One night poll
Mar. 31st, 2006 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ewx
[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.
you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-04 10:45 am (UTC)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
Date: 2006-04-04 10:54 am (UTC)Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-04 11:06 am (UTC)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
Date: 2006-04-04 01:39 pm (UTC)(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
Date: 2006-04-04 02:05 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2006-04-04 10:41 pm (UTC)Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 11:23 am (UTC)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
Date: 2006-04-05 11:51 am (UTC)Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 03:44 pm (UTC)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?
Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 04:28 pm (UTC)Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 04:46 pm (UTC)I would have expected *their* poll to be phrased so that people who answered your poll with "I clicked 'no' with a heavy heart because it's not OK, but I suppose it must be *morally* ok," would have been in the same category as "immoral" people.
Do you not think so?
Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 05:04 pm (UTC)Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 05:11 pm (UTC)Fair enough, that's a good point. (Though while I wouldn't feel it necessary to state my own opinon urgently -- I trust your judgement of if you should have sex :) -- I still felt compelled to be complete in my answer.)
The explicit distinction of 'morally' wrong is right there in the question I asked.
Yeah, but I'm still not sure if
(i) You intended to answer a subtly different question to the ones in the research you linked to, and don't think that should be confusing
(ii) You think I'm drawing unnescessary distinctions between your questions and their questions
(iii) You think my interpretation of the poll was wrong...
Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 05:23 pm (UTC)Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 05:31 pm (UTC)OK, mainly I'm confused by which question you chose. I would have thought "Do you think it's ever ok to have casual sex?" was the obvious question, and "morally wrong" as more interesting for what it tells you about moral beliefs in general than on this issue; but then that view depends on my prejudgement of what my friends *do* think, so it's not necessarily right.
Re: you don't get lengthy digressions on what their favourite colour for JCBs is
Date: 2006-04-05 05:13 pm (UTC)