CIIS Public Programs Podcast

Transcript

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[Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

Modern-day sexual ethics has held that “anything goes” when it comes to sex—if everyone says yes and does so enthusiastically. So why, even when consent has been ascertained, are so many of our sexual experiences filled with frustration, disappointment, even shame? In her book Rethinking Sex, reporter and Washington Post columnist Christine Emba calls for a more humane philosophy, one that starts with consent but accounts for the very real emotional, mental, social, and political implications of sex. In this episode, Christine is joined in a conversation with CIIS Professor and Program Chair of the department of Human Sexuality Michelle Marzullo that invites us to reimagine sexual intimacy, and in turn, attain greater affirmation, fulfillment, and satisfaction for ourselves. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 11th, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes] 

Michelle Marzullo: Hi Christine.  

Christine Emba: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be here.  

Michelle: Yeah, I’m really excited about this conversation. So, you know, I just wanted to start off to say, I just love this book. I mean really, I was, when I was reading it, I was actually on spring break here. We had our spring break in March at the university, and I was texting my friends and my family members and saying, oh my goodness, the insights here. It's really great. I just can't, can't get enough of this book and really told everyone to read it. Just really terrific. Was that your, the general response you received for the book? 

Christine: Well, I mean, I love to hear that response from you. Yeah, I mean, I think that as I had hoped, Rethinking Sex has been a provocation for a lot of people, you know, there's been some pushback obviously and some disagreement, but I think the responses that I've found you know, sort of most valuable and exciting are the ones from people who have written in and said, “wow this put into words, sort of things that I've been grappling with, but didn't really know how to name or thought I was weird for wondering about or having problems with,” or simply, you know, “this made me, look at how I'm going about sex differently and raised questions that I had raised before.” That's great. I mean, that's what I wanted from the book in the first place, so I'm happy to hear that. 

Michelle: Absolutely, absolutely. And then, can you tell me a little bit about the sort of the background of the book? How you came to write the book and kind of what, what were the main questions you began to ask when you realized that this could be an actual manuscript, an actual project for you?  

Christine: Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what I never thought that I was going to write a book, let alone my first book, on just the topic of sex. Like sex. How do we fix it? Definitely sort of a first author's, sort of lack of humility and understanding when it comes on, when it comes to thinking about what it takes to write a whole book.  

But to go back to the very beginning, I'm a columnist at the Washington Post. And as a journalist, I've always been interested in questions of culture and society and ethics. What are the duties we have to each other? And how do we treat each other? And what does the common good look like, if there is one? And of course, I'm a young woman. So, I'm also really interested in you know, these questions of sex and gender too. And the MeToo moment in 2017, 2018 was fascinating and galvanizing for me and I was writing a lot of columns at the time on sort of Me Too related topics and the moment itself showed that, you know, many of the problems that we almost thought we might have moved past, you know, post sexual revolution, the feminist movement haven't actually gone away, you know, hadn't been solved. And there are some Me Too cases, the high-profile ones, the Matt Lauer’s, the Harvey Weinstein's that had sort of clear-cut answers for what was wrong that we needed to fix. You know, you can't rape your underlings, Harvey Weinstein, we don't do that anymore. But then there were other sort of Me Too cases, the ones that actually went the most viral I would say that surfaced tricky issues that weren't so easily resolved.  

So, you had stories like the sort of Aziz Ansari, babe.net debacle and the short story “Cat Person” from The New Yorker, which I think is still the New Yorker’s most read piece of short fiction ever. [Michelle: Wow.] And both of these stories, one fictional, one reported are basically about young women who go on dates with guys and feel like they're being pressured into having sex that they don't want. And in “Cat Person” you know, the woman goes along with it, and then sort of doesn't enjoy the experience, but feels like she's supposed to. And these went viral because so many people related to them. You know, people were sharing these, women were sharing these especially and saying, “oh, yeah, that's, that's me. That's happened to me. This is normal.” And it wasn't clear what you could put a finger on as kind of wrong, because ostensibly the sex was consensual, etcetera. And yet it clearly was, you know, it was causing people a lot of pain and sadness and yet this was sort of the norm.  

And so, I kind of I wanted to dig more deeply into sort of these unresolved gray areas almost and take stock of where we were, post-Me Too. Figuring out what seemed to be ailing our sexual culture that was visible not just in the sharing of these stories, but into the people’s lived experience. You know, what assumptions were we making about sex, or holding about what our culture looked like that weren't actually serving us? You know, where did we think the sexual revolution should have taken us? And where did we end up? And what do we make of sort of the delta between the two? And then when it came to consent, you know, if there are so many situations where consent is not solving the problem, that probably means that consent is not enough. So, what ethic do we need? Where should we go from here? And you know, these ended up being pretty big questions, not ones that you could just sort of sort out in an 800-word column and so it led to kind of some longer essay writing and eventually turned into Rethinking Sex, the book.  

