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JS.Hardy's avatar

This is a good post I enjoyed it.

I like the discussion on turning the conversation into "legalism". For example, when I express my disgust that a certain popular masculinity influencer systematically used the lover boy technique to manipulate vulnerable young women into becoming porn stars I frequently get these knee jerk responses from other men:

"Oh are they not CONSENTING ADULTS? Is it a CRIME? Did he FORCE THEM AT GUNPOINT?"

Like bro, I'm allowed to personally not like something gross a man did to women without doing a Law and Order episode about it

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David's avatar

Maurice Merleau-Ponty somewhere said that, for mediocre people, sex is the closest thing they have to encounter the mystery and exhilaration of being.

You rightfully point out the legalistic, black-and-white consent-based sexual ethic that predators and sexual autists exploit and gamify. The Gaimans, predators, and sexual autists become something even lower than mediocre as they reduce the sexual act into a mechanical, lifeless interaction with the other, no different than a breathing fleshlight. They annihilate the mystery entirely, reducing it to raw objectification. This is a cultural cancer that permeates every inch of our modern sexual ethic.

You say: “Having sex is viewed as more important than having good sex. On the right, this manifests with … religious puritans turning sex into a sterile act relegated to the confines of marriage.”

I agree completely when it comes to the Ned Flanders style religious puritan, the kind of person who sees sex less as a mutual self-gift and more as a duty existing within a pseudo-transactional framework of marriage. These puritans operate within the same spectrum of legalism that turns sex into a calculated exchange, not unlike the timid enthusiastic consent junkie awkwardly requesting "verbal consent at every juncture." The only difference is that the puritan’s sterility is limited to the confines of marriage. In other cases, we see this in practice with pathetic workarounds like the Mormon loopholes of “soaking” or using sodomy to sidestep perceived restrictions, treating the very idea of sex as some kind of obstacle course to navigate.

But I’d challenge you here because not all who maintain that sex belongs exclusively within marriage fall into the sterile framework of Ned Flanders level puritanism. In fact, there’s a religious alternative to the brokenness of both commodified, consent-driven sex and the grudging marital duty of puritanical legalists. The alternative I'm shilling for is the misrepresented Catholic intellectual tradition that offers a vision of sex which reclaims its mystery and affirms the dignity of both partners.

The Church teaches that sex is unitive and procreative. Far from being “sterile,” this understanding restores the fullness of eros and completes it with agape. It begins in the erotic but finds its culmination in mutual self-gift, a unity that becomes nothing less than a participation in creation itself. When the procreative and unitive aspects of sex are preserved, sex transcends the transactional. It no longer a sterile exchange of pleasure or a begrudging marital duty but a participatory life-creating act of communion. Indeed, at its best, it encompasses a proper intuition of, in your words, "body language and social cues, [where one is capable of] making inferences about another person’s emotional state" precisely because one views the beloved as a dignified partner in love, as opposed to another commodity to consume and dispose.

This is why the Catholic rejection of contraception is so critical—and I know, such rejection becomes scandalous to modern ears and I'd argue is now the counter-cultural position, even among Christians—not because the Church is hung up on rules for the sake of rules,but because contraception abstracts the sexual act, strips it of its mystery, and reduces it to consequence-free pleasure. It facilitates a shallow framework where sex becomes a negotiation between two autonomous “I”s seeking mutual gratification, even if that gratification is selfless in intention and coupled with romance. Without the openness to life, sex becomes less-than transcendent and short of its mystery precisely because the willfulness of the "I" detaches and abstracts sex from its teleology.

Good sex isn’t just about good technique, but instead an emotional culmination that enters into the mystery of the other as a co-creator in life, with all the risks and responsibilities it entails. The Catholic vision not only preserves the dignity of sex but elevates and redeems it. It refuses to reduce sex to a legalistic exchange or a tool of commodification and instead demands its integration into the fullness of human love.

So yes, the Gaimans, the puritans, and the consent-based legalists are all part of the same spectrum of brokenness. But the answer isn’t less restriction or “better consent.” The answer is to reclaim the profound mystery of sex as both a gift and a responsibility, grounded in love and open to life. Anything less reduces the act to a shadow of what it’s meant to be.

I don’t expect you or anyone reading this to agree entirely, but I hope it offers a counter-balance to the Flanders level puritanism that gets lumped in with every religious person that thinks sex is better and more fulfilling in marriage—not as a sterile duty, but as something more, something whose mysterious sense has been dulled and lost to the commodified sex-consent cultural ethos of our time.

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