On Shoring Around By Nicholas Halwani Summary

Casual Sex

In “On Fucking Around” by Nicholas Halwani, he asserts that casual sex is immoral because it objectifies one or both partners who engage in the act. According to Halwani, in a casual sex arrangement with two individuals, person A and person B, he claims that person A only has sex with person B for the purpose of A’s own sexual pleasure. He also believes that person A’s desire for sexual pleasure comes at the expense of being concerned about person B, and as such A is using B solely as a means to achieving sexual pleasure. Such treatment undermines B’s dignity and this is why casual sex should be considered morally wrong (449). This argument embodies Kantian-inspired “pessimistic view of sexual desire”, which is not rooted in any scientific evidence, by maintaining
that partners engaging in casual sex can only objectify each other, even when both parties are consenting, because there are some forms of objectification to which no one is able to consent. I think that the strongest objection to Halwani’s assertions is that he categorizes all sexual desire as the same and as coming from the same source or motives.
Halwani only uses the pessimistic view of sexual desire for the purpose of his argument, and by doing so fails to account for other motivations that are not about using another person for the sole purpose of achieving sexual pleasure and gratification. The “Pessimistic View of Sexual Desire” stems from Kantian ethics that stress not using other people as a means for one’s own ends because human beings possess a higher moral status than other animals. This view also portrays humans as victims of their own, seemingly uncontrollable sexual desires which compel them to use casual sex as a way to satisfy personal desires without regard for the other partner (445). Sexual desire is stripped to its fundamental and animalistic level where it overrides rationality and enslaves humans to their sexual desires (449). The nature of Halwani’s argument only holds up when constrained by this pessimistic view of sexual desire because in this case, casual sex involves undermining another’s dignity by only seeing the partner for his/her body
parts. Sexual desire can stem from many reasons and I disagree that it always focuses on deceiving another person for access to his/her body parts. Halwani highlights sexual desire’s occasionally selfish motivations, but never tries to apply the argument outside of the context of the pessimistic view of sexual desire. On page 454, Halwani recognizes issues with the argument by stating the possibility that “…one can act out of sexual desire and simultaneously attend to one’s partner’s sexual needs for the latter’s own sake.” This shows that it is possible to fulfill mutual sexual desire without being immoral, because it is not the sex that Halwani finds immoral, but the selfish motivations that undercut the other partner’s dignity. While sexual pleasure is one of the first thoughts that come to mind when thinking about motivations for casual sex, it is certainly not the only one. An instance where people engage in casual sex with regard for the other person is after one partner, person B, when B feels melancholy after the death of a close relative. In this situation, person A’s motivations could be to make B feel better following the loss of a relative by giving B sexual pleasure, rather than having sex with B only for the purpose of achieving sexual pleasure. I will say that sexual pleasure is normally an offshoot of casual sex, but even then sexual pleasure is not a guarantee and Halwani does nothing to account for casual sex in which no sexual pleasure is achieved. Another hole in the pessimistic view of sexual desire is that it does not account for individuals who have sexual desire, but have willingly chosen not to engage in sexual activity such as monks and nuns. This viewpoint effectively demonizes sexual desire and portrays it as a problem that humans are too weak to tame, so it drives them to deception while weakening judgment (449). By neglecting other views of sexual desire for the purpose of his argument, Halwani constructs a stance that only weakly holds up under a very narrow set of parameters. The pessimistic view of sexual desire complements Kantian ethics because by nature it highlights the human ability to use other individuals as “instruments” for attaining one’s own goals. Humans are capable of such behavior, but Halwani’s argument exploits this under the limitations of the pessimistic view of sexual desire.

Works Cited Halwani, Raja. "On Fucking Around." The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings. Ed. Nicholas P. Power and Alan Soble. 6th ed. Lanham (Md.): Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. 441-57. Print.