Michelle: Terrific, I mean this book really to me, the reason that I got so excited about it and you know, when we, when we initially talked about doing this, this podcast together, I just said do you have a background in sexuality studies? And I was so sort of struck that, that you didn't because really you, you capture the zeitgeist, right? You capture the, what is going on in terms of sexuality. My, you know, I talk about this every day with, with my doctoral students and candidates who are pursuing their various studies. That, that something is going on, and it really is, it's very hard to put your finger on it. But you really, you did capture this, you know, sex and relationships. And I wonder if, you know, to give those who haven't had the pleasure of reading your book, if you might, if you might read a short selection from, from it, for us today.  

Christine: Sure. Absolutely. We talked about the section. So, I'll read that. But I’ll also point out that just in the writing of the book, I mean I started writing columns on the Me Too topic more broadly, but a lot of what went into the book was just conversations with people. Sort of these the one-on-one interviews where I just would talk to people about their sex lives and like, what they felt about the culture and how they conceived of sex and even just doing that sort of helped me shape the book and shaped my understanding of what other people were feeling, but I'll read a few paragraphs.  

Michelle: Sure, sure. That would be great. Thanks.  

Christine: “What I heard again and again was contradiction. Having sex was a marker of adulthood and a way to define yourself. But also, the act itself didn't really matter. Good sex was the consummate experience. But a relationship with your partner was not to be expected. It was nearly impossible not to indulge your desires and extended celibacy was a state nearing to death. Yet, I could, and did say no to sex and was clearly still alive. I didn't end up waiting until marriage to have sex. I held on to my absence for a while and then let it go after emerging from a relationship and wrestling with my own faith. I stayed Catholic but sex went from something longed for and maybe slightly feared to something far more down-to-earth. Still from my unusual vantage point, outside the post- virginal circle, then inside, the narratives around sex seemed deeply confused. Maybe these stories sound familiar to you. Thinking that we should be having sex, even when we don't really desire it because that's the impression society gives us and thus seeing ourselves as incomplete, abnormal, or fallen behind if we aren't doing it, even when we're nothing of the sort. Having sex we don't really want for reasons that we don't fully agree with far more often than we would like, but also thinking that that's just how it goes and that it would be unreasonable to ask for more. Feeling jaded and discouraged by the romantic landscape, its lack of trust, emotion and commitment. But also feeling as though other options aren't reachable or even realistic. Experiencing too much of the kind of sex that saps the spirit and makes us feel less human, not more. Sex that leaves us detached, disillusioned, or just dissatisfied. Knowing that something in our sex and dating culture is somehow off and wishing things were different, even if we don't exactly know why we feel this way or how to make the shift to something better. Hopes are high, outcomes trend low, social expectations seem at odds with our true desires. And for something meant to bring pleasure, sex is causing a lot of pain.  

It feels as though we have accepted many of these disappointments as normal, unfortunate but not criminal, the cost of doing business even after Me Too. Yet, things don't have to be criminal to be profoundly bad. And the fact that so many of the women around me relate so deeply to stories of harrowing dates and lackluster encounters shows that a lot of us are having a lot of bad sex. Unwanted, depressing, even traumatic. If this is ordinary, something is deeply wrong. 

The goal of this book is to reassure you that you're not crazy. That thing that you sense is wrong, is wrong. That there is something unmistakably off in the way we’ve been going about sex and dating. Rather than suggesting marginal improvements to these problems, I'd like to ask you to rethink the assumptions beneath our approach to sex. The ones that got us here and the ones that add to our dissatisfaction. For instance, sex is a purely physical act. The absence of rules will make me happier. My sex life is nobody's business. Women and men are basically the same.  

What happens after we've identified the faulty assumptions? That's a more complicated project. I can make some suggestions and I will make a fairly radical one, but I can't give you rules that will mean we never have to talk about this again. There's no simple cut and dried one-and-done approach to getting rid of bad sex, but there is a positive vision to reach for. A sexual culture that is pleasurable, connective, and enriching instead of confusing, alarming or immiserating. And there are steps we can begin to take to get there. Making substantive claims about what sex is and means that can be argued over, critiqued and revised. Moving past our laser focus on consent and discussing the other element of ethical behavior that we've left by the wayside.” 

