Defending The Yale Faculty/Student Sex Ban

Libertarian blogger Will Wilkinson is incensed by a new Yale policy forbidding intimate relationships between faculty members and undergraduate students, not just those with an academic relationship as was previously the case, calling the ban "repugnant" and "paternalistic". Noting that most such relationships involve male faculty members and female students, he also equates it to a "denial of the autonomy of female undergrads". This is precisely the sort of situation that I find tends to elicit uninteresting, dogmatic responses from Reason magazine-type doctrinaire libertarians, and despite the fact that Wilkinson is usually a very nuanced and though-provoking writer, this rant strikes me as precisely that. The college years in middle class American life represent a somewhat uncertain middle ground between what is commonly conceived of as immaturity and what is commonly conceived of as adulthood, and the American university occupies a correspondingly uncertain place between those of a parental surrogate charged with nurturing and protecting its students and a private market entity whose only mission is to provide them with contractually designated educational services. They are, by dint of that position, somewhat paternalistic by nature, even if they are less so than high schools. In addition to the subsidized housing and living expenses, many provide free academic and personal counseling, guaranteed access to part-time employment via work study programs, health care, and a host of other support services in addition to purely educational goods. Anyone who's been to college will tell you your typical undergrad is not treated as a full adult in a wide spectrum of areas, nor expected to act as a full adult, and it seems to me that these norms are uncontroversial. Given that I don't really see a compelling reason to get upset about a limited imposition on undergraduates' already limited personal autonomy. Wilkinson's case is even weaker when you consider the ban as something that applies to faculty members rather than to students. Unless the social activity serves a clear business-related function, most companies forbid their employees from fraternizing with customers while on the job. Most people would have to concede that this is reasonable - in the case of most businesses, that's not what employees are paid to do, and with sexual liaisons in particular there is a not-insubstantial possibility that a company could be found liable for its employee's actions in a sexual harassment lawsuit. If you want to think of a university such as Yale solely as a business entity engaged in the provision of educational services to its customers, the students, as Wilkinson seems to, you have to either argue that such bans are unacceptable impositions on personal freedom in all cases (a really tough sell for me), or else clearly establish that that some portions of a student's undergraduate years do not constitute "company time", even though the economic transaction that defines the relationship between business and customer is ongoing throughout that period and legal liability is clearly an issue (perhaps an easier argument to make, but still not one I find persuasive). Do I have a "disgust response" when I see a lecherous, fifty-year old professor ogling a 19 year old sophomore? Yes. Do I acknowledge that my argument could be taken to extremes, and that a relationship between a 30 year old adjunct professor and a 27 year old graduate student is not the university's business if the two aren't working together? Yes. But neither of those answers mean that there isn't a sound logical rationale for banning some types of faculty-student relationship.

Underlying this whole issue is the fact that our laws render in absolute black and white many things which in reality shade from black through all shades of gray to white, and that maturity (sexual, social, financial, and otherwise) is one of these. Of course, a democratic society has to draw categorical lines somewhere, because we must determine at what point a person falls under the category of full adulthood, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof. Nevertheless one must admit that there's really no good reason why we ought to consider a 25 year old teacher involved with a 17 year old high school student a sexual predator who should do time and lose his or her career, and a 50 year old college professor involved with an 18 year old freshman a private matter between consenting adults. This is particularly true when one takes into account the fact that defining the threshold of adulthood as twenty years or so is comparatively speaking a very new sociological development - within the last 100 years it was fairly widespread for people in their mid- or early teens to marry in the United States and Europe, and in many countries around the world it is still commonplace. Human biology doesn't provide us particularly good evidence for our norms either - as everyone knows, by the biological definition of the term people reach sexual maturity far before they reach what our society considers adulthood.

Given all this, I'm okay with letting widely shared disgust responses - the so-called "ick factor" - keep certain markets taboo, to use Wilkinson's uncharmingly economic-reductionist term. I don't particularly want to see markets for pubescent pornography or prostitution flourish. Relationships between professors and college students aren't quite so repugnant as that, of course, and I'll concede (and even agree with) Wilkinson's point about the importance of developing personal autonomy in young adults, but if a university wants to ban such liaisons for whatever reason - practical, paternalistic, or anywhere in between - I don't really have an issue with it.

