The Philosophy of Sex Are we doing it right? Putting sex into perspective (ft. Euphemia Russell, Raja Halwani, Lisa Wade & Victoria Brooks)
Jul 28, 2021
Euphemia Russell, pleasure coach who centers somatic, slow-pleasure practices. Raja Halwani, philosopher probing Kant and sexual desire. Victoria Brooks, researcher challenging Western sexual morals via public-sex studies. Lisa Wade, sociologist studying hookup culture on US campuses. They explore hookup scripts, embodied pleasure versus dualistic shame, Kantian puzzles about objectification, and building pleasure-centered sexual ethics.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Hookup Culture Behaves Like A Social Script
- Hookup culture on US campuses functions as a prescriptive script that treats casual sex as an obligation rather than an option.
- Lisa Wade shows students split sex into masculinized hookups and feminized relationship sex, creating rules that punish emotional investment and produce widespread disappointment.
Gender Binary Drives Pleasure Inequality
- The gendered binary framing of hookup versus relationship sex produces a pleasure inequality that advantages men and frustrates women.
- Wade connects this to campus dynamics: men feel frustrated, women feel infuriated or traumatized, and many students feel ambivalent or opt out.
Research At A Nudist Beach Revealed Personal Ethical Tensions
- Victoria Brooks researched a nudist beach in southern France where open public sex and swinging occur as a field site for sexual ethics.
- She returned despite discomfort to test whether Western philosophy could help her form a personal sexual ethic.