Michelle: That's great. Thank you so much for that. You know this is what I mean by, I mean this book is so incredibly insightful and really powerful and permission-giving in, in a way. When I was reading this book and talking to several colleagues about it, I was sort of reminded of a book written by a British sociologist named Jeffrey Weeks. He wrote this book called The World We Have Won: Remaking the Erotic and Intimate Life and that book was essentially reflecting back on exactly what you were sort of siting, in regards to the sexual revolution and you know, like when Me Too came, we thought, oh my goodness. I thought, that we thought that we had addressed this. We fought the sexual revolution, we fought the gay and lesbian, you know, sort of rights movement, the L, and then the LGBTQ+IA movement. And how are we still here? 

Christine: Exactly.  

Michelle: So, he argues, and I agreed that, that this is the context for all sexual subjects, right? And sort of what you captured, the zeitgeist, the zeitgeist that you capture, in this book, I argue in line with Weeks that I really think that you've got it. You've got this, this, this circumstance that we’re all sort of captured in at the moment for no better term to use.  

So, my only critique of your book and of course, this is, we have, we had this conversation. It’s that the only the very, it's so tiny, it's so tiny, but it is, that I know that you were writing this book, thinking and keeping in mind heterosexuals, and you had this disclaimer at the beginning, and, and I totally understand that, but amongst the queers that I know, amongst the LGBTQ+IA folks that I know, they are equally stuck in this morass [laughs] that you so well-articulated right there in the opening, in the opening passage, and I just want to just kind of give you a moment to sort of reflect on that and let me know what you think of that critique.  

Christine: Yeah. No, I, it's incredibly flattering that that's your main critique. But it's a good one. You know, I got interested in this topic, as I said before, because of this kind of specific cultural moment of Me Too. And in that moment, there was so much attention and discussion around men and women specifically, and, you know, heterosexual interactions and the bright and, you know, sort of gray lines in their sexual conduct, and the nature of power dynamics between the sexes in this sort of cisgender, you know, heterosexual context.  

But you know, as I say in the book, I do think as a rising share of the population, you know, identifies as gay or queer or non-binary, even those relationships are often navigated within or at least influenced by sort of a dominant sexual narrative and the ethics it implies, and simply by kind of sheer preponderance of numbers and sort of tradition at this point, that tends to be kind of that the heterosexual cisgender narrative. And so, you know, the arguments in this book, I think may not apply to every sexual encounter. And, you know, there are voices that I wish I'd been able to have more of, to have included more of.  

But I think that there is something here for everyone, you know, especially when it comes to thinking about what sex means to us, not just like the physical act, but sort of almost the idea of the thing. And you know, what an ethic for treating someone else well in a sexual encounter looks like. Because, you know, no matter sort of what relationships you're in, or what your encounters look like, there is another person there and there should be standards for how to treat them well and we should all be talking about them. And considering them and reconsidering them together for sort of the world in the time that we now live in, where more people are included, where there are sort of more options and more of, you know, a wider diversity of voices. 

Michelle: Right. No absolutely. Actually, as you were talking about, as you were talking about sort of this idea of hegemonic masc- hegemonic sexuality and sort of, you know, just the fact that we're all sort of dealing with this same narrative, the same conversation, the same discourse. I mean, we're dealing with it and reacting to it in different ways, based on our own orientations or, you know, engagement with gender identity. But still, we're all, we’re all in this conversation together. It reminded me of this one book called Heterosexuality in the Post-Closeted Moment, right? It's written by a sociologist.  

Michelle: Oh, fascinating. 

Christine: It talks about, essentially, how gay and lesbian rights movement and discourse, queer discourse, trans discourse, non-binary discourse actually impacts the way that heterosexuals think about their own positioning and their own relations to sex and sexuality. So that, I do think, as, as you say, the majority of folks in, you know, are, do identify as heterosexual. But there's such a rich public conversation now in which there are, there's a sort of, a cacophony of voices really talking about sex and sexuality, and we're all influencing each other in this way. And I think that that's sort of, you know, just to kind of get to the provocation of your book, really sort of this tentativeness now, right? Especially post Me Too, there's such a tentativeness about sex and sexuality.  

So, I'd like to sort of shift us a little bit into the actual propagation of your book. It's, you know, this is kind of, I think why, why is the- the book is so, is so great because we all love a little bit of controversy, don't we. So. So I’d like to sort of draw on an excerpt from Weeks’s book to frame up what I think your argument leads us to. In short, his book traces these massive social shifts that we've been talking about, you know, and your book captures, I think what his book didn't do is your, your book does sort of picks up on. Is that it captures in the current moment, sexuality amongst millennial urbanites, right? In the District of Columbia. I think that was posed, was that where most of your interviews happened?  

