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The Ethics of Sex
The Ethics of Sex: An Introduction systematically and comprehensively exam-
ines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of sex. It addresses important
questions such as:
• How can we approach questions of sexual ethics in a philosophical way?
• Must we give armative consent to all sexual activity, and what would
be the impact of implementing an armative consent standard into law?
• Can our dating preferences ever be considered a form of discrimination?
• Is BDSM sex compatible with feminism?
• Should we promote monogamy as the best way to live?
• Is it harmful to have a relationship with a robot?
• Should sex work be decriminalized?
• Is there a right to sex?
Including discussion questions and suggestions for further reading at the end
of each chapter The Ethics of Sex is the perfect philosophical introduction to
the perennially topical issue, and ideal reading for students taking courses
within the elds of applied ethics, sociology, law, religion and politics.
Neil McArthur is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Pro-
fessional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, Canada. In addi-
tion to his academic work, he writes regularly about sexual ethics and LGBTQ+
issues for the media. His work has appeared in VICE, the Guardian, the Globe
and Mail, Time, and Fast Company. He has also written for film and theatre.
The Ethics of …
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The Ethics of Sex
An Introduction
Neil McArthur
The Ethics of Sex
An Introduction
Neil McArthur
Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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informa business
© 2022 Neil McArthur
The right of Neil McArthur to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McArthur, Neil, author.
Title: The ethics of sex : an introduction / Neil McArthur.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021048440 (print) |
LCCN 2021048441 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138213203 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781138213210 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315448848 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Sexual ethics.
Classification: LCC HQ31 .M354 2022 (print) |
LCC HQ31 (ebook) | DDC 176/.4--dc23/eng/20211202
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048440
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048441
ISBN: 978-1-138-21320-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-21321-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-44884-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315448848
Typeset in Times New Roman
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Sexual Ethics in the History of Philosophy 6
1.1 The Ancient Greeks and Virtue Ethics 7
1.2 Augustine, Aquinas, and Natural Law Theory 10
1.3 Kant and Kantianism 13
1.4 Utilitarianism: Bentham and Mill 15
1.5 Feminism 18
1.6 Post-Structuralism 23
1.7 Queer Theory 25
1.8 Conclusion: General Principles for Studying
Sexual Ethics 28
2 Meeting, Dating, and Having Sex 33
2.1 Dening Sex 33
2.2 Casual Sex 45
2.3 The Ethics of Internet Dating 56
2.4 Dating and Discrimination 62
2.5 BDSM 70
3 Consent 94
3.1 The Limits of Consent 95
3.2 Dening Consent 100
3.3 The Harms of Non-Consensual Sex 102
3.4 The Capacity to Consent 104
3.5 Consent and Deception 121
3.6 Armative Consent 126
3.7 Concluding Thoughts on Consent: Alternative
Models of Sexual Communication 136
vi Contents
4 Commitment and Marriage 146
4.1 Monogamy 147
4.2 Gay Marriage 165
4.3 Plural Marriage 175
4.4 Transforming Marriage 183
4.5 Concluding Thoughts on Commitment and Marriage 191
5 Sex and the Law 199
5.1 Legal Moralism and Sexual Liberty 200
5.2 Pornography 211
5.3 Sex Work 229
6 Sex and Technology 255
6.1 Access to Sexual Technology 256
6.2 Sex Robots and Second Wave Technologies 264
6.3 Digisexuality: A New Sexual Identity? 273
6.4 Virtual Child Exploitation 280
6.5 Love Drugs 288
6.6 Concluding Thoughts on Sex and Technology 293
Conclusion: Philosophical Principles for Debating Sexual Ethics 301
Index 308
Acknowledgements
One of the great benets of working on sexual ethics is that people are always
interested to talk about it. Over the years, my friends have shared opinions
and personal experiences in ways that have enriched my understanding of
these topics. I have taught courses on sexual ethics for several years, and I
have beneted from countless useful discussions with my students.
Markie Twist has been a wonderful collaborator in our research on sex-
ual technology and a supportive friend. My collaborations with Marina
Adshade have deepened my understanding of consent, among other topics
we have discussed and written about. John Danaher generously read parts of
this manuscript and oered comments.
My children have had to live with a father who often appears in public and
in the media talking about sex robots. They’ve been patient.
