[Greta Christina] The Ethics of Public Sex
Is public sex ethical?
Be forewarned: This isn’t one of those pieces where I gas on about some sexual topic that I already hold a strong opinion about. This is one of those pieces where I gas on about a sexual topic that I haven’t figured out yet; where I try to figure out what I think and where I stand by writing about it. So if I get this wrong, please accept my apologies in advance.
My initial reaction to the question I myself am posing is that public sex is at least borderline unethical. I think it creates a troubling situation where consent is concerned: you’re making other people be voyeurs in your sex life, when they haven’t consented to be. Even if you’re in a public place where you hope not to be seen but might well be, where you’re trying to be hidden but part of the excitement is the fear of getting caught . . . I’d say much the same thing. You’re deliberately taking the risk of getting caught — in other words, of forcing other people to be involved in your sex life. This was the essence of the piece I wrote last week about how parents should deal with their kids being sexual and masturbating: I said that you could be a sex-positive parent, and still teach your kids to keep their sexuality private, since not everyone wants to see them masturbate.
But I realize that this is a complex question. And like many complex questions, it’s complicated by one simple question: Where do you draw the line?
Not everyone has the same standards of sexual privacy. The standards for what constitutes appropriate public sexual expression, and what constitutes a violation of other people’s right to not participate in your sex life, vary tremendously from person to person, and from situation to situation, and from culture to culture. (And, of course, they change over time.)
Examples. You might be fine watching your best friend grope her boyfriend; your English professor might not be. You might be fine watching your best friend grope her boyfriend; you might be less fine watching your father or your sister grope theirs. An outfit that would get you shunned in Salt Lake City might not even raise an eyebrow in Miami . . . and in some societies, it’s considered a grotesque and indeed illegal breach of sexual privacy for women to wear pants. You might reasonably get squicked seeing a couple necking at, say, a law school graduation or an honorary dinner for the retiring president of the company. But at the Folsom Street Fair, if you see someone giving a spanking or a blowjob in broad daylight? In my opinion, you have no right to be upset. If you didn’t want to see that, then what were you doing at the Folsom Street Fair?
But I’m not just going to punt this question to “be appropriate for the context.” I’m not just going to say that you have to be culturally sensitive and do as the Romans do. I think that’s a cop-out. I think cultures that forbid women to wear pants are misogynist and oppressive and fucked up beyond belief, and I will stand by that position firmly and passionately. As a matter of practicality, I’m not going to wear pants in those countries . . . but as a matter of moral principle, I’m not going to accept that they have the right to make or enforce those laws.
Which leads me to my next point. The stricture against public sex can and does get used as a serious form of political oppression. It gets used to restrain women, to silence queers and other sexual minorities, to censor sexual information. In the bad old days, gays and lesbians could be arrested for public lewdness simply for kissing or holding hands. (In fact, same-sex public displays of affection are still often treated as inherently sexual, when equivalent opposite-sex displays aren’t.) Countries that force women to wear burqas are countries that treat women as disgusting fonts of sexual sin and shame. Some people consider the very act of writing about sex for public consumption, or selling books about sex in a public bookstore, to be a breach of public decency, a violation of their right to never have to encounter sexual ideas that they don’t approve of. The idea that “you shouldn’t express your sexuality in any way that other people find invasive” can all too easily translate as “you shouldn’t express your sexuality in any way.” Period.
But I still don’t like SM couples giving spankings at dinner parties. I still don’t like it when people I don’t know very well tell me graphic details about their sex lives. (Unless they’re at porn readings, of course, or are writing to me for advice.) I still don’t like opening my front door at midnight to take out the garbage, and finding a couple fucking on my front steps. It feels like a violation: like I’m being made to participate in their sex lives, without having been asked.
So what’s the difference?
I’m tempted to say that the difference is motivation. Are you being publicly sexual to make a political or artistic point, to point out society’s hypocrisies and inconsistencies about sex and to try to shift sexual mores? Or are you just doing it for a forbidden erotic thrill, or because you don’t have the patience to get a room? I’m tempted to say that if it’s the former, then mazeltov; if it’s the latter, then get a room already.
But there’s not always a clear, bright line between the two. What if the cultural more you’re trying to shift is the one against dry-humping in public for fun? The difference is often in the eye of the beholder: a half-naked gay couple passionately kissing at the Pride Parade may see themselves as expressing their pride and their love, and yet may be seen by a homophobic right-winger as deliberately flaunting their sexuality in a flagrant act of exhibitionism and seduction. And I’m not sure it makes much difference anyway. Am I going to be any happier with the couple fucking on my doorstep if I think they’re doing it as an act of erotic political rebellion? Not really.
