Claire is at pains to avoid pain. She proposes the following: "exploratory discussion" of sexual ethics in which we ought to "give more thought to the dynamics that surround hooking up." We are not told where these thoughts ought to lead or whether it is even possible for these thoughts to go wrong. Again and again, Claire says that we ought to "question" and "rethink" our attitudes toward sexual ethics-but she says very little about what the answers to our questions might be, or where our new thoughts ought to lead.
Claire cannot do more than propose and apologize because she will not repudiate the sexual ethic that she wants to criticize. The centerpiece of this philosophy of sexual ethics is the happy-go-lucky one-night stand: "a one-time, mutually satisfying physical encounter," in which no crime is committed and to which everyone brings the multicolored handouts, dice and anatomical charts provided by the SHEs at my parents' expense. Claire explicitly says that this is fine with her, and that is where her critique ends.
All that she can do, from that point on, is ask questions. "Why, for example, is alcohol such an important factor?" "Does getting consent really ensure that both parties' desires are aligned?" "From the perspective of female empowerment and gender equality, is a woman's ability to have purely sexual relationships truly liberating?" Claire cannot give a normative answer to these questions-she can only point, tentatively, at her own views and then apologize-because she has agreed that sexual morality is in the eyes of those who behold it in bed.
Imagine a series of responses to Claire's questions. A rakish wino might reply, "Claire, my rotating series of nighttime companions and I insist on at least five glasses of Veuve Clicquot because that is part of our sexual identity." A connoisseur of consent might point to the contracts which his paramours sign in longhand. Some very bright feminists think that sexual adventurism is fine, even virtuous; some very bright feminists think not. My point is that Claire would have nothing to say to any of these people, because where consent rules, there can be no argument that overrides personal whim.
Her enforced silence points to the real danger of her position. Consent-based sexual ethics of the type preached by the SHEs and the PAs and parroted by their fellow travellers is not a morally neutral stance. It is a substantive position that, in the content-free philosophical atmosphere of Heath Education or the (only slightly more oppressive) atmosphere of a Social Quad basement, takes on the character of a creed. Since Claire is no hypocrite, she cannot break with that creed without reconsidering her role as a PA. Hence, her dilemma: Break with the creed and give her doubts some normative force, or stick to the creed and avoid a fight. In these pages she has chosen the latter. I suspect, though her article is too shy for my suspicion to turn to certainty, that she finds the former more tempting.
James is a dilettantish cook, a mediocre chess player and an irritating contrarian, but friendship with Claire more than makes up for all of these shortcomings. He can be reached at jmontana08@amherst.edu.