DeNel Johnson has kept me sane as I worked to nally nish this book. I
dedicate it to her with love and gratitude.
DOI: 10.4324/9781315448848-1
Sexual ethics is an exciting eld. And this is not just because it is about some-
thing, sex, that is itself pretty exciting – although that helps. It is also because
debates in this eld are urgent ones, and they are moving very quickly. If we
ever thought that questions of sexual morality had easy answers, we do not
think that anymore. Movements for women’s rights and gay rights, the devel-
opment of new technologies such as the internet and smartphones, shifts in
religious belief – thanks to these and other factors, we live in a dierent world
from the one in which our parents and grandparents grew up.
If you ever feel you are struggling to gure out what these changes all
mean, you are not alone. Philosophy can help. People sometimes think that
philosophers, and especially ethicists, see it as their job to pronounce, from
some presumed position of authority, on what the rest of us should or should
not think or do. But that is, I think, philosophy at its worst, and it is not the
kind I want to do here. At its best, philosophy gives us not predetermined
answers but rather a way of thinking about dicult questions, one that helps
us reach a solution on our own. This book presents opinions and argues for
those opinions, but it does not make any pronouncements about what is right
and what is wrong when it comes to sex. What I am interested in above all is
an open debate. I have tried to identify the most important and interesting
issues in sexual ethics and to explore each of them from a variety of angles.
My intention is to provoke discussion and reection.
The issues I discuss fall into two broad categories: moral issues on the one
hand, and political and legal issues on the other. The two categories are not
distinct. On the contrary, they overlap signicantly, and with some of the
topics discussed, they are inseparable. However, it is useful at the outset to
outline the dierence between the two.
Moral philosophy deals with the question: what is the right thing to do in
a given situation? It also deals, more broadly, with the question: what is the
best way to live? Moral philosophy is for people who want to examine, criti-
cally and in good faith, their beliefs about right and wrong, and who are will-
ing to revise those beliefs in the light of evidence and argument. Philosophers
cannot say much to people whose views are so xed in advance that nothing
could change their minds, to people who think they have the answers to every
Introduction
2 Introduction
question, or to people who are determined to be totally selsh or capricious
in their actions. But most of us are not like that. We want to be good people,
and we are often genuinely uncertain what this entails.
Moral problems will sometimes be ones we ourselves face, and will some-
times be ones faced by others. Some readers might ask: how can we judge
other people when it comes to something as private as sex? But making a
moral judgement does not mean pompously declaring that we are better than
someone else. It often simply means guring out whether, if we were in the
same situation, we would have acted dierently than she did, and whether we
admire someone more or less based on the decision she made. The fact is, we
judge people all the time. If your friend tells you she is sleeping with her boss,
or that she paid a sex worker for sex, or that she had internet sex with some-
one else’s spouse, you will invariably make a judgement about her behaviour.
Even the decision not to judge your friend is itself a moral judgement. This
book is an attempt to help people think through such dicult situations so
that they can make judgements that are considered ones – ones they can feel
happy with and are willing to share with others.
The book also deals with moral philosophy’s second question, what is the
best way to live. I take up some issues that may not seem properly moral at
all, in that they are less about how to treat others than about our own private
decisions. One of the purposes of philosophy in such cases is to help ensure
that our decisions are fully autonomous. Most people agree that when it
comes to private matters, ones that aect our own lives above all, we should
have a considerable amount of liberty – that is, that no one should actually
prevent us from making our own decisions. But this is not the same as hav-
ing autonomy. While the two are related, there is more to autonomy than
just liberty. Liberty is the ability to do what you want without being con-
strained by others. Autonomy is the ability to make choices that promote the
sort of life you would want to lead after you have subjected your available
options to an open process of reason and reection. It is the sort of life that
can make you happiest in the long run. Liberty is something given to us by
others by staying out of our way. Autonomy is something we must largely
achieve for ourselves.
Many things can restrict our autonomy without constraining our liberty.
The pressures placed on us by our family, the prejudices we learn from
our society, our own anxieties – and perhaps most powerfully of all, sheer
habit and laziness. All of these can prevent us from leading the sort of lives
we would, on full reection, want to live. By subjecting readers’ assump-
tions about sex to critical scrutiny to see if they hold up, I want to help
them ensure they are making the choices that will ultimately bring them
the most happiness.
