The Redistribution of Sex

[Theodarzna]

One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion.

This is part of why there’s been so much recent agitation over universities and op-ed pages and other forums for debate. There’s a general understanding that the ideological mainstream isn’t adequate to the moment, but nobody can decide whether that means we need purges or pluralism, a spirit of curiosity and conversation or a furious war against whichever side you think is evil.

For those more curious than martial, one useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign that there’s something interesting going on.

Which brings me to the sex robots.

Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.”

This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly. A representative response from Slate’s Jordan Weissmann, “Is Robin Hanson the Creepiest Economist in America?”, cited the post along with some previous creepy forays to dismiss Hanson as a misogynist weirdo not that far removed from the franker misogyny of toxic online males.

But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.

Srinivasan ultimately answered her title question in the negative: “There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want.” But her negative answer was a qualified one. While “no one has a right to be desired,” at the same time “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t instantiate a formal right to sex, exactly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary architects intended, sex would be more justly distributed than it is today.

A number of the critics I saw engaging with Srinivasan’s essay tended to respond the way a normal centre-left writer like Weissmann engaged with Hanson’s thought experiment — by commenting on its weirdness or ideological extremity rather than engaging fully with its substance. But to me, reading Hanson and Srinivasan together offers a good case study in how intellectual eccentrics — like socialists and populists in politics — can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates.

By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a recurring pattern in liberal societies.

First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration.

Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline.

Third, because the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian, despite certain revisions attempted by feminists since the heyday of the Playboy philosophy — a message that frequency and variety in sexual experience is as close to a summum bonum as the human condition has to offer, that the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states. And this master narrative, inevitably, makes both the new inequalities and the decline of actual relationships that much more difficult to bear …

… which in turn encourages people, as ever under modernity, to place their hope for escape from the costs of one revolution in a further one yet to come, be it political, social or technological, which will supply if not the promised utopia at least some form of redress for the many people that progress has obviously left behind.

There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.
Comments

But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions, rather than reverse them.

In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.

But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind, the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robots will increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.

Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.

(source)

Since we've now had 2? 3? however many shootings but appearent "INCELS" it might be worth taking a look at these people and the peculiar conditions that both create them. More over how interesting it is that while INCELS are largely a Right-Wing thing, there is a counterpart on the Left or a Left-Wing narrative for redistributing sex as well and perhaps the fact that radicals on in many different theoretically opposed camps are both seeing the same sort of issue, the sleepy liberal bits in the middle may wish to take notice.

[GennGreymane]

Stop asking for sex.

[Sunseeker]

Stop spreading propaganda.

[King Shark]

Why don't these fuckers just go to Vegas? Plenty distribution to be had.

[Theodarzna]

Stop spreading propaganda.

The New York Times is propaganda?

[Draco-Onis]

How to get sex in 2018

1) Download tinder

seriously this is the easiest time if you just want to get laid these people are not incels, they are not getting laid because they are picky.

[GennGreymane]

Theo, no one owes u sex.

[Sunseeker]

The New York Times is propaganda?

OpEds in any newspaper is. They're these nifty things called "opinions" not "news".

[JohnBrown1917]

Is protecting the incels the 'in' thing with centrists now?

[Theodarzna]

OpEds in any newspaper is. They're these nifty things called "opinions" not "news".

I didn't say it was news. Maybe I am not using the icons correctly. I thought Light Bulb next to the topic indicated that it was just an op-ed for opinions. Also, propaganda wouldn't be the correct term here anyway.

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Is protecting the incels the 'in' thing with centrists now?

Amia Srinivasan wishes to protect the Left-Wing equivalent of Incels. If anything it is more of a radicals thought experiment. I am unsure she could be called a Centrist by anyone other than Stalin himself.

[Sunseeker]

I didn't say it was news. Maybe I am not using the icons correctly. I thought Light Bulb next to the topic indicated that it was just an op-ed for opinions.

Lol, yeah sure.

I just think it's funny that as soon as an idea starts circling your silly conservative circles ya'll jump on it like it's a great new thought.

[GennGreymane]

Why do you want to force people to have sex with others theo?

[Cthulhu 2020]

If only women would freely give away their vaginas to any random creepy anti-social gun nut with psychopathic tendencies and a mad hatred for the Democratic party, this problem would be solved!

I for one thank Theo for giving herself to the cause, otherwise her rabid right wing husband might have done something unthinkable.

[Sorshen]

Theo is trying help the incels get laid?

[GennGreymane]

Theo is trying help the incels get laid?

I mean maybe they should volunteer instead of asking others to do so.

[Theodarzna]

Lol, yeah sure.

I just think it's funny that as soon as an idea starts circling your silly conservative circles 'll jump on it like it's a great new thought.

First, you've incorrectly used the term "propaganda" here. An op-ed isn't propaganda, it is someone putting out an idea, to discuss. Like, say on a forum or message board.

Second, considering Amia Srinivasan Lefty credentials and the fact that idea approximating redistribution of sex has been circling in the far-left for ages now, I am unsure why you call this necessarily Conservative. The person I mentioned wrote an article on the topic from a Left-Wing perspective. I'll paraphrase from the OP to explain but; It focused on what left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy for the overweight, disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans* folk unable to find partners.

Srinivasan answered the question of "Are people entitled to sex" in the negative. But she qualified that with “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t be a right to sex directly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary thinkers intend, sex would be more "justly" distributed than it is today with many victim groups having more sex such as overweight, disabled, minority groups, trans* people, etc...

The discourse about sex has, if anything, a long history in the far left and a relatively new presence right.

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Theo is trying help the incels get laid?

I believe in legalizing prostitution, though I think some of them would be disappointed once they actually got laid.

[JohnBrown1917]

Amia Srinivasan[/URL] wishes to protect the Left-Wing equivalent of Incels. If anything it is more of a radicals thought experiment. I am unsure she could be called a Centrist by anyone other than Stalin himself.

No idea who she is, or how that changes anything about what I said. Or what the 'left-wing' version of incels even are.

[Sorshen]

I believe in legalizing prostitution, though I think some of them would be disappointed once they actually got laid.

A noble goal.

[Sunseeker]

First, you've incorrectly used the term "propaganda" here. An op-ed isn't propaganda, it is someone putting out an idea, to discuss. Like, say on a forum or message board.

Except it's been put "on a forum" at least here in particular, about once a week since the attack in Canada.

Second, considering Amia Srinivasan Lefty credentials and the fact that idea approximating redistribution of sex has been circling in the far-left for ages now, I am unsure why you call this necessarily Conservative. The person I mentioned wrote an article on the topic from a Left-Wing perspective. I'll paraphrase from the OP to explain but; It focused on what left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy for the overweight, disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans* folk unable to find partners.

It's conservative because they're the idiots who invented it to get those poor white incels laid because it will magically prevent violence or something.


Here, simple question: You're a woman. If someone told you that some white boy was gonna shoot up a school if he didn't get laid, would you offer up your goods?

[Dontrike]

How to get sex in 2018

1) Download tinder

seriously this is the easiest time if you just want to get laid these people are not incels, they are not getting laid because they are picky.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I am a 30 year old virgin (not surprising, I know) and having sex without forking over $1,000 just to do is damn near impossible.