sex moralny - Gray P

Date: 03 May 2024

the predictive power of moral incongruence, however, has yet to be applied to other sexual activities though moral incongruence research has yielded consistent results in that context, the concept and theory has yet to be extended to other sexual behaviors about which individuals may feel morally conflicted such as same-sex and non-marital sexual behavior it also assessed the extent to which associations between moral incongruence regarding these sexual behaviors and general unhappiness differed by gender numerous studies have observed that persons who more regularly view pornography are often found to exhibit symptoms of poorer mental health, depression, lower happiness, and general psychological distress perry, a footnote 2 despite this consistent link between pornography use and poorer subjective well-being, however, the nature of the relationship has historically been poorly understood some studies, on the one hand, theorize that individuals experiencing unhappiness, psychological distress, or other depressive symptoms may engage in pornography use as a way to relieve stress and cope cooper et al other studies, however, have suggested that habitual pornography use may be a contributing factor to the psychological distress or dissatisfaction, possibly due to attendant self-isolation owens et al early research on this topic sought to explain the finding that the link between psychological distress and pornography use seemed stronger for deeply religious americans

patterson and pricefor example, found that pornography users who attended church more often reported lower happiness than viewers who rarely attended church, suggesting that the lower happiness was connected to violating the moral values of oneself and their faith community rather than pornography use per se similar findings were also reported among samples of college students e focusing more specifically on the issue of how one perceives and evaluates their own pornography use, grubbs et al same-sex and non-marital sexual activity are ideal behaviors with which to test moral incongruence since both are historically stigmatized and currently represent points of moral contention among americans the topic of internalized shame or stigma has a long history in studies of lgbtq individuals, though the data have often been limited see review in herek, a despite the connection identified in these studies between internalized homo-negativity and mental health, these studies did not necessarily connect poorer mental health outcomes with direct contradictions between sexual behavior having sex with someone of the same sex and moral rejection of that behavior though lesbians have also faced considerable social stigma in the usa, same-sex sexual activity in men has historically been more strongly stigmatized that that of women because of patriarchal norms of heteromasculinity herek, ab unsurprisingly then, research exploring gender differences in internalized homophobia and its consequences among lesbians and gay men found that men exhibited stronger internalized homophobia than women, and more indicators of poorer mental health were associated with internalized homophobia for men than for women e

consequently, moral conflict involving non-marital sexual activity for women would be expected to be more strongly associated with their mental health than such conflict for men while the literature on these sexual activities do not lead the authors to develop formal hypotheses regarding differences between men and women, our analyses will consider the potential moderating role of gender while the gss waves contain numerous core questions that are asked of participants every year since e because this study was focused on assessing the potential influence of moral incongruence regarding same-sex and non-marital sexual activity on general unhappiness, only gss waves that asked about both same-sex and non-marital sexual activity and about moral views toward either were used response rates for each wave of the gss far exceed those of most nationally representative surveys and are available from the norc website cited above because the outcome was dichotomous, multivariate models were estimated with binary logistic regression because the gss asks questions about whether or how frequently participants have engaged in certain sexual behaviors while also asking participants about how they view those types of behaviors morally, moral incongruence was captured directly by analyzing differences in unhappiness between those adults who engaged in a particular behavior while also viewing that behavior as unequivocally wrong i for same-sex sexual activity, the gss asks participants about the sex of the persons with whom they had sex in the previous year

participants could indicate men exclusively, both men and women, and women exclusively for non-marital sexual activity, the gss asks participants about their frequency of sex in the past year in order to isolate non-marital sexual activity, the sample was limited to unmarried participants and thus the sex frequency question allowed the researchers to measure the frequency with which a participant had non-marital sex in the past year the gss also asks participants what they felt about the morality of heterosexual sex outside of marriage footnote 7 a cross-product interaction term was also created to analyze how moral incongruence regarding non-marital sexual activity might have been associated with greater unhappiness lastly, a control variable for the year in which each particular survey was fielded was included tables 1 and 2 provide coding and descriptive statistics for all variables used in the analyses because the analyses draw on separate samples, two separate tables are provided for descriptive statistics tables 12

in order to conserve space, multivariate models presented in tables 3 and 4 include all controls however, when models in each table were run with only gss survey year as the control variable, results were virtually identical in both substance and statistical significance see online appendix tables 1a and 2a analyses are divided for males and females because of the nature of the same-sex sexual activity variable asking about sex with men or sex with women analyses are included for the full sample, men only, and women only as in the previous regression table, model 1 includes all controls and predictors, while model 2 adds the cross-product interaction term looking at adult men in model 1 of table 3neither having sex with a man in the previous year, nor viewing homosexuality as always wrong were significantly associated with being unhappy these results suggest that same-sex sexual activity per se is not in itself associated with unhappiness, and neither is rejecting homosexuality as immoral for men who did not have sex with another man in the previous year, their views about homosexuality were completely unrelated to their happiness: each had a

