Title:

“Unjustly Undesired?” 

Abstract:

Recently, several theorists have argued that certain sexual preferences (such as race-based sexual preferences) are unjust. We pose a challenge for this view by asking a simple question: What right, exactly, do putatively unjust sexual preferences violate? The relevant theorists are at pains to clarify that unjust sexual preferences are not unjust in virtue of violating a “right to sex”, since there is clearly no such right. But then how should we specify the right that is violated by such preferences? In this paper, we consider and reject a variety of potential specifications of the relevant right, arguing that all either under-generate or over-generate unjust sexual preference by the lights of the relevant theorists. We also reject the possibility that sexual preferences can be unjust despite violating no rights. This suggests to us that it was a mistake to place sexual preference within the realm of justice and rights. Nonetheless, we conclude in a constructive and reconciliatory vein by offering an alternative way of capturing some of the intuitions that motivated the view that sexual preferences are unjust. On our view, sexual normativity is a sui generis “source of normativity” akin to moral normativity, epistemic normativity, aesthetic normativity, and so on. This allows us to maintain that one ought not to have, say, certain race-based sexual preferences (in the same way that one ought not to believe contradictions) without this being morally wrong, unjust or rights-violating. More generally, this view opens up an intriguing line of inquiry into the nature of the standards governing sexual normativity.

Bio:

Collis Tahzib works on moral and political philosophy, and in particular on the philosophical foundations of liberalism. He is the author of A Perfectionist Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press). His articles have been published in Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.