Tuesday 10 February 2015

"Erotic Chatting" as a problem case

In this seminar, which will be our final one where we consider the question of 'what is sex'?, we will consider if chatting erotically (internet chat boards, sexy texts ect) counts as a kind of sex. This will of course inform our discussions of what sex is.


Questions to think about;

1. Portnam claims 'chatting is not cheating'. Why? Do you agree?

2. We might separate the questions of whether something counts as 'cheating' and something counts as 'sex'. For example:

Amy and Adam are in a monogamous relationship, live together and get a cat.

Supppose Adam falls in love with Eve, but does not touch her at all, nor masurbate whilst thinking of her, not sext her.

Do you think that Adam has 'cheated' on Amy?
Has Adam had sex with Eve?

3. Considering your answer to qu 2, could erotic chatting be cheating, but still not sex? How about it not being cheating, but still a kind of sex? How much is Portnam's claim a moral claim about chatting, and how much is it simply a classification of chatting (as sex or not). Can we separate the two?

4. Several of you advocated a view last time that we should define what counts as sex culturally, or perhaps micro culturally. Does the question of erotic chatting being sex depend on which culture you come from?

5. Do we have touch each other to have sex? Think about chatting but also our discussion last time of mutual masturabation.

6. Some people advocated a view of sex where you affect someone else's consciousness. It seems in this case chatting would count, do you agree? What about mild flirting? Is this a problem?

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