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Sexual shame seems to be part of human nature, but its causes are mysterious. The book of Genesis tells us that when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they felt suddenly ashamed of being naked. "Then the eyes of both [Adam and Eve] were opened and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." Genesis 3:7. The story has some weak logic, of course. Cover themselves from whom? From each other? But they were a couple and had sex with each other - otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. From God? But God sees everything, so trying to cover yourself from Him seems rather futile. Never mind. What is important in this story is that it tells us that sexual shame is universal, an intrinsic part of human nature. This means that sexual shame has a biological origin, and not merely a cultural one. Otherwise, sexual shame would be present only in some cultures and not in others. It would not be part of human nature. Is this true? And, if so, why? Instances of sexual shame In many cultures, particularly in Western countries, being naked is shameful and humiliating. Partial states of undress are permissible at the beach, or while changing in the presence of members of the same sex. But having exposed genitalia, buttocks and breasts in public is taboo, and often illegal. Another strong taboo is against having sex in public. Being surprised by strangers while having sex is deeply shameful. Watching other people having sex (voyeurism) is taboo. Watching pictures or movies of naked people, or people having sex (pornography), is also taboo, and illegal in some countries. Being seen while experiencing sexual pleasure - for example, while masturbating - is shameful. Sexual desires, fantasies and fetishes are kept secret. If somebody reveals them to others, this is shameful. People often feel ashamed about the size or shape of their genitals, or other sexually charged body parts like breasts and buttocks. Conversely, bragging about the size or shape of one’s genitals, or sexual body parts, is taboo or, at least, considered bad taste. Sex is more shameful for women than for men. “Sex is boys' fame and girls' shame”. However, homosexual sex is more shameful for men than for women. Being penetrated sexually (vaginally, orally or anally) is considered humiliating, especially if you are a man. Anal sex is the most humiliating sex act. Giving oral sex is also considered degrading for men, and more so than receiving fellatio from another man. People use sexual expressions to ridicule or humiliate somebody. “He’s an ass-kisser.” “He fucked him over.” “He has no balls”. Being “cheated on” - when our partner has sex with other people - is considered one of the most shameful thing that can happen to you. Sex should not be shameful Sexual shame is so pervasive that we take it for granted. It’s just another fact of life. However, when you stop to think about it, there is no good reason why sex should be shameful. No other animal experiences sexual shame. Animals have sex in front of other animals or people without any problem. But this is hardly surprising, since shame seems to be a uniquely human emotion. Sex is one of the things that brings us the most joy and pleasure in our lives. When it comes to other pleasurable things - like drinking, eating and playing - we are happy to talk about them and do them with others. However, we hide sexual pleasure. Sexual shame is dangerous and harmful One huge problem in our society is the deep psychological trauma caused by sexual abuse, particularly during childhood. One of the main harms associated with this trauma is shame and the resulting decrease in self-esteem. Memories of the sexual abuse bring about strong sexual shame. It doesn’t matter that the victim is not responsible for the abuse; shame is felt all the same because there seems to be something intrinsically shameful about sex. How can the victim free herself or himself from this shame? It seems that understanding sexual shame could be of help for sexual trauma. Sexual abuse is not the only case in which sexual shame is harmful. When somebody is being persecuted for being gay, a lot of the harm is done by shaming. A lot of this shaming involves evoking images of what that person does during sex. Sex-positive culture has come up with the term “slut-shaming” to denounce emotional attacks perpetrated on people who dare exert their sexual freedom against cultural norms. Particularly women, but also men. A similar term, “kink-shaming”, denounces the psychological warfare on people who practice BDSM and other kinks. In all these cases, sexual shame is weaponized to maintain sexual norms and gender stereotypes, and to punish people who dare to infringe them. We fight shame with its opposite, pride, and have made it the flag of various sexual liberation movements. Still, sexual shame is so powerful and so pervasive that it is able to hurt even the most sex-positive people, never mind those who find themselves isolated in the midst of conservative populations. What is shame, anyway? “Shame is considered a social emotion (as opposed to basic emotions like happy, sad, and mad). It is learned via socialization (all the complexities of interacting with others) and through the transmission of group norms. […] Shame originates from morality.” No One Is Immune to Sexual Shame, Psychology Today. I disagree. As I explained in my article What Is Shame?, shame has many physiological manifestations, like blushing, lowering the head, a hunched posture, inhibition of talking and moving, and social withdrawal. In that, it is similar to the six Ekman emotions - anger, fear, joy, sadness, disgust and surprise -, which can be detected in humans and animals by facial expressions. Therefore, I think that shame is hard-wired, just like the six Ekman emotions. It is biological. It does not originate from morality. Shame is also deadly. It often leads to suicide. I think that shame evolved in humans as a means to enforce cooperation and social interaction. When you do something good for the community, you receive praise and you feel good about yourself. If, instead, you do something bad, refuse to cooperate, or even fail at a task you were supposed to do, you get punished with ridicule and shaming. Pride and shame are two opposite emotions that increase and decrease your social status. One has little control over their shame. If they did, it could not be used by others to control their behavior. It is hard to avoid feeling shame if you are surrounded by people intent on shaming you. One of the main evolutionary pressures on humans was on having effective cooperation inside tribes. Communities that cooperated well flourished and reproduced. Those who didn’t went extinct. Shame, indignation, ridicule, humor and sex What happens when somebody feels unduly proud? Imagine somebody who hasn’t done a thing to help the community, and yet he goes around full of himself. This arouses indignation in the people around him, who feel compelled to bring him down a peg or two. They do things to make him lose his dignity, to fall into ridicule. When that happens, they laugh at him. Note the interplay of several social emotions in this story: pride, indignation, dignity, ridicule, humor. They interact to regulate social status which, in small tribes of hunter-gatherers, could mean the difference between life and death. Or between having lots of children and having none. Which, evolutionarily speaking, is the same. Instead, imagine that the proud person senses the indignation building around him and does something about it. Before anybody ridicules him, he humbles himself by engaging in clownish behavior and self-deprecating humor. People laugh with him, not at him, and social tension dissipates. He has lost social status, of course. But has done so voluntarily, so he is in a better position to regain it when he does something pride-worthy. Therefore, shame, indignation, ridicule and humor are emotions that play together to control social status. Curiously, ridicule and humor are also emotions that are commonly associated with sex. Think about all the jokes we tell about sex. And all the slapstick situations and ridicule that can happen around sex. As for indignation, this is the emotion that accompanies prudish behavior and puritanical morality. When sex doesn’t evoke laughter, it evokes pearl-clutching. Is sexual shame caused by religion and sexual morals? It is true that Western culture is one of the most loaded with sexual shame. Islamic cultures are even worse. In both cases, sexual shame originates from religious norms and prohibitions. Still, even the most non-religious and sexually liberated people find it hard to escape sexual shame. No matter how hard they try, a mean comment or laughter will bring it back. “But sexual shame has, in truth, never remotely gone away, for it is a psychological, not a political or religious problem.” The Problem of Sexual Shame. The universality of sexual shame suggests that it is something intrinsic to human nature and not originating in morality. “The universality of bodily shame is not supported by anthropological studies, which do not find the use of clothing to cover the genital areas in all societies, but instead the use of adornments to call attention to the sexuality of the body.” Cordwell & Schwarz (1979). The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment. Yes, it is true that nakedness is not universally shameful. However, sexual behavior is. What happens is that nakedness is only perceived as sexual in certain cultures. There are even cultural differences between Europeans and Americans in this regard. I think that humans are predisposed to feel shame about sex, but the exact manifestation of sexual shame varies from culture to culture. There seems to be a time window during childhood for the imprinting of sexual shame, similar to the time window for the learning of language. Think about how easily children latch on to messages about shame. Once you tell them that they should be ashamed of being naked in public, this feeling becomes overwhelming for them. Sexual shame and sexual desire seem to become intrinsically linked with each other at this time, and also associated with cultural taboos and notions about humor and ridicule. Explanation 1: sex is intimate because it serves for bonding I am going to propose five possible explanations for sexual shame. I find some more plausible than others, but you may take your pick. The first explanation is that sex is not really shameful, it’s just intimate and private. During sex, neurotransmitter like oxytocin, vasopressin and endorphins are released in key areas of the brain, leading to couple bonding. Perhaps it is necessary that this process happens away from other people, so that the bonding does not include them. The problem with this hypothesis is that it does not explain why sexual shame is so hurtful. If sex was just meant to be private, then there should be a feeling of rejection or anger towards intruders, but not a self-directed feeling of loathing for being discovered having sex. Besides, in a lot of people, sexual shame exists in confrontation with exhibitionism and voyeurism. Many people enjoy watching others having sex. Some people enjoy being watched having sex. It all seems to depend on our ability to open a space of intimacy and vulnerability around our sexuality. Explanation 2: Sex is shameful because it is associated with disgust Urinating and defecating are biological functions that, like sex, are done in private and that are shameful if done in public. They evoke disgust, one of our six basic emotions. Anybody who sees us voiding our vowels will be disgusted, and this emotion will become associated with us. We don’t want that, because being perceived as clean is part of our social prestige. Disgust evolved to keep us away from substances that may transmit infections. Sex is one of the main ways in which we may acquire an infectious disease. Our genitals are the same organs that we use for urinating, and they are extremely close to the anus. It is natural, then, to see the genitals as unclean. Culturally, sexual shame is often expressed as disgust. Thus, promiscuous women are considered “dirty”, and sexual acts are often described as dirty or with words associated with filth. One of the main obstacles in first sexual experiences is disgust, because we are touching parts of another person’s body that we were trained during childhood to consider dirty. Menstruating women are considered in many cultures as unclean and able to contaminate people who touch them. This is a big source of sexual shame for women in those cultures. Puritanical and other sex-negative cultures are built around the idea of cleanliness and purity. This latches into feelings deeply built into human nature. It is possible that shame itself evolved in humans as a specialization of disgust. Whereas disgust is found in all mammals, shame is exclusively human. All these pieces of evidence indicate that sex is shameful because it may be perceived by others as disgusting. Thus, we avoid being seen having sex for the same reason that we avoid being seen defecating - so that others do not think that we are disgusting. And yet, I do not find this explanation completely satisfactory. Many people get sexually aroused, and not disgusted, when they watch other people have sex. Likewise, most people find other people’s genitals arousing instead of disgusting, sometimes even the genitals of people of the same sex. Being disgusted by sex seems to be a reaction of people with little sexual experience, and may be culturally ingrained. As I argued above, sexual shame may go deeper than that, and be genetically encoded. Explanation 3: Sex is shameful because it makes us vulnerable Professor Brené Brown, in a famous TED talk, explains shame as a fear of disconnection. “Whole-hearted people” who are able to overcome shame and establish strong connections are those that embrace vulnerability and tell the story of who they are. Then, perhaps sex is shameful because is an act that makes us vulnerable. Just like pain, sexual pleasure is salient, meaning that it forces us to pay attention to it. Sexual desire needs others to be satisfied, making us depend on them. During sex, our bodies express pleasure and desire in an uncontrolled way - the more we try to control ourselves, the less we enjoy sex. Sex can also be painful, particularly for the person being penetrated. However, it is funny how men receiving a fellatio seem oblivious to all those sharp teeth surrounding their penis. Feeling safe during sex requires having a lot of trust that our sexual partner will not hurt us. All these things add up to make people vulnerable during sex. We don’t like strangers to see us in vulnerable positions. Maybe that’s why we feel ashamed if we are seen naked or having sex. Explanation 