Rod Dreher agrees. Acknowledging that the Marquis de Sade conceived of humiliating and being humiliated for sexual pleasure long before today's San Franciscans, he posits that such behavior is becoming more acceptable due to the absence of a strong moral framework to push back against it. "You can have whatever you desire," he writes. "If you choose hell, then we will call it good, because it is freely chosen, and brings you pleasure." He worries that "the result is chaos and nihilism" and the idea that "the only way to find transcendence is to yield to one's desires." For Dreher, "affirming human dignity, and walling off the most destructive impulses within individual and collective human beings, requires condemning this pornography and perversity." [...]
Jacobs and Dreher seem to imply (but may or may not believe, were it to come up directly) that consent as a cultural lodestar is a shameful moral abdication, indicative of an age where other, much more important norms have been abandoned. As I see it, the emphasis on consent in today's sexual morality isn't decadence. However incomplete, it is a historic triumph. And growing reverence for consent would gradually make our culture radically more moral. [...]
None of that means one must approve of the acts described in the San Francisco basement. I happen to think it doesn't in fact threaten civilization, that transgressive sex cannot, by definition, become the norm. Others may differ, and I'm just guessing there; but it is to say that, whatever you think of the porn shoot, the scattered, unconsensual sex that went down in the Bay Area that night was more worthy of condemnation, more uncivilized, more destructive and less moral. I hope it is clear that I'm not suggesting my interlocutors are insufficiently horrified by rape. What I am saying is that really grappling with and evaluating consent as a sexual ethos makes it harder to assume, as Dreher seems to, that he's raising his sons in a more sexually depraved society than the one in which he grew up. What to make of the fact that the undeniable rise in pornography has coincided with a startling, steep decline in the rate of forcible rape? If fewer men are raping and fewer women are being raped, isn't there, at minimum, a strong case to be made that young people today are less sexually depraved than before? I realize that doesn't make it any easier for a father to explain extreme porn to his teenager, and deeply sympathize while acknowledging that I'd be confounded by and dread the task myself. [...]
The question remains. Are some kinds of sex degrading or immoral even if they're consensual? Unlike many conservatives, I don't particularly trust my disgust instinct. It misled me about Brussels sprouts in childhood, and again in the days before I became a dog-owner about how awful it would be to pick up freshly defecated feces with nothing but a thin plastic bag covering my hand. It really isn't that bad. Who knew? My strong instinct is nevertheless to say yes, some consensual sex acts are immoral. A brother and sister breaking the incest taboo diminishes the norm of presumed nonsexual contact between siblings, a norm that is of tremendous benefit to most of humanity. Or imagine a couple agreeing that it would bring unsurpassed excitement if, mid-coitus, Sally chopped off Harry's arm with a bedside guillotine, with his consent. That certainly transgresses against my sensibilities, though I can't articulate just why in a way that wouldn't encompass other behavior that my instinct would be to refrain from condemning. But if a brother raped a sister? Or if Sally chopped off Harry's arm without his consent?
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