Christine: So actually, they happened kind of all over. I started writing the book before Covid. And then during Covid. And so, it was locked down, but you know, I talked to people in DC and in New York, but also, you know, on the, on the west coast in Canada, in the South, a couple in Europe actually. So that was, you know, I was trying to get kind of a broader span of voices too, you know. 

Michelle: No, I love it and you really did sort of capture, I think where Weeks left off, you kind of pick up. And so, among, among the insights in Weeks’ book, he observed that between the 1960 and the 1990s, there were six main effects on sexuality and intimacy that can be identified as a result of several social changes. I mean, you've already touched on a lot of this. But, but the six, the six main effects were essentially a shift in the power between generations. Right? Such that older generations are not the ones that are only to be listened to around sex and sexuality. A shift in power between men and women, that’s cisgender men, cisgender women, I would argue also for trans and non-binary genders. The separation of sex and reproduction, the separation of sex and marriage, this is very big. And the separation of marriage and parent. So, so with all of these, these kinds of shifts, there really is this kind of redefinition of what is normal? What's abnormal? How do we know the difference between the two? And, and I just wonder if this- that if this list resonates with you, resonates with what you found in your book research, especially around the six, the six effects and then what as- do we as a society do without such guideposts for anchors? What should we be doing in our intimate lives? 

Christine: Yeah, this list is really fascinating because I think that it's also doing a really great job of kind of separating out and boiling down a number of shifts that seem kind of hard to entwine when you're looking at it from within. You know, I think that the- I mean MeToo in part was just about like, you know, a shift in power between men and women and also in generations. The sexual revolution and our sort of post sexual revolution behaviors, I guess, and expectations have so much to do with the separation of sex from A: reproduction. The fact that if you have sex, you may not have to get pregnant anymore. And then also that the ensuing shift between or disconnect between sex and having to be married to someone or, you know, having to become a parent.  

But in the book, I think I focus the most on that last one, you know, the normality versus abnormality question. And there's a section where I talk a lot about Freud, actually. And how, you know, in the 20th century, we sort of entered this phase of, you know, trying to define the human person and ourselves kind of by our actions, our actualization in the world. And sex was taken to be like a huge part of that. Suddenly, sex went from something you do in the context of, you know, marriage or parenting, to, you know, what, Freud, and in one line memory- memorably describes as the sign and sight of a healthy self. So, sort of anything that's happening in your, in your sort of adulthood or lived experience, could be tied back to some sort of like sexual thing that happened in your childhood, any sort of sexual repression.  

Michelle: So Freudian, so Freudian, right? 

Christine: Yeah, and also not right. I mean, the thing about Freud is that right, many of his theories were just not right, but [Michelle: Right.] nonetheless have completely infiltrated society or that, you know, repression was sort of the worst thing possible. And that we had to kind of break all of our boundaries in order to move past it to be sort of fully actualized people. And then I guess this, you know, this…this was not particularly Freudian, I guess, I mean, this is sort of a larger shift, the normal versus abnormal and the idea that anything should be seen as normal for the person who is, you know, partaking it and that we shouldn't judge, that, you know, everything is valid and the sexual revolution was in many, very useful cases, based on this, right? That women’s sexual experiences were valid, their experiences were not abnormal or to be ignored but should be respected. And sort of the LGBT rights revolution basically had kind of the same impetus that like, no, this isn't like a weird group of people that we sort of need to look down upon. Like, we are all human and all different and not abnormal. We're just different. And that's okay.  

And, you know, I think the bad faith reading of my book has often been sort of like, well, you want to roll back the sexual revolution and go back to the time where the norms were much stricter and go back to tradition and sort of cut out everybody who doesn't fit the traditional mold. And you know, that's, that's not the case. But you know, I do think that, you know, we've, we've breached the ramparts of repression, right? The wall of silence that prevented us from expressing our sexuality has fallen, you know, at this moment, we’re n what you might consider to be kind of the golden age of having sex, right? We've- it's separated from pregnancy. STI rates are low. The sort of societal approval of premarital sex is the highest it's ever been. And, you know, we've only instituted this one floor: consent. You have to get consent before you have sex with someone. And once you do, everything else is kind of fair game. It's behind the curtain, that's between you and your partner. But you know, getting rid of the old rules and replacing them with just consent was supposed to make us happy. But instead, many people today feel really lost.  