4: sexual roles reinforce gender roles in patriarchal societies This is the thinking that led the radical feminist writer Andrea Dworkin to write “penetration is rape,” which was then taken literally by other radical feminists. Apparently, what she was discussing is the way that the act of being penetrated has taken on a meaning of being subjugated and shamed. However, this is not limited to women. In men, it is worse. A man who is “getting it up the ass” is being emasculated, subjugated and shamed. A man who performs fellatio is a “cock sucker”, and a “sucker” is somebody who is gullible, passive and submissive. And yet, in reality, women and men who are penetrated do so because they feel a strong desire for it. And they get pleasure from it. The act doesn’t make them losers. Then, why is it shameful? Mainstream feminist theory sustains that the patriarchy has created cultural stereotypes and taboos that reinforce the role of men as dominant over women. It is the patriarchy, then, that established the belief that the penetrator (a man) is more powerful that the one being penetrated (a woman). According to this view, the sexual act is the ultimate enactment of gender roles and their power imbalance. The rules of the patriarchy also imply that men who act like women by being anally penetrated or by performing fellatio emasculate themselves. They abandon their male privilege to become pseudo-women. This leads to homophobia - the fear of being homosexual or being perceived as being homosexual. If this explanation is true, then sexual shame is not biological, but cultural. As we eliminate patriarchal stereotypes and beliefs, sexual shame would go away to leave room to new sexual freedom in which anyone can experience sex as they want, free from imposed gender roles and the shame of losing male privilege. But I doubt that this would ever happen. As I said above, I think shame is hard-wired, and so is sexual shame. Explanation 5: sex establishes social hierarchy If shame is an emotion that evolved in humans to signal social status, then sexual shame may have something to do with social status. On the other hand, human sexuality is different from the sexuality of other animals because it has been co-opted for bonding, away from its primary function for procreation. As I discussed in my article The Seven Enigmas of Sex, this co-opting of human sexuality explains why women lack estrous and have hidden ovulation instead, have powerful orgasms and a clitoris away from the vagina, menopause, and the commonality of homosexuality and sexual fetishes. One of those seven enigmas of sex was, precisely, sexual shame. The two ideas that shame signal social status and that human sexuality is for bonding suggest that sexual shame exists because who you fuck and how you fuck has a big effect on your social status. In men, having sex with desirable women - young and fertile - shows that they are powerful and thus should be a cause of pride: “sex is boy’s fame.” In women in hunter-gatherer tribes, having sex with men who are good protectors and providers should also increase their social status. Then, why “sex is girl’s shame”? Perhaps because if a woman is seeing having sex with a young man - attractive but of low status - that would unduly decrease her social status. The different reproductive strategies of men and woman may come into play. A high status male may want to have sex with a young woman who is more likely to give birth to healthy children, but may be honor-bound to be sexually exclusive with an older, high-status woman. The young woman, in turn, may want the protection of the high-status man but crave sex with an attractive young man. Then cheating happens. And that requires having sex in secret. It has been proposed that ovulation is hidden in women so men cannot be sure which children are their own, and hence are motivated to protect all the children in the tribe. This would increase cooperation and social cohesion. This uncertainty of paternity would be increased in sex happened in secret. In dogs and some species of monkeys, males mount another male as a sign of dominance. Conversely, males display their backside as a sign of submission, to stave off attacks by more powerful males. So, it is possible that the meaning of penetration as a sign of dominance is biologically encoded. This could explain why some sexual acts are perceived as demeaning, and why we wouldn’t want to be seen performing them in public. It would also explain why acts of domination and punishment, like bondage and spankings, have such strong sexual meaning. Conclusions Sexual shame is a key element of human sexuality, but it has not been sufficiently investigated. It is assumed that it is caused by religion and other sources of sexual repression, but its universality and the fact that shame is part of human nature suggests otherwise. I have proposed five possible explanations for sexual shame, which are not mutually exclusive. I am sure that these five hypotheses can be tested in scientific research on sexual shame, which is sorely lacking. Understanding sexual shame is essential to understand the trauma caused by sexual abuse and, hopefully, help to heal it. Copyright 2022 Hermes Solenzol

A conversation about sex, political change and inner liberation Excerpt from my novel “Games of Love and Pain”, to be published on June 24th, 2022. Spain, 1977. Two years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, Spain is transitioning to democracy. Cecilia, her boyfriend Julio and Lorenzo have lunch after rock-climbing in the mountains north of Madrid. Cecilia and Julio are college students. Lorenzo is a car mechanic and a member of the Spanish Communist Party. The "war" they mention is the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. "Carrillo" is Santiago Carrillo, leader of the Spanish Communist Party at the time. There was no wind and it was getting hot. The granite walls around them reflected and concentrated the sun. Insects buzzed. Julio unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. “Oh, I want to do that, too!” said Cecilia. “No one will come, right?” “No, but you might give a heart attack to our comrade over there,” said Julio. “He’s not used to seeing shirtless girls.” “Don’t be silly! He’s seen me naked already, don’t you remember?” She took off her shirt and her bra. Lorenzo pretended to focus on lighting a cigarette, but then he stared boldly at her tits as he took a deep draft. Julio was looking at her, too. It flattered her to be the focus of their attention. The freshness of the air and the warmth of the sun aroused pleasant sensations on her bare breasts. Julio got up and sat down next to her. He put his arm around her shoulder and casually stroked one of her tits. She felt her nipple rise under his fingers. “What do you think, Lorenzo? Doesn’t she have nice tits?” Lorenzo just exhaled a long column of smoke. However, judging by the bulge under his jeans, the answer was probably yes. “I can’t believe you guys!” he finally said. “Your girl gets butt-naked at the drop of a hat, and you encourage her!” “Why? Is there anything wrong with me getting naked?” “I don’t know, girl… It’s just that my mother taught me to respect women.” “And what does been naked have to do with respect? Oh, I see! You think like that girl that came to lecture me after the striptease: that if a woman gets naked in public, she’s being exploited. Is that it?” “Yeah, something along those lines… And don’t tell me that you bared your tits to sunbathe, because that’s bullshit. You did it to expose yourself to us.” “And that’s exploitation? Perhaps it’s just that I like it when you guys look at me.” That seemed to surprise him. “And why would you like that?” “Because it makes me feel good. It’s like a gift I can give you, and that makes me feel beautiful and powerful.” “Powerful? How? Because you make Julio jealous and that makes him love you more?” “That’s nonsense! I don’t want to make Julio jealous, and he wouldn’t love me more because of it. Jealousy is just awful. And didn’t you say that he is the one who encourages me to get naked? Look, Lorenzo, even if you are a communist, you are clueless when it comes to these things. Julio and I want to free ourselves sexually, to get rid of all the repression that was dumped on us. We are doing the erotic revolution.” “The erotic revolution? You’ve got to be kidding! Yeah, so you guys like to fuck, I get it… But that’s not doing any kind of revolution.” “Of course it’s a revolution! It’s an internal revolution, by freeing the mind of the repressions that have been implanted in us.” “It’s true, Lorenzo,” Julio said. “The revolution is not done just with demonstrations and Molotov cocktails. The most important thing is to change people’s minds, to foment a spirit of rebellion against the system.” “No shit! So now you two are going to turn out to be anarchists?” “No way! I’m a socialist, I’ve told you plenty of times. Damn it, Lorenzo, it’s true what they say, that you communists are more prudish than priests! Cecilia is right. Sex helps you free yourself from within, and that’s a form of revolution.” “What the fuck do you know about revolution? You two are just bourgeois, enjoying the privileges of your class, living in nice houses, going to university, and having a grand old time. You are not interested in doing a revolution. For you, things are just fine the way they are!” Cecilia opened her mouth to answer him, not quite knowing what she was going to say, except that it made her mad that Lorenzo was attacking them so unjustly. And she thought that she was doing him a favor by showing him her boobs! “Cut it off, buddy! Of course, we don’t like things the way they are,” Julio said in his calm voice. “Because what’s wrong is not just the unfair distribution of wealth. It’s the oppression, the lack of freedom, and that affects us all. And neither Cecilia nor I live so well. Especially her. You have no idea how badly they treat her at home! Her father and her brother are two fascists of the first order. They hit her at the drop of a hat. They don’t support her going to college… Her father has even have taken away her allowance, so she has to work nights as a waitress in a bar to make some money.” “Wow, I didn’t know that!” said Lorenzo apologetically. “Well then, that’s awesome! You’re working class, girl, just like me! I’m sorry… Sometimes my wires get crossed and I give the wrong speech at the wrong time.” Cecilia smiled at him, pleased with how Julio had stood up for her. “No problem,” she said. But now that Julio had gotten fired up, he wasn’t going to stop. “They put her in the hands of Opus Dei when she was a child. You can’t imagine how brain-washed she was when I met her! But she’s such an intelligent girl that she was able to break free of that mess, all by herself. That’s why, when she talks about revolution, she talks about inner liberation, because that’s how she has lived it. And sex was key in that process. You may think that the striptease she did that night was just an act of frivolity, but you can’t imagine how much it changed her, how much it freed her from her chains. When Cecilia talks about the erotic revolution, she is talking about a serious commitment that she’s made in her life, one that has cost her many sacrifices. It’s not just being able to have sex with me.” “Okay! Whatever, man! But just explain to me how that erotic revolution of yours is going to get us fairer wages, safety at work, not being fired at will.” “Well, yes, it works for that too!” she said. “Because people are controlled from the inside, by doping them with religion to prevent them from thinking freely. Why do you think conservatives defend religion so much? To be sexually free proves that you no longer are controlled by feelings of guilt and shame, that you have overcome repression. When people feel free within, that’s when they can act to change society.” “Very good, Cecilia! That was quite a speech!” Julio laughed. “I don’t know, girl!” said Lorenzo. “It still seems quite a specious argument. You don’t need to go to such extremes to be able to think freely.” “Yeah, I know you can’t see it, buddy, but you’re still quite repressed,” Julio said. “You’ll understand it once you get laid.” “Aw, shut up! Why did you have to bring that up?” “You’re such a bigmouth, Julio! So, Lorenzo, are you still a virgin?” “Yeah, so what? You think that fucking makes you more progressive? How lame!” “Come on Lorenzo, don’t get upset! The problem with Julio is that he doesn’t know how important intimacy is for some people.” “It’s not just Julio. It’s both of you bragging about your goddamn erotic revolution. Well, no, I haven’t been laid yet! I’ve just spent a year in the army, penniless. As you may understand, that makes it quite hard to get a girl. Before that, I had to struggle to finish high school, working nights and dealing with my father’s drunkenness.” “Sorry, man! You don’t have to get so defensive. We just wanted to explain how it is between us, not to criticize you. I know you’ve had a hard life. I admire you a lot for it.” “It’s true, Lorenzo. I’m sorry,” she added. “Well, I’ve gotten a bit carried away, too.” “At what age did you start working?” she asked. “I started working in a store when I was fourteen. My father was out of work, and my mother had been in the slammer for two years.” “She was in jail? Why?” “They caught her handing over Mundo Obrero, the newspaper of the Communist Party. See? That’s what doing the revolution is all about!” “For sure!” Julio admitted. “I’m sorry, man. They’d have released her by now, I hope.” “Yes, several years ago. She lives in Bilbao.” “My mother had a very hard time during the war,” Cecilia said pensively. “Her father, my grandfather, was killed by the Reds in Madrid. Well, I’m sorry, Lorenzo… I didn’t mean to compare him with your mother. It’s just that you reminded me of it.” “You never told me that. Why did they kill him?” said Julio. “I just know what my parents told me, which is not very reliable. My grandparents were wealthy and had a large apartment in Alcala Street. Some revolutionaries wanted to get the apartment, so they used some excuse to give him a ride, as they used to say. My mother was fifteen. Fortunately, she was not at the house when it happened.” “It’s a pity our people committed atrocities like that. When you use violence, the most violent win. Doing the revolution may sound romantic, but the reality can be quite different.” “Unless it’s a nonviolent revolution based on changing people’s minds,” said Julio. “Which is just reformism,” said Lorenzo. “That’s what Carrillo wants: to make deals, to follow the democratic way.” “If they let us follow that path, which is yet to be seen,” said Julio gravely. They remained silent for a while, each engrossed in their own thoughts. Finally, Julio grabbed his shirt and put it back on. “Well, we’d better get moving if we want to do another route.”

