West's primary thesis in this short paper is that many encounters of consensual sex are harmful. Prima facie we might object to this idea, primarily because of the word "consensual", giving us the idea that a person will usually not consent to doing something harmful. Contrariwise, however, West notes that those harms may not be easy to discover (for the person who is harmed).
Brief aside: I always get a little worried when someone says something like the latter. Admittedly, I am deceived sometimes, but usually a double-take, or some serious reflection, gets me back on track. So let's see.
An assumption: "...some women occasionally, and many women quite frequently, consent to sex even when they do not desire the sex itself..." (West 263) From this admitted assumption, West draws the conclusion that many women "...have a good deal of sex that, although consensual, is in no way pleasurable." (Ibid) It is not clear to me that her conclusion follows from her set of premises. I don't want to be misconstrued here. Sex, when it is not forced, is, in the great majority of cases, pleasurable. This is to say that if X is not inclined to have sex, but gets seduced, gives in, does it so X's partner can be satisfied, the probability is high that X will derive some pleasure from it. (West gives what look like very realistic reasons why X would consent to have sex when X doesn't want to.) This follows from the fact that sex is one of those activities that is pleasurable, notwithstanding that there is perhaps no activity which is, in and of itself, and always, pleasureable for everyone who engages in it. I mean, even those activities we normally take great pleasure in are sometimes not pleasureable. Take bicycle riding; it can be a lot of fun (and some people enjoy it to the nth degree). However, if one has a knee or ankle injury, say, the ride will likely be painful, even excruciatingly so.
How, then does West think women (for that is who she is talking about) are harmed by having consensual sex which they don't want to have? The harm is to her sense of selfhood; four possible ways.
It can hardly be denied that the list above consists of harms to a person's sense of self. Further, it seems clear that these harms are not insignificant, most especially iii. and iv. One of West's excellent points is that these harms can become "quite profound" if carried over a lifetime. As she notes, these harms can themselves lead to repeating the actions which brought about the harms in the first place. For example, if X consents to having and has sex with Y when X doesn't want to, then if this leads to a diminished sense of autonomy, then this may well put X in a position of consenting again to unwanted sex out of a sense of loss of freedom to say "no". Over time, this sense of the loss of autonomy can become so serious that X may feel enslaved (and possibly rightfully so). Whether X largely brought it on herself is, though relevant, not of equal importance to the harm itself here. And ultimately, the harm itself is the nexus of the causal process.
Up to this point, we might be in agreement with West's thesis. There comes an idea though, worth worrying over. She writes,
These points may be small, however, in comparison with the claim West makes about each of the injuries being somehow hidden from the victim. By and large, her reasons for saying that the victim may well be unaware of the injuries are good ones, I judge. For example, if your culture tells you that you ought to do such and such, and if this is ingrained in your thinking from a very early age, then it is likely that you will need to have it pointed out to you that your culture may be advocating something injurious to you. In this case, our culture tells us that we should have sex with our partner sometimes even if we really don't want to (for some reason or other). As West points out, there seems a bit of confusion between the legal and moral codes here. Certainly this is true when it comes to talking much about what harms there might be in having "consensual" sex.
Another point by West. If our value system tells us that exchanges of value are good for us such that we come out on the good end of each exchange, then it will be very difficult to see that what we consent to can be harmful to us. And this is exactly the point West is up to making, to wit, that consensual sex can be harmful, even though it may be an exchange where we judge our best interests to be served. It the "where we judge..." part that is important, because the point is that something (the possible harm) is hidden and therefore not open for us to take into consideration when making our judgment on the matter.
Further amunition. Our almost total immersion in the ideology of freedom makes it well nye impossible for us to see that what we do freely can be harmful to us. This lends strength to the point just above.
I think one of the best points West makes is that the focus of feminist groups on force, violence and rape have had a tendency to downplay the harms of consensual sex. It's not that feminists have not recognized these potential harms, but rather that the attention has ben focused in other directions. It may be that the harms of rape are more serious than the harms of consensual sex. In that case, the attention has been directed to the most pressing problem of the two. It is at least questionable, given West's excellent lecture, that the harms of consensual sex are much less serious than the harms of rape. Of course, a lot more would need to be said by way of comparison; however, it suffices to bring the question up here for reflection.
"Although these women may be making rational calculations in the context of the particular decision facing them, they are, by making those calculations, sustaining deeper and to some degree unfelt harms that undermine the very qualities that constitute the capacity for rationality being exercised."
What is being said here? Something about rationality. Trouble is, partly, that she doesn't elaborate on the nature of rationality, nor does she expand on those "qualities that constitute the capacity..." But, that's what we need. How is it, we can ask, that an injured sense of integrity can undermine the capacity for rationality? It is, in fact, highly debatable that it can. If we take rationality to involve making logical inferences from given or accepted premises, then I don't see how the capacity for rationality can be affected by injury to the sense of autonomy. For example, if one thinks (perhaps erroneously) that one's liberty is diminished, it seems clear that one could still make perfectly good inferences from that belief. It may be that the belief that one's liberty is diminished is a false belief (that is, perhaps one's liberty is not diminished). That would be irrelevant to whether or not one could make rational decisions beased on the belief.
This criticism of the quote from West applies, mutatis mutandis to diminished self-assertion, self-possession as well as integrity, so far as I can see.
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