I am teaching the Philosophy of Sex and Love in the Fall 2018 term. I was motivated to construct a course that would speak to the philosophical dimensions of concerns that people actually have.
Although love and sex are two areas where we might suspect that philosophers attend (more than usual) to embodied experience, twentieth century philosophizing on love and sex remains very abstract (read this review of the philosophy of love as an indication of this point).
Philosophy, as I understand the discipline, helps us lead better lives. For some people, romantic and sexual relationships are among the most important. For others, romantic and sexual relationships aren’t all that important, yet social norms dictate (at least where I’ve lived in Canada and the US) that (a certain kind) of romantic and sexual relationship is a marker of happiness and success in life.
The course, in brief
Given the ubiquitousness of love and sex talk in our culture, what better area to draw on philosophy than thinking through romantic and sexual relationships? Here’s a peek of what we’ll be doing in the course.
Module 1: Positioning uurselves–The lover as philosopher
The course begins with thinking through connections between eros, love, and sex on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. What’s the relationship between conceptual analysis and lived experience in relation to love and sex? How does one’s lived experience shape the way one approaches philosophy and love?
We’ll be reading Plato’s Symposium and Donna-Dale Marcano’s black feminist re-reading of Socrates and Alcibiades. Marcano explores how she approaches philosophy much more like Alcibiades, whom Socrates chastises for being a poor philosopher. Not only do these texts introduce philosophical thinking about love and sex, but they help us think through how embodiment and social positions shape our thinking. Marcano reminds us to challenge assumptions about what counts as philosophy or who can be a (good) philosopher.
Module 2: Sexual agency
In this module, the class will confront questions of objectification, consent, and power (although these themes arise elsewhere too). Can seduction be non-coercive/non-dominating? How does one flirt with respect? Note: “seduction” here is not referring to harassment or assault. What constitutes unjust sex (as a separate category from rape)? When is sexual objectification permissible and even, perhaps, wanted? Does medicalizing sexual desire promote women’s sexual agency? How does the law produce difficulties for people with disabilities to be recognized as consenting to BDSM sex?
Module 3: Race and sexual desires
In this module, we’ll examine racialized sexual desires on three fronts. First will be “yellow fever” and the sexualization of Asian women/women of the Asian diaspora by non-Asian, Western men. Second will be an analysis race power dynamics and mixed race sexual relationships between gay men (specifically, black men and white men). Third, we’ll examine whiteness as an implicit and under-theorized norm in defenses of sex with non-human animals. (Before the yuck factor kicks in, yes, there are philosophical arguments for the permissibility of sex with non-human animals, provided some welfare conditions are in place).
Module 4: Conception of romantic love
Although we’re not leaving sex behind, this module looks more specifically at romantic love. I’m going to approach philosophical accounts of what love is (for example, love as valuing a particular individual, as a particular kind of union, as an emotion) sideways, through looking at questions that I take to challenge or expand our conception of what love is.
We’ll start by looking at representations of romantic love in pop culture (zombie fiction, our Halloween class) and in evolutionary biology. These discussions will help us pay attention to the background that informs how we in Canada understand love, for example, around the privileging of heterosexual, family-oriented, monogamous relationships within a consumer culture.
Turning to challenger/challenging questions, we’ll first explore polyamory’s metaphysics and ethics. Second, we’ll examine claims about the mutuality of love by considering whether a human-robot sexual relationship could also be a mutually loving one. Third, we’ll look at what the phenomenon of faking orgasms says about love and concern for a particular other.
Module 5: Love and the politics of solidarity
This module looks beyond romantic love to what we might call civic love, thinking about how love might inform political action and resistance. The idea that love is important for politics has a long history in black and Latinx feminist and other political thought which continues today (see for example this recent interview with American politician Cory Booker).
This module is centered around philosopher Allison Weir’s reading of the Idle No More movement as practicing collective love through dancing as an act of resistance to the colonial state. Weir draws on, among others, Hannah Arendt. Arendt, as I have written about previously, was skeptical of certain kinds of loving relationships serving as the foundation for political resistance.
Not only is this paper theoretically interesting to me as an Arendt scholar, but it also helps to decolonize Arendt’s thought. It requires an acknowledgment of the Anglo-European centricity in Arendt’s thought. But we don’t have to stay with the limitations, as indigenous and black feminist thought can challenge and enrich Arendt scholarship. By bringing insights from black and indigenous feminist thought to Arendt’s philosophy, we can take Arendtian themes in new directions. This sort of project is not without controversy, of course, but I’ll leave that question for another post.
We’ll be reading Audre Lorde on the political power of erotic love and Dory Mason on love in Indigenous women’s practices of resistance. These readings, one classic and one contemporary, will provide a theoretical background for examining love as a practice political resistance.
Becoming better philosophers, citizens, and sexual agents
As I mentioned, I think philosophy helps us be better in particular domains: better knowers, better citizens, better friends. Through this course, we’ll think more deeply about sexual desire and the social-political context for loving and sexual relationships. We’ll question more assumptions about what “good” sex and “true” love constitutes. We’ll practice advocating for more critical thinking in everyday discussions about love and sex. In sum, I hope this class will enhance our sexual agency.
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