• However, for those men who did have sex with another man in the previous year, there is a great disparity in unhappiness by their moral views
• For those men who had sex with a man but who believe homosexuality is not always wrong, their probability of unhappiness was identical to those men who did not have sex with a man prob
• In other words, engaging in same-sex sexual activity is not necessarily associated with unhappiness, but experiencing moral incongruence regarding that same-sex sexual activity is powerfully associated with unhappiness, for men
• Turning to an analysis of moral incongruence regarding non-marital sexual activity, Table 4 first presents the full sex moralny of unmarried American adults
• Thus, while more frequent sexual activity suggested greater overall happiness among unmarried people though causal direction could go either way herethose unmarried persons who unequivocally rejected non-marital sex as immoral tended to be less happy
• This means that for unmarried adults who did not view non-marital sex as always wrong, more frequent sex was an even stronger, negative predictor of unhappiness
• When separate analyses were run for gender, the moral incongruence term was positive, but not statistically significant for men, while it remained positive and significant for women
• These substantive differences were not large, however

and when a triple interaction was run in order to determine whether the patterns differed by gender, results were non-significant results available upon request thus, while it seems that women experienced more unhappiness associated with their violation of moral values regarding non-marital sex [and this might be expected since unmarried women were also considerably more likely than their male counterparts to condemn non-marital sex as immoral see table 2 ], such differences are slight for those unmarried women who do not view non-marital sex as always wrong, higher frequencies of sex in the previous year were associated with a slight decline in their likelihood of being unhappy however, among those women who unequivocally rejected non-marital sex as immoral, the more frequently they had non-marital sex, the more likely they were to report being unhappy ancillary analyses were conducted in order to assess how sensitive the findings were to different coding and modeling decisions ultimately, all ordinal models violated the proportional odds assumption and thus binary logistic regression with the outcome dichotomized was the more appropriate modeling estimation strategy even so, the ordinal regression results were substantively similar to the logistic regression results results were virtually identical in both substance and statistical significance when examining how moral incongruence regarding unmarried sexual activity was associated with unhappiness

thus, it seems that the interaction reported in table 2 was sensitive to the coding of the moral objection category while previous research has repeatedly demonstrated how moral incongruence helps explain the link between pornography use and manifestations of psychological distress and dissatisfaction, studies had yet to extend and apply the moral incongruence concept to other sexual behaviors about which adults may feel morally conflicted however, believing non-marital sex is always wrong moderated that association such that if unmarried adults viewed non-marital sex as always wrong, the more frequently they had non-marital sex i splitting the sample by gender indicated that this moderating association persisted among women but was weaker yet still suggestive among men findings from this study make several key contributions to sexuality research looking at non-marital sex frequency, for example, the more frequent sex unmarried adults had, the less likely they were to be unhappy generally speaking however, for those who unequivocally rejected non-marital sex as immoral, more frequent non-marital sex was linked to greater unhappiness, and especially among women following previous research, it was proposed that moral incongruence regarding either same-sex or non-marital sexual activity, like that associated with pornography use, creates dissonance festinger, in the lives of men and women such that they experience anxiety, frustration, or disappointment related to their failure to uphold their moral values, or perhaps the internalized shame they feel because of their surrounding moral community

in other words, repeated instances of moral incongruence potentially intensify its consequences for greater unhappiness, more so than simply any instance of moral incongruence what explains the gendered differences in these moral incongruence outcomes? as theorized earlier, gay men historically have faced slightly more social hostility than same-sex attracted women due to dominant gender norms enforcing heteromasculinity herek, ab some additional data limitations should be acknowledged in order to chart a course for future research first, these data were cross-sectional and thus it cannot be definitively determined whether the moral incongruence regarding same-sex and non-marital sexual activity caused the unhappiness or whether unhappy people are simply more likely to engage in sexual behavior that they deem morally problematic theoretically, however, this latter explanation is highly unlikely since 1 men do not tend to engage in same-sex sexual activity as a consequence of their being unhappy, sad, or depressed; and 2 unhappy women are less likely to seek out sexual behavior table 4 and thus it is unlikely that unhappy, unmarried women would be found to have the most sex in addition, longitudinal studies that allowed researchers to isolate temporal precedence have validated our theoretical explanation here, namely, that moral incongruence regarding these sexual behaviors was preceding and contributing to the unhappiness e thus, future studies would ideally field surveys with more comprehensive measures and large enough sample sizes to account for the adults who are violating their own moral views in certain repeated sexual behaviors additionally, as more data collection efforts are undertaken in order to replicate and extend findings presented here, pre-registered studies would be helpful in continuing to increase the rigor of analyses applied to moral incongruence research

