Ole Martin Moen

I think there can be several good reasons to engage in casual sex (i.e. in sex without romantic feelings involved): 1) It is pleasurable 2) It is physically healthy 3) It can give you valuable practice for great sex later on with a romantic partner 4) It can be a thrilling and adventurous experience 5) Sex and sexual intimacy is a basic human need just as much for singles as for those in romantic relationships If we grant that these reasons count in favor of casual sex, it seems that if we are to rationally conclude that engaging in casual sex is harmful, we will need to point to a strong overriding reason why that is so. Let us consider three candidates that are presented in this thread. A) Casual sex brings with it diseases, unwanted pregnancy, etc. This is a reason, but it’s weak. If you value your life, you have a moral obligation to protect yourself, and with the proper use of condoms, the chances for pregnancy are next to zero, and so are the chances for venereal diseases (or, at least, for venereal diseases that are not easily cured by antibiotics). I doubt that engaging in occasional casual sex is significantly more life threatening than owning a swimming pool. Casual sex destroys sex, since sex is a manifestation of deeply shared values. Sex is (or can be) a manifestation of deeply shared values, but this alone is not an argument against casual sex. It is an argument against casual sex only if one can show that having casual sex makes it harder to have romantic sex with one’s partner. It is not obvious, however, that this is the case. To emphasize this, I often draw a parallel to eating. When a romantic couple dines at a lovely gourmet restaurant, their eating might very well carry deep meaning for both parties. What is, on the one hand, a biological need, is then given deep significance because of the social and psychological setting in which it is placed (Peikoff uses this example in OPAR). It is not clear, however, that one degrades eating as such and destroys one’s capacity for appreciating deeply meaningful gourmet meals if one earlier has engaged in “casual eating” or has been “eating around”. Indeed, it seems absurd that one has destroyed eating if one has eaten a cheap McDonald’s burger on the run. Therefore, engaging casually in an action that has the potential of deep meaning must not necessarily imply destroying this action’s potential on other occasions. If one believes the case is different with regard to sex, one will need to present a (non-question begging) argument for that, not merely appeal to the fact that sex can be a manifestation of deeply shared values. C) Casual sex is an indication of low self-esteem Even if it might be true that people with low self-esteem engage the most in casual sex (though I seriously doubt it), this would not provide suffucient grounds for concluding that casual sex leads to low self-esteem. That is reversing the causal order. If one wants to argue that casual sex positively leads to low self-esteem, and one does not want to be an emotionalist, one needs to show that there is something independently harmful to casual sex; something that makes having casual sex a bad choice that only those with low self-esteem would make. Until or unless more such arguments are advanced, I believe it is rational to conclude that casual sex is perfectly permissible.