection. If meanings instead are the mere pro- jections of our creative imagination – ways of seeing things devoid of factual basis – then they are to be classified as subjective. Of course, this is a simplification that ignores the various forms and different degrees of subjectivity and objectivity, but it suffices for present purposes.

Work and sexual activity are useful examples of human endeavors that can have or lack meaning. An objective meaning that work might have could consist in its contribution to some larger purpose of value to the community or to one’s own personal development; sex can have meaning objectively given certain assumptions about its natural purpose or reli- gious role. Most of the meanings ascribed to our experiences and activi- ties are socially evolved or individually attributed, however, with no reality apart from humanly created structures. One’s work can be viewed as having or lacking meaning from a personal point of view, at least for oneself, quite apart from whatever institutional good or societal benefit it might provide. Having a subjective meaning is not distinguishable from believing something meaningful, and the subjective meanings we attach to our work and other activities are often far removed from reality.

Sexual activity, as all human activities, has no given meaning in itself; rather, whatever meanings attach to it are due to the network of inten- tions, practices, and other cultural systems within which it occurs. Individual intent is widely variant here – sex can serve many different aims, a large subset of which could be construed as meaning-giving. Only connections of certain kinds to values of significance can provide mean- ing, not just any sort of connection or any possible purpose. That pur- poses of limited or relatively trivial sorts do not imbue activities with meaning should be apparent. We see things as meaningful only to the degree they are related to values that are important, deep, or profound. An experience might be worth having or an activity be of some value, yet not be really meaningful.

But what can be said about the character of the connection(s) giving meaning to what we do and what we experience? A detailed attempt at an answer is well beyond the scope of this essay, and it would certainly involve a very complex explanation. But one thing that seems essential is this: whether an intentional relation or some other kind of causal connection, it would appear to be one that brings us in contact with a deeper level of value in such a way that the meaningful event, activity, or experience is endowed with a greater significance than it would have had otherwise, and in such a way that the more profound value seems as if it is one of its intrinsic features. Something that might or might not have value in itself – be worth having or doing – becomes meaningful to us when we see it as connected to a realm of higher values, thereby connecting us to what is important.We tend to experience this meaning connection emotionally as well as in a cognitive capacity. Of course, something may have an objec- tive meaning for us, but not one that we perceive or understand.

Sexual acts that lack meaning are often gratifying but not fulfilling. A feeling of emptiness and pointlessness can follow, no matter how phys- ically satisfying as well as technically satisfactory they can be; a mere handshake could have more meaning despite being less satisfying. A mean- ingless sexual experience is at best like a good massage or a fine but lonely meal that has no social aspect, no sharing of love or even friendship.

We should not forget, however, that human activities can have mean- ing of a negative sort when what may be perceived subjectively as a con- nection to higher values is in fact related to things that are objectively lacking in value, even disvalues, as when perverted or otherwise unhealthy or immoral experiences and practices give a disordered individual a false sense of fulfillment.We can be mistaken about what has genuine value or meaning, just as we can be proud of shameful things. In the former case, we fail to understand what is ultimately best for human beings; in the latter, what is truly excellent. A narcissist, for instance, whose sense of superiority and entitlement is in constant need of support from others via praise, awards, admiration, and fame might feel his life to be mean- ingful when “enough” of these recognitions are accorded him (as if there ever can be enough). But if these forms of positive recognition are unmer- ited, he possesses only a pseudo self-esteem, for they hardly warrant his distorted idea of personal greatness. His sense of meaning based on such esteem would be just as false, however subjectively perceived.

Sexual practices and preferences motivated by or rooted in needs for things that are of little value, e.g., scoring and conquest, that are pursued to an extent out of proportion to their value and perhaps at great cost, or

for the sake of things that cannot generally be obtained through those sorts of sexual pursuits, are likewise lacking in objective meaning, what- ever one may subjectively think or feel. The perverse and unhealthy rea- sons for which some human beings engage in certain kinds of sexual habits and practices are varied and often complex. And there are also motivations not abnormal in themselves but taken to undue lengths and involving exaggerated desires and needs. Consider, again, a narcissist whose sexual satisfactions are based on needing to be worshipped rather than truly loved, to dominate and subordinate others, and to be con- stantly reassured of her attractiveness and desirability. As with a craving for repeated novelty and excitement, when taken beyond reason, these motivations cannot be a basis for meaningful sexual experience.

Meaning requires deeper relationships, which in turn demand time, energy, consideration, appreciative awareness, and, to some degree at least, emotional investment.The widespread pursuit of hook ups on college cam- puses today appears of a piece with other social trends toward superficial- ity: the diminishing level of appreciation of higher culture and scholarship even among the educated, the decline in the number of avid readers and the quality of what is read, even among students, and the “dumbing down” and vulgarizing of most things other than the scientific or technical, espe- cially entertainment, celebrity worship, and public discourse. Much of the sexual involvement on campuses nowadays, if Wolfe is accurate, represents a fast-food standard of human interaction: we are in an age of junk sex. As physical activities go, sex has become less like yoga, with its many possi- bilities for spiritual meaning and higher-level consciousness, e.g., tantra, and more akin to weight-lifting. How one looks and performs are the ulti- mate criteria of good sexual experience. All of these developments have a common feature – the devaluation of the intellect and the spirit.