because this study focused exclusively on non-marital or same-sex sexual activity, it is worth thinking about other possible instances of moral incongruence meriting further exploration but is this sort of activity morally acceptable? he argues that the widespread view that casual sex is without moral significance is squarely at odds with the widely held view that rape and pedophilia involve extreme moral violations in his argument benatar contrasts two views of sexual ethics : the casual view and the significant view on the casual view, sex is not the sort of entity that can be subject to moral evaluation when sexual activity is morally unacceptable, this is not due to the sexual nature of the activity but to some other aspect for example, killing someone while having sex with them is wrong, but it is wrong because of the killing, not the sex benatar believes that the popularity of sex with no strings attached suggests that many people agree with the casual view that sex is morally unproblematic and not something that needs to involve a special kind of love or commitment but most of those who think casual sex is unproblematic simultaneously believe that pedophilia and rape are moral violations of the worst kind

the significant view can explain why pedophilia and rape are extreme moral crimes sex between a child and an adult, though it may involve love, does not involve the right kind of love—it does not involve a kind of love that fits the act even if there are instances of pedophilia that involve the right kind of love or commitment, those instances do not involve the right kind of understanding, because children cannot understand the ramifications of sex according to benatar, however, the casual view cannot explain the extreme moral nature of pedophilia and rape sexual acts between adults and children need not physically hurt the child depending on the age of the child and the nature of the interaction, it may not hurt the child emotionally either pedophilia does involve a level of force or coercion, but that by itself need sex moralny be problematic, benatar argues we coerce or force children in many different ways

we force them to go to bed at a particular hour, to eat nutritious food, to do their homework and to practice before their music lessons there are things that children can consent to and things they cannot consent to children can consent to eat an apple but not to buy real estate, because the latter, but not the former, requires a type of understanding that a child is not capable of but, benatar says, on the casual view, sex is not significant it is not something that involves a great level of understanding but if sex is not significant, then it ought to be something that a child can consent to the casual view does not imply that rape is morally acceptable rape involves force by someone who does not have the authority, or right, to exert that force

it would be bad to force your neighbor to eat an apple but it wouldn't be an extreme moral violation and certainly not one that's on a par with raping your neighbor yet because the casual view does not attach significance to sex, defenders of the view cannot appeal to force to account for why being raped is so much worse than being forced to eat an apple, says benatar so, defenders of the casual view could say that while there is nothing wrong with sex between two consenting adults, there is something wrong with forcing someone to engage in sexual activity because it involves a form of displeasure or disgust that is extremely bad this would allow the defenders of the casual view to explain why rape is so much worse than many other activities involving force advocates of the casual view could perhaps appeal to similar considerations to explain why pedophilia is profoundly unacceptable another way out for the advocate of the casual view would be to appeal to the special relation that obtains between a person and his or her body likewise, violations of super-ownerships are very wrong

so using another person's body without consent is profoundly morally unacceptable this could perhaps partially account for why rape or other forms of sex that involve force or coersion and a lack of consent are extreme moral wrongs, even if the casual view is rightthis chapter discusses how natural law understands sexual intimacy; the importance of honoring one's spouse by making sex a reserved activity; and how sex is nothing more than sport outside the protective context of a loving, lasting commitment if you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of ip addresses this authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an ip authenticated account choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution if you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian

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our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions oxford university press is a department of the university of oxford it furthers the university's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwideposted july 12, people often question why so much of morality is focused on sex further, compared to the rest of the world, most western countries are not especially conservative sexually, and are generally much more permissive than, for example, most islamic and asian countries nevertheless, the question of why so much morality is focused on sex is a compelling one in many cultures, much of the moralizing that goes on about sex probably stems from efforts to discourage promiscuity, and thereby increase paternity certainty and encourage male parental investment maternity was always certain in ancestral environments, whereas paternity never was

