The current cultural norm on college campuses is one that embraces and encourages casual sex. Alongside this shift has come a new sex positivity movement, whose stated goal is to promote safe, respectful sexual encounters and to shed the shame associated with sexual activity. This openness about sex is seen as a prerequisite to the liberation of women, who are now, like men, capable of enjoying sexual experiences without commitment. Despite the good intentions of this movement, normalizing casual sex is the opposite of liberatory. Not only is normalizing casual sex damaging to long term, meaningful romantic relationships and especially harmful for women, it rests on an inadequate “consent only” view of ethical sex. While consent is absolutely necessary for ethical sex, it’s not sufficient.

The first fundamental problem with casual sex is its promotion of sexual commodification, which results in the separation of sex and intimacy. Rather than seeing others as persons, we view them as objects by which to achieve some goal. They are a means to an end. This shallowness is clear in the way people talk about their hook-ups. These discussions usually revolve around a partner’s physical appearance or the act itself. It’s never, or rarely, about the person.

This is not a healthy way to engage in sex. The idea that sex and intimacy are separable is scientifically mythological. Orgasm, sex, and physical proximity release a flood of chemicals in the brain, affecting the function of many of the most important neurotransmitters. This drug cocktail promotes love and bonding. Psychology provides good evidence that separating sex and intimacy is difficult and worsens our ability to form intimate relationships. People who have permissive attitudes towards casual sex and have had many sexual partners are far more prone to infidelity, depression, anxiety, self-esteem issues, and are more prone to regret their experiences. Other studies have shown that motives for casual sex are often self-centered, deceptive, and even predatory. What all this evidence shows is that trying to separate sex and intimacy is psychologically dangerous: we are likely to develop feelings for those who we have casual sex with, and even if we can train our brains to distinguish between intimacy and sex, this comes at the cost of damaging our ability to create romantically intimate and meaningful relationships. Notably, all these studies show that these effects are more pronounced in women than men, which makes the idea that casual sex is liberatory for women even more ridiculous.

Ultimately, hook-up culture is causing a breakdown of intimacy and empathy. Rather than working to form intentional and meaningful connections, we see people as opportunities for dopamine hits, treating a deep act of intimacy just as one treats eating a burger or smoking a cigarette. Sex becomes another service we trade with people instead of an act of tremendous psychological significance.

But casual sex is not only psychologically harmful, it’s ethically dubious. The main ethical view underlying this normalization is a ‘consent based’ account of sexual ethics. According to this framework, consent is all that’s needed for ethically acceptable sex. Whether your partner is having a good time, whether you feel degraded and empty, whether you are being dishonest, whether you are being disloyal: none of this matters for whether a sexual encounter was morally acceptable. This is clearly wrong: while consent is a necessary condition of ethical sex, it’s not sufficient. I am not embracing a reactionary, conservative, or religious viewpoint on sexual encounters. Rather, I am making a point that progressives have missed: consent isn’t enough. Yet, this is what many teach is solely needed for sexual respect.

A grave problem with this view of sexual ethics is that it impairs our ability to condemn horrible sexual crimes. The primary reasons sexual assault and rape are seriously wrong is that they involve forcing another person to engage in an act of deep intimacy and affection, thereby exploiting one of their most personal and profound faculties. However, if sex is just another pleasurable activity without deep significance, we have lost this justification and it becomes unclear what is seriously wrong about horrible sexual crimes. Of course, coercing someone to do something is wrong — however, forcing someone to eat brussel sprouts is ethically incomparable to rape. Yet, if we adopt a view of sex on which it has no intimate significance and is like smoking a cigarette or eating chocolate, then the serious moral difference between these cases evaporates. We can see this reflected in many spaces that do not take sex seriously such as fraternities or college parties — such spaces are rampant with sexual assault. Seeing sex as “not a big deal” surely contributes to this.

One of the promises of the women’s liberation movement was to address toxic elements of male sexual behavior such as treating women as objects, having power over women in sexual encounters, and being seen positively for engaging in casual sex. However, rather than addressing the unethical nature of this culture, the answer we got, at least some feminist circles, was that women, just like men, should be free to participate in this culture without judgment. As I was told by a woman commenting on this bizarre result of feminism: “The sexual revolution feels like women’s pursuit to be like men. My hope would be that we should all strive to be better than that.” ■

— Anonymous