Congratulations on your new book rethinking sex. Im really excited to be talking to you today about it. My first question for you is just why did you decide to write this book . I would like to understand what went into your your thinking when you decided to take on this project. Donna first thanks so much for having me here. Its really exciting to talk to you about this. I know weve had previous conversations on the topic around your own book. So its exciting to see this meeting of mind i suppose. Why did i decide to write rethinking sex . Well, im in opinion columnist the Washington Post and my beat has always been ideas in society, and ive always been interesting questions of morality and culture and ethics and also just how we relate to each other. So i was writing a number of columns during the Metoo Movement at its height 20172018 and it became clear that with the most high profile cases Harvey Weinstein etc. There were problems that we thought the sexual revolution and feminist movements might have solved concerning consent that still very present. But more than that. There came to light these cases that were not so clear cases of sex that werent not necessarily unconsensual but consensual and yet still bad degrading traumatizing and so many women related to these stories stories like cat person the new yorker short piece of fiction that i think is still their most red piece fiction piece of short fiction ever. And there was a general sense among young people people my age my peers and colleagues that something was off in our sexual culture the me too movement had highlighted it but there was something much more personal going on, too. So many people were having sex that they were supposed to enjoy but werent and i wanted to figure out why what was happening. Was there something wrong with our definition of consent . Was there something off about our understanding of what sex even was was there something off about our cultural understandings of what surrounded sex so i kept writing columns about this. I started writing longer pieces. And then finally there was just enough to write a book on and thats where this began. I feel like you just touched on all the different topics that i want to ask you more about, but i do want to you you mentioned that a whole list of possibilities about what what is off with whats going on with sex especially among young people and im wondering is there something that really rises to the top for you about what is off . Well, one of the threads that runs through thinking rethinking sex the most is this question of consent. I feel that we have arriv at a moment in time, you know again post sexual revolution postfeminist Movement Even post sort of College Education plans that talk about how you have to respect that. No means no and only yes means. Yes that that you have to get consent. Weve almost established consent as sort of the dividing line between good sex and bad sex. But consent is a floor, you know, its a its a nonnegotiable baseline, but it was never meant to be the ceiling. And so we spent a lot of time talking about whether sex is a sensibly consensual that is legal, but we dont spend a lot of time talking about whether sex is good. Meaning ethically good morally good good for the person having it good for the encounter and what it creates in society at large. And there just seems a space thats that sort of missing there. People know not to do the worst thing, but theres a lack of clarity around what the Better Things should be what we should actually be aiming for we talk about legality all the time, but we arent talking about ethics or morals or how people really feel theres theres actually theres a passage from your book that really struck me thats related to what you were just talking about and i i wanted to read it and and then have you respond to it. I keep going back to it as ive looked at your book. So you say even the newer qualified version of consent the affirmative the enthusiastic . Still have that as their baseline take off my glasses. Theyre baseline question. Did i get permission of the right kind so that what im going to do to this person is not statedly against their will the modifiers may try to complicate the question, but theyre most often perceived as simply shifting the goal posts. Rather than stopping when your partner says no you now have to get them to say yes, but the end goal is still to get the sex from someone else without having committed an actual violation if we invoke just getting consent as an ideal the ideal the highest ethical standard for any encounter. Were giving ourselves a pass on the hard but meaningful questions whether that consent was fairly gotten what our partners actually want whether we even should be doing what weve gone consent to do. And then you go on to talk about how you know in the end consent is a legal criterion. Not an ethical one, and i was wondering if you could say more about that this idea that our conversations around consent. You know seem to have moved us toward the idea that as long as you get a yes, then everything is fine that this is this is the goal. So yeah, can you say more . Yeah. No, i think thats one of the key passages in the book and its one that i like that i quote very frequently and it you know later on on that page. I actually have a copy of the book here with me too. You know, i say nonconsensual sex is always wrong, but the inverse is tricky is consensual sex always right not necessarily can consensual sex be damaging to an individual to their partner to their society. Absolutely, you know, and its hard to look at our sexual marketplace and say that consent has fixed the problems of sex in some ways. Its a fig leaf, and its falling off. And i think that you know consent is in some ways made our conversation about what sex should look like about what the good looks like a lot smaller. I quote later on in the book the georgetown feminist law professor robin west whos work has been really influential for me. She talks about this idea of consent. Beginning to serve almost a legitimating function when it comes to sex theres this idea that you know, we make agreements