Domestic discipline is a form of dominance/submission without the usual BDSM paraphernalia. Its Christian fundamentalist version raises ethical concerns Domestic discipline is a form of BDSM practiced by a cohabiting couple, often married. It is based on the head of household (HOH) enforcing rules on the subordinate partner. In practice, it is centered around spankings and other forms of physical punishment. Hence, it could be considered as overlapping dominance-submission and sadomasochism. The head of household is often a man, but there are also woman-led and same-sex households. Although roles are on all the time (24/7), the power differential dynamic often fades in the background, to come into play on certain occasions. The subservient wife has to behave following traditional gender roles, like doing house chores, wearing modest garments, having her expenses controlled, and being sexually available to the husband. When the submissive partner is a man, there may or may not be some level of feminization, but house chores and other service activities would fall completely on him. The important thing is that there are pre-established rules need to be followed, in and out of the house. When rules are broken, the submissive is punished. One of main characteristics of domestic discipline is that it rejects the fetishes and looks that are typical of mainstream BDSM, like leather and latex garments, impact implements like floggers, paddles and whips, and furniture like stocks, spanking benches and Saint Andrews’ crosses. Regular clothes are worn instead. In some forms of domestic discipline, women are forbidden to wear pants, and modest garments like long skirts, high neck dresses and long sleeves are preferred. When spankings are not given with the bare hand, the HOH uses household items like kitchen spoons, hair brushes and belts. Some couples keep wooden paddles, birch floggers and canes for specially harsh punishments. The punishment fetish The main drive in this type of relationship is what I call “punishment fetish” - a fascination with, and sexualization of, punishing or being punished. In domestic discipline, the punishment is often a beating: a spanking, paddling or belting. However, there are other old-fashion punishments, like doing lines, time-out, grounding, early bedtime, mouth washing, kneeling, or corner time. In the more sexual versions of domestic discipline, rough sex, oral sex or anal sex may be used as punishment, perhaps in addition to a beating. The punishments are real. They entails enough pain, discomfort and humiliation that the submissive is motivated to avoid them. Still, the submissive derives a deep psychological satisfaction from the idea of being punished. The physical nature of the punishment fulfills a more or less covert masochism. Conversely, the dominant is a sadist who enjoys punishing the submissive, all the while claiming that “this hurts me more than it does you.” The ambiguity of enjoying while hating the punishment, and all the drama that surrounds the sentencing, preparation, administration and aftercare, are a big part of the allure of domestic discipline. Ethical concerns with domestic discipline Like with any other form of BDSM, the ethics of domestic discipline should be defined by the parameters of safe, sane and consensual. The problem is that, since the people that practice it reject mainstream BDSM culture and organizations, there may be no incentives to follow these rules. Although domestic discipline looks quite mild, in fact it could be considered as a form of consensual non-consent, inasmuch as the submissive consent once and for all to the rules and associated punishments. Moreover, she may not have the option to withdraw her consent at any time (for example, with a safeword) or to re-negotiate these rules. The fact that all the action happens in the privacy of a home, in the context of a long-term relationship, makes any abuse easier to hide and harder to escape. Spankings and other traditional forms of beating can be painful, but are physically safe. However, if the beating steps outside of the ritual forms to include pushing, kicking, punching and choking, we are in the territory of physical abuse because of the risk of permanent damage. Regarding sanity, such long-term, ongoing dominance relationship carry psychological risks like coercion, gaslighting and harm to the self-esteem. The fact that the couple is living together and probably has merged finances can introduce an element of coercion. If the wife decides to stop the domestic disciple, will this entail a break-up or a divorce? Will she be able to become financially independent, in this case? The only way to avoid a suspicion of coercion is if the viability of the couple does not depend on continuing the domestic discipline, or if both partners can break up without undue financial duress. Some couples practicing domestic discipline may not live together. Others may adopt the ethical guidelines of the BDSM community. Hence, my concerns about abuse may be misplaced. However, there is a form of domestic discipline that is much more likely to lead to mistreatment, not just of women, but also children. Christian domestic discipline Christian domestic discipline is similar to domestic discipline, but with a religious twist and increased ethical concerns. Again, there is a radical rejection of the fashions and norms of mainstream BDSM. Christian disciplinarians see themselves as completely different from “those perverts.” Instead, they build a sophisticated rationalization for why the husband has to spank his wife, using carefully chosen passages from the Bible. Christian domestic discipline is based on an essentialist ideology, consisting of the belief that God ordains that the wife has to obey the husband, and has to be disciplined by him. Here are two websites promoting this belief (1, 2). Unlike regular domestic discipline, in which roles are independent of gender, in Christian domestic discipline the HOH is always a man who subjugates his wife. Still, Christian domestic discipline uses the same terminology and methods as regular domestic discipline. There is some overlap between the two. Sometimes, domestic discipline looks like a conservative version of BDSM. Since BDSM is intrinsically linked to the liberal sex-positive ideology, there is a need to build a right-wing alternative as an outlet for the sadomasochistic desires of some conservatives. Christian domestic discipline is big on punishments, which are (surprise! surprise!) spankings, more often than not. However, the obvious sexual connotations of a spanking are explained away. In any case, since part of this ideology is that the wife has to serve the husband sexually, even if the spanking is sexual, that shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, there is much more to Christian domestic discipline than spankings. The woman has to be truly submissive to the HOH: obey him in everything, cook for him, keep the house clean and take care of the children. She is not allowed to argue with him. He is the true and only master of the house. Christian domestic discipline is part of the larger Christian Patriarchal movement, which defends traditional gender roles in and out of the house, sees God as masculine and men as natural leaders, and fights feminism and LGTB rights. Ethical concerns with Christian domestic discipline There is a lot of push-back against the obviously sexist, patriarchal and regressive ideology of Christian domestic discipline, sometimes even from Christian conservatives, who see it as the hypocritical cover for sadomasochism that it really is. However, unlike conservatives, I am all for sadomasochism and sexual freedom. People should be free to do whatever they want in their beds and in their homes, as long as it is consensual and between adults. Therefore, if the wife gives informed, free consent to Christian domestic discipline, there should be no ethical concerns. Yes, the hypocrisy of practicing sadomasochism while condemning BDSM and sex-positivity disgusts me, but religious freedom allows people to believe whatever they want. If Christian domestic discipline is the mere juxtaposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs (which people are free to have) with sadomasochism (which people should be free to practice), then it is not unethical. At least, in principle. In practice, the concerns I mentioned above regarding consent, safety and sanity in domestic discipline are greatly amplified in its Christian version. Is a wife immersed in a fundamentalist environment really able to give informed, revocable consent? When servitude, obedience and physical punishments are added to a religion that sees women as inferior to men, does this not have an effect on self-esteem? Is there no coercion, considering that the woman is financially and emotionally dependent on the husband? Could she be able to escape this situation if she decides that domestic discipline is no longer for her? Bigger concerns arise when we consider that the children from these couples are home-schooled and subject to the same discipline as the wife. People who practice domestic discipline should be aware that spankings are sexual, so giving them to children amount to nothing less than child sexual abuse. Children cannot give consent to them, and the lifelong trauma caused by sexual and physical abuse of children is extremely well-documented.

After a spanking seasoned with chili peppers, Cindy finds herself in a weird predicament. I have her bent over the black leather bench. Naked. Blindfolded. Arms stretched, tied to the other side of the bench. Ankles shackled to the leg posts, slightly spreading her legs. I work her perky bottom with my hands. At first, I spank it lightly, warming it up. It was chilly outside, when we walked from the car to the party, and the skin of her butt is cold. She moans softly. What I’m doing feels nice. Let her enjoy it. I stop to caress her bottom. It has warmed up, taking a light pink hue. I take one step back and lift my arm high in the air. I spank her hard now, rhythmically, about one stroke per second. Her breathing gets heavier. Her moans return, this time with the high pitch of pain mixed with pleasure. I take my time, pausing every now and then to enjoy the increased warmth of her bottom. She soaks it all in, now deep in sub space. I decide that I have achieved what I wanted. Her buns are all red, particularly in her sweet spot, just above the crease between her buns and her thighs. Time for the next phase. I rummage inside the toy bag until I find my pocket knife, latex gloves and a small tupperware. I put on the gloves, open the container and take out a serrano chili pepper, fiery red. I cut it lengthwise with the knife. I wonder if she can smell the pungent aroma. I take one half of the pepper a start rubbing it on her right bun. She tenses with the unexpected contact, but then relaxes. The pepper feels moist and cool. Her left buttock receives the other half of the pepper. In the toy bag I find some skin lotion, which I also rub on her bottom. More coolness. She is probably wondering why I’m treating her so nicely. I grab a roll of paper towels, and tear one off to wipe her bottom clean of lotion and a few pepper seeds that had stuck to it. I put the pepper away in its container, and peel off my gloves. I unclip her hands and ankles. As she stands up, I take off her leather blindfold. She gives me a puzzled look. “Are we done already?” “For now” I answer cryptically. I pick up her panties. “Put them on.” They are white cotton panties that cover most of her butt. I chose them myself. I make her walk in front of me, going nowhere in particular. A few looks follow us. She looks sexy in her white panties and leather cuffs and collar. Finally, it happens. She slides a finger under her panties, separating the fabric from the skin. She turns to me with a suspicious look. “What have you done to me?” I smile. I walk over and hug her, sliding my hands inside her panties, cupping her buns. She opens her mouth in a pain grimace. “Ow, ow, ow! It burns!” “I know.” I release her. “Walk.” She takes two steps forward. She grabs her panties again, fanning her bottom with the fabric. She gives me a pleading look. “What?” I smile. “Please, Sir…” She looks surprised and confused. “Sir, I don’t know what you have done to me, but my butt feels on fire!” “And?” “Sir, may I please take off my panties?” “Go ahead. But don’t tell anybody what is happening. Understand?” She nods and quickly steps out of her panties. I stuff them in my pocket. I put my arm around her waist. “Let’s go to the foyer.” As we walk, I occasionally slip a hand over her butt. She pants and dances a little jig of pain until I take my hand away. Richard and Martha are gathered in the foyer. “I just gave Cindy a good spanking. Do you want to feel her butt?” Richard is always ready to put his paws on Cindy. He quickly steps behind her. Cindy looks me in the eye, trying not to react as Richard massages her burning bottom. After a while, she can’t help it anymore. She kicks her feet on the floor and moans. “What’s the matter?” Richard steps back, surprised. “I guess the spanking was a bit harsh,” I say. “I want my turn, too!” says Martha. “Martha, please!” says Cindy, linking her fingers together as in prayer. But that only arouses Martha’s sadistic nature. She knows that something is cooking. “Poor girl, what has he done to your pretty, perky bottom?” she says as she caresses, squeezes and pats. Cindy lowers her head, making her wavy hair fall over her face to hide her blushing. She bits her lips to stop the moaning. But she can’t avoid stamping her feet and doing her cute little dance of pain. She still holds her hands together to stop herself from brushing away Martha’s hand. That would have gotten her in trouble. Martha won’t quit. She can see what she is doing to Cindy, and she’s enjoying it. I finally take pity and pull Cindy away for her. “That was worse than a caning!” Cindy whispers in my ear. “I know, but I really enjoyed it! Thank you for taking it so graciously.” We go back in. I sit on sofa by the wall. She sits by my side. And bounces back up almost immediately. “Please, Sir, can you stop it now? Please, make it stop!” I grab her hands stand up, giving her my sadistic smile. “There is no way to make it stop.” “No? How long will it last?” “Tomorrow your butt will still feel warm, but it won’t hurt.” “But… how am I going to sleep?” “On your belly, I guess.” “But… I won’t be able to sit… Or wear my panties. How are we going to get home?” “You don’t have to put your panties back on. Stay naked under your coat. And you can ride in the car as you find it most comfortable. Maybe kneeling on the floor?” “I don’t see how that’s going to work out… Maybe we should wait.” ‘No, let’s go home! I want to fuck that pretty bottom while is still hot!”

