1. Sexual objectification & exploitation
Scott Stewart
PHILOSOPHY 2103

2. Is it wrong to sexually objectify someone?
Kant: sexual desire overpowering
treating someone solely as a means to an end
Instrumental vs. intrinsic value
Treating people as things (Nussbaum): (1) a tool; (2) deny self-determination, (3) deny agency, (4) interchangeable with other objects, (5) lacking boundaries, (6) something that can be owed or sold, (7) something that lacks feelings or inner states.
Marriage
Other ways to avoid objectification?
Recognize partners as unique indivisuals with their own ends, values, goals, feelings, boundaries, intrinsic vale, etc.

3. Is consent a sufficient condition for moral sex?
Consent requires: a mentally competent adult who has adequate information and is not coerced.
What constitutes adequate information? (STD status? Long term goals? Relationship history?)
What constitutes coercion? Obvious cases – physical force or threat of it. Less obvious cases – psychological pressure, patriarchy, socio-economic disparity, etc? (Catherine MacKinnon)

4. Commercial sex Is it truly consensual?
Does it avoid Nussbaum’s seven points regarding treating people as things?
Is sex itself the problem or is it something else? Nussbaum claims we need to abandon our irrational stigmas regarding sex.
Debra Satz: female prostitution perpetuates pernicious stereotypes regarding women and exacerbates existing gender inequalities.
Sex workers not really free
Seiriol Morgan: consent not enough e.g., Cruel Intentions/Dangerous Liaisons, Casanova. The complete cad.

5. BDSM and consent
Women as submissives
Mental health

6. Setting the consent bar too high?
Sexual contracts?
Government interest in public health and protection of its citizens?

7. Commercial Sex Again
Can we distinguish b/w voluntary adult sex work and trafficking in persons?
Recent Ontario court case regarding prostitution laws (specifically ones prohibiting sex-trade workers from operating a common bawdy house, living off the avails of prostitution and communicating for the purposes of prostitution) as violating Charter of Rights and Freedoms by violating the security rights of prostitutes.
Does decriminalization/legalization of (certain types of) prostitution) lead to greater trafficking? Greater safety?

8. What does it mean to have sexual autonomy?
Up in the Air
Ryan Bingham, (his girlfriend) Alex, and (his young co-worker) Natalie
Freedom from and connection to: liberalism vs. communitarianism
Do our relationships constrain us help to give our life meaning?

9. What is the connection between “exoticizing” and “eroticizing” someone?
The Exotic Other – foreign, mysterious, strange
Sex tourism
Interracial dating sites
Sticking to ‘our own’?
Personal taste vs. prejudices