based on consent that sort of contractual question. And then once something is consented to you know can sense sort of legitimizes the action. We assume that anything thats consented to must then be you know, good or fine or were something out of it. And when that happens with sex, you know something youve consented to you feel like it should be good. Theres no space to talk about what else might be happening whether something has gone wrong postconsent. You know what it actually means to be doing the thing that youve consented to doing and that has led to problems. I think so for so many young women and men who have these encounters that they may have consented to but then they still dont feel good about and yet they dont have they dont have recourse to complain. They dont have anything that they can say to sort of explain their discontent because theoretically, you know, they legitimated their act by consenting to it. And i think that there can be a lot of sort of pain and hurt hidden there and also Big Questions that end up swept under the rug just because you can send it to something again doesnt mean that its good doesnt mean that its good for society at large. We sort of lose the ability to interrogate sex more more fully. You know, what do we want . Why do we want what we want . Would be good for us to want in some sense . Its interesting to hear you talk about this this in my own work, you know, ive sort of seen our conversations about consent as ideally they open a door. For us to to talk more expansively about the meaning of sex except what seems to keep happening is theyve narrowed the way were thinking about sex which is what youre describing here and you know, one of the things ive thought a lot about and i thought so much about when i was reading your book was you know, why is it so hard for us . To talk about the meaning of sex or even to allow ourselves to attach meaning to sex. Yeah, this was a phenomenon that i observed. Over and over and talking to people about sex. So for this book, i did dozens of interviews with you know, young men yng women kind of across t us and in some other countries, too, and there was this first of all, i would say that people were really excited like more exciting than more excited than i would have guessed to have someone to have this conversation with to be able to talk sort of openly about their feelings about what they thought sex meant what they wanted it to mean what they had hoped for and how they were being disappointed in some ways. But there was a real reluctance in some ways to admit that. Sex was meaningful or rather not a reluctant to admit it, you know and i would ask people outright. Okay. What well, what is sex to you . What does it mean . What do you want from it . They talked about big things, you know, they talked about intimacy transcendence the desire for carrie even love. But they felt almost sheepish about it about saying that they wanted to mean something because they felt so much cultural pressure to say that it meant nothing that they were collecting experiences, you know a young woman told me that she sort of struggled with this question because she wanted to be you know, kind of a good modern sort of liberated person and to her that meant that you know, she should be hooking up with a bandon. She should be having as much sex as she could have because she was in her 20s, and that was what youth was for right . And you know, she should be cool about it. He should be chill. It shouldnt mean that much. And yet it did it did mean a lot to her and she was hurt by encounters that were supposed to be meaningless and feel good and she felt embarrassed talking about that. And so in some sense part of this book is just a legitimating function for me saying no, its not crazy for you to feel that way. Youre youre not the crazy one for thinking that something meaningful is meaningful that you have feelings about something that creates feelings and we should be able to talk about that if we actually want to address the current problems with sex that makes me think so much about shame and you know for the last 20 years. Ive been having conversations similar to yours with with College Students about these issues and one of the things ive also found is just theres the shame in talking about how you know, people will say i know im not supposed to care, but i do care and theres embarrassment that they they cant seem to not care and and so this has been going on for 20 years. Ive been hearing this conversation and youre clearly hearing that too and one of the ironies i i see in that expression of shame is that we are supposed to be so liberated around sex and yet we are so like i feel like the shame has shifted elsewhere the shame that we experience is not from when we have sex like it used to be its because we actually have feelings about this sex. Were having and were embarrassed to admit this and i im wondering if you could comment a little bit about that. You have a chapter called where liberated and were miserable and i was wondering if that resonates with you what i just said and you know and with regard to that chapter. No completely and that theres a chapter called related and were miserable and then the chapter that follows that is actually called. We want to catch feelings and what youre saying makes so much sense to me. Actually there was kind of this feeling that you know. Host sexual revolution with the advances at the feminist movement had made and these are really important advances to be clear. The boundaries around sex had fallen, you know the barriers to having good sex were finally down. And that was supposed to be again liberating for us. But im finding that for a lot of young people. The liberation, you know the sort of open field of sex thats rolling out before them actually leaves them feeling a bit lost. A bit unsure of what to do. You know, theres a lack of clarity especially post me too of how to approach members of the opposite sex. You know, what a sexual encounter what even a romantic encounter should look like the first or second time. And so you kind of see a retreat actually from this open Playing