And nothing without.

That is the whole entirety of sexual ethics in a simple, logical form. Everything with consent, nothing without. That is it. Whatever it is whatever number of people want to do in the privacy of their own whatever^[1] is perfectly fine as long as everyone is consenting and having a good time however they define it.

Everything else is bullshit, suitable only for those who lack the wit to separate their morality from their disgust reaction. The fact that you find a certain sex act to be disgusting or disturbing – even when an objective case could be made for that – does not actually give you the right to have any opinion whatsoever about whether people should do it or not.

One of the simplest definitions of a certain brand of intolerance as a psychological phenomenon is the inability to live with the fact that something even exists. Even if it is simplicity itself to avoid actual exposure to the thing, the intolerant person is so hounded by the mere thought of it that they feel justified in wanting it destroyed, or at least tightly contained.

So the debate always comes down to something like this :

Don’t like it? Don’t look for it.
Don’t want to see it? Don’t go looking for it.
Don’t want to watch it? Turn the channel.
Don’t like the sound of it? Don’t listen to it.
Don’t like the taste of it? Don’t eat it.

Personally, I loathe olives. But that doesn’t make me want to destroy or restrict them. That would be extremely immature. Intolerance is always a sign of an immature mind which lacks the metacognitive capacity to avoid thinking about something.

It all comes down to metacognition in the end.

Back to the subject at hand. Consent seems like a very simple idea, and most of the time it is. But there are potential grey areas.

Like coercion. For the purposes of fairness, we have to assume that if someone indicates consent through words and action, they are consenting. Maybe they feel coerced into having sex, but unless they make some kind of indication to their partner that they do not want to do this, and the signals are unclear or unreliable enough to allow for misinterpretation, we have to assume consent has been given.

After all, the other participant(s) cannot be expected to read minds. They can only go by what they see.

Relatedly, there is no such thing as “retroactive rape”. Consent is a realtime thing, and cannot be retroactively withdrawn. No matter how someone feels about the sexual encounter afterwards, if they consented at the time, then it was not rape, sexual assault, or whatever you want to call it.

Then we have age-related issues. The phrase “age of consent” has always stuck in my craw a little. I understand why, in order to formulate the highly necessary laws/rules against adult/child sex in this modern and tolerant era, it is necessary to construct a somewhat artificial notion that people below a certain age “cannot consent”.

But it’s clearly untrue, at least in the literal sense of the word. Clearly, a teen or child can consent to things. In fact, they often make it very, very clear what they want to do and what they don’t. They are perfectly capable of the emotion and intention of consent or lack thereof.

What we really mean is that we don’t think they can make certain decisions for themselves. Obviously, children and even teenagers cannot be allowed to make important decisions like sex or voting or driving a car or entering into contracts on their own because they lack the mental faculties to truly understand what it all means, and the younger they are, the less we can make them responsible for their decisions.

I mean, we don’t even let little kids decide when to cross the street, for Christ’s sake.

But in some cases, we let parents make decisions for the child/teen. Sure, no amount of parent consent would be sufficient to allow an eight year old to sign contracts, join the military, or legally drive a car. But virtually all other decisions are made by parents.

Parents can, essentially, consent for the child. In fact, we accept this surrogate consent in all conditions where an individual is considered non compis mentis and thus not capable of consent, whether it’d ebcause they are too young, adult but not possessing an adult IQ, mentally ill, senile, unconscious, or otherwise mentally compromised.

So it’s really a cognitive issue. Without ever giving it a scientifically precise definition, a level of mental acuity and cohesiveness is required for consent to count. Without that, you can get all the seeming consent that you want and it doesn’t matter diddly because the individual is not considered capable of informed consent.

The most curious case of concern for consent is bestiality. Sex with animals disgusts people, especially those in the modern world, largely because most of the exposure a modern city-dwelling human has with animals is via pets and pets arouse our nurturing instincts in much the same way children do. So on a gut level, bestiality is pseudo-pedophilia.

Thus, we have the rather unusual notion that we can justify modern laws against bestiality because of the animal’s inability to give consent. This works both on the emotional and intellectual levels. On the emotional side, it is in line without our thoughts (and instincts) on children, and intellectually, it is in line with the cognitive definition of consent.

The problem is that ask animal’s consent for precious little else. Most of us are carnivores, and it’s hard to imagine that the animal wanted to die. We spay or neuter our pets. We make animals do work for us. We make them follow human rules without asking them beforehand. We can do virtually anything to an animal entirely for our own pleasure, and it’s legal as long as it’s not “cruel”.

Just not sex. Why?

Because it grosses us out, that’s why.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

You can’t hate yourself for all your flaws if you would not hate someone else with those same flaws.