I also discuss political and legal problems. Disputes about sexuality often
get settled not by moral debate but by legislatures and courts. I am less con-
cerned about what our laws and policies are than about what they should be.
Introduction 3
I want to ask the question: what sort of society do we want to live in, and how
can we attain it? In order to answer this question, we can imagine ourselves
as a president or prime minister with rm control of the country’s legislature
or as the swing vote on the Supreme Court.
With both types of issues, moral and political, I have tried to nd open
questions – that is, questions that genuinely have two sides and ones about
which reasonable people disagree. Not everything counts. Once upon a time,
people used to debate whether it was okay to have sex with your spouse on
certain days of the week or whether oral sex was ever permissible. It would
be silly to rehearse those debates here – no one worries about such things any
more. A hundred years from now, some of the debates in this book may look
just as outdated. But for now, they are the ones that academics, students, and
people in the media are most interested in, and ones that can thus form the
basis for interesting, reasonable debates.
People who are familiar with academic philosophy will notice one aspect
of this book that is somewhat dierent from most work published in aca-
demic books and journals in the eld. In my quotes and citations, I have
drawn on media articles and blogs alongside published academic writing. I
have done so for several reasons.
First of all, sexual ethics is, as I have already said, a rapidly evolving eld.
Though the broader study of sexology is well-established, with an abun-
dance of peer-reviewed research spanning a variety of disciplines, there are
relatively few philosophers working in the eld of sexual ethics specically
(though more than there used to be). There are many issues covered here that
are hardly discussed in academic journals or not discussed at all. Relying
exclusively on writings by philosophers would have limited both the issues
covered and the arguments discussed. By drawing on a broader range of
sources, I can tailor my choice of topics to reect areas I think will be of
most concern to readers, even if published academic work has not caught up.
Second, by drawing on a variety of sources, I can use the words and writ-
ings of people directly engaged with and aected by the issues under discus-
sion. The days when philosophers can talk to and cite each other exclusively
on social issues are passed or should be. We should not write about pornog-
raphy, for instance, or sex work, without incorporating the words and writ-
ings of people in these industries. This does not mean we must agree with the
views of the people quoted or that they will agree with each other. But they
must at the very least be heard.
Third, I have tried whenever possible to take my examples from real life
rather than constructing hypothetical examples. Anyone who reads contem-
porary ethics knows that ethicists are very fond of thought experiments –
abstract scenarios, often elaborated in great details, and often disconnected
with the issue under discussion. Though I cannot entirely avoid hypotheti-
cals, I have tried where possible to nd real-life cases to illustrate the issues
under discussion.
4 Introduction
Some words of warning. First of all, this is a book of practical ethics. I
hope that it will have relevance to the lives of its readers. But it is not an
advice book. I am not trained as a counsellor, and I am not the person to
tell you whether or not you should break up with your girlfriend because
she won’t give up weed or whether you should take a job as a gaer for a
porn movie shoot, or what you should do if you nd out your new boyfriend
once had a threesome with your parents. (Yes, that actually happened.)1
Nor am I a lawyer. The discussions of law in this book are, as I have said,
normative. Though I do discuss laws and real-life legal cases, I am inter-
ested above all in how the law should work in an ideal world. The real one
is obviously very dierent.
Second, I exclude any appeals to religion in the arguments I consider.
Sexual morality has, of course, been a matter of great concern to most of
the world’s major religions, and many of my readers will have views that are
shaped by their religious beliefs. I certainly respect this. However, I have
tried to focus on arguments that can, in principle, appeal to people regard-
less of their faith. In a multi-cultural society, we cannot presume that others
will share our beliefs, and so we must learn to carry out moral debates on
common ground.
Third, it is not possible to draw neat, clean boundaries around the eld of
sexual ethics. I have had to make dicult decisions about what to include
and what to exclude, and other philosophers draw the boundaries dierently.
I deal specically with sex in the sense of sexual behaviour and intimate rela-
tionships. I include discussions of the nature of marriage since dening mar-
riage requires us to decide what sorts of sexual relationships we as a society
consider legitimate and why. However, I do not consider issues specically
regarding gender identity. I also do not deal with reproductive issues, such
as abortion, genetic engineering, or the morality of having children. Though
these topics are not unconnected to sex, they are complex and important and
deserve detailed treatments to do them justice.