So I’m not sure where I’m going here. It seems like there should be a line, or at least some principle that would help us figure out where that line is under which circumstances. I don’t expect that we’d all always agree about how this principle should be applied — even the clearest ethical principles are complex and have shades of gray in practice — but at least we could agree on what the principle is.
But uncharacteristically, I’m drawing a blank. I’m starting to wonder if this desire for sexual privacy is one of those deeply-rooted, “hard-wired by millennia of evolution” moral principles that got shoved into our social-animal brains hundreds of thousands of years ago when were living in extended-family tribes. I’m starting to wonder if the desire for sexual privacy is irrational at its core . . . and that therefore any attempt to find a rational guiding principle behind it is just going to be a back-formation: not a genuine understanding of the core of the principle, but simply an attempt to rationalize a belief that’s already in place.
I dunno. I’m coming up blank on this one.
Thoughts?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 at 11:31 pm Paul wrote:
Honest and clarifying, as far as it goes. The phrase “hardwired by millenia of evolution” caught my attention. Your example of living in extended families applies to social taboos, but evolution proceeds in much longer steps. Our nearest relatives, chimps and bonobos, find hardly any situation unsuitable for sex, and privacy seldom enters into it. Group sex shocks the squares, but is in several ways more healthy than sexual monopolization of another. I do not have a made up mind on this subject either, but the prejudices of the “public” are no sound guide to sexual ethics.
on Thursday, 6 August 2009 at 12:29 pm bill wrote:
I loved reading this. Yes couples who still wear clothes in public but are making each other cum in a public setting…yes they are stars in their own movie.
I just hate it when they don’t let me watch, that’s all.
on Thursday, 6 August 2009 at 3:03 pm Tinker wrote:
I agree with Greta. I’m not sure either. I do suspect that my tolerance for this kind of activity is higher than most, but when my limits are exceeded, involuntarily, my response is more violent.
And (even) Texas Law on this subject is pretty clear. If you go somewhere, notorious for more than 20 years, where you are likely to see public nudity, not only can you not call the law to harass them, you might be asked to leave for exhibiting your own disapproval/failing to participate. (Some douchebag preacher went down to Hippy Hollow, years back, was inevitably offended, was stupid enough to try and get video tape [he called the local TV stations], and the sheriff. They threw his ass out.) The video tape was almost exclusively of him inveighing against the destruction of Public Morality, but when it was shown on the news that evening people laughed at him, and even more showed up naked.
Don’t shove it in other’s face, don’t be an asshole about it, and don’t TRY to be offended. Does that sum it up?
I have to admit, on my own door step, I’d be inclined to kick someones ass, and feel justified.
on Monday, 10 August 2009 at 2:01 am Greta Christina wrote:
Paul: I should clarify the evolution thing. The reason I brought it up is that, in the anthropology I’ve read (which admittedly isn’t vast), a taboo against public sex seems to be on the list of behaviors that are common to all human societies, in all cultures and historical periods. That’s not proof that it’s hard- wired by evolution… but it’s certainly suggestive of it.
on Monday, 10 August 2009 at 11:56 am Sue wrote:
“I still don’t like opening my front door at midnight to take out the garbage, and finding a couple fucking on my front steps.”
Does this happen to you often? Just wonderin’.
on Monday, 10 August 2009 at 12:24 pm Tom Allen wrote:
I have a similar rant, actually, about something that offhand sounds pretty silly. I don’t like the quasi-D/s scene in which a nervous man is made to walk into a random lingerie store to ask about garments that would fit him. It drags another person (the sales clerk) into his kink without their consent.
Similarly, I’ve heard about submissive men who had orders to explain to clerks, etc., about some kind of sexual appliance that they might be wearing. Okay, sure — if you drop into the local adult toy emporium, then you’re probably not telling them anything they haven’t heard, but I do not think that this is the case in, for example, Victoria’s Secret. Public humiliation might be *your* kink, but it’s unethical to drag others into it without consent.
on Monday, 10 August 2009 at 12:29 pm Jack Fertig wrote:
For me it’s more about “time and place” than intent. As our friend from Texas says, what goes on at “Hippy Hollow” is the hippies’ business, but you wouldn’t take it to a church. (and vice versa). As for suppression of sexual minorities, I”m very sensitive that, but I think the “sauce for the goose” litmus test applies here. Whatever hetero couples can get away with in public sets the standard for the rest of us.
What goes on at a GLBT Pride parade is definitely for queer folks to decide and certainly we shouldn’t worry about what the haters say. They’ll find something to beat us over the head with anyway. And besides you can hardly watch TV for an hour without seeing some young man and woman sucking face or rumpling the sheets. So a couple of boys or 2 girls get exuberant at a pride parade. BFD!
