Evan Nicely
12/4/15
Sexual Ethics
Prior to this class, I never considered whether or not sexual acts were “ethical.” Sure, I
had been told growing up that things such as incest and prostitution were immoral, but morals
and ethics are not necessarily the same things. At a basic level, I understand morals to be the
difference between the inherent quality of “good” or “bad” in regards to a behavior or act. Ethics,
to me, is something more along the lines of positive or negative consequences of actions. I
suppose that neither ethics or morals can be determined in an entirely objective way, but I do see
the necessity to at least try to assign ethical standards to sexual practices because the
consequences can be severe. Consequences can be especially sever in the cases of prostitution
and incest.
The articles on prostitution in the class handout are particularly interesting. Each article
more or less takes a one sided position on prostitution. Pro-prostitution points include the waste
of resources used to stop prostitution that have had no effect, and the idea that regulation would
improve the conditions of the sex industry. Conversely, anti-prostitution mainly focuses on the
victimization of the prostitutes. I am inclined to agree with the pro-prostitution side of the debate
because I believe it makes sense that if no one is being harmed by the act of prostitution, why not
allow it to happen under carefully regulated conditions? Alcohol is harmful, it gets people killed
every year, and everyone knows it, but that doesn’t stop most people from enjoying it. I could be
wrong, but I would expect that very few people, if any, die from consensual sex. Currently,
prostitutes are abused and taken advantage of by a criminal system. No human being should be
coerced into having sex. I feel that the most important question in the debate is, would regulation
mitigate the exploitation of prostitutes enough to justify legalization? That is a difficult question
to answer because legalizing prostitution may create a path of least resistance for some people to
follow; and that may be a form of coercion itself because it presents a release from the
challenges that people normally face to find normative means of success. In other words, would
legalization push people towards prostitution because it reduces the threat of uncertainty in
finding a job? I am not sure that a correct answer exists for this problem.
Incest on the other hand, is a little more black and white. The most objective consequence
to incest is the chance to produce disabled, or otherwise genetically weak offspring, which I
believe is almost universally considered to be something that people want to prevent. However,
if no offspring are produced, does incest between two consenting individuals do any harm to
anyone? Many people think it is not normal to find family members attractive, but people aren’t
always attracted to, or romantically interested in every single person they have sex with. Friends
with benefits is a concept that explicitly relies in the notion that sex can be just for fun, without
any level of attraction, romance, or reproduction. Why not siblings with benefits? That said, I do
not have a sister, or even any cousins, so I can not actually say how I would feel about engaging
in this kind of behavior myself. I follow societal norms in virtually every other way, so I would
imagine I would be very apprehensive towards the idea of incest if it applied to me.
Sexual ethics is an interesting topic, and it is likely that there will never be an agreeable
consensus because sex is something that nearly everyone does, so it is bound to be as unique to
people as a personality. Like personalities, some sex preferences fit together better than others,
but Everyone has a different perspective in regards to sex, so everyone will probably have a
different opinion about sex.