Prostate stimulation produces distinct forms of pleasure and orgasm, but requires breaking powerful cultural taboos. Men take for granted that our only source of pleasure is the penis, and that the male orgasm is limited to the few seconds it takes to ejaculate. However, in the male body there are sources of pleasure other than the penis, and orgasms other than ejaculation. Prostate stimulation can produce intense pleasure, even leading to an orgasm that is described by those who have experienced it as deeper and longer-lasting than the orgasm produced arising from the penis. If the G-spot is or female prostate - the Skene's gland -, then the prostatic orgasm in men would be analogous to the vaginal orgasm in women, while penile orgasm would be equivalent to clitoral orgasm. What is the prostate? The prostate is a gland located between the root of the penis, the urinary bladder and the rectum. It is traversed by the urethra. Its function is to secrete a liquid that constitutes 30% of the semen. The rest is produced by the seminal vesicles. Semen serves to keep alive the spermatozoids, which are cells produced in the testicles. During fertilization, one of the spermatozoids in the semen fuses with the oocyte produced by the woman to give rise to the embryo. Half of the genetic material (the DNA of the chromosomes) of the new living being is provided by the spermatozoid. During ejaculation, the pelvic floor muscles surrounding the prostate and the seminal vesicles contract powerfully, sending semen into the penis. The pleasure that occurs during ejaculation comes, in part, from this squeezing of the prostate. Perhaps this is why massaging the prostate produces pleasure. However, the sensation of stimulating the prostate is quite different from that of stimulating the penis. Why men reject sexual stimuli other than the penis The only most effective way to stimulate the prostate is from the rectum, which requires anal penetration. This is a significant psychological barrier for many men. There is a strong taboo against a man being penetrated. This is considered something that is done only to women, so men are feminized and emasculated if they are penetrated. Patriarchal culture grants privileges to men, as long as they behave according to certain norms of masculinity. They need to "be manly ": be strong, tough, fight with courage, and work hard. They also need to give up feminine forms of pleasure. A man is expected to obtain his pleasure during sex by penetrating the woman with a large and firm penis, ending with a powerful ejaculation. Pleasure that comes from erogenous zones other than the penis, such as the buttocks, nipples and anus, is considered feminine and therefore forbidden to the male. This cultural taboo goes even deeper. It associates penetration with submission and defeat. This is transmitted through well-known expressions: “getting fuck in the ass”, “up your ass”, and “fuck you” are synonyms of defeat and subjugation. In patriarchal societies, effeminate men are denied masculine privilege and relegated to a status even lower than women. But gays are precisely those who are most familiar with alternative sources of male pleasure: the nipples, the anus and the prostate. Hence, enjoying pleasure from anal sex and the prostate requires recognizing the privileges and prohibitions that locks men up in a psychological prison, away from certain ways of being and feeling. For this reason, being penetrated can help us, not only to accept new forms of pleasure, but also to liberate ourselves and opening up to other ways of understanding masculinity. Men can also receive anal sex Fortunately, sex-positive culture, following the footsteps of the gay movement, have begun to break through these sexists prejudices. Knowledge of the erotic properties of the prostate dates back to ancient times. More recently, it spread among gays and was later picked up by dominant women and submissive men. Nowadays it is also practiced in heterosexual, vanilla couples, without any connotation of dominance-submission. Anal penetration of women is a common sexual fantasy in both men and women. Many women find anal sex pleasurable. The same goes for men. How to stimulate the prostate The prostate can be found by inserting a finger into the anus. To avoid fissures and hemorrhoids, use lubricant for any anal penetration. If we feel the anterior wall of the rectum, we will find a lump the size of an egg or a walnut. That's the prostate. At first, pressing on the prostate produces an uncomfortable sensation. It is common to feel the urge to urinate, because the pressure in the prostate is transmitted to the urinary bladder, where nerve endings in its walls interpret that pressure as the bladder being full. The same thing happens with the stimulation of the G-spot in women: it is also read as an urge to urinate. It is better to massage the prostate gently, in a relaxed and sexually exciting environment. We can accompany it with stimulating the penis, nipples and other erogenous zones. You should have a spirit of adventure to face the taboos I mentioned before. Some men find it helpful to adopt a submissive role, although this is not necessary to enjoy anal sex. It may be necessary for the first tries to be short, and to train the prostate in successive sessions in which the intensity and duration of the massage is increased. Little by little, we develop the nerve pathways that send these sensations to the brain, making them more and more pleasurable. I would advise exploring these sensations by yourself at first, in mindful, deliberate masturbation sessions, with time to spare. You can start with your finger and then with a suitable dildo. It is best not to have high expectations at first. You have to consider it as a training that requires time, patience and perseverance. As the prostate becomes more sensitive, we will feel the desire to stimulate it more vigorously. The pleasure from the prostate does not require an erection and can actually suppress an erection. So, not having one shouldn’t worry you. Stimulating the penis at the same time can help us get excited. But it can also be distracting, drawing our attention to the pleasure channel we've been using all along, instead of to the new sensations we want to open up to. The prostate is not the only source of pleasure in anal sex. The anus is also very erogenous, as is the part of the rectum next to the anal sphincter, especially on its anterior face. Butt plugs and dildoes Stimulating the prostate with a finger is difficult and tiring, since it has to be inserted deeply into the rectum. It’s better to use stimulators designed for this. Some have a special curvature to go around the prostate. Others are designed to move when the anus is squeezed. Butt plugs have an oblong, conical, or pear-shaped part that goes into the rectum, a narrowing for the anus, and a wide or elongated base that stays outside to allow retrieval. They can be of many materials. There are soft ones, made of rubber or silicone, and hard ones, made of plastic, metal or glass. They are inserted for a certain time, dilating of the anus and progressively stimulating the rectum and prostate. Some butt plugs are designed to move when the anus is contracted. Others are electric, stimulating the prostate with vibrations. Dildos are penis-shaped, straight or curved, without a constriction for the anus. They are designed for fucking, that is, to be used with a back-and-forth motion. This produces a lively stimulation of the prostate. Like butt plugs, they come in many shapes, sizes and materials. Pegging: fucking a man with a strap-on Dan Savage is a sex-positive writer who produces The Savage Lovecast podcast. One of his specialties is to create new words for sexual practices, which he requests from his audience. One of the terms invented this way is pegging. It’s a sexual act in which a woman fucks a man using a dildo attached to her pubis with a strap-on - a harness that surrounds the hips and thighs. There is a wide variety of harnesses and dildos, which can be bought in sex shops and on the internet. They are also used in lesbian sex. In pegging, the pleasure of prostate stimulation is combined with the allure of reversing sexual roles - the woman penetrates and the man is penetrated. This can happen within a BDSM session where the man is submissive, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Pegging can be practiced in all the positions for fucking: missionary, doggy style, sideways, scissors, etc. Some produce more effective stimulation of the prostate, but it can also become too intense. They should be explored to find the most satisfactory. Milking A special form of prostate stimulation is called milking. It is usually practiced on submissive men. It consists of massaging the prostate continuously for a long period of time, from 20 to 45 minutes. The dominatrix does not allow ejaculation or a prostate orgasm to occur, but keeps the submissive in a continuous state of sexual arousal. The erection usually goes away after a few minutes. As it progresses, the penis begins to release semen in small amounts, continuously; hence the name. The objective of milking is not to produce pleasure or an orgasm, although it can be quite a pleasant. On the contrary, the frustration of not being able to ejaculate, together with the humiliation of being penetrated and giving up control over one’s pleasure, leads to a deep state of submission. It’s mind-fucking, one of the most sophisticated techniques of domination-submission. In 24/7 dominance-submission relationships, milking is often practiced together with chastity - depriving a man of ejaculating for long periods of time, sometimes using penis cages that prevent erections. This greatly increases the frustration, humiliation and submission produced by milking. Prostatic orgasm There are men who claim to have achieved very intense and prolonged orgasms just by stimulating the prostate. These orgasms feel very different from those obtained by stimulating the penis. This supports the idea that there are different clitoral and vaginal orgasms in women. Prostatic orgasms are sometimes accompanied by ejaculation, but in others there is a very slow release of semen, like what happens with milking. Achieving orgasm just by stimulating the prostate is difficult. Often, it is necessary to accompany the stimulation of the prostate with that of the penis. This joined stimulation produces orgasms more intense than usual. Conclusion There are always new things to explore in our sex lives. We need a spirit of adventure to break cultural barriers that have been imposed on us since our childhood. The prize is not only pleasure, but freeing ourselves from psychological barriers.

The principles of sex-positive culture are interdependent and logically anchored in personal freedom and autonomy Sex-positive culture arose from the sexual liberation of the 60s and the Feminists Sex Wars that started in the 80s and persist until today. This protracted confrontation between radical feminists and sex-positive feminists gave rise to a larger sex-positive culture that eventually spilled out of feminism into the general society. Sex-positive ideas are based on the fundamental principle of personal autonomy, which states that everyone has the right to decide what to do with his/her body and mind. This is not an absolute principle, but one that need to be balanced with the rights and safety of others. It can be overridden by some collective goods, like drives to vaccinate or quarantine people in epidemics. Still, these should always be extenuating circumstances. The simple will of the majority cannot erase personal autonomy. That would be a dictatorship of the majority. A democratic system is not just one in which decisions are made by voting or by elected representatives; it should include respect for the rights of minorities and the personal autonomy of individuals. This is what we call freedom. I write this article as a compendium of the main ideas of sex-positivity. I also want to show how these ideas derive logically from the principle of personal autonomy and empirical facts about human sexuality. 1) Sex is a human right We need to start by recognizing that sex is a biological drive in humans as powerful as our need to breathe, drink, eat, be warm and be safe. Since these biological needs are recognized as basic human rights, the right to safe and consensual sex should also be a human right. 2) Sexual desire and sexual pleasure are intrinsic goods Sex should not be considered just as a need to be satiated, but as something positive that contributes greatly to enriching our lives. Sexual desire should be valued, not considered something that needs to be satisfied in the most expedient way. Since sex is good in itself, it does not need to be justified in base of anything else, like reproduction or strengthening a relationship. Science has shown that, in humans, sex is not exclusively for reproduction, but has been co-opted to promote bonding. Evidence for this are numerous anomalies of human sexuality when compared with that of other mammals. Therefore, the claim by some religions and philosophies that sex is only ethical when its goal is for reproduction is based on false ideas about human nature. Sex-positive culture also rejects the idea that sex is only ethical when done by people who are married, in a relationship, or who love each other. That would render masturbation and casual sex unethical. Quite the opposite: since sex is a human right, it should not be forbidden to people who are unable or unwilling to form a relationship. 3) All sexual acts - vaginal, oral, anal, kinky, and other - are equally valid Since sex is good by itself and doesn’t have to lead to reproduction, all forms of sex that are safe and consensual are valid. Besides, multiple forms of sexual expression are good because variety enriches human life. Just like we like to drink different drinks and eat different foods, it’s okay for us to enjoy different forms of sex. 4) Homosexual sex is valid and should not be persecuted The fact that sex is intrinsically good justifies sexual acts between people of the same sex. Conversely, repressing homosexual sex is unethical because it violates personal autonomy. This is a main point of confrontation between sex-positive culture and social and religious conservatives. It is not logical to defend freedom for some activities and not for sexuality. 5) Sexual repression is sexual abuse Sexual repression is unethical because it infringes on freedom and personal autonomy. If sex is a human right and an intrinsic good, it is wrong to take it away from anybody. 6) Rape and sexual abuse are crimes that produce enormous psychological trauma The principle of personal autonomy shows that rape and sexual abuse are profoundly unethical. Furthermore, we know that rape and sexual abuse produce a particularly nasty form of psychological trauma. Therefore, consent is paramount in any sexual activity. Since there are many subtle forms of coercion, it is important to establish clearly the details and limits of consent. Another concern is safety from sexuality-transmitted diseases (STDs), pregnancy and emotional trauma. However, personal autonomy also dictates that people should be free to engage in unsafe behavior as long as they don’t compromise the safety of others. Otherwise, we would give the state the right to prohibit any unsafe behavior, like practicing risky sports. Still, if we place other in danger - for example, by withholding information about a STD - then we violate their personal autonomy. 7) Sex between adults and minors is also traumatic and criminal Sex between adults and children or teenagers is also traumatic. Besides, having sex is a decision with important physical and emotional consequences, which require maturity. Still, children have their own sexuality. They masturbate and even interact sexuality with other children. This should be allowed, otherwise we risk traumatizing the child with repression and sexual shame. Of course, this raises concerns about consent - a child could sexually abuse another child - and safety - physical and emotional harm produced by sexual games. The best way to address these problems is by giving children sexual education from an early age. 8) Reproductive rights are paramount Although sex is not exclusively for reproduction, pregnancy can be an undesired consequence of heterosexual sex. Today’s sexual freedom was enabled by the discovery of safe and efficacious contraceptives in the 50s and 60s. These should be available to everybody, as should be fact-based education about their safety, efficacy and personal indications. Since women have a right to body autonomy, they should not be compelled to carry an unwanted pregnancy. The idea that the embryo and the fetus are persons is a religious belief and should not be imposed on people who do not wish to share it. Therefore, abortion should be available and safe by being performed by medical professionals with the means to do it safely. The converse side of reproductive rights is that people should be allowed to have children when they wish to, and to have access to means to fight infertility and to adoption. This is a point of contention with religious conservatives, who want to ban procedures like in vitro fertilization. Conservatives also want to ban homosexuals from adoption. Although radical and sex-positive feminists agree about contraception and abortion, radical feminists want to ban surrogate pregnancies. As with prostitution, women should be free to use their bodies to carry a fetus for other people, and to be paid for this service. Otherwise, this would infringe on their right to body autonomy. 9) Masturbation is ethical and a great way to learn about your sexuality This is another consequence of the principle of personal autonomy and sex being intrinsically good. Religious conservatives have spread many lies to convince people that masturbation is unhealthy. Quite the opposite: masturbation is one of the safest sexual act, without risks of STDs, pregnancy or emotional trauma. Masturbation is also a good way to learn about one’s own sexual desire and pleasure. It prepares young people for healthy and satisfactory sexual encounters. 