There are sex clubs and other venues for people who want a willing audience, and no excuse for those who want an unwilling audience. Living in downtown San Francisco I find used condoms around my building while walking the dogs, and have seen couples in flagrante delecto. That teaches me about the dark corners where hookers take their johns late at night. They don’t want to be seen, and all I can think is that it’s awfully tacky and they should clean up after themselves. Still I’d rather see the “French love letters” than the occasional hypodermic needle.
On a related note, one time, while I was living in a South of Market back street, my sister and her two very young daughters were visiting. Someone had left a very large and filthy dildo in the middle of the street. We wished someone would pick it up and toss it, but understood why anyone would be as unwilling as we were to go near the thing. We had quite a job of distracting the little ones so they wouldn’t see it.
Tacky indeed!
quibble, quibble… I believe there’s only one country where burqas are considered mandatory (Afghanistan) , veils and manteaux in one other (Iran), and niqabs in a few (and maybe even just Saudia Arabia, but perhaps in some other gulf states) Still, even one is way too many, and women should surely be allowed to wear what they like. In Malaysia it’s common to see women wearing headscarves and jeans that look they were sprayed on. The conflicting messages of costume and tradition could make a whole new blogsite!
on Monday, 10 August 2009 at 8:58 pm Elizabeth wrote:
If it is any help, the idea of privacy for sex is not universal throughout history. In the middle ages, for example, often everyone in a household slept together (and presumably sometimes had sex with their spouses) in one room. Indeed, in some cultures it was required that the marriage consummation be witnessed. Try _Home, A Short History of an Idea_ for some interesting information on the evolution of privacy.
on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 at 4:41 am Joreth wrote:
I’m too tired to really explain the thoughts in my head at the moment, and maybe I can come back to this later, but my first thought is that it’s all about the recipients expectation of the event. Not what is “culturally relevant” or “appropriate”, but what is someone’s *expectation*, which may or may not line up with the cultural standard (your disapproval of misogynistic behaviours, for example, that are culturally approved but you don’t agree with in spite of that acceptance - you expect that women have the right to be treated equally).
When our expectations are not met, whether they are implicit or explicit, that’s when we feel a cognitive dissonance. So, regardless of society’s rules, the context, our own individual belief structures, if whatever we *expect* to happen doesn’t happen (or vice versa: if something happens that we did not expect), that makes us feel uncomfortable. So I don’t think it’s necessarily “hard-wired” in the sense that we have sex taboos built in, but more in that unmet expectations cause these mental roadblocks and *that* is a species universal, perhaps.
My personal solution to this is to try and remove as many expectations as humanly possible, but A) not everyone is willing to do that and B) I’m only human, and even consciously trying this approach fails on occasion.
As far as I’m concerned, if people aren’t doing it on or in property that I own (or rent) without my consent, and if they are not actually interfering with my ability to enjoy whatever I originally intended to enjoy (making out a movie theatre is fine as long as they’re quiet enough that I can still hear the film), I don’t actually care one way or another if people are doing whatever consensual sexual or fetish act. It saves me a lot of personal discomfort that way.
However, if they *are* doing it somewhere “public”, then I reserve the right to watch openly without punishment … if they’re going to force their sex life onto me without my prior consent, then they get to participate in my own sex life, which happens to include voyeurism.
on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 at 5:31 am Simon wrote:
I was wondering to what extent does having noisy sex count as ‘involving others in your sex life without their consent’. My wife prefers to be noisy during sex, she feels more turned on when she does it and consequently enjoys sex more when she’s noisy. However, she’s also polite and worries about other people hearing us (it was helpful that we lived out in the country for two years, but now we’re moving back to the city so the problem has become salient). If visuals are a problem, shouldn’t sounds be a problem too? Where does this fall on the ‘consent’ scale of a public-private act? You can often ‘block out’ visuals simply by closing a door, but you can’t get rid of sound as easily.
on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 at 6:43 am Alice in Wonderland wrote:
Greta, your posts are always so interesting and thought-provoking!
I have to say, I’ve never given much thought to the sex-in-public thing before, other than to firmly decide it’s not something I want to do myself. I’d certainly never thought of comparing sex in public with wearing pants, but I think you make a valid point.
Having read your essay, I’m not entirely sure what I think, either, but at least now it’s a more considered unsureness!
I think the basic issue here is one of politeness (which is of course a very fuzzy and culturally-relative term). Generally speaking, in order to live happily in communities we should avoid doing things that make other people uncomfortable.
Taking the example of a couple starting spanking at a dinner party — I think that’s inappropriate if it’s likely to make the other guests uncomfortable. Just like, for instance, it would be inappropriate for a couple at a dinner party to get into a really heated argument about whose fault it was that the dishes didn’t get washed last night.
