Private and Personal Matters of Sexual Behaviour

• Foucault


  He challenges religious thinking on sexual ethics as it tends to categorise sexual behaviour in terms of normal and abnormal.
• Mills liberalism suggests that governments should intervene in people's lives as little as possible. Rules are needed only to protect people from harm. Therefore, provided people are consenting and no one is harmed, sexual behaviour is a private matter.
• Modern utilitarian John Harris supports this view; he argues that sexual ethics as such is not needed, since issues such as violence, abuse or paedophilia would be dealt with under other ethical debates.
• Feminists would argue that sexual ethics is an important area of debate. Gender inequality means that women are disproportionately affected by sexual discrimination; women are more likely than men to be judged as promiscuous if they have several partners. The #MeToo movement also has highlighted issues that by far affect women more than men.
• Mill's principle of no-harm means neither politicians nor philosophers need to consider sexual matters.
• Existentialists argue that the mistake in religious philosophy such as Aquinas' natural law is in assuming all people act with purpose. When the idea of purpose is removed then we can see sexual behaviour as purely free and personal choices.
• Sexual behaviour like other areas of human life affects people for better or worse. Hence, there is absolutely ethical dilemmas to be discussed.
• There is a need to discuss the ethical issues that arise from the imbalance of power in sexual relationships.