One night poll

[ewx]

Apropos of this article.

[Poll #701581]

Notes:

• If you're in a monogamous relationship then answer as if you were not - i.e. I'm asking about your opinion about the activity in general not about your current situation.
• "Morally wrong for everybody" means you think nobody should do it. "Morally wrong for you but OK for other people" means you'd think you were being bad if you did it but wouldn't necessarily think the same of someone else doing it. "OK for everybody" means you wouldn't think anyone, including yourself, was being bad for it (even if they themselves would).
• You can think it's distateful, or indication of something missing, without necessarily also thinking it's wrong.

Comments

[keirf.livejournal.com]

What if I think it's okay for me, but morally wrong for other people.

I'm not saying that's what I think, I'm just being pedantic.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Freakish edge cases are of course welcome to leave comments if the poll does not include their oddity.

e.g.

[emperor]

"YHWH told me to get laid"? :)

Got to be a BT about it somewhere...

[(Anonymous)]

I'd have said the same thing - it's morally wrong for those in an agreed monogamous relationship. Now, since the premise of your question is for me to assume I'm not, the only possible answer is "fine for me, but not for all other people" - which is the only answer I'm not allowed to give.

Ho hum.

[songster.livejournal.com]

That was me, by the way

Re:

[ewx.livejournal.com]

That seems like completely bizarre interpretation of what I said. I'm asking your opinion on the activity in and of itself; if people who've agreed to be monogamous sleep around with randoms then that's wrong because they're breaking their promises, not because they're sleeping with random people. (Assuming we agree that breaking your promises is wrong.)

Re:

[songster.livejournal.com]

But activities don't *exist* "in and of themselves", and nothing we do takes place in an ethical vacuum. The fact that you made an explicit point of saying we could assume we ourselves were single, but didn't make the same assumption for everyone else, thus ended up being a bit misleading.

Frankly, it strikes me that almost any activity can be rationalised away in the same manner - it's not that's morally wrong, it's breaking your moral code that's morally wrong. That's both a tautology and ridiculous.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Obviously any specific instance of casual sex will have more moral variables than whether it's casual sex or not, but I'm surprised to see you completely denying the validity of abstraction.

[lnr]

I think the question is meant to be read as follows:

If there's no *other* moral reason not to have sex (ie it's not a case of being unfaithful) is casual sex bad in and of itself.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

You have the right idea. I'm not sure why this is causing so much trouble, if you ask someone what their favourite color is you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite color for JCBs is, what their favourite color socks are, what color their prefer their politicians to be, they just say blue or red or something. Sex may be more complicated than color (but color isn't necessarily as simple as all that...) but even so.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I don't quite see why it's causing so much trouble either - it seemed a very straightforward question to me!

you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You do with this crowd! That is, I think many people find that sort of distinction interesting, so tend to bring it up more than is strictly necessary :)

Also, I think people genuinely would answer the question in different senses. If you said "chocolate is bad" we'd all understand you meant "bad FOR YOU", and if you said "gay sex isn't bad", we'd understand you probably meant "not intrinsicly evil", but here it seems to fall exactly between the two: some people think casual sex is intrinsicly bad, some that it's bad for you, some that it's bad for you because it's intrinsicly bad, and some that it's intrisicly bad because it's bad for you...

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[ewx.livejournal.com]

But I said "morally wrong", not "wrong"...

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

And now I'm only getting more confused. From your other posts I get the impression I do think about the same thing as you, but my language just doesn't live up to it.

I would have expected you *not* to say "morally", what distinction are you drawing?

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[ewx.livejournal.com]

(1) "Stealing is wrong" = morally wrong = you shouldn't do it. You might think something morally wrong because it hurts other people, because your parents told you it was wrong at an impressionable age, because you think (correctly or otherwise) that some god said it was wrong, because the law prohibits it, or for some other reason.

(2) "2+2=5 is wrong" = factually wrong. (Assuming we're working the integers).

"eating so much I get fat" might be morally wrong (1) according to some people, or some third kind of wrong (3) for others, or not any kind of wrong at all.

Any given kind of sexual activity might fall into (1) or (3) depending who you ask. Most people would put rape in (1) for instance. Some people would put casual sex (defined one way or another) into (1) or (3) while others don't think it's either kind of wrong.

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OK, I can get down with those definitions.

I assume you accept that "eating so much I get ill" is wrong in some sense? Meaning about the same as "unwise". (Even if I have the right to do it, you'd council me not to?)

Then that might be a *different* sort of wrong, "(3) Unwise", or might be one of the justifications in (1), depending on your definitions and morals.

I think many of our friends (and maybe you) would agree with me that:

(i) Casual sex with someone you don't know is *normally* unsatisfying to you and the other person, and should be avoided for that reason.
(ii) This may or may not be described as morally wrong.
(iii) One-off sex with someone you mutually know and like may or may not be described as casual.
(iv) And may or may not be unsatisfying, depending on the circumstances.

If so, your answer depends on those maybes, but a poll can only really separate out two cases. I think the *interesting* questions are does everyone agree with (i) and where between "always" and "never" do people fall on (iv), but people have sufficiently divergent definitions of 'casual sex' and 'morally wrong' that they become necessary to answer.

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Sure, if I thought you were going to overeat to the point of illness I might suggest that was a bad idea, and that'd be bad as in "rubbish" and not "bad dog" coming from me. I see incidentally that wrong is a borrowing from Old Norse and bad unknown before the 13th century and of uncertain source.

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it didn't even occur to me to think about etymologies :)

that'd be bad as in "rubbish" and not "bad dog" coming from me

OK. So does your question mean even if you casual sex (by either definition) is always bad as in rubbish, answer yes iff you also think it's bad as in dog?

(I suppose they *would* go together, because if it's always rubbish, then it's rubbish for the other person and so wrong to inflict it. But then, if they know the risks and want to anyway, you can't enforce everything on them.)

Am I elucidating at all why I (and other people) were somewhat confused by the question?

(Possibly because so many of *my* friends are naturally utilitarian liberals it takes me by surprise every time morally bad means something other than a sum of harms.)

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Huh? It doesn't take a view on whether it's bad=rubbish, or wrong=factually incorrect. Look, no view. How should I write "morally wrong" other than "morally wrong" in order to convey the notion "morally wrong"?

Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry -- I swear I'm not being deliberately obtuse! I feel like you're shouting "morally wrong" when I just said I wasn't quite sure how you're using it.

As far as I can tell, you really did mean morally wrong, and I'm sorry I didn't see it, that was just unexpected to me. It feels like that's avoiding asking a question. For instance, suppose someone posts a poll that says "Is it morally wrong if I self harm?" My literal answer is "no". But the answer I want to give is "No, but it's not a good idea! Please try to avoid it if you can!"

If I wanted to ask that moral question, I've come to decide I would have to specifiy explicitly that most people (or some people) think it's a bad idea to sidestep that.

The casual sex example is more complicated because people will also disagree about whether it is unwise.

I'm sorry, does that make any sense?

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Then you'll end up either a corruptor of innocents or frustrated.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I did wonder why that option was missing.

Does Richard really believe he has no moral hypocrites reading his journal?

[gerald_duck]

Perhaps he believes nobody but he should be a moral hypocrite?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

*snigger*

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I expected that they'd lie about it...