10) Pornography is ethical Most people these days use pornography to masturbate. Pornography has been one of the main point of contention between radical feminists (also called anti-porn feminists) and sex-positive feminists. In the 70s and 80s, radical feminists claimed that pornography was used only by men, that it was degrading to women, and that it exploited its performers. These claims were proven wrong when women started watching pornography and doing their own pornography, sometimes for money, sometimes just for fun. Exhibitionism turned out to be part of the sexuality of a lot of women. This came to light when social norms against it started to be eroded and the internet and cell phones allowed to anonymously post sexy pictures. Pornography entails the personal autonomy of two kinds of people: those watching it and those producing it. Repressing it violates the rights of these two classes of people. Of course, lack of consent and exploitation can infringe the rights of pornography models. Still, exploitation is not unique to this business, and it is made worse when pornography is banned, persecuted or stigmatized. Consumers of pornography can make sure that they are not exploiting the performers by paying for it and obtaining it through legitimate channels. This is a battle that conservatives and radical feminists have largely lost. But they are not giving up. Their latest push is to depict pornography as unhealthy and leading to addiction. This should remind us of the lies about masturbation. While it is true that some people develop compulsory behavior towards pornography, this is also true of other activities like eating, drinking and gaming. But compulsory behavior and addiction are different things. Compulsion is a in pre-existing problem in these people; it is not caused by the things they obsess about. 11) Prostitution and sex-work are ethical and should not be persecuted Prostitution has become the main point of contention between radical feminists and sex-positive culture. Together with pornography and BDSM (bondage, dominance-submission, sadism and masochism), it made the triad that radical feminism started fighting in the 70s and became the subject of the Feminist Sex Wars. Unfortunately, in this issue radical feminists won their largest victories. They were able to impose in many countries the Nordic Model against prostitution - based in persecuting the clients and not the prostitutes. Allied with conservatives, they spread the lie that prostitution and sex trafficking are the same thing. Personal autonomy entails that any adult should be able to engage in consensual sex. Whether the sex is paid for should be irrelevant. Repressing consensual sex violates personal autonomy, and therefore is unethical. Therefore, not only prostitution is ethical, but prohibiting, persecuting or stigmatizing it is unethical. These are the tenets of many sex-positive thinkers and the organizations that prostitutes are creating to defend themselves. The internet and modern sexual practices have blurred the lines between prostitution, pornography and other monetized sexual activities. Nowadays we have escorts, sugar babies, gigolos, cam girls, phone sex, professional Dominatrices, professional Dominants, professional submissives, financial domination, Only Fans, erotic writing, lap dances, and many other ways of monetizing sex. That’s why the all-encompassing term sex work is much more accurate than prostitution. And that’s why the drive to make sex work illegal will ultimately fail. 12) BDSM is a valid form of sexual expression Sadomasochism, nowadays properly known as BDSM, was one of the three main targets of radical feminism in the 70s. It was the one that directly caused the Feminist Sex War, when the BDSM lesbian organization Samois rebelled against radical feminism. But Samois was just one among several BDSM organizations that starting sprouting in the 70s and flourished in the 80s: The Eulenspiegel Society in New York City, the Black Rose in Washington, DC, Threshold in Los Angeles, Society of Janus in San Francisco, and others. BDSM was an easy target because dominating others seems to be antithetical to personal autonomy. The desire to give or receive pain, or to dominate or being dominated, also seems unhealthy. Because of that, BDSM groups set to work during the 80s on defining the terms in which BDSM was ethical. The principles of “safe, sane and consensual” were established, as well as devices like negotiation, limits, safewords and aftercare, to safeguard these principles. In fact, similar devices are being adopted nowadays to ensure safety and consent in vanilla sex. Basically, kinky desires and the ways to satisfy them are as legitimate as any other sex acts. The principle of personal autonomy applies equally to them, within the limits of safety and consent. In fact, these limits have been explored in more depth in the realm of BDSM than of any other sexual activity. 13) Polyamory, swinging and open relationships are ethical alternatives to monogamy Ethical non-monogamy has old roots, going all the way to the writings of psychologist Eric Fromm and novelist Aldous Huxley. Contemporary books about ethical non-monogamy and polyamory include The Ethical Slut, More Than Two, Opening Up and Polysecure. The somewhat chaotic free love movement of the 60s crystalized of several distinct forms of non-monogamy: Swinging is when couples have sex with other people or couples, usually without romantic involvement. An open relationship is when people in a couple seek sex independently of each, also without romantic involvements with the outside partners. In polyamory, both sex and falling in love are allowed, giving raise to triads, quads and polycules involving complex romantic configurations. Cuckolds fetishize adultery by having a partner (the cuck) watch while the other partner (the hot wife) has sex with a stranger (the bull). Relationship anarchy seeks non-normative sexual and romantic relationships without hierarchy, possession and control. Again, the principle of personal autonomy establishes that there is nothing unethical about sex and love between multiple partners. The existence of various forms of ethical non-monogamy contest the idea that humans are naturally monogamous. Jealousy is seen as a culturally created emotion that can be overcome and even turned into its opposite, compersion: feeling happy when our loved one is happy and is loved by others. These new forms of relationships are raising awareness that monogamy is a set of cultural norms and laws as oppressive as patriarchy and heteronormativity. Infringing monogamous laws can get you killed in many countries as surely as being homosexual. Even in advanced Western societies, being non-monogamous is more stigmatized than being gay. It can cause you to lose your children, your social status and your job. Questioning monogamy is lowering the stigma attached to adultery. There is an increasing realization that being able to engage in ethical non-monogamy is a privilege not accessible to everybody. When people are trapped in a sexless relationship and their partner does not allow them to practice non-monogamy, adultery can be the best of all the bad options. 14) Trans rights Your sexuality is not just what you do, it’s also who you are. Nowhere is this more clear than in people who experience sexual dysphoria: the feeling that your assigned gender is not what you want to be. Modern biomedical technology has made it possible to change the sex of people through hormone replacement and surgery. There is much controversy about the difference between sex - which is biology-based - and gender - which is culture-based. However, science shows that many biological sex differences are mediated by the sex hormones. Hence, hormone replacement largely accomplishes a change of sex, which can be completed with surgery. Being able to choose your sex and gender represents an enhancement of human agency. Denying it is another violation of the principle of personal autonomy. And yet, the rights of transsexual people have become the latest battle between radical feminists and sex-positive feminists. And, one more time, radical feminists ally themselves with social conservatives in this battle. It seems that radical feminism is not as progressive as it pretends to be, but an oppressive ideology that, time and time again, opposes the freedom of individuals in the name of questionable dogmas. Conclusions Sex-positive culture has unmasked the many layers of oppression that surround human sexuality and romantic love. It empowers us by naming homophobia, transphobia, slut-shaming, kink-shaming and oppressive monogamy, denouncing them as unethical. It has placed consent and safety at the forefront and center of discussions of sex. This list ended up being much longer than I thought. And I am probably leaving some things out. If so, please point them out in the comments. In any case, I hope this list is a good place to start. Copyright 2022 Hermes Solenzol

Happiness is not pleasure, joy, love, or the absence of suffering. Happiness is not an emotion, but a state of being. Should we be happy? Happiness has a bad press, particularly among intellectuals. Most religions tell us that we shouldn’t look for happiness in our current life. There is too much suffering in this world; what we should do is to live a righteous life and wait for a reward of incommensurable happiness after we die. Even Buddhism is based on the idea that life is full of suffering, that can only be remedied by achieving Nirvana. This would involve a lot of toil and meditation, and probably will only come after several reincarnations. Philosophies are not better. The ancient Stoics and Epicureans taught that looking for happiness is futile. The most we could hope for is to avoid suffering by reaching a state of equanimity called ataraxia. Other ancient philosophers, like Aristotle and Plato, emphasized cultivating Virtue. More modern philosophers focused on duty or social order, when they were not utterly pessimistic. There is a reason for that. In the ancient world of limited resources and constant warfare, you had to keep the populace in a state of resignation. If people thought too much about happiness, they may decide to do something about their misery, which would inevitably lead to rebellion in a struggle to achieve a more just apportioning of resources. With the advent of democracy, education and the ideal of social justice during the Enlightenment, the goal of being happy irrupted into collective consciousness. The “pursit of happiness” was written into the Constitution of the United States. That was the first time that happiness was officially recognized as a goal of the state. And yet, many voices today criticize pursuing happiness as an unworthy goal. Chasing happiness is hedonism, a dirty word. They warn us that it would lead us to craving and perpetual dissatisfaction. There is also a lot of confusion about what happiness actually is. After thinking a lot about this, I want to examine what happiness is, and is not. Is pleasure happiness? The first confusion is between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure - like its opposite, pain - is primarily sensations and the emotions associated with those sensations. When we hear the word ‘pleasure’, we immediately think of sexual pleasure, perhaps because it is the most repressed. But there are many other physical pleasures: eating, drinking, being caressed, exercising. The satisfaction of our biological drives to survive and reproduce is pleasurable. But there are other forms of pleasure that gradually move us from the terrain of the purely physical to the mental realm. Music, for example, is one of the pleasures that has been greatly amplified in modern society. It’s something really basic: hearing a nice sound. And yet, it can be educated and developed to evoke the most sublime of mental states. The same can be said about reading, watching movies, and enjoying other forms of art. We live in the most hedonistic societies ever. Never before have so many pleasures been available to so many people with so little effort. Songs, movies, TV shows, books, photographs, paintings, dances, and other pleasurable things can be found everywhere. And this is undeniably good, isn’t it? Why would living a rich life be a bad thing? The philosophers frown and shake their heads. “You should not pursue pleasure,” they say. “It would leave you unsatisfied, empty and full of cravings. Pleasure is addictive, like a drug.” There is some truth is that. If all we wanted is pleasure, why don’t we just shoot heroin, which produces the most intense pleasure of all? Surely, pursuing pleasure cannot be the whole story. There has to be more to life. However, it is not true that pleasure inevitably entails dissatisfaction and craving. Precisely by studying the effects of addictive drugs, neuroscience has revealed that pleasure and craving are entirely different things. You can enjoy something pleasurable in a detached way, welcoming it when it comes and letting it go when it stops. When pleasure stops being scarce, we are much less likely to crave it. Conversely, we can crave things that are not intrinsically pleasurable, like revenge, fame, virtue or money. The main difference between pleasure and happiness is that pleasure is something that we experience in the moment, while happiness seems to be something that applies to our entire life. Another difference is that, while pleasure is just sensations and emotions, happiness seems to go deeper than that. But what does that mean? Is joy happiness? Another thing that gets confused with happiness is joy. Joy is an emotion, one of the six emotions that psychologist Paul Ekman identified in the facial expression of people and animals: joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise. Joy is often the result of pleasure, but can be experienced independently of it. We can see joy in many mammals - think of a dog running free in a park. But joy is particularly rich in us humans, manifesting in our ability to smile and laugh, and branching into other complex emotions like humor, religious devotion and ecstasy. Joy is wonderful, and is hard to conceive happiness without it, but is not the same thing as happiness. By its nature, joy is energy-intensive and short-lived. Any parent knows that a child running around in a joyous state will soon be crying. Joy has an uncanny tendency to crash into sadness, its opposite. And yet, sadness does not imply unhappiness. Otherwise, why would be watch sad movies, read sad stories, listen to sad songs? We can be happy while being sad. Perhaps it is possible to be unhappy despite feeling joy. Here is a novel idea. Despite what most people think, happiness is not an emotion. Happiness is a state of being, something that affects the entirety of who we are. Suffering - the opposite of happiness - is likewise a state of being, and not an emotion. Let’s explore these ideas in more depth. Is love happiness? Love is the most hyped emotion in modern culture. Just like when we mention pleasure, sexual pleasure comes to mind; when we talk about love, most people think about romantic love. The idealization of romantic love is one of the most basic characteristics of our civilization. And yet, in the past, romantic love was not considered necessary for marriage. Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, thousands of romance novels, and Disney movies have created a mass of people who crave romance and suffer without it. Love is not limited to romance. There are many other kinds of love, some undervalued: for our parents, for our children, for our friends. Love has also been sublimated by religion and politics into love for God and Nation. So much so that many are willing to die and kill for it. Then, the psychedelic explorers of the 60s came up with the idea that Love is the essence of the Universe and able to conquer anything. “All you need is love,” sang The Beatles. It has become impossible to separate this basic emotion from all the cultural baggage that we have attached to it. We are social animals, incapable to thrive in isolation. Science has shown that healthy bonds and a good social environment are required for good health. So, yes, love is an important ingredient for happiness. But, like it happens with joy, it’s not the whole story. Is happiness lack of suffering, ataraxia, or equanimity? However, the fact that emotions like joy and love are not sufficient to achieve happiness doesn’t mean that I agree with the philosophers who say that the ideal state is ataraxia, a state of equanimity where there is neither suffering nor happiness. Positive emotions - like pleasure, joy, love, awe, kindness, curiosity and pride - are necessary for a happy life. We don’t need to feel them all the time, just enough to live a satisfactory life. Conversely, negative emotions - like sadness, fear, anger, shame, guilt and envy - do not necessarily detract from our happiness. But if they become predominant and get out of control, they will surely make us miserable. Emotional hygiene is a requisite of a happy life. Happiness is not just the absence of suffering. If that were true, why not just kill ourselves? When we are dead, there is no suffering. However, we all have the strong intuition that life is worth living, it has to be worth living. Not having that feeling is considered a disease: depression. I think that, just like there is existential angst - a basic suffering intrinsic to just existing -, there is also existential happiness - a basic happiness that comes with just being alive. And existential happiness, in most cases, beats existential angst. Happiness and extended consciousness Let’s go back to the idea that happiness is a state of being. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, in his book The Feeling of What Happens, proposed that the human mind has a unique property he calls extended consciousness. It consists of being aware that we are a self (the extended self) that has existed in the past and will continue to exist in the future. Although animals have memories, they do not have this sense of being a self living through time. Based on research done by neuroscientist Bud Craig, I think that the emergence of extended consciousness in humans is due to the development of a new part of the brain cortex called the anterior insula, which is able to create hypothetical states of the body and hypothetical emotional states. The anterior insula does the thinking of “if this were to happen, this is how I would feel.” Craig thinks that the neural network formed by the anterior insula, the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex gives rise to human consciousness. While emotions like pleasure and joy exist only in the present, extended consciousness gives us a window to our entire life. What matters is not how we feel now, but how we felt before and how we are going to feel in the future. An animal in pain experiences it as it happens now, while a human in pain remembers all the pain he felt before and worries about the pain he will experience in the future. We are also aware that we will eventually die, and this produces an existential dread that we carry all our lives. Therefore, human happiness and human suffering have a depth that they don’t have in animals. Is happiness eudemonia and Virtue? The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers defined happiness as a life worth living, or eudaimonia, which is achieved by practicing Virtue (arête) and ethical wisdom (phronesis). This brings a new perspective about what happiness is. It is not just the emotions that we feel in the present, or the emotions that we felt in the past or may feel in the future. Happiness has a cognitive component, a series of ethical values that orient our decisions and determine how we feel about ourselves. According to this view, happiness is taking a look at who we are, and finding it satisfactory. If we hate our lives and despise ourselves for what we do, we suffer. Ethics, knowledge and values determine if we are happy or not. While I agree that living according to our values is an essential component of a happy life, that is not the whole story. We can be ethical and still be miserable. A certain measure of pleasure, joy and love is required to be happy. We need to find a balance. We should also be aware of what I call the Trap of the Ego. The ego is built during our formative years by two powerful opposing emotions: shame and pride. The praise we get when we do good things and the scorn we get when we fail or behave badly build inside our minds, creating an internal judge, the interiorization of all the figures of authority we encountered. This is our Ego. It drives us to achieve more and more, to avoid failure at all costs, to be bigger and better. When we live our lives just to feed our Ego, that’s the Trap of the Ego. If we just pursue Virtue and wisdom, it’s easy to fall into the Trap of the Ego. We believe that we are acting ethically, when in fact we are just looking to aggrandize ourselves. It’s easy for people who fall into the Trap of the Ego to, not just sacrifice themselves in their pursuit of Virtue, but to sacrifice others as well. This is how Puritanism is born. It deceives us by making us believe that only the mind, ideas and values matter, when we also need to satisfy our physical and emotional needs to be happy. But there is a deeper problem with Virtue: it is a means to an end, it cannot be an end in itself. Virtue, alone, is as empty and meaningless as pleasure. Because, in the end, how do we decide what is virtuous and what is not? Ultimately, ethical values have to be defined in term of happiness and suffering, of others and ourselves. But if happiness is to be virtuous and virtue is to achieve happiness, we are trapped in circular reasoning. We either decide that happiness is the ultimate goal, and that virtue is a means to achieve that goal, or the whole thing falls apart. Is happiness finding meaning in life? So, here is where we are. Happiness is not an emotion - it encompasses our emotions, the way we perceive our lives in the past and the future, and the way we perceive ourselves as ethical and knowledgeable beings. Happiness has emotional, cognitive, social and cultural dimensions. It extents to our whole being. That’s why I say that happiness is a state of being. Therefore, we could say that achieving happiness - understood this way - is the ultimate goal of human life. This is basically what is stated by existentialism. Still, this view leaves dissatisfied. If we just live to be happy, does it really matter if we live at all? Would the Universe be the same with and without human beings? Does human existence has any ultimate value? This is the problem of the meaning of life. It has two possible answers. Intrinsic meaning. Human life has meaning in itself. We find human life meaningful because we are humans. There is no other, external, meaning for human life. Extrinsic meaning. Human life has meaning because it is part of something larger than humanity. In some religious views, it has meaning because it is the manifestation of the will of God. Rejection of belief in God has led to the rejection of the idea that there is any extrinsic meaning. However, modern philosophies like Transhumanism postulate that humans are part of a larger evolutionary process of development of intelligence and consciousness in the Universe that will continue beyond the human stage. If intelligence, knowledge and consciousness have a fundamental value, then human existence has value not just by itself, but because it is a manifestation of those values. Putting our life in the context of an external source of meaning contributes to our happiness by giving a bigger dimension to our being. Or, at least, that’s the way I feel. Can changing our consciousness lead to happiness? There is yet another way to find happiness, with roots in Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies and in the psychedelic movement of the 60s. The basic idea is that a change in how the human mind works - a change in consciousness - is necessary to achieve profound and lasting happiness that is not dependent on external conditions and would allow us to face death. The idea of Samadhi in Hinduism and of Nirvana in Buddhism are normally understood as supernatural phenomena. However, some thinkers like Stephen Batchelor propose a secular view in which Buddhism is not a religion but a philosophy. Together with author Aldous Huxley, he thinks that Nirvana is not a supernatural phenomenon, but a transformation of the human mind that can be achieved through meditation, yoga and other disciplines. The psychedelic movement proposes that such a state is the same as the one achieved by taking drugs like LSD, mescaline or psilocybin. In my experience, mystical states are real and can change substantially our outlook on life, increasing our self-understanding and our happiness. Such experiences are accompanied by a special kind of joy - ecstasy - that improves our baseline emotional state. Meditation can also transform ourselves by helping us understand our life and manage our emotions. Conclusions Happiness is not a given. Finding it takes work. The pleasures of life, joy and love are important for happiness. They should not be rejected out of a prudishness inherited from past religious repression. But we should also avoid falling into attachment and craving. Living and ethical and wise life is another key ingredient for happiness. However, an important part of our wisdom should consist is not falling into the Trap of the Ego. At least for some of us, an external source of meaning is an important part of living a happy life. Meditation and other spiritual practices can substantially contribute to our happiness by leading us to self-knowledge, self-transformation and emotional control. Copyright 2022 Hermes Solenzol.

Vaccines come before individual freedom, just like any other civic duties Almost a year ago, on January 8, 2021, I received the first shot of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine against Covid-19. As I stepped into the both, my voice caught in my throat and my eyes filled with tears. A mixture of emotions overwhelmed me. I was humbled by the privilege of being one of the first people on Earth to be protected from this horrible disease. Being a scientist, I was fully aware of the amazing technological marvel that was about to be injected into my arm. And yes, I was happy that all the fear that I had felt for the entire year of 2020 was over. I was no longer in danger of dying or developing lifelong symptoms from the new coronavirus. I could get out of confinement and walk freely out into the world again. To this day, I am in shock, disbelief and anger that a lot of people do not see this vaccine the same way. They have to be actually compelled to receive it. It’s like having to force the passengers of the Titanic at gunpoint into one of the lifeboats. The question I examine here is: do we have the right to do that? There are several interrelated questions here The right to body autonomy is a basic human right that is the foundation of other rights. For example, we have a right not to be sexually abused because it infringes on our body autonomy. My body is mine and I decide when it should be touched. Likewise, undesired medical interventions would violate body autonomy by doing something to my body that I don’t want. Doesn’t vaccination violate this body autonomy? Depending on what vaccine is being given, it may result in harm. Most vaccine produce mild secondary effects. However, for some people, getting vaccinated can result in a serious disease. Shouldn’t taking that risk be my personal decision? In his article Vaccines Are For Winner Only @Carlos Garbiras also raised the issue that opposing vaccination is a matter of free speech. If somebody thinks that vaccines are not good, shouldn’t he be free to express his opposition? Vaccines are critically important for the common health I once heard the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin say, in a lecture at UCLA, that the great improvements in the quality of life and increase in longevity brought by science were not due to new medicines as much as to two other things Public sanitation, including sewers, pest eradication, clean water, a healthy food supply, and a healthcare system that isolates and treats people before they can pass a disease to other people. Vaccines, and a system run by the state that ensures that everybody gets vaccinated. He was right. It was only thanks to these things that we were able to eliminate many of the infectious diseases that plagued humanity before the 20th century. For example, the bubonic plague, which produced many deadly pandemics in Europe, was propagated by fleas living on rats. Pest eradication played a key role in its elimination. Cholera was brought under control by a combination of water purification, sewers and vaccines. These days you hear a lot of people parroting the anti-vaxxer’s lie that vaccines are not effective. The truth is that vaccines have led to the complete eradication of two diseases: smallpox and rinderpest (in ruminants). The viruses that produced these diseases are now considered extinct. “Five more infectious diseases have been identified as of April 2008 as potentially eradicable with current technology by the Carter Center International Task Force for Disease Eradication—measles, mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) and cysticercosis (pork tapeworm).” Wikipedia. mRNA vaccines The current Covid-19 pandemic has a silver lining: the invention and large-scale validation of mRNA vaccines. Previous vaccines consisted of injecting viruses or bacteria that were previously deactivated - killed by heat or radiation to render them non-infective. A new step in vaccination was the use of single proteins from infectious organism to prime the immune system against them. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a nucleic acid molecule similar to DNA that produces a protein when it is translated in the ribosomes, the little molecular machines inside cells where all proteins are made. A single molecule of mRNA can produce many copies of the protein it encodes. In a mRNA vaccine, the viral protein is expelled into the blood, where it activates the immune system. A key step in the invention of mRNA vaccines was to pack the mRNA into minuscule droplets with a lipid membrane similar to the cell membrane, called liposomes. This provides a way to get the mRNA into the cells, because liposomes fuse naturally with the cell membrane. Also, liposomes protect the chemically unstable mRNA molecule. This is also why mRNA vaccines have to be stored at very low temperatures, -80 degrees Centigrade. Liposomes are made of the same phospholipids that make the cell membranes, and therefore are non-toxic. mRNA vaccines represent an enormous breakthrough in medicine. Using the genetic code, it is easy to translate back and forth between the amino acid sequence of any protein and the nucleotide sequence of mRNA. Modern molecular biology techniques had made it possible to sequence the proteins and the DNA of most known pathogens, and also to synthesize DNA and mRNA encoding for these proteins. It is relatively simple to transduce DNA to mRNA and vice versa, using enzymes that can be purchased from any major distributor of lab products. A technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) - used in any molecular biology lab in the world - can turn minuscule amounts of RNA or DNA into amounts large enough to make millions of vaccines. When you put all this together, you have a technology that can take you, in a matter of weeks, from the sequencing a protein of a new virus or bacteria to making millions of vaccines against that pathogen. We can beat the rapidly mutating SARS-Covid-19 virus using this technology. Now we have the means to eliminate all infectious diseases Therefore, the mRNA vaccine technology developed thanks to the granting of large amount of government dollars to biotech companies during 2020 have made it possible, not only to defeat this pandemic, but to get rid of any other infectious disease. There is even talk about creating vaccines against cancer by targeting proteins produced by cancerous cells. Long-sought vaccines that had defeated the efforts of scientists for decades - against HIV/AIDS, malaria and the common cold, for example - are now feasible. In less than a decade, we can rid the world of all major infectious diseases and win a major battle against cancer. We just need two things: A commitment from the governments of industrialized nations to produce the vaccines and to distribute them worldwide. Including to developing countries that cannot pay for them. A willingness from people to receive the vaccines. Both things should be no-brainers. Unfortunately, that’s where we are stuck. The ethics of vaccination Since vaccines were invented in the 19th Century, people have welcomed them as the gift to humanity they really are. Vaccination campaigns were demanded by the Left and found little opposition from the Right. The anti-vax movement that originated in wealthy elites and has now spread to anti-science conservatives has changed the equation. As I said at the beginning of this article, there are valid arguments to be made against vaccines, stemming from the right to body autonomy. I would counter them by arguing that this right is not absolute but limited by the collective right to health. Furthermore, other restrictions to body autonomy are widely recognized in the legal systems of any country in the world. I would break my argument down into the following points. Your good health is not something that was bestowed on you by nature. You owe it to the work and sacrifices of past generations. If people had not been vaccinated against smallpox, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, rabies, tetanus, measles, etc., you may have had one of those diseases already. You may have even died from them. By getting vaccinated, you are just paying forward the favors that past generations gave you. The enormous benefits to public health brought by vaccination campaigns far outweigh any harm that the vaccines may produce to individuals. The evidence shows that these harms are minimal and preventable. Not everybody has to be vaccinated, just enough people to achieve herd immunity. However, the decision to exempt somebody from vaccination should be done by doctors, so that these exemptions are reserved to people who would be harmed by the vaccine. If anybody could capriciously exempt himself, he would take that right away from people who really need it. Getting vaccinated is not a violation of free speech. You are free to hold any opinion that you want and talk about it loud and clear. But vaccination belongs to the category of doing, not speaking. You should get that shot, even while protesting vociferously that it is not necessary. Quarantine, too, is a violation of your freedom and body autonomy. Yet, it is widely recognized that the state has the right to confine you into your house or a hospital room to prevent you from spreading a disease that you have. I have always opposed the military draft because I don’t think the state has the right to force you to undergo military training and to fight for a cause that is not yours. I was drafted myself into the Spanish military, where I serve for 14 months. I view that time as little more than slavery. I lost almost all my body autonomy: I had to sleep, eat, exercise and work as I was told, with no ability to decide how to do these things. However, if we had to fight an evil like the Nazis during World War 2 or an outright invasion of our country, I would agree that a draft was a necessary evil. If we recognize that the state has the power to force men to go into the military, to kill and be killed for the country, getting a vaccine is very little to ask in comparison. Therefore, vaccination falls squarely into the category of civic duties. Like paying taxes, following evacuation orders, getting quarantined or getting drafted. Some circumstances trump personal autonomy. Individual rights need to always be balanced against the rights of your community.

