I thought PoT readers might be interested in a post written for my “Making Moral Decisions” blog, the site for my Phil 250 class by that name. In my never-ending quest to understand the mysteries of sex, undergraduate ethical attitudes, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I present “Lust, Shakespeare, Fantasies, and Porn.” The topic is the ethical status of lust as reflected in private sexual fantasy. Most of my students found my view “creepy.” I found theirs characteristically bizarre and ill-conceived. Feel free to join the ensuing dialogue of the sexually deaf, but if you do, please comment here rather than on the class site.

Postscript, September 17, 2015: The Phil 250 creepshow continued with discussion of this horror show of an article in Vanity Fair (ht: Kate Herrick). I had my students write up a response to this passage:

They [“girls”] all say they don’t want to be in relationships. “I don’t want one,” says Nick. “I don’t want to have to deal with all that—stuff.”

“You can’t be selfish in a relationship,” Brian says. “It feels good just to do what I want.”

I ask them if it ever feels like they lack a deeper connection with someone.

There’s a small silence. After a moment, John says, “I think at some points it does.”

“But that’s assuming that that’s something that I want, which I don’t,” Nick says, a trifle annoyed. “Does that mean that my life is lacking something? I’m perfectly happy. I have a good time. I go to work—I’m busy. And when I’m not, I go out with my friends.”

“Or you meet someone on Tinder,” offers John.

“Exactly,” Nick says. “Tinder is fast and easy, boom-boom-boom, swipe.”

Where’s the function argument when you need it? At some level, I just feel like slapping these kids, but that wouldn’t be very Socratic of me.

I asked my students about these guys, and an alarming proportion of them applauded Nick (didn’t just agree, but applauded). Incidentally, most of my students (more than two-thirds) are women between 18-21 years old. Here’s the overlapping consensus, put in my words:

1. Assume ex hypothesi that Tinder hookups of the preceding sort are consenting. If so, both parties assume all the risks of the transaction.
2. When women who frequent Tinder claim to be hurt (in the psychological sense) by the men on it, one of two things can be said about their situation: either (a) the mutual consent involved completely nullifies any claims about their being harmed (as in ‘volenti non fit injuria’) or (b) if the women really are harmed, then they are fully culpable for being harmed because in consenting to the interaction, they assumed the risks of being harmed. In either case, the guys are off the hook. The men are not culpable because the whole point of a hookup is to inflict the kind of harm that the women are complaining about. To complain about harm in this context is like a boxer’s complaining about being hit by a right jab in the middle of a boxing match. If ignorance is involved, it’s surely culpable ignorance.

I found this an interesting (if horrific) set of views. For one thing, it is, in form, a tacit consent argument. The claim is literally that women using Tinder are tacitly consenting to be harmed by it, and since they are, they forfeit the right to complain.

Second, I find it interesting that the argument involves the same basic presuppositions and structure as the Brennan-Magness line on adjuncts: a quick inference to the culpability of a group on the losing end of a bargain; a further inference from their culpability to their having forfeited the right to complain about ill-treatment; and a reminder that the bargain was, after all, consensual, so that the complaints amount to unseemly whining.

Third, though it’s obviously not a scientific sample (about 60 students), I found the coalitions that formed in my classes somewhat interesting. There were, broadly speaking, two of them:

Majority: the hard-hearted sexually conservative women plus the women in favor of casual sex plus virtually all of the men, endorsing (2) above.

Minority: the sexually conservative women with feminist sympathies plus the feminist liberals in favor of monogamous sex, rejecting (2) above.

Roughly speaking, the hard-hearted line was,

Tinder is something I’d never do; I have moral standards. Those who do it are sluts who deserve the harm that befalls them, if it even counts as harm at all.

The casual sex variation on this theme was:

Well, Tinder is something I’d do, but since I’d never be harmed by it, you’d never find me whining about it like the losers in the article. Hookups aren’t harmful; they’re fun. Everyone knows that Tinder is for hookups, and as long as you’re clear about that, there shouldn’t be a problem.

The men grunted their approval of this latter line. Here’s the most articulate male response I got:

Well, I mean, like…if they’re offering, what do they…and no one is forcing them…is anybody like forcing them? ….like, why are they all like complaining?…I just don’t get it.

The sexually conservative quasi-feminist women led the confused, inchoate counter-charge against their hard-hearted sisters. Mostly their view was that the men were taking unfair advantage of the women, with the liberal monogamists chiming in with an enthusiastic, “Yeah–what she said!”  But this group was outnumbered by the majority group and somewhat overwhelmed by its own sense of righteous indignation.

For the most part, the men sat glowering in the back of the room, wondering when the girls (and the professor!) would shut up and class would end. I mean, what does any of this have to do with anything in the real world? Boom-boom-boom swipe.