Promiscuity

This is a comment on some things in a post by the Wandering Webwhore, which post you should probably read first in order to get the context for what I’m talking about. (Note that there is a lot more in the post between the quotations below. I just selected passages that I wanted to comment on.)

Anyone who scarfs down corn syrup, meat, chemical-laden and genetically modified food is in NO position to judge a woman for what she puts in her vagina.

First of all, I don’t see any inherent problem with chemical-laden and genetically modified food. Sometimes such foods don’t taste as good, but sometimes they taste better. I don’t think there is any evidence that chemicals or GMOs per se are unhealthy or immoral. (Obviously some chemicals are unhealthy, but that’s why we have the FDA.)

With respect to meat, there are moral and environmental issues, but there are also health issues that might outweigh those, since some people develop iron deficiencies when they don’t eat meat.

As for corn syrup, I don’t see much of a moral issue. There’s a health issue, but it may be outweighed by other considerations, such as the relative difficulty and expense of obtaining foods that don’t contain corn syrup, and a preference for the taste of corn syrup.

With respect to promiscuity OTOH, there are clearly moral issues, in that promiscuity promotes the spread of STIs and risks unwanted pregnancy. The moral issues are, if anything, more acute for men than for women (about which see my discussion below concerning the double standard), but they certainly apply to women too.

I’m not saying that I personally think promiscuity is worse than the sort of gluttony cited in the quotation. (I'm not much inclined to condemn either one, really.) But I would say that a sincere and thoughtful person might, without being a hypocrite, come to the conclusion that scarfing down “corn syrup, meat, chemical-laden and genetically modified food” is acceptable behavior whereas putting the wrong things in your vagina is not.

What does promiscuous mean, anyway? To me, it just means having many partners in a short time span and that's a meaningless definition since “many partners” and “short time span” are so subjective.

Sounds like a reasonable definition, but I don’t think it’s meaningless. It just says that promiscuity is a relative term. The cutoff between “promiscuous” and “not promiscuous” is arbitrary, just as the cutoff between “cold” and “warm” is arbitrary. But someone can still meaningfully assert that “it’s bad to be promiscuous,” meaning that more promiscuity is worse than less promiscuity.

[EDIT: The implicit comparison when someone uses the word “promiscuous” is with the average (or typical) person. Even though Rhode Island is big enough to fit millions of people and Texas covers only a small fraction of the earth’s surface, we still say that Rhode Island is small and Texas is big, because that’s how they compare to the average US state.]

The UNhealthy/wrong thing to do is get into or stay in a relationship just so you can have access to socially acceptable sex.

I disagree with that. The bad thing about promiscuity is that it promotes the spread of STIs. If people want to have sex, the healthy way to do it is in long-term monogamous relationships, even if those relationships are only for the purpose of having sex. (I will agree that it’s unhealthy when one party to the relationship doesn’t realize that that’s the only purpose.)

As to the double standard, I’m going to be a devil’s advocate here and argue that there is no double standard. People that really care about morality are just as quick to condemn men as women for being promiscuous. (Did you ever hear a preacher say it was okay for guys to be promiscuous?) But for most people, morality is not the only virtue. I would venture to say that, for a great many people, it is not even a very important virtue. While moral considerations might lead one to choose to have fewer sexual partners, there are other virtues that enable one to have more sexual partners. In the case of women, though, those virtues aren’t really very impressive: since men are typically eager to have more sexual partners, it’s typically easy for a woman to find more men to have sex with. But since women are typically not so eager to have more sexual partners, it is more difficult for a man to find more women to have sex with, and it is therefore more impressive – and indicative of some sort of non-moral virtue – when he succeeds. That's not a double standard; it's just a recognition of the fact that men and women face different opportunities and have to be judged in the context of those different opportunities.

The devil’s advocate will have to grant, though, that this difference in male and female opportunities could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or, as we say in economics, a system with multiple stable equilibria. If it’s considered impressive for a man to have more sexual partners, then men will be eager to have more partners so they can impress people, whereas if it is not considered impressive for a woman to have more sexual partners, then women will be less eager to have more partners. And therefore, it really will be impressive for a man to have more partners, because he has to seduce all these less-eager women, and it really won’t be impressive for a woman to have more partners, since she can easily find men who want to demonstrate how impressive they are by adding her to their list of partners. So in a sense, it’s a double standard but not an irrational one from the point of view of the people who are living it. As long as the double standard exists, it will be self-perpetuating even if people are rational.

I’ve simplified the argument here by assuming that everyone is heterosexual. But I think it actually strengthens the argument when I allow homosexuality. My impression is that people are more eager to condemn promiscuity in male homosexuals than in female homosexuals. (Some people think lesbianism is wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any straight person suggest that promiscuous lesbianism is worse than monogamous lesbianism. Whereas the “gay men are too promiscuous” idea is something you hear every day.) That makes sense according to my theory, because male homosexuals have the easy task finding men to have sex with, while female homosexuals have the relatively more difficult task of finding women to have sex with. So promiscuous lesbians are demonstrating a non-moral virtue that promiscuous gay men are not.

(Why does Microsoft Word think that the plural of “equilibrium” is “equilibriums”? I’ve never heard or read the word “equilibriums” except in MS Word’s spell-checker. Oh, well. Stay tuned for my next post on why conservatives should advocate giving teenagers pornography and sex toys.)