Some people come to polyamory with a secret agenda The story Janet meets Keith at the party of some common friends. He’s handsome, witty, dresses well, and drives a Mercedes. A catch, she decides. She asks around to see if he is single, but nobody seems to be able to give her a clear answer. She flirts with him, anyway, and they hit it off. Keith finds Janet sexy and charming. He takes her home and, after some hot sex, he tells her that he’s polyamorous. She can date him, if she wants, as long as she accepts that he has two other girlfriends, Lena and Mary, that he will keep seeing. Janet doesn’t like hearing that at all, but she’s falling for Keith, hard. She pretends not to be bothered by that revelation and agrees to be polyamorous with him. Keith introduces Janet to Lena and Mary and their other boyfriends. She’s all smiles and charm. For a couple of months, everything seems to work fine. Keith and Janet are deeply in NRE (new relationship energy, also known as falling in love) and enjoying their time together. Which is never enough for Janet, since she has to split it with his two other lovers. Keith advises her to date other men, but she tells him that she’s so deeply in love with him that she couldn’t possibly like any other guy. Then the drama starts. Every time that Keith wants to see Lena or Mary, there is some misunderstanding that leads to a fight. Janet starts speaking ill of his girlfriends. She has taken careful note their shortcomings and does not miss a chance to point them out to Keith. Janet learns that Keith is not out as polyamorous at work. One day, she shows up at one of his work parties and introduces herself as his girlfriend. She kisses him in public. Of course, Keith is not stupid and sees what she’s trying to do. Now that she’s the “official girlfriend”, Keith would have to be careful not to be seen with his other lovers, because then people would think that he is a cheater and a womanizer. He calls Janet on that, they have a terrible fight, and they break up. Broken-hearted, Keith goes to see Lena and tells her what has happened. Lena is furious. She calls Mary and tells her. The next day, Janet calls Keith to apologize. She could not sleep all night. She could not bear the thought of living without him. He agrees to meet with her, as friends, to talk things over. They end up having some rough sex - spanking and anal - as punishment for what Janet had done. But they are back together. Janet had gambled and won. It gets even better. When Keith tells Lena and Mary that he’s back with Janet, they get outraged and break up with him. The whole polycule (polyamorous group formed by lovers and metamours) ostracizes him. So now Janet has Keith to herself. She is careful to fill all of Keith’s time so he doesn’t have a chance to meet other women. Vacationing together, she proposes. He hesitates, but she puts the pressure on, alternating between fights and sweet making up. He agrees to marry her. Soon after the wedding, Lena calls Keith and seduces him. It’s not hard. Keith is naturally non-monogamous and he’s getting bored with Janet. Lena wants revenge. She doesn’t stay with Keith, but the dam has been broken. Keith is now a cheater and starts seeing other women. Janet knows, but pretends she doesn’t. She gets pregnant to bind Keith more closely to her. And they lived unhappily ever after. Does this situation really happen? The story is completely fictitious, of course, but I cobbled it together from some real-life situations that I have witnessed quite closely. The gender of the characters is irrelevant. The monogamous intruder could be male, or this could happen in same-sex relationship. I chose a female intruder because these days men are often portrayed as the ones that are controlling and possessive. This is not the type of situation that people imagine when they talk about polyamory, but it may be quite common. I have heard the monogamous intruder being called a “cowboy” but, as I show here, it could be as easily a woman (cowgirl?). It reflects the tension between the monogamous and polyamorous mindsets. Normally, it’s monogamous people who fear that polyamorous people would induce their spouses to cheat, but exploitation and deception can work both ways. What is unethical about Janet’s behavior? Some monogamous people would defend Janet’s behavior with platitudes like “all is fair in love and war”, “it was time for Keith the stop fooling around and settle down”, “his other relationships were not serious”, or “she saved him from living in sin.” However, if we agree that polyamorous relationships are as valid as monogamous, what Janet did is glaringly unethical. She was not honest when she entered into a polyamorous relationship with Keith - she had a secret agenda. She was in a disloyal competition with Lena and Mary, when they were not competing with her. She purposely undermined the relationship of Keith with Lena and Mary by speaking ill of them. She used the repression of monogamous culture against polyamory to her advantage, risking to out Keith at work and to slut-shame Lena and Mary for being polyamorous. She hurts Lena and Mary by purposely destroying their relationships with Keith. She was emotionally manipulative of Keith, using fights, sex and emotional blackmail to twist his will. Even when things turned sour, she was unwilling to stop the train wreck that was her relationship with Keith. She even brings a child into a dysfunctional family, where he was likely to have a unhappy childhood. Did Keith do anything wrong? Of course, Keith is not totally blameless. He’s a dupe. He sees that Janet is being manipulative and still stays with her. He’s not fair to Lena and Mary. He made a commitment to them to abide by polyamorous rules. When he sees that Janet is not playing by these rules, he should have broken up with her. He should never have allowed Janet to speak ill of Lena and Mary. He should own the drama that Janet and he introduced into his polycule. The other boyfriends of Lena and Mary are also indirectly harmed and have a right to be pissed at him. Sometimes polyamory is hard because of monogamy We often hear these days that polyamory is hard, even impossible. But polyamory wouldn’t be this hard if it didn’t have to wage an unfair fight against a monogamous culture. This story is just another example of how the scales are unfairly weighed against non-monogamous people.

Do we value knowledge for itself or just for the benefits it brings? Ethical systems and the question of the intrinsic value of knowledge Lately, I have been intrigued by the idea that the existing systems of ethics do not properly answer the question of whether some things have intrinsic value. First and foremost among these things is knowledge. Do we value it as an end or as a mean? Many religions consider the acquisition of knowledge as an act of hubris or as appropriating something that belongs to God. Thus, in Christianity the Original Sin was eating from the Tree of Knowledge, which seems to be a metaphor for learning something that we shouldn’t have learned. Later, the Tower of Babel was considered as an act of hubris that needed to be punished by confusing men - withdrawing knowledge from them. Deontology does not establish any particular duty regarding the acquisition of knowledge, although it does condemn lying about something that we already know. Consequentialism, and Utilitarianism in particular, are based on maximizing happiness for the larger number of people. More knowledge may, or may not, makes us happier. For example, knowing that we are just a speckle in the vastness of the cosmos, and that the duration of the human species is less than a heartbeat compared with the expanse of Deep Time, it is more likely to lead to despair than to happiness. So, according to this systems of ethics, not only knowledge does not have an intrinsic value, but it may not be good at all. Virtue Ethics is concerned with the moral development of individuals. For it, knowledge has instrumental value as a way to reach wisdom, prudence and other virtues. Hence, it views knowledge as a means, not as an end. Therefore, if things like knowledge, a work of art, or a species, have value in themselves, this seems to require a new system of ethics. We would need to compare their intrinsic value with the value we assign to happiness, Virtue, or the fulfillment of duty. The practical relevance of this question This is not a moot question. Modern societies are confronted with practical decisions that depend on whether knowledge has intrinsic value or not: Is it right to invest enormous amounts of money in space exploration, particle accelerators or experiments in astrophysics, when their practical application is dubious at best? Is it right to use animals for experiments that would only increase our knowledge, without any clear practical application? Should scientific knowledge be disseminated to the entire population, risking that some individuals or states would use it to do harm? The practical versus intrinsic value of knowledge The benefits of modern civilization would not have been possible without the large amount of knowledge accrued by science. There is a general agreement that investment in scientific research is justified by the technical innovations that science brings. World War II and the Cold War taught us that the country with superior scientific and technological knowledge will have the upper hand militarily. Hence, to be powerful, a country must invest in science. From the economic standpoint, science brings new inventions that contribute to the wealth of the nation. Hence, governments try to invest in the aspects of science that are related to public health, economic development and military might. But scientists constantly warn them that it is impossible to know which parts of science will contribute to new inventions, so there has to be investment in basic science. However, when they say that, scientists are not being completely honest. Most of us scientists feel in our hearts that we do science because we want to acquire knowledge for its own sake. And it’s not just scientists who feel that way. The sciences that most resonate with the general public have little or no utility: astrophysics, particle physics and evolutionary biology, for example. Pictures taken by the probes on Mars are truly awesome, but of little practical significance. Even if colonizing Mars was not a pipedream, doing so would be of little benefit for life back here on Earth. The truth is that we are inspired by discoveries in these areas because they fill us with awe. Many people feel that science is a valuable thing in itself. The dangers of knowledge Not only is knowledge no always beneficial, it could downright dangerous. There is no guarantee that continued scientific discovery will always work for the good of humanity. Some people argue that the reason why we don’t find other civilizations in the stars is because every civilization eventually makes a discovery that dooms it to extinction. Nuclear bombs provide a good example - we now have the power to destroy ourselves and much of the life on Earth. Biotech is making increasingly easy to develop new diseases, even with limited means. Imagine if future discoveries made it possible to create a black hole that swallows the Earth. Or a nanomachine (“gray dust”) that turns into itself everything it touches. Or a life form that eats the whole biosphere and becomes the sole species in the planet. The desire for knowledge is an essential part of being human And yet, we feel in our bones that learning about the world and ourselves is our destiny. Science has given us the technological marvels that make possible our comfortable societies but, most importantly, it liberated us from our ancestral fears. We no longer fear the lightning, the wind or the crashing waves. We know that they are the manifestation of basic physical laws, not of the whims of some deity that needs to be appeased. Yes, natural phenomena can still kill us, but knowing what they are gives us a measure of control over them. History has taught us that knowledge means power, comfort and freedom. But, going deeper, we are the first species that has conquered the entire planet, and we have done that because our gigantic brains allowed us to understand the world. Craving knowledge is in our DNA. Is what makes us human. I would even say that to value knowledge because it’s useful is to get it backwards. What if what makes humans valuable is our ability to gather knowledge? In our endless quest for meaning, we may find it in knowledge. Because it’s what we leave behind when we die, for others to enjoy. Or perhaps because knowledge has meaning in itself. Copyright 2021 Hermes Solenzol

This coveted state of bliss and euphoria in BDSM scenes may actually be different mental states In the BDSM community, submissive space or sub space is a special state of bliss that is achieved by the submissive or bottom partner during a Dominance/submission (D/s) scene or sadomasochistic play. This mental state is reached by means of the pain produced by impact play (spanking, flogging, etc.) or bondage. In other occasions, sub space does not involve pain, but the emotions and mental manipulation resulting from masterful Dominance and unwavering submission. It is commonly assumed that sub space is a single stated mediated by the release of endorphins and their opioid-like effect in the brain. However, the fact that it can be achieved through different means should alert us that it is not just one state but a collection of different altered states of consciousness, probably mediated by different neurotransmitters and brain areas. In previous articles, I have pointed out that some of the beliefs about sub space are supported more by myths than by actual scientific evidence. Unfortunately, sub space is often followed by sub drop, its mirror image. Sub drop a negative emotional state of dysphoria, sadness, withdrawal, physical unease and even depression experienced immediately after a BDSM scene or several days afterward. In this article, I propose here that there is not just one sub space but several, with distinctive characteristics. I need to emphasize, however, that there is almost no scientific research done on masochists. There is also very little research on the endorphin high and other altered states of consciousness produced by extreme exercise or by pain. Therefore, what I say here is speculative. It is based on my knowledge of the neurophysiology pain and emotions. I also draw parallels between the effects of drugs and the behavior of bottoms and submissives during BDSM scenes. Noradrenergic sub space The main natural response to pain is the fight-or-flight response. It consists of the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis: the hypothalamus is a part of the brain that releases corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF or CRH) into the pituitary gland, located under the brain, which in turn releases adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) into the blood, triggering the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline from the adrenal glands located over the kidneys. Adrenaline activates the sympathetic system, increasing the heart rate, switching blood circulation from the viscera to the periphery, and promoting muscular activity. At the same time, inside the central nervous system there is a parallel activation of pathways that use noradrenaline as a neurotransmitter. Noradrenaline (or norepinephrine) is a similar compound to adrenaline (or epinephrine), it just lacks a methyl group (-CH3) attached to the amino (-NH2) terminus of adrenaline. While adrenaline is a hormone in the blood, noradrenaline is a neurotransmitter at some synapses in the brain. One important neuronal pathway that uses noradrenaline (noradrenergic pathway) goes from three noradrenergic nuclei of the brainstem (A5, A7, and the locus coeruleus or A6) down to the spinal cord. There, noradrenaline activates alpha-2 adrenergic receptors, producing an inhibitory action that suppresses incoming pain signals in the sensory nerves. This decreases pain (analgesia). Other noradrenergic pathways in the brain go from the brainstem to the cerebral cortex, activating it to increase alertness. Another noradrenergic pathway goes to the hypothalamus, activating the HPA axis. This way, noradrenergic activation in the brain is linked to