And it kind of makes a case, I think, for boundaries and norms in a way because you know, boundaries are necessary, they’re important, as any therapist would tell you, because they help us define for ourselves and also externally, the scope of what isn't wanted or acceptable and what is and in doing so, lay out a space for everything else that might be and you know, I wonder in the book and wonder personally that it- sort of the flattening of our expectations. Everything is normal. Everything is fine. No judgment allowed. We've kind of lost those boundaries and were liberated but a little bit confused and miserable about it because now, you know, we are remaking the rules constantly, but there's no sort of- or there's less rather, I guess, agreement on what the rules really look like and we have to hold them ourselves and enforce them ourselves individually, which can be confusing and hard because there's no social recourse. And there's no way to say, you know, past consent like you may have gotten consent but nobody wants to be a West Elm Caleb as it were. So, like that's kind of a gray area what you do past that. Even if you have the rule of consent, like what kind of consent should you get? And even if you get it, are things going to go wrong? Maybe you give consent but for what reasons? I think there's a lot more gray and that makes it hard for people to navigate this current sexual moment.  

Michelle: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, going back to your point about tradition, I agree with you that I do not see your book advocating for an idea that we should all go back to traditionalism, in whatever form that is because there are many forms of traditionalism. But instead, I think that the reason that I, that I found your book so refreshing is that it really asks us to start this conversation about, I mean, that's the provocation, right? Are we brave enough to start a conversation about morals and ethics and sex and sexuality without devolving into those staid and tried and true tropes of- around sexuality that, say, religion gives us or that, say, former generations give us. How is it that we move bravely into conversations that say, you know, what, there is a boundary here. How do we, how do we define that boundary? How do we think about that boundary in ways that are productive, in ways that move towards sexual freedom, a sexual positivity that's not toxic positivity, that, that really that holds us as individuals, but understands us as connected, always connected. These are really, they're very, very difficult. They're broad questions. And I think, I think you're right that the only way that, that sort of these questions are answered is not with the blunt tool of consent laws, right? All laws are just big blunt clubs, right? There’s no nuance at all in laws. It's also why I was so refreshed when, you know, you were sort of saying in your book how, you know, we can't turn to government for this. Government’s not going to save us from this conversation right now. This is really a conversation at the societal and then, you know, intercommunity level that we really need to- that we really need to start. I wonder, you know, you really did kind of touch on, on all of this in your book. And I wonder if you could read that, that last section that we agreed on, which is, you know, kind of the heading is “what could sex be and who could we be?” Which is I think just such a great way to put it.  

Christine: Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, first though. I want to respond to kind of what you were saying there. I mean, so I'll tell a story that's in the book that I think is- I found fascinating and kind of alarming and included because it seemed to represent so much of what was the problems that we were wrestling with. You know, there was a woman, I talked to at a party actually. So, you know, a thing about writing a book about sex, if people know that you write about sex, they just tell you things because I actually think that a lot of people feel that they don't have a space to ask real questions about sex.  

Michelle: Christine. Welcome to my world. Welcome to my world. I can never go to a party, it’s always work. 

Christine: Yeah, I bet you get this constantly. [laughs] Yeah, it makes for some kind of strange parties. I'm not sure that I will miss that completely having finished the book, but I was at like just a sort of random holiday party, at like a house party. And I'm talking to this woman who I've never met before and she's telling me about this guy that she's dating. And she's like, he's really great. He has a great job. He's so handsome, he’s really nice etcetera, all these, you know, good things that you want to hear and then she says, you know, but he chokes me during sex, and she goes on to say that she like, doesn't really like it. But she did consent, she guessed. And like this happened to her friend too, and maybe that's just kind of how it is, but she's sort of like, you know, I don't really like it. Is that okay? And that sort of last, is that okay seems to encompass a lot of questions.  

Like is it okay to not like something or is it sort of being judgmental to say that you don't like fulfilling that desire for another person? Would it be okay to criticize or is that off the table? Is it okay for this to keep occurring since, you know, she consented to it? So, does that mean that like, you know, bets are off once you've given consent and it just, I mean, just so many questions, lived in that one interaction and, you know, in the book, I talk a lot about how consent is a floor, right? It's a baseline norm that we- that we need, and it honestly has taken us long enough to get to a place where we can even say, you know, no means no. Yes means yes, actually it should be affirmative and even enthusiastic but that's still a floor. It's not the ceiling. It was never supposed to be. You know, we want more from sex, presumably, than well, the person consented, so it wasn't strictly illegal, you know, most of us want more from our relationships than that. And, you know, I worry that we spend a lot of time focusing on what's legal, you know, sort of, in a carcel state in a governmental sense, based on this understanding of consent and not actually, what is good. You know, what is moral and ethical and how we should treat each other on a higher level, you know, not just the negative, what our encounters should not be, that is to say non-consensual. But also, what should our encounters be?  