Even within this book itself, the division into dierent chapters and sec-
tions reects choices that are, inevitably, somewhat arbitrary. The topics
overlap at multiple points. Does the discussion of BDSM (bondage, dom-
ination and submission, and sado-masochism) for instance, belong in the
chapter on sex and relationships or in the chapter on consent? I have done
my best to organize this book in a way that makes sense, and I have provided
cross-references in order to guide readers through the connections between
the dierent topics.
Fourth, in its examples, this book focuses mostly on what I call the liberal
western jurisdictions – primarily Europe, North America, and Australasia.
This is not meant to suggest these jurisdictions are superior or uniquely wor-
thy of attention. It is partly a nod to what I expect to be this book’s primary
audience. It is also an acknowledgement that most of the scholarship on these
issues has emerged from these countries and reects their perspective. And to
Introduction 5
deal with other jurisdictions and other cultures in a way that is both reliable
and respectful would require specialized expertise. I did not want to risk dis-
cussing them in a way that was supercial or inaccurate.
Finally, I do not provide trigger warnings for specic chapters. But I deal
with topics, such as sexual assault and virtual pedophilia, that some readers
may nd upsetting. I try to approach them with care. However, readers who
worry they may nd some of the discussions upsetting should look through
the table of contents and skip over those sections. The parts of this book can
be read independently of one another.
The book begins with a survey of dierent approaches to sexual ethics that
have been adopted by philosophers through history. It then proceeds to exam-
ine various topics in modern sexual ethics. In most sections, I try to pose a
question and lay out arguments on either side. The ordering of the arguments
is somewhat arbitrary. I do not mean, by placing them in any particular order,
to prejudice the discussion in either direction. Each section ends with ques-
tions for discussion and suggestions for further reading. I conclude with a
discussion of the general philosophical principles that are used throughout
the course of this book. Readers may nd it helpful to skip forward to that
chapter for reference purposes as necessary.
Note
1 Dan Savage, “Mum and Dad,” Savage Love, 3 August 2021. https://www.thestranger.com/savage-
love/2021/08/03/59937560/savage-love. Last accessed 27 May 2021.
Sexual Ethics in the History of Philosophy
Lea Campos Boralevi , “Jeremy Bentham's Writings on Sexual Non-conformity: Utilitarianism,
Neo-malthusianism, and Sexual Liberty,” Topoi 2, 1983, pp. 123–148.
Raja Halwani , “Temperance and Sexual Ethics,” in Adrianne Leigh McEvoy , ed., Sex, Love,
and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love: 1993–2003, The
Netherlands: Leiden, 2011, pp. 419–428.
John Giles Milhaven , “Thomas Aquinas on Sexual Pleasure,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 5,
no. 2, Fall 1977, pp. 157–181.
Evangelia (Lina) Papadaki , “Sexual Objectification: From Kant to Contemporary Feminism,”
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Meeting, Dating, and Having Sex
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Marjorie Jolles , “Pleasure, Pain, and the Feminist Politics of Rough Sex,” in Shira Tarrant , ed.,
Gender, Sex, and Politics: In the Streets and Between the Sheets in the 21st Century, New
York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 263–274.
Paddy McQueen , “Sexual Interactions and Sexual Infidelity,” The Journal of Ethics, 2021.
Consent
Janet Halley , “The Move to Affirmative Consent,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 42, 2016, pp. 257–279.
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2018, pp. 70–97.
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Robin L. West , “Sex, Law, and Consent,” in Franklin G. Miller and Alan Wertheimer , eds., The
Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 221–250.
Commitment and Marriage
Harry Chalmers , “Is Monogamy Morally Permissible?” The Journal of Value Inquiry 53, 2019,
pp. 225–241.
Christie Hartley and Lori Watson , “Political Liberalism, Marriage and the Family,” Law and
Philosophy 31, 2012, pp. 185–212.
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Liberal Public Justification,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 8, 2011, pp. 244–270.
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Sex and the Law
Hilkje Charlotte Hänel and Mari Mikkola , “Feminist Philosophy and Pornography: The Past, the
Present, and the Future,” in Mari Mikkola , ed., Beyond Speech: Pornography and Analytic
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Sex and Technology
John Danaher , “Regulating Child Sex Robots: Restriction or Experimentation?” Medical Law
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