Coercion, Promiscuity, and Ideal Sex

This paper examines the tension between the distinctive gravity of sexual coercion and a progressive sexual ethics that permits casual and promiscuous sex. Through a discussion of Fiona Woollard, Berit Brogaard, and Adri & agrave; Moret, I argue that leading attempts to explain the special wrongness of sexual coercion tend to move beyond a flatly permissive view of sex and toward a normatively loaded conception of the sexual domain. I then develop an alternative account that understands sexual coercion as the corruption of an ideal, and identifies that ideal with the unitive character of sex. Although this view introduces a hierarchy of sexual practices, it does not entail a conservative rejection of casual sex. Rather, it yields a more layered sexual ethics, one that distinguishes permissibility from ethical excellence and makes room for ideals of intimacy, connection, and mutual regard without denying the permissibility of non-ideal sexual practices.