On Casual Sex

I find articles like this one mystifying. I'm as much in favor of gender equality as anyone of my generation, and on balance, I think the sexual revolution was a good thing. What I don't understand, however, is the need of some feminists and sexual liberation advocates to deny that there might be any tradeoffs whatsoever associated with greater sexual openness, or that sleeping around just because you can might not be the healthiest option for some women (or men). Indeed, arguing such in the wrong crowd may very well get one branded a moralist and a prude at best, a closet patriarchalist at worst. This dogmatic attitude is deeply unfortunate, both because, like the social conservatism it decries as overly enamored of female chastity, it treats a woman's sexual life as a sociopolitical football rather than a matter of individual choice, and because it ignores some very real problems with promiscuity.

While the author of this article claims that it's been proven that engaging in casual sex is not psychologially harmful, this does not accord either with my personal experiences or with how actual people seem to behave in the real world. I don't move in particularly conservative circles, and while I haven't polled them I'd venture to say that almost none of my female friends are intent on saving themselves for marriage or anything like that. Nevertheless, with only a few exceptions, they don't appear to be particularly interested in screwing around, as opposed to trying to find a boyfriend for at least the semi-longterm. When they have had engaged in casual sex, it's been either a.)because they were drunk, lonely, or otherwise impaired, and a matter of regret afterwards, or b.)because they really didn't realize it was casual (or convinced themselves it wasn't casual) at the time, and only found out afterwards that the partner of the day wasn't interested in anything more serious (many men I've known are somewhat less than decent human beings, and will take advantage of this, whereas as others are merely immature and self-centered, and don't think about hurt feelings and messy aftermaths tomorrow when they have a chance to get laid tonight.) The fallout I've observed in such incidents has ranged from bruised feelings and awkward, unpleasant vibes between the involved parties up to and including terminated friendships, but it has certainly been real. I'm not a woman, but my own personal experience was similar - in the aftermath of a painful breakup, I had an alcohol-lubed one-night stand with a female friend that left me feeling hollow, emotionally drained, and disappointed in myself. Growing up as I have in a culture in which men are lauded for engaging in casual sex, I can definitively say that these feelings didn't result from any kind of social censure - had I told any of the men I socialized with at that time about them, I suspect they would have told me (whether they believed it or not) that I was lucky, and wondered what the big deal was. But it was a big deal for me, because I was (and am) a romantic, and I always thought an act so intimate ought to mean more than a few minutes of fumbling pleasure, and the fact that I hadn't lived up to my own ideals left me depressed. If that's true for me, heterosexual male, who by cultural consensus ought stereotypically to revel in shallow and transitory sexual pleasures, I'm sure it's true of at least some women, who by a similar consensus stereotype are thought to want more. If someone finds an experience messy, complex, and hurtful, it seems presumptious to tell them they ought not to have those feelings because they don't accord with your ideology.