Then again, sometimes it’s necessary to make people uncomfortable in order to push for desired social change (as in the gay pride parade). So I guess I’m saying that more sex in public is not something I see as a desired social change!
on Wednesday, 12 August 2009 at 2:37 pm Michael wrote:
I’m starting to wonder if this desire for sexual privacy is one of those deeply-rooted, “hard-wired by millennia of evolution” moral principles that got shoved into our social-animal brains hundreds of thousands of years ago when were living in extended-family tribes. I’m starting to wonder if the desire for sexual privacy is irrational at its core
I would think this desire for privacy is deeply rooted but I wouldn’t say that this means that [therefore] it’s irrational at its core and [therefore] irrelevant. Ultimately, rational arguments build on elements that aren’t wholly rational — it can’t be rational all the way down.
But whether or not it might be wrong now would you agree that in a more sex-positive future it would be less of a big deal even to find people fucking on your front lawn? Although there might be still some discomfort, a secular sex-positive society would be less likely to have people as mortified as many would be.
on Thursday, 13 August 2009 at 3:17 am ToppHogg wrote:
Can the garbage not wait until it’s daylight???? I would certainly complain if the truck came to pick it up at midnight!
But getting back on topic, there is a certain visceral thrill in being able to do the gender dance with Mother Nature in attendance. Many of us have done it. But one would have to be very discrete about it due to the Blue Nose laws on the books inserting itself into every opportunistic nook and cranny, as well as self-appointed voyeurs - uh, Protectors of the Public Morality, who get off on torturing others in ways that cannot be retaliated against. Thus, self-preservation (and a desire not to get buff new roommates whose ideas of limits may not match yours) dictates that the basic rule of any action be consulted: is it WISE to be doing (insert specific action sexual or otherwise here) HERE and NOW? If not, find ways to meet the criteria or abstain. Bubba and Bruno will just have to make do with each other for a while longer if you follow this advice.
My biggest issue with seeing others engaging in public makes me want to join them. I’d rather not be frustrated while someone else is enjoying sex because I like it too much to allow that.
on Friday, 14 August 2009 at 2:17 am The Editor wrote:
I don’t think this is about sex in public sex per se, but about tolerance. How do others react when they find something they deem offensive.
In parts of the Middle East, women baring their arms makes some men go apoplectic, whereas an errant nipple following a wardrobe malfunction seems to upset Americans. In parts of Europe, public nudity is no big deal.
Children handle nudity far better than most adult, and have to be “taught” that it upsets adult, who pretend that it offends their kids.
A tolerant society does not stone people to death because they catch someone with bare arms, bare breasts or whatever, in the same way it does not jail people for thoughtlessly littering their neighborhood, wearing “offensive” t-shirts, or urinating on the sidewalk.
It should make no difference whether people are offended from a sexually-related matter, but to suggest that their being offended deserves a prison sentence, I find offensive and intolerant.
on Monday, 17 August 2009 at 9:47 am Talisker wrote:
I think the difficulty here is that one group’s happiness can conflict with another’s.
Consider horror films. I like them, but I won’t watch them in public on my laptop, or graphically describe them to people who are clearly uncomfortable. Doing so would make me an annoying idiot, not a countercultural hero.
A great many people are upset by seeing sex. That doesn’t make them evil prudes. Sex by its nature stirs up strong emotions, which makes it especially intrusive and distracting.
All this is as much a question of good manners as ethics. For example, I’d consider sex in a cinema to be extremely rude, more so than popcorn-munching at an equal noise level — because of the aforementioned emotional distraction.
on Saturday, 29 August 2009 at 5:53 am twistedpyxie wrote:
Oh, this is a complicated one alright.
I’m coming to the conclusion that intent and consideration are key here. People have the right to their sexual expressions, including exhibitionism and kinking up on outdoor sex and whatnot. People also have the right to not have to be part of other people’s sex lives without consenting.
There’s a big, big difference, for me, between a person/couple/group doing something sexual in what is technically public, but either making an effort to not be observed or to only be observed by consenting others, and a person/couple/group doing something sexual without making any effort to keep it away from people who don’t consent to be involved*. The people making out on the beach while I’m trying to have a nice relaxing afternoon? Get a room, please. You’re blocking my view and it’s kind of hard to concentrate on this book with all the slurping noises. The people fucking a few hundred yards down the beach who’ve taken the trouble to find a nice deserted spot behind some rocks? Hope you’re having an awesome time and that it’s worth the extra-special all-over exfoliation the sand’s giving you. And if I decide to take a walk down the beach and happen to see/hear you? Well, you’ve made the effort to be courteous and stay out of view so I won’t be tetchy about it. The least I can do is show a similar level of courtesy.
*voyeurism is participation, people. ;)