Kaylee and Casual Sex
A thoughtful reader anonymously writes:
First of all, we weren’t debating the ethics of sex outside of wedlock, just the psychological realism of the Kaylee character. Your argument was basically that any women who ever indulges in casual sex must be cynical and jaded or have deep-seated psychological problems, and although it’s true that most societies throughout history have not looked kindly on women having casual sex (though many have had less problem with men doing so), it seems to me that the reasons rarely have much to do with the belief that it caused psychological harm to the people involved, and more to do with the fact that it caused harm to society because of the problems associated with illegitimate children or uncertain paternity, and also in many cases because there were traditions saying that God or gods did not approve of it. But speaking of the ethical question, if one does not hold these particular religious beliefs, and one lives in an era of highly effective birth control, what further reasons are there for universally condemning casual sex? Provided it is done without deception or coersion, what specific harm does it do, either to the individuals involved or to society at large? Would you say that any of the works you point to illustrate types of harm not associated with either pregnancy or religion?
Also, I’m sure I’m not nearly as well-read in the classics as you, but my impression is that you can find plenty of historically significant works that took a tolerant attitude towards sex outside of wedlock, particularly in poetry–looking online I find the erotic poems of Ovid, or of Catullus or Sappho, or the haikus and other poems of the zen master Ikkyu Sojun. In sanskrit literature there is of course the famous Kama Sutra, which although it is primarily devoted to lovemaking between a man and a wife, includes a section 5 which includes instructions for seducing another man’s wife, and a section 6 on courtesans, which begins with “By having intercourse with men courtesans obtain sexual pleasure, as well as their own maintenance. Now when a courtesan takes up with a man from love, the action is natural; but when she resorts to him for the purpose of getting money, her action is artificial or forced.” In Greek philosophy, I think of the Epicureans, who tended to believe that pleasure was in general a good thing as long as it was pursued in moderation and didn’t harm others…Epicurus wrote a letter to a disciple saying “I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclinations as you will provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbors, injure your own body, nor waste your possessions.” After that he also wrote a line that is usually translated as “a man never gets any good from sexual passion, and he is fortunate if he does not receive harm”, which of course is less positive on the subject, but I came across a page from a classical philology journal at tinyurl.com/32jx6c which claims that a better translation would be “[They] say that sex never benefits, but it is desirable, provided that it does not harm”, and notes that Cicero translated it this way too.
Read Blackstone while you are at it, and read the statutory law for the jurisdiction where you live.
Who do you mean by Blackstone? And what’s the significance of the comment about statutory law? If you’re suggesting Kaylee was underage, I don’t recall the character’s age given on the show, but the actress playing her would have been around 20 when the show was filmed.
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“First of all, we weren’t debating the ethics of sex outside of wedlock, just the psychological realism of the Kaylee character.”
Yes, my friend, I know. You were the one who took the cheap shot of calling the norm “my view”, as if I fell out of bed on Tuesday and just decided to disapprove of something for no reason. My argument was that unwholesome behavior does not square with the wholesome character. Kaylee is not a whore, and it was bad writing–an insult to the character– to put in a scene where she had sex in return for pay–in this case, she coupled with a no-brain dude in return for his showing her the engine room. This puts her on the same moral level awoman who is willing to play hide-the-sausage with a trucker in return for a free ride and a hot meal.
“There is no evidence in the scene that she doesn’t like the guy well enough, and certainly no reason to think that she doesn’t enjoy the sex for its own sake rather than seeing it primarily as a means to an end”
Well, all I can say is that this is not my memory of the scene. Maybe someone with a better memory will correct me, if I am misremembering.
My memory is this: Kaylee betrays the guy to get his job, and speaks of him dismissively after. She says she only slept with him for a chance to look at the Engine room. It was not the kind of thing a woman in love does–bad mouth her man, stab him in the back to steal his job?– it is something a harpy-hearted femme fatale does, maybe, or a female James Bond.
Before we change the topic, my comment was that “my” view was not mine at all, but ours, even yours to the degree that you are a member of the human race and obedient to the laws and customs under which we live.
“Who do you mean by Blackstone? And what’s the significance of the comment about statutory law? If you’re suggesting Kaylee was underage….”
No, it was not underage fornication to which I referred. It was just old-fashion fornication fornication. Last time I checked, about one third of the jurisdictions out of 50 in the United States outlaw sex outside wedlock, between consenting adults without fraud or coercion. In those jurisdictions, fornication is illegal, and carries either a fine or jail time; half make adultery subject to criminal penalty.
