Sexual Liberalism

In a recent article of mine I discussed “sexual freedom”, and there we covered not only what sexual freedom was but also discussed different argument for and against it. However, it is very obvious that my post was very pro sexual liberalism.

To recap quickly, in that post we described sexual liberalism as a position that allows individuals to engage in, without any judgement from others, their desired sexual practices. Most Western countries for instance do not legally restrict all that many sexual practices between two consenting adults.

Yet we agreed that sexual freedom should have some limits. For example, we would all agree here that we should not be allowed to rape anyone (I really hope you all agree!) nor cause any severe long-lasting harm to our sexual partners – like most of us would find it noxious that someone went around spreading HIV on purpose.

In other words, we want consensual sex and to minimize the possible harms of certain sexual practices. But pretty much these limitations of sexual freedom serve one and only one purpose: maximize and protect the sexual freedom of each individual. Think about it: how much sexual freedom does a rape victim have when she is being raped?

But what about other restrictions? What about sleeping with other people’s partners? What about women “slutting around” or men “perving around”? And finally, what about monogamy and the conservative family?