sex moralny order to reproduce successfully, men needed to ensure that their support of their mate and her offspring was benefitting their own genesrather than those of another man but in most cultures, the norm is for women to seek investment from one male mate, and these cultures tend to develop mechanisms for promoting and reinforcing paternity certainty these mechanisms may not condemn just promiscuity specifically, but also demonize anything seen as related to or promoting promiscuity lust, pornographynon-reproductive sex, premarital and extramarital sex, abortion, dancing, alcoholetc why have so many cultural mechanisms evolved to reinforce paternity certainty, in, for example, western and muslim societies? probably because fatherly investment has traditionally been important to children in these societies, and has therefore also been important to mothers, fathers, and other relatives of these children further, fatherless children in these societies have historically tended not just to be disadvantaged, but to impose costs on society as well for example, by increasing the need for publicly-funded orphanages if anti-promiscuity moral rules are calibrated to past environments in which male parental investment was essential, then these rules may become more relaxed as male parental investment becomes less essential in some of these environments due to, for example, women becoming more powerful economically you may see this outcome as either good or bad, depending on your own interests and cultural affiliations from a scientific perspective, however, it's morally neutral, and just a good example of how our biological human nature can generate cultural change

evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland south america proceedings of the national academy of sciences michael price, ph understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world sex and morality: what's the connection? posted july 12, shareposted december 5, for decades, the idea that sex and porn are like drugs has permeated the world of pop psychology despite a great deal of evidence that sex and masturbationand even pornographyare actually very healthy, there has been a long held belief that too much sex is unhealthy now, research by european sexuality researchers has investigated sexual frequency in both sex addicts and other men results show that not only is tso a poorly discriminating variable, but that self-identified sex addicts are actually having less sex than many other men

surprisingly, only so, there is no validity, in this research, to the idea that how much sex a person is having actually has anything to do with any sex-related problems in their life, nor with the identity of sexual addict so, what is it then, which leads a person to identify themselves as a sex or porn addict? these findings demonstrate the inherent flaw in this - because the sex addiction concept has become so popular in the media, many people have incorporated the label of sex addict into a general sense of shame about their own sexuality, regardless of any problems related to their sexual behaviors other research has demonstrated that this self-identity is unhealthy, and iatrogenic, actually causing more distress and depression numerous other studies in new zealand, canada and in the us have found similar results, that many more people fear their sexuality, or feel that they have difficulty controlling their sexuality, despite a lack of evidence of sex-related problems thus, we must begin to examine what are the variables which lead people to fear their sexuality, and to feel that it is out of control? research now consistently demonstrates that these men who fear their sexuality, feel that it is difficult to control, and embrace the identity of sex addict have a few consistent characteristics: when a client presents to a therapist, reporting that they feel they are addicted to sex, the therapist's first and most primary intervention should be one of shame reduction, sexual education and values conflict exploration and reconciliation focusing on their sexual behaviors, and telling people to change or reduce their sexual behaviors is a distraction, and dangerously harmful one at that, perpetuating sexual shame remember, there are many people out there having more sex than most sex addicts, and not having the same problems

and the way they feel about it is driven by their social and religious values and attitudes towards sex these people deserve treatment that helps with their real strugglesonly when you [have sex] […] are you most cleanly alive and most cleanly yourself there is no morality intrinsic to sex, although general moral rules apply to the treatment of others in sex acts as they apply to all human relationships while we write this chapter, a court in the united arab emirates have detained a foreign couple in their twenties for having sex outside marriage and if found guilty they will both face a lengthy jail sentence what is the role of sexual pleasure in defining sex? what is consent? is pornography wrong? what is sexual perversion? of course, we can only deal here with a very small fraction of some of these issues for an excellent survey of articles see sobel and our focus will be on some of the ethical issues to do with sex thus we need to be clear about the different ways to understand sex and this will enable us to explore more usefully the various moral issues associated with sex is the answer not obvious? sex is penis-in-vagina penetrative intercourse coitus — end of story

given the definition of sex as coitus, then this obviously means that by definition homosexual sex is conceptually impossible sex as coitus also gives rise to some odd situations a good knife is one that cuts well, a good guitar is one that plays well, etc what is its function? in answering this question, we should then be able to work out what is morally acceptable sexual activity aquinas and other natural law theorists would say that our sexual faculties have one true end — procreation if this is correct then sexual activity is good if, and only if, it is consistent with procreation and bad in so far as it frustrates that end it is important to understand that the outcome is independent of desires, wants, reasons, hopes, fears etc this means that for the nlt there are objective moral truths regarding how we ought, and ought not, to behave sexually

