Sexual standards - The Daily Princetonian

Princeton should have sexual standards that allow people to live the good life. Recent ?Prince? op-eds have rightly criticized Princeton?s present sexual standard insofar as it promotes hookups as right for everybody. But we should go farther. In seeking a good sexual culture, a culture that offers the proper freedom and support, we cannot bracket the question of whether hookups are bad. Our actions forge a culture that affects our community, our relationships, our actions and even our preferences.

Hookups are dishonest, harmful and naive. Some people can walk away from a sexual encounter without growing fond of the person in question, but this isn?t characteristic of erotic desire nor of human sexuality in general. Sex is an action of love, and to agree not to love while engaging in such a desirous act is jarring; it denies the reality of our bodies and the meanings of our actions. But it?s also unjust to hookup without such an agreement, to say ?we may fall in love, we may not.? It?s easy to get attached, especially when you care for one another, and it is a cruel and insensitive thing to cultivate this attachment in someone else without reciprocating. And even when you both fall in love, you?ve done so without sufficient freedom: You engaged in practices which induce affection without evaluating whether that affection is conducive to your good. You may even end up married, but you also may both have been better off with someone else, with someone you evaluated as a potential spouse before sleeping with them.

Along with Vivienne Chen, we deny that ?sex and relationships work the same for everyone.? Clearly, they don?t. Some people either because of their life goals or their own maturity level don?t want to be in a committed, romantic relationship, while others do. Each person needs to reason about what type of relationships they should engage in right now. But this reasoning does have limits. There are relationships a person can never reasonably engage in because they?re detrimental to one?s flourishing: for instance, friendships based on a shared enthusiasm for cruel gossip, friendships based on flattery, extramarital affairs and hookups.

It?s impossible to have it all. We cannot think of sex as merely a fun activity in some contexts and as expressive of lifelong exclusive love and intimacy in others. Hookups have determined consequences on our well-being and character. They can leave emotional damage: For some, there is the sense that they?re abusing themselves or their partner, that they?re misusing a higher good for lower purposes. They feel shame and frustration. For others, they don?t feel the scars so acutely, but their appreciation of sex declines. They find it to be a fun hobby but not especially meaningful. They have to either develop an unsustainable dissociation of non-marital and marital sex or they have to deny sex?s higher meanings of new life and the union of two people.

Abstaining from hookups can form our character to help us resist and avoid inopportune sexual desires. It is unrealistic to expect that in marriage we won?t be attracted to anyone save our spouse, and if we hope to be faithful then, it is wise to practice temperance now. People who don?t hook up create a character capable of resisting their sexual desires when they are not conducive to living well, and, if not indulged, these desires weaken. People who have developed this sort of chaste character will find it possible to maintain whatever sort of relationship is the most conducive to their flourishing. A celibate monk is not asexual, but chastity means that his desires will not prevent his happiness; so too for a chaste college student. Likewise, a married person will find that monogamy is not difficult but is instead very fulfilling. In both cases, reason shapes their sexual desires and enables happiness even when those desires cannot be fulfilled.

The hookup culture not only harms the individuals who participate in it, but it saps away the campus? social energies from meaningful friendships that last a lifetime to trivial encounters that are over by morning and make any further interaction awkward. Hooking up does nothing to further the University?s academic aims, and it serves no purpose for our nation or any other. Hookups are not the sort of memories which one recounts proudly over a lifetime, which stir admiration in others.

So then where does culture come in? To cultivate chastity in ourselves, we need community standards that make chastity easier to cultivate. This means that hookups should not be celebrated. Our community needs to look out for people who hook up and make chaste activities more prevalent. We should be unafraid to defend the merit of chaste lifestyles over promiscuous ones. By encouraging our friends? chastity, we can do them a great service. It is an act of love to help a friend quit hooking up.

Audrey Pollnow, a philosophy major? from Seattle, Wash., is the president of Anscombe Society. Ben Koons, a sophomore from Austin, Texas, is the vice president of Anscombe Society. They can be reached at apollnow@princeton.edu and bkoons@princeton.edu, respectively.

Source: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/12/07/32104/

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