I’m fat. But I don’t hate people for being fat.
I’m clumsy and uncoordinated. But I don’t hate people for being clumsy and uncoordinated.
I’m very absentminded. But I don’t hate people for being absentminded.
I wouldn’t even hate someone for being fat, clumsy, uncoordinated, and absentminded.

I don’t like any of those three things about myself. When I hate myself, those are the top three justifications for it.

But I don’t hate others for being that way. So why should I hate myself for it? What makes the rules different for me?

Mental exercise time. Think of all the things you hate about yourself. Dig deep. Get to the really nasty stuff. Then…. imagine another person with all those same attributes.

Do you hate them for it? Why or why not?

Of course, the answer to the question of why the rules are different for yourself is not to be found in logic. The position is logically inconsistent. The real reason is not logical, it’s chemical. A chemical imbalance is pulling your mind toward the negative and distorting your perceptions.

And there’s no system of logic in the world that can give you accurate results when the basic data is corrupted. Despite what certain “rationalist” philosophers say, everything in the human mind begins with perception, and if the perceptions are flawed, the rest of the system is useless.

Instead, the depressed create elaborate (but flimsy) logical justifications for the self-loathing being forced upon them by their chemical disorder. This satisfies the bare minimum requirements of logic, or rather, the feeling of logic. Actual logic would destroy these justifications, and that cannot be allowed.

Because the one thing that the human mind cannot tolerate is the knowledge that its perceptions are inaccurate. Without perceptions, there is nothing. The entire structure of our consciousness rests on the belief that things are how we perceive them.

If the justifications were to disappear, then you would be left with emotions with no justification, and that is a deeply terrifying thought. As human being, we need to believe in cause and effect. Unjustified emotion would be an effect with no cause. So we make up explanations.

Myself, I can accept that my perceptions are distorted and that things aren’t always how they feel, but that doesn’t solve anything because no matter what I know, my perceptions are what I have to work with. In this, I am no different than any other form of lunatic. The psychotic may well know that there isn’t a demon waiting for it outside, but it’s still very difficult not to believe there is.

That’s where metacognition comes in. One definition for metacognition is that it is the part of your mind that monitors the rest of the mind and checks for errors. If, for example, you were trying to remember when your next dentist’s appointment is, and you think it’s the 15th, but a part of your mind says “No, it’s the 16th, because of this”, that part is your metacognition.

But it is my belief that metacognition requires an above average level of intelligence, and possibly the “emotional off switch” that allows us to NOT act on emotion that often accompanies it. For the average person, metacognition exists but is not, I suspect, strong enough to resist a very strong perception, one with a great deal of emotion attached to it.

Thus, people, by and large, believe the world to be exactly how they feel it is. The feelings lead and logic provides the justifications. To ask a person of average intelligence to disbelieve their perceptions may be unfair.

Instead you have to change that perception, and for that, you have to change the emotion from which it stems. That’s why any attempt at persuasion that relies solely on logic is doomed to failure. You have to reach people’s emotions directly, and change how they feel. Only then will they be ready to change how they think.

Of course, I am not claiming we smart types are immune to going where emotion leads us and making up the justification later. I am just saying we stand a better chance of resisting it some of the time.

So if you hate yourself (hey look, it’s the topic!), you will invent reasons why it is justified. It is a delicate thing to undo these reasons. It can’t be done all at once – or at least, it can’t for someone like me, who lacks the capacity for transformation of that sort – but you can get there.

You just have to be willing to separate your identity from your depression. This is the necessary first step, and it is the hardest. You are not a depressed person – you are a person currently suffering from depression. It no more defines you than a broken leg would. You were you before you became depressed, and you will still be you when it has gone. There is nothing to fear.

Once you can do that, or at least start down that road, you will be able to attack your depression without it feeling like you are attacking yourself – like you are trying to rip off your own arm. That means that you have bypassed its most powerful defense, because the human mind cannot interpret an attack on identify as anything other than an attempt at assassination.

Identity death is the only real death, after all.

Others will be free to attack your depression as well, if you let them. This is harder than the first step because we interpret disagreement as an attack on identity anyhow. But once you make the separation, you can learn to hate your depression, and turn your rage on it.

I hate my own depression. It destroy my prime adult years and left me trying to get my life started at 43. As far as I am concerned, it’s dead tissue, and the sooner I can get rid of it, the better. I will not defend it or its justifications and excuses. It’s a very wrong path, and I now recognize it and its ways and can make better choices, the exact choices it doesn’t want.

In fact, if my depression tells me not to do something, that’s a damned good reason to do it. Every time I overcome it, it dies a little.

Eventually, it will all be gone…. and only the real me will remain.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.