we can say then that, for the traditional nlt, premarital sex, masturbation, bestiality, contraception, homosexual acts, pornography and adultery are all wrong homosexual acts have no tendency towards procreation at all; contraception frustrates procreative ends; masturbation and pornography focus the sexual acts inwards towards oneself, frustrating procreative ends however, it is vital to make a number of clarifications as people often misunderstand nlt the nlt is not claiming that anything sex moralny frustrates natural ends is wrong but rather only human acts furthermore there is a difference between using something wrongly and not using it at all we use a knife wrongly if we try to use it as a violin bow but not by leaving it in the knife drawer so, not using sexual faculties celibacy is morally acceptable for the nlt so, for example, sex between a man and women when the woman is pregnant is not wrong for the nlt

if this was the case, wearing glasses and taking medication would be wrong and the nlt is not committed to this so the use of sex toys, or various medications such as viagra is not wrong even though they are unnatural we might think that linking sex to procreation in this way would take all the fun out of sex but this is not the case just as one can eat a dish in many different ways whilst always fulfilling the natural function of eating, one can be involved in different forms of sexual act, fantasy, etc as noted, the nlt does, though, rule out homosexual sex and all forms of contraception because having sex whilst using contraception is to use the sexual faculties whilst intending to frustrate their end there are many things which we could ask regarding this overall nlt approach to the ethics of sex kant thinks that sex is morally permissible within the context of a heterosexual, lifelong, and monogamous marriage his reasons for thinking this are very complex, not least because his writing on the subject, like just about all of his writing, is incredibly dense, but broadly speaking, his views on sex are based on his second formulation of the categorical imperative see chapter 2 : act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end

augustine — and sometimes freud, is what alan soble — calls a sexual pessimist plato and many modern philosophers would be counted as sexual optimists the broad feeling amongst the pessimists is that our sexual desires and impulses, and acting upon those impulses, are undignified the sexual part of our nature is unbefitting to how humans should behave and threatens our proper moral life for kant, sexual desire is the only impulse in us that takes the body of another human as the object of indulgence far from there being any concern for the happiness of the loved one, the lover, in order to satisfy his [sexual] desire and still his [sexual] appetite, may even plunge the loved one into the depths of misery […] [and after having sex] the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry if you recall from chapter 2, kant believes that treating others as whole persons is key to being moral, but for him, this is precisely what is missing in sexual desires that is, in sex we are treating others as objects and not treating them as whole persons and hence we are acting immorally in the language of his second formulation of the categorical imperative: in having sex we are treating people merely as a means to an end

because sexuality is not an inclination which one human being has for another as such, but is an inclination for the sex of another, it is a principle of the degradation of human naturein that it gives rise to the preference of one sex to the other, and to the dishonouring of that sex through the satisfaction of desire so if this is his general pessimistic view of sex how does that relate to a view on ethics? as it stands it looks like any sexual desire or act is going to be morally wrong, but if that is the case, then that means that for kant the continued existence of the human race is evidence of immoral behaviour! that is surely wrong in the context of marriageand only in marriage, kant thinks that sex and sexual desire is more than simply treating another merely as a means to an end but why? so we can avoid the charge of objectifying and using a sexual partner merely as a means to an end because in sex within marriage you are treating each other as a whole person and thus there is reciprocity sex within marriage is about the whole person and not simply the genitals, sexual desire and pleasure how does this work? this is how soble starts to approach this question: this reciprocity though is not present in non-marital sexual relationships this is very hard to understand on many levels and we urge the reader not to get too caught up on this

we wanted to show you that kant is complex and that the answers are not simple the greatest kant scholars are still not sure how to understand his ideas on sex the thing to remember though is that via the second formulation of the categorical imperative kant thinks that sex outside heterosexual marriage is wrong as you will recall from chapter 1 utilitarianism does not rule out an act on the basis of it being a particular act this means that if utilitarianism is correct we cannot say that any particular sex act is always wrong premarital sex, or homosexual sex, or masturbation, or oral sex can be morally acceptable the matter is decided by whether or not performing that act brings about more pleasure overall than not doing so this leaves a few questions and qualifications that need to be made

first, although sex will typically lead to pleasure that does not mean that utilitarianism is committed to the claim that the act of having sex is always good utilitarianism does leave space for us to show that rape and paedophilia are morally wrong for even though the rapist or paedophile might get pleasure from their act, it does not take much to see that the overall unhappiness, the mental and physical suffering of the victim, the distress of relatives and loved ones etc second, just because sex is typically pleasurable it does not mean utilitarianism is committed to the claim that we have a duty to have as much sex as possible notice then the contrast with the kantian and the nlt accounts fourth, adultery or having multiple sexual partners can be morally acceptable