And then, you know, the second part goes back to this question of abnormality and normality, right? I guess, this idea that, you know, to sort of be sex-positive which used to have a very specific meaning kind of when it was first used by sort of second and third wave feminist, post sexual revolution has now almost ballooned to be what you describe as toxic sex positivity in some way where it kind of just means that you have to be up for it and willing to do anything and that you shouldn't complain or shouldn't judge people. Whereas I actually do think that it's fair to ask is this good? Like, you know are some desires helping us achieve the relationships that they want. Should every desire be indulged? Like what does it- what does that mean? And these are questions that I think, you know post sexual revolution, we need to find ways to talk about together, to adjudicate together to set new common norms because we're also very aware now, I think that the sexual revolution happened for a reason, that rules around sex have often been used to kind of marginalize and separate out people in the past. And we need to be really wary of doing that. But at the same time, you know, we do have to ask ourselves is what I'm doing good? Is it true to the meaning of what, you know, we want sex to be? Is it good to the other person? And I think that that is a discussion that we need to have, a provocation that I'm willing to make. 

Michelle: And it's also you know, if we think about what the sexual revolution was meant to do and then what it did, these are really different things. Right? What the sexual revolution did was that it gave cisgender heterosexual men a whole lot of freedom, not so much for a cisgender heterosexual woman right? There- and I think that's some of what you're picking up on in this book, you know, he feels like he can choke me out during sex, I feel hesitant to actually say, I don't like that. Why is that? You know, not to say that as we've seen with the Johnny Depp trial, we understand, and we can actually see that there can be abuses on, you know, from between women and men, and men and women. And, you know, trans folks and non-binary folks against each other and others as well. So, not to say that this is only, you know, one sided. But, but the one thing that we did learn from the sexual revolution is this idea that, that yes, indeed, morality and constraining sex and sexuality have their downsides and yet, and yet, the people who, who may benefit from this, we have to really keep an eye on to make sure that that we all benefit. Not just sort of that the folks who happen to be in a sort of strong powerful position, right? 

Christine: Yeah, no that makes- that makes total sense, I'll jump back to the section of the book that we agreed on and read that. 

Michelle: That sounds great. No, I think you set that up well. 

Christine: So- and it actually relates to the story and that's kind of where I start. “You know, he chokes me. I don't like it, but I gave consent. Is that okay? At the party that December night, consent did not give me a good response to her tentative question. And later, I thought more about how I should have answered. At parties and over brunch, whispered at book clubs, and sent in DMs by anxious college students. More and more women shared stories, oddly, like hers, ones where discussions of consent didn't allow the language, or space to confront, what else might be wrong in those situations. We want to treat the preferences of others with respect. We should be cautious when telling others what they really want, or what the ideal version of them should do. We often don't know what's right ourselves. Those who convince themselves that they do are often informed less by superior knowledge and more by their own situatedness and traditions of hierarchy and power. It's also important to define sex which cuts so clearly to the heart of the human person in a way that’s corrigible and not overly exclusionary given how often traditions around sexuality and gender have been used to disadvantage and disempower.  

Yet that doesn't mean there isn't room for ethical considerations, for a discourse that critiques our desires. Encouraging it might even be good for us. One of the best ways to make social values stick is to eroticize them. When it comes to inequality as a natural state, self-centeredness is a virtue or contempt for women as a statement of power, this method of advocacy has worked astonishingly well. But what if we, as members of society, eroticized something else? The task was to liberate sex from the distortions of oppression, right? Samia Sreenivasan. Not simply to divide it into the consensual, unproblematic and non-consensual or problematic. Sex positivity actually had higher aims than getting private individuals off. The goal was a fairer world, radical structural change, the personal as political, not only our being free to explore our own desires, but actually to free that desire from the unjust constraints that shape it.  

There may not be one single answer as to what our responsibility to discipline our desire might look like. But desire shouldn't be exempt from critique. We're not going to ban pornography. It's far too late for that and the critiquing of desire isn't going to take place in a court. We shouldn't and can't call on the coercive power of the state to address all the problems of sex. Because historically, that sort of attempt has come at a great price. Still, it might be a positive practice to identify the substantive goods that we hope for in our encounters with each other, to publicly promote practices that advance them and publicly discourage practices that don't. The sex we choose still may not be traditional or conform to the tastes of the mainstream. But if sex has anything close to the meaning with which we’ve freighted it, we should want it to be more than grudgingly consented to, and more than an unthinking reflection of our most selfish impulses. And what most of us want at this point is to be moving past what we're allowed to do and toward what would be good.”  