(That number is dropping, by the way–the judges of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in an incredibly arrogant bit of judicial overreach, just rewrote the statute without bothering to put it to a vote in our House of Burgesses. [We have the oldest standing continual democratic house in the world. If only we were allowed to put matters to a vote in it! Virginians, where are your muskets? Have we run out of rope, or lampposts … or is it merely backbone we ran out of?] )
Blackstone is a famous commentator on the law. If you only read one learned jurist on the state of the Anglo American common law, its underpinning logic and policy, he is the one to read.
I have noticed that the sexual revolutionaries tend not to be aware of the law. The law is a fairly apt yardstick of what the real social opinion of the majority is. My point was that, a disapproval of whoredom is not merely “my view” as if I were a member of some peculiar and obscure school of taste.
I do not mind people opposing the majority view, or defying all mankind. I do mind naivety: do you not know that the human race disapproves of fornication, all cultures of all times?
The erotic poems you mention have meaning only in the context of a society that has a marriage custom. No one speaks erotic poetry to impress a harlot; he merely hires her. No women who acts like a harlot wants to hear erotic poetry, not unless she can stomach a substantial amount of hypocrisy. Urging a maiden to fall in love with you is not the same as asking for a casual fling. She might wonder, if you are willing to praise her in poems, why you are unwilling to put a ring on her finger.
“what further reasons are there for universally condemning casual sex?”It kills romance.
It betrays a lack of self-command and hence of character.It is immature and based on a false model of human behavior.
It destroys the character needed to build families, raise children, or pursue the other virtues needed for survival. Ultimately, casual sex is deadly to the culture and race that approves of it.
When a woman has casual sex, either she takes sex casually, or she takes herself casually, and above all she takes self-sacrifice casually. The first option destroys any romance, mystery, or sacred privacy that would otherwise surround the sex act: she is coarsened. The second option diminishes her self-esteem, and, if the society around her is perceptive, the esteem in which society holds her. If the society is not perceptive, and approves of the act, it is coarsened.
It is not a matter of religion but of economics. What men get cheaply, they esteem of little value.
It is not a matter of religion but of habituation and custom. When men are raised to believe in chastity, they are raised with the character to avoid adultery as well. Someone who can survive virginity until marriage demonstrates a degree of self-control that a man who sleeps around does not. A bride, if she were wise, would know the first candidate stands a better chance of having the strength of character needed to resist a homewrecking level of temptation. If fornication could be isolated from adultery, you might have an argument that it is a harmless, private affair: in reality, a culture that approves of fornication cannot with a straight face disapprove of adultery and divorce, which have widespread public consequences.
When the casual fornications are done, and the woman gets back to the natural business of reproducing the species, she finds she no longer has the mental or moral character needed to do it; and the society, now that it has adopted the same philosophy, no longer can support, even by lauds, the self-commanded needed to use sexual reproduction for sexual reproduction.
A casual attitude toward sex leads to high divorce rates, broken homes, children raised by single parents, which leads in term to high juvenile delinquency. Merely because one vocal minority of sexual revolutionaries speculates that casual sex can be had without any entanglements, or psychological or financial repercussions, does not mean human nature actually changes.
It is not a matter of religion but of virtue. Matrimony, by its nature, is a grave and serious lifelong commitment: only a fool would enter sacred bonds casually. Casual sex, by its nature, is selfish and therefore shallow. A woman who treats sex casually encourages her selfishness; a woman who treats matrimony seriously encourages selflessness.
Now, this has ramifications outside the condition of matrimony. Logic still works in the human heart. One cannot approve of selfishness in one limited area of life, without tacitly approving of it elsewhere. Laws and customs, since they are based on precedent and habit, cannot approve of selfishness in one limited area without also approving of it in other areas to which a similar set of values and reasoning can and will apply. One cannot approve, for example, of fornication without also approving, if only tacitly, with masturbation or incest. No forceful argument that approves of fornication can draw a clear distinction at incest: if you argue that birth control will stop birth defects, and if your moral only forbid fraud and violence, you are left with no reason to disapprove.
The upshot of it is, you soon find you have no reason to disapprove of cowardice either, or intemperance, or immodesty, or even injustice. It was not a coincidence that the selfish philosophy of the sexual revolutionaries of the Boomer generation was followed by the nihilism and relativism of Gen X.
Once your moral code is firmly grounded on selfishness, it is difficult, perhaps impossible to teach your children to maintain high standards of selflessness and courage in other areas.
Even simple things, like rallying around the flag in time of war, become complex and nuanced matters to the children of single-parent sexual revolutionaries.
Casual sex is selfish; selfishness tends to diminish selflessness over time; a culture that approves of selfishness tends to lose its grit.
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.