sympathetic activation of the body, the stress response. In BDSM, when the bottom partner goes into this noradrenergic state, she screams, struggles, stomps and laughs. At the same time, her pain thresholds go up and she becomes more tolerant of spanking and other forms of pain. Therefore, this sub state is characterized by analgesia, mild euphoria, outward-directed attention, and high interaction with the Top. It is important to note that while the fight/flight response is considered a stress reaction, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Some forms of stress (eustress or good stress) are healthy and sought by many people. Just think of roller-coasters, horror movies and dangerous sports. A certain amount of eustress may be necessary for good health and can counter the nefarious effects of distress (bad stress). I think that BDSM is a form of eustress. The noradrenergic sub space is similar to the effect of stimulant drugs like cocaine and amphetamines These drugs act by increasing the availability of noradrenaline and dopamine at some key brain areas, particularly the pathway linking the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to the nucleus accumbens. This is known as the pleasure pathway, but it actually mediates motivation and craving. Endorphin sub space This sub space also produces analgesia (decreased pain), but in almost all other aspects is the opposite of the noradrenergic sub space. In it, the heart rate goes down, and activity and alertness decrease. The release of endorphins that leads to euphoria and analgesia is not into the blood, but occurs in some specific brain areas. The pain inhibition is driven by a pathway connecting the periaqueductal gray area in the middle of the brain with the nucleus raphe magnus in the brain stem, and then down to the spinal cord to block incoming pain signals. There are reciprocal inhibitory connections in the brain stem between the nucleus raphe magnus (which drives endorphin release) and the noradrenergic nuclei (A5, A7 and nucleus coeruleus), so that when the endorphin system gets activated, the noradrenergic system gets inhibited, and the converse. While the noradrenergic system mediates fight/flight, the endorphin system is related to freezing behavior.Freezing is a response to imminent danger alternative to fight-or-flight. Immobility helps prey to escape predators by relying on camouflage. However, freezing also happens when the animal cannot generate a successful behavior - it doesn't know what to do. It's "heads I win, tails you lose". This is not a pleasant state. It's not accompanied by the euphoria that we normally associate with endorphin release. Repeated freezing from unavoidable stress leads to learned helplessness, a dysfunctional state that decreases learning, reduces immune activity and produces several other negative responses. However, I don’t think that learned helplessness is a problem in BDSM because the submissive is actually in control because she has chosen to be in the scene and can stop it by using a safeword or other safety devices. Where learned helplessness is a real problem is in non-consensual, abusive situations in which control is taken away from the victim. As long as the BDSM scene is consensual, the state of defeat of the submissive is illusory. The endorphin sub space is similar to the effect of opioid drugs - like morphine or heroine - because endorphins activate the same receptors as these drugs: the mu and delta opioid receptors. Endorphins also produce the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens in the pleasure pathway, the one activated by addictive drugs. Therefore, one may wonder if continuously going into the endorphin state may not be similar to taking opioid drugs. However, unlike morphine, endorphins are rapidly degraded by peptidase enzymes in the brain. Hence, the body has its own safety mechanisms that make the endorphin high less dangerous than taking opioid drugs. A bottom in the endorphin sub space becomes dreamy, with a calm form of euphoria. He is in an emotional mist, stops screaming and struggling, and becomes less alert of his surroundings. The unresponsiveness of the bottom in this state can be risky. Many people become non-verbal. The Top partner needs to be aware of this and not rely exclusively on safewords to dial down or stop the pain. Often, the bottom will plead for the beating to go on. She doesn’t want to leave that mental state - which is why at some people call it the forever place. Serotonin sub space This is the sub space that is properly named as such, because is induced by submission and not by pain. Surrender, obedience, discipline, service and other strong intimate interactions with the Dominant likely lead to the release in the brain of oxytocin and vasopressin, which are the neuropeptides that mediate bonding. This state is similar to that produced by the drug MDMA (ecstasy or molly), which increases bonding, intimacy and affection. Since MDMA increases serotonin and dopamine at brain synapses and activates some serotonin receptors, this sub space may be driven by serotonin release in the brain. There is also evidence that the bonding effects of MDMA are due to the release of oxytocin in the brain. Serotonin produces positive mood and counters depression. However, it has mixed effects on pain because some serotonin receptors in the spinal cord increase while other decrease pain. The same goes for dopamine, which can increase or decrease pain depending on the emotional state of the individual. Whereas the noradrenergic and endorphin sub spaces are mutually exclusive, it is possible that the serotonin sub space can combine with them to produce mixed effects. It is also clear that the noradrenergic, dopaminergic and serotonergic neurotransmitter systems vary a lot between individuals. That is why it is so difficult to fine-tune antidepressant medication to each person. Therefore, sub spaces are going to vary a lot from individual to individual. Sub drop There seem to be two types of sub drop. The first type of sub drop happens right after a BDSM scene. It is likely the consequence of coming down from the fight/flight noradrenergic reaction. After a strong activation of the sympathetic system (the one that releases adrenaline into the blood) the parasympathetic system kicks in, decreasing the heart rate and cutting blood circulation to the periphery. The result is that the bottom feels cold, tired and emotionally exhausted. A blanket, lots of cuddles and emotional support are the best solution. The second type of sub drop occurs about two days after the BDSM scene. It is similar to withdrawal from MDMA. It may be the result of the serotonergic or the endorphin sub space. It is much harder to address, because it creeps in long after the scene is over, when the Top is no longer available for emotional support. It may even last several days. The best way to address it is to be ready for it and have in place an emotional support system (friends, chocolate, a good movie, etc.). Take-home message Things in a BDSM scene are not as simple as going into sub space and come out of it a happier person. The human brain is incredibly complicated; we are just beginning to understand it. By inflicting lots of pain, or messing with strong emotions like shame, guilt and submission, we are giving our minds some extreme challenges. It is hard to predict what is going to happen. The best course of action is to go slowly, pay a lot of attention to your body, and find the path that works best for you. An accomplished Top is not one who has perfected techniques so that they are going to work with anybody, but one who has learned to accurately read the body language of the bottom and knows how to adjust the scene accordingly. With special thanks to GlassHummingbird from Fetlife, who taught me some of the things I wrote in this article. Copyright 2022 Hermes Solenzol. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. If you cite parts of this article, please post a link.

“Casual sex is using another human being solely as a means to our end, which is unethical” This argument against casual sex is based on Deontology or the categorical imperative, the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He said that we should act according to universal laws, that is, that there are some basic ethical principles from which all duties and prohibitions derive. A categorical imperative is something that we do not do to attain a certain end, but because it is an end in itself. In particular, human beings are ends in themselves, so it is unethical to treat them as means to an end. “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. You can see how the condemnation of casual sex, and the idea of “objectification” that is used to denounce pornography, derive from this imperative of not to use people as means to satisfy our desires. However, this is an unrealistic imperative that clashes with almost everything we do in our capitalist society, in which we are constantly using the labor of other people to achieve our goals. We use barbers and hairdressers to do our hair, masseuses to relive our muscular tension, doctors to guard our health, teachers to get educated, etc. More generally, capitalism is based on using the labor of workers to produce goods and services. You may dislike capitalism, but in a communist society things are basically the same: the labor of workers is still used as a means to an end, only that it is controlled by the state instead of corporations. Using people is not unethical, as long as it is consensual and everybody involved is treated fairly. In most cases, that means getting paid. In the examples I gave above, what we have are transactional interactions in which people mutually use each other to achieve a goal. I get the haircut and the barber gets my money. If I could not get a haircut and the barber was unemployed, we would both be unhappy, which is a bad outcome indeed. What is unethical is not using people, but using people while disregarding their humanity. When I go to get a haircut, I interact with the barber as a human being, chitchatting about things that interest us both. From that point of view, we should be concerned when corporations use people with complete disregard of their humanity: as faceless workers and consumers; as mere statistics in a healthcare system; as a mass of students being lectured. That is what is wrong with capitalism. However, casual sex - as long as it is consensual and not exploitative - is not unethical because people are using each other. It is just another transactional activity: I enjoy your body while you enjoy mine. I get pleasure and you get pleasure. Even in the most impersonal casual sex, there is an implicit recognition that we are dealing with a person, with desires and sexual needs that need to be satisfied. We are not using a person disregarding their humanity, like corporations do when they treat us as machines. The fact that pleasure is an emotion prevents us from seeing each other as objects. “Sex is too intimate to be transactional, so it is unethical in the absence of love” A second argument against casual sex is based on the idea that sex is somehow special or sacred, so it is only allowed in the context of love or a relationship. Prudish philosophers like Kant and social conservatives do not seem to be bothered when capitalism and corporations use human beings - workers and consumers - as means to an end - making money -, while ignoring that humans are ends in themselves. But when it comes to sex, things suddenly change and the accusations fly about being used and objectified. Why? What is so special about sex? One old argument is that sex should be used only for procreation. As I explained in my article The Seven Enigmas of Sex, that idea has been largely put to rest by science. In humans, sex has been co-opted as a powerful mechanism for bonding and to create cooperation and trust between couples and perhaps even amongst entire tribes. Most of the sex we have is not for procreation, and that is completely morally acceptable. Even the Catholic Church is having to reckon with the fact that even the most pious couples have sex that is not procreative. But then, if sex is for bonding, wouldn’t this support the idea that sex is only ethical when done by a loving couple? Isn’t it true that sex is a most intimate act? There certainly seems to be something special about sex. Otherwise, rape wouldn’t be considered such a horrible crime - it would just be similar to any other act of physical violence. If sex is indeed special, it might be that is too intimate to be casual. We may violate something inside ourselves when we do not recognize its emotional importance. I examined the problem of the specialness of sex in my article Is Sex Sacred? I pointed out that if sex is sacred, then masturbation would also be unethical. Let me give you an example of something that is both transactional and intimate: psychotherapy. Indeed, it is even more intimate than sex, since we reveal to the therapist our deepest emotions, traumas and fears. In fact, intimacy is the whole point of therapy. In addition, the client is using the therapist for his own personal benefit. He will dispose of the therapist the moment he sees that his goal of improving his mental health is not being achieved. Again, the fact that it is transactional is an important part of going into therapy. The therapist is a professional committed not to reveal our secrets, and who doesn’t have the biases and the personal investment of a friend in whom we would confide instead. If psychotherapy is not wrong, even though it is intimate and the therapist is being used as a means to a goal, how could we condemn causal sex on the same grounds? This should get rid of the objection that casual sex is unethical because is too intimate. But what about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)? The AIDS pandemic taught us to take STDs seriously. Ironically, comparing AIDS with the modern Covid-19 pandemic uncovers the puritanism and sex-negativity hidden behind some of the advice to prevent AIDS, like being monogamous. If during the AIDS pandemic having sex with many partners was stigmatized, during the Covid pandemic socially approved things like attending religious services became the most risky activities. But the Catholic Church and other religious organizations had no qualms of taking to the Supreme Court their right to be infected during mass. And the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. Of course, preventing STDs in others and ourselves by practicing safe sex and being informed is extremely important. However, STDs should not become an excuse for sexual repression. We all have the right to engage in risky behavior. Otherwise, risky activities like rock-climbing, hang-gliding, free-diving and driving motorcycles would be illegal. We do not have the right to expose others to STDs, but this should be addressed by the responsible exchange of information between sexual partners, not by rules imposed by society and the state. Casual sex and sexual repression For some people, casual sex is something that they would never do. They need love and connection for sex, and that is fine. But some other people want to practice casual sex. And they have the right to do so. For young people, having sex with many partners is useful to help them define their sexual desire, and their favorite kinks and sex acts. That way, they would be able to identify sexually compatible partners for future long-term relationships. The question is not one of personal choice, but whether casual sex should be something that we condemn in others, to the point of creating social sanctions and even laws (e.g. against sodomy, pornography or prostitution) to ban it. I think the latter is wrong. The modern sex-positive movement is a struggle for sexual liberation, understood as the right of every person to approach sex according to their own personal preferences. The only prohibitions should be non-consensual acts and sex with minors. It’s actually the other way around. What is unethical is sexual repression, not casual sex. Sexual repression should, indeed, be considered a non-consensual sex act. Just as sexual abuse and rape are wrong because they violate the personal autonomy of an individual, sexual repression violates the right of that individual to their bodily and mental autonomy.