Really, the examples here are not about freedom but about moral goodness/rightness/cultural acceptability.
On a very deep level there is an almost irrefutable argument that no one is free in the sense that they could have done other than what they did because all our behavior (which involves physical motion, whatever else it involves) and psychology, is causally determined by things over which we have no control. Physics and biology (including brain biology) have no place for the idea of "acts of will" creating different physical outcomes given the same initial circumstances and laws of nature. Quantum probability doesn't help because it's truly random, not involve choice.
The standard reply to this, that we are free if we do what we want even if what we want is determined, strikes many people as unsatisfactory, if want we want _is_ determined, and it hard to see how it could not be determined.
Now if you think too hard about this your brain will melt down. It drove Rousseau, who wrote a lot about freedom, to say he would Not NOT _NOT_ consider "freedom in the metaphysical as opposed to the political sense. It drove Kant to wacky postulations of a world outside space and time that somehow noncausally "affects" the empirical world in space and time. There's a huge literature, and some of the recent stuff looks like it is starting to at least get off the beaten track, but basically this is a quagmire.
Now the real difference between Johanna's example seems to me not to hinge on whether we are free in the sense that our behavior is not determined, that we could have done otherwise, or whatever, but on whether the behaviors she discusses, determined or not, are morally acceptable (rape/child exposure no, love/ordinary lust yes), or socially tolerated (sexual arousal through excreta play or spanking, the former generally not, the latter more so but not necessarily widely admitted -- kind of like oral sex in the old days).
If determinism is true, all of these behaviors and desires are determined and in a sense not free -- the people could not do otherwise in the circumstances. They may still be morally judged, though not under the moral theories that require freedom, responsibility, and the possibility of doing otherwise. Utilitarianism is a theory that does not. Rape is bad, free or otherwise, because it cause more net pain than pleasure. Child exposure -- actually we probably don't know if mere exposure is really harmful, as far as I am aware. The other behaviors, probably if consensual are moral in the utilitarian sense because they probably cause more net pleasure than pain.
There is a further fallacy in Joanna's discussion. She talks about people who can be sexually aroused ONLY by certain kinds of sexual acts. Now with respect to kinky people, there may be people like that, but from what I've heard people who like being whipped or even shat on often --as a general rule-- can also become aroused by plain vanilla get-naked-and-fuck sex.
In sum, here's the point: whatever concerns Joanna has about freedom, these examples don't go to it. If I am causally determined (and that makes me unfree) to be able get off only by vanilla sex, I am no more free, just as "scripted," to use a word she uses in another context, as someone who is causally determined so that they can only get turned on by being whipped. The differences her examples make really concern morality -- rape is very bad and exposing yourself to children is pretty bad, intuitively; and her attempt to assimilate morally bad conduct to merely socially "deviant" conduct like being aroused by being whipped or shat on. This is an obvious fallacy. She completes it by contrasting it with pretty pictures of morally or socially accepted conduct like being aroused by love or (vanilla) lust, but it begs the question to say which side of the line the "deviant" examples fall on.
Besides, I don't understand why exclusively vanilla lust or love is supposed to be "freer" or better or nicer or whatever or even less scripted than kinky lust or love. (And yes, kinky people do express love as well as lust for each other through sexual gratification of kinky desires. -- Ask Brian and his husband or our friend the Domme and her sub.)
As Joann and any feminist ought to know, romantic love and even modern lust are socially constructed -- just like desires for food, to use Joanna's earlier example. Americans find the thought of horsemeat or chicken's feet icky, the French and the Chinese don't; Northern white Americans generally are grossed out by the thought of eating chitlins, Southerners and blacks less so. Claude Levi Strauss wrote a whole book, The Raw on the Cooked, and Marvin Harris has another one, Good to Eat, on the social construction of tastes in food. Do you think sex is any different? There is a large industry on the development of modern love, starting, maybe, with a book I know Joanna knows. C.S. Lewis' study of medieval chivalry, The Allegory of Love. Modern lust, same deal.
Well that's enough to as it were, chew on for now.
--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > No one can judge the degree of freedom in someone
> >else's private experience.
> >
> >Carrol
> >
> I don't know, shrinks do this all the time. Perhaps
> we don't want to use
> the word "judge," but certainly "understand" might
> be appropriate.
>
> 1. You have a kid who can only get off by raping
> women. How free is your
> kid?
>
> 2. You have a kid who can only get off by exposing
> himself to children.
> How free is your kid?
>
> 3. You have a kid who can only get off by wearing
> liederhosen and being
> shat on. How free is your kid?
>
> 4. You have a kid who can only get off by being
> whipped? How free is
> your kid?
>
> Lots of people go see shrinks precisely because
> their lives feel narrow
> and restricted , sometimes sexually so.
>
> Now, consider the next propositions:
>
> 5. You have a kid who can only get off by having sex
> with a woman he
> loves and feels sexually attracted to (and who feels
> the same way about
> him.)
>
> 6. You have a kid who can only get off by having sex
> with a woman whom
> he is sexually attracted to (and who feels the same
> way about him).
>
> Now everyone on this list, except for ravi, are
> arguing that #3 and # 4
> and #5 and #6 are the same. I don't agree. I'm also
> not sure where to
> put BDSM; probably because it's a huge gray area.
>
> As for the comments ridiculing "spontaneity" -- I am
> always amazed by
> the complete contempt people have for the body.
>
> Joanna
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
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>
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