Michelle: I just love the way that you end that rather than saying towards what we want, right? You say, what towards, what would be good. This is a- that's, that's a different footing. That's a really different place to start a conversation in. There's a class that I teach called Sexual Gender and Reproductive Rights, and I often talk about how policymaking around sexuality is often focused on the negative, right? So often focus on negative aspects of sexuality: disease, rape, intimate partner violence, all of the things that are just so heavy rather than sort of- and this I think this is, this is a societal issue. We don't talk about policies that will- could help with positive sexuality, how do you increase wellness? What are you? How does sexuality and sex contribute to feelings of connectedness? To feelings of wholeness? And you know, how might we think structurally about this. There is very few- very little policy on that, and I- by policy, I don't mean only public policy, but I also mean, you know, organizational policy that, you know, could, you know, do all kinds of things. Including provide medical care for, you know, for various kinds of sexual pleasure, and wellness interventions.  

So, I just think that as a society, we don't have the language. We just don't know what to do with this and in the general program that I run on critical sexuality studies, we- one of the things that I think, is a real bonus of critical sexuality studies isn't that- we're not just looking at how knowledge is created and what people’s social worlds are, right. So, what you're talking about is sort of these- the sort of ontological right to being right. I desire this, I should be allowed to sort of desire. I should be allowed to do it, right? What is- what is the different- what are the different worlds we occupy in terms of sex and sexuality? But the bigger the other question and sort of the related part of that is, is sort of the third leg of western philosophy, which is axiology. So, epistemology is how we create knowledge. Ontology is how we look at sort of the different worlds, world making and metaphysics. And then the third is axiology and axiology is literally the question of values, who do we value, how do we value each other, right, you know, it has to do with aesthetics. It has to do with politics. It has to do with what we find to be beautiful. Who says why?  

And then most importantly, it has to do with sort of exactly what- how you ended. What is good? What is the pith, the center of good and in terms of, in terms of your, your book, what you hit on I think, and the reason I think it is just so incredibly insightful is that of course in sexuality studies, the folks ask me all the time, you know, why is it that that that sex, sexuality, and gender are continually attacked right? We see Roe v. Wade is, is on the precipice of falling. Why is- why are these things attacked all of the time and my answer is well, sex and sexuality are actually the linchpin. They're the center. They’re the rules that we have for making our society, for knowing who we are as people. As you say, I think that you so eloquently put this just just a little while ago that, you know, we, we plucked out sex and sexuality for very specific, Western cultural reasons as something that is interesting. And, and that is an anchor, and, and we're living with it. Now, we're living with that sort of, that cultural condition. It is the center of our society. And so, that being said in, you know, in the, in the absence of rules, in the absence of rulemaking, you know, the problem is navigating, navigating the social world. And so to me, the- your book raises two really interesting questions to grapple with, in sort of- if we put it in Weeks' terms in the world we have won, right? First is how do we set our own personal boundaries, right, at the level of the individual? How do we actually do that for, for whomever, you know, whatever our identities are? Consent is one way, but it's not the only way. What's it- what's a really nuanced way to do this?  

And then for the second I think, you know, as I, I just turned, you know, 51 years old and I'm sort of in the middle of my life. And I certainly think about this question that I think undergirds some of the structural questions that you're asking. Is that how do we attend the inevitable problem of aging and caring for ourselves outside of traditional kinship systems if we don't get married, if we don't have a stable partner, if we change partners, if we, if we have these questions of precarity in our old age. What is it? I mean, we're all going to get old. We're all going to get sick. We're all going to die. Right? So, what is it? And how is it that we form up these care systems to care for each other outside of these traditional ways of only doing things that way, right. So, I think those are the- those are the big questions that I was left with after, after your book. And I just wonder, wonder if you might, if you might have any sort of reflections on where we go as a society, I know, that's how you sort of left this a provocation. You left us with a lot of questions. And where did you go towards the end of this with that? 

Christine: Yeah, those- I mean, those are huge questions and they're ones that I think about all the time. And I think your point that, you know, we’ve pulled out and centered sex in in a specific way as a really valid one. I…in- there was a review of my book in the Times by Michelle Goldberg, and she was a little bit of confused by sort of where I stood, because she was, like, it's a little bit heterodox. She quotes Andrew Dworkin, but also Roger Scruton, but actually Roger Scruton, the philosopher has, you know, a great quote that I used in the book where he says “sex, you know, is the bond that builds society. And also, the force that explodes it” because it really is kind of how society reproduces itself and replicates itself. And there is a reason why we're so concerned with what it looks like.  