Then we have the famous problem of the sexual double standard - the so-called "virgin-whore" dichotomy. A lot of the men I know, even highly promiscuous ones - a voracious sexual appetite, it seems, is often incompatible with self-awareness or a functioning sense of irony - consider a lengthy sexual history a huge turn-off in potential long-term romantic partners. As patently unfair as this attitude is, it persists, and the more we know about human psychology, the less tenable the feminist position, that such attitudes are merely a relic of the patriarchal past and can be ironed out of the male psyche given sufficient enlightenment, seems. For my own part, I too for whatever reason share the preference for a relatively chaste mate. I don't levy any particular moral judgment against women who choose to sleep around - their bodies, their choices, etc. - but a learning a woman has a history of such behavior pretty much torpedoes any romantic interest I might have had in her. I don't know why. I can try to intellectualize it by saying I don't want to be just one more in a long procession of men, or that I think of myself as a special jewel that only a truly discerning woman will appreciate. I can chalk it up to experience, saying that in my dating life women too ready to sleep with me have often turned out to be carrying baggage that made them less-than-ideal girlfriend material (which is true). I suspect, however, that the reasons are deeper and more visceral than that - that given the choice between two otherwise completely identical women, one who'd had three previous partners and the other thirty, I'd choose the former - why, I'm not sure, but I would. I don't feel it's fair to hold a woman to a standard I couldn't live up to myself, and that's the other reason, besides my romantic temperament, that I haven't slept around even when I've had the opportunity to do so - four lifetime partners at the age of thirty, three of them women with whom I had real relationships. Nevertheless it appears for me, as well as many other men of my generation, that growing up in a post-feminist world has not eradicated the desire to marry a "good girl", and rooted as this preference may be in the evolution of the human mind, I doubt it ever will. I suspect women are highly aware of this phenomenon, and know that acquiring a reputation for promiscuity is a sure way to turn off potential long-term suitors. Hence, regret about actions that may lead to them acquiring such a reputation.

All of this is to say nothing of the fact that casual sex carries risks that, regardless of whether people desire to wish them away, can't be ignored. Sperm and eggs have proven stubbornly unwilling to observe the distinction we have decided as sentient beings to draw between sex-for-pleasure and sex-for-procreation, and unwanted pregnancy is pretty much always an ugly business. Then there's the issue of venereal disease. As much as modern medicine can do, it can't cure 'em all, and an unlucky person might find themselves debilitated for life by something they catch from someone they'll only seen once in their lives. And so on. If sex is analogous to other leisure activities, it is more analogous to skydiving or bungee-jumping or high altitude mountain-climbing than to watching t.v. or reading books - a thrilling activity that carries real dangers with it. To deny such, or even downplay it, is foolish.

Sex is a complicated subject, best treated by women (and men) as a matter of individual conscience and prerogative, not a means a pawn in the game of gender-politics chess. Some women may want to sleep around, or dance on a tabletop in ass-baring chaps a la Christina Aguilera, and more power to them, but for those don't, well - I have trouble reading that preference as a betrayal of feminism, or a sign that such women have been successfully slut-shamed into "re-domestication". I thought, after all, that feminism was about a woman having the right to do as she pleases.

Denmark, Kingdom of the Slutty Blonde Sex Valkyries

Tourism authorities in Denmark have pulled an ad they had previously posted on YouTube because citizens complained that it implies that Danish women are ready and willing to have casual sex with tomcatting male tourists.

A few takeaways:

1.)The ad does more than "imply" the message in question - it pretty much flatly states it.

2.)It's obvious that despite their (somewhat deserved) reputation for irreligiosity, sexual liberation, and lax social mores, Danes don't enjoy being stereotyped as libertines or having their women marketed as disposable sex toys. Even in the most liberal corners of the world, social conservatism lives - after all, only 10% of Danish children are born out of wedlock, as opposed to something close to 40% in the U.S.

3.)There's an interesting double standard at work here, I think. This ad seems to have come under attack most from social conservatives in the U.S. (Fox News is all over it), whereas the most common liberal response I've seen is to laugh it off. If a poor country with a reputation as a destination for sex tourism - say, Thailand or the Philippines - attempted to market itself with a similar video implying its women were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to service foreign tourists, I suspect the liberal response would be very different. Sure, one can argue that because Danish women are comparatively much wealthier than Thai or Filipina women, they aren't as vulnerable to sexual or economic exploitation, and this is true in the sense that it's probable that very few Danish women are forced into actual prostitution by dire economic circumstances. But for those Danish women who don't wish to engage in promiscuous casual sex with random foreigners (of whom there are apparently many), is it really any comfort to know that they won't have to actually have sex with any of the American fratboys, English stag-doers, or other horny, obnoxious foreign men this ad attracts? Their sexuality is still being sold for money against their will. Sexual exploitation is sexual exploitation, full stop. There are only degrees of difference.

4.)There are some people working at this particular Danish tourism agency who should probably be in another line of work. Producing porn trailers, perhaps.