But you know, how do we go about creating, you know, our personal boundaries, our own standards, but also kind of a societal level understanding of where we go from here. I think, you know, the first thing is to start with honesty and, you know, that's in some ways what I'm trying to do with rethinking sex, you know, provoke people to look at sex, honestly, not sort of just through the lenses that they have been given by culture, various assumptions, but you know, what does sex mean to us? And how significant is it, really? What kind of relationships do we actually want? And what are we looking for?  

Your second question was sort of about how we care for each other as our society changes, and one of the things that I found so fascinating in just talking to people about sex and one of the things, one of the false assumptions that I think has become a really big problem is the idea that we should treat sex as though it's just an activity that doesn't mean anything and that we shouldn't have feelings, that it’s weird to have feelings about things, that the best way to approach sex is from a mode of total liberation where we don't care about each other and you know, don't get attached. But you know, when people are honest about what they're looking for in their sexual encounters, it is relationship, it is care and I think if we, if we are honest with ourselves about then sort of our approach to what we should be doing and how to think of ethical sex in an ethical sexual culture, really changes.  

And so, to that end also, you know, we have to be really clear-eyed about interrogating the assumptions that inform our approach to sex and you know, these are, you know, wider cultural assumptions that aren’t just about the act of sex itself, but how we conceive of how we move through the world. So how highly we value the idea of privacy or how we define freedom as liberation versus, you know, interdependence or you know, how much weight we place on fulfilling every desire, should fulfilling my desire take precedence over respecting someone else? You know, we talk about desire so often and especially sexual desire, as if it's you know something that we have to satisfy as immediately as possible. Otherwise, we're not being true to ourselves. But in some cases, it's possible that were actually over selling sex and sexual desires and under selling our own free will in which case maybe we should think about that.  

And then also, you know, you have to just be willing to make as in that section, I read, you know, substantive claims about what good really means, what our end goals are, for ourselves and for our broader culture and talk about what moral and ethical behavior looks like. And actually make those our standard and be willing to, you know, not just make those kind of a personal standard, but expect them, you know, from our partners and peers and try to make that the norm. So, for instance, in the book, you know, in trying to move past sort of that floor level standard of consent, I suggest the idea instead of willing the good of the other which, you know, it means well, willing the other person's good in an encounter as much as you would will your own, it's sort of a radical non selfishness or radical empathy but it also implies a number of other things right? That you actually have an understanding of what the good is that you're trying to achieve in an encounter, that you are actually, you know, trying to meet your partner and figure out what the good is for them, and an understanding that you will probably fail. You're likely to fail, if you think failure is totally imminent, maybe this is not the time for that sexual encounter. But even if you are not going to do it perfectly every time, the fact that you're trying to reach an ethical, a higher ethical ideal, a positive vision rather than just the negative vision is several steps further from, from where we've gotten.  

I think your idea of just having a positive vision is so important. Not just saying as I kind of found, you know, when I started writing this book, you know, okay, yeah, the situation is bad, it’s- yep. It's bad out there. We don't like it. Okay, that's good to know. Where do you go from here? Like how do you take steps forward by taking a stand, by making assumptions that can then be critiqued and interrogated themselves to sort of get the wheel moving? I think those are, those are the next steps, that radical honesty and willing to critique. 

Michelle: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Well, thank you so much. This was just such a great discussion with you. It's such a beautiful way to end Christine. Thank you so much. Thank you for this discussion. Thank you for the book that you've contributed to the world and its great thinking, and I think it's, it's time to close out. But I wonder if there's anything else you'd like to sort of add in your closing tonight? 

Christine: Yeah, I mean first of all, thank you and CIIS for having me and having this conversation. I found it really enlightening and I find all of these conversations enlightening because the questions that people bring up in the questions that you brought up, Michelle, like pushing me to think about this even deeper and, you know, I guess I'll go back to the beginning. Rethinking Sex. The subtitle is A Provocation. It's not a prescription and in part, the provocation is for us all to continue having this conversation because as we each put forward our ideas and sort of like discuss our substantive ideas about what sex means and how we- what the good looks like and how we can be good to each other. That's how we begin to build a new culture. And so, I'm just really excited that we're able to do that here tonight. 

Michelle: So am I. Thank you so much, Christine.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
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