Field by both women and men you know, there are a lot of men who specially young men who feel almost afraid to approach now because theyre worried that they might be doing something wrong because the boundaries are unclear and then for women they often experience these encounters where you know, they think one thing is going to happen and then something wildly different happens in a sexual encounter and they feel taken aback or shocked or even abused in some way. But again, there are really no boundaries to point to you to say. Well you shouldnt you shouldnt have done that apart from the very very low bar of consent, you know, you can say well you shouldnt have assaulted me perhaps but apart from that it seems like they cant really criticize anything because again, theyre supposed to be liberated. Theyre supposed to be free. And i think this creates a lot of sort of confusion and dismay in the sexual landscape a lot of almost. Milling about trying to figure it out and this is not bringing the happiness that was promised all of this freedom, you know does not necessarily make people happier in some ways, you know, it makes them more confused. Its interesting. I one of the things that ive talked for so long about in my work is the idea that theres the the hookup in theory versus the hookup in reality and the hookup in theory is supposed to be incredibly wonderful and liberating and amazing and but its really hard to find someone who reports that actually was amazing in reality and mostly its its really a mix of confusion and you know, sort of uncomfortable feeling and uncertainty and you know, i feel like you know, we we have to really think about reality and i one of the things that always seems like a revelation when im talking to College Students about my research. Is this idea that i say a lot . You know, you have the right to decide what you want to do and what you dont want to do you have the right to say to draw boundaries like you have the right to time to think about you know, what is it that i really want from sex like you dont have to just go along and you know, why do you think its so hard to ask for boundaries or to say like i will do this, but not this or like im not ready for this like what is going on with our nervousness about drawing lines around sex for ourselves. Thats a really interesting question. You know, i one thing that i found interesting in writing this book interesting. Both in the research and also in thking through my own feeling here is that as a culture as we talk about sex we have sort of accepted a definition of sex positivity. That seems at odds. Well that is at odds with the original definition of sex positivity. I describe, you know, the sort of modern idea of sex positivity with the descriptor uncritical uncritical sex positivity and its this idea that well we have to be really positive about sex basically that you know, all sex is good that we should be having more of it that any activity that happens between two consenting adults is great or its their own business and you cant be critical of it. You shouldnt be asking questions that sort of walls off those encounters. And i call this uncritical because you know, it doesnt allow us to interrogate anything more about about sex about you know, whether certain desires should be acted upon about you know, what the emotional or even physical ramifications are for the people who are taking part about what the societal implications are of, you know, certain things being mainstreamed whether its you know fetishes that implicate race or or sexism or classism or anything else. Um, i think a lot of young people feel that to be seen as modern to be seen as sex positive. They just have to be up for it all the time in some in some sense that to complain or to, you know, raise qualms about a certain actor encounter would mean that theyre judgmental or repressive or oldfashioned in some way and you know, theres it almost feels as though. Theres almost a stigma against making judgments in some ways against, you know, trying to say, you know, well certain things might be good or bad or even good or bad for me because you dont want to feel like youre judging other people, you know, we know what that has looked like in the past and also in some sense is because by making judgment calls some of our behaviors might be implicated too. So its almost a sort of dont ask dont tell dont. Dont make judgments dont ask for boundaries because thats unfair in some way. Thats two critical thats not positive. Thats antisex or sex negative. When in fact boundaries can be good for us. You know with any therapist would tell you boundaries are important and we have to make them but theres almost a push to have none in the quest to be seen as ultimately sex positive. Does that make sense . Yeah, you know the your your phrase uncritical sex positivity it was one of the places i really paused your book to to thank just because i think its such an interesting phrase. And you know it i think where were so pro sex positivity. And i understand why i understand whats behind that we want to affirm sex as a good and we want to empower people to feel good about having it. But you know there is this sort of like are we allowed like are we allowed to to say no to something and one of the things i was thinking about when you were talking was this conversation i had once with a group of College Students where they ended up talking about how like really what we want to do is just make out on the dance floor and but then theres all this other stuff like around it where we have to go, you know, we have to go home with people if we because if we start making out it has to lead to sex and and one of the things that kept asking them was why cant you just make out on the dance floor if thats really what you want to do like what is stopping you from stopping there . And you know, then i think about how somehow you know in our conversations, you know, theres a coercive element around sex like we are actually like people are afraid to say no. And or theyre afraid to set limits and i find this a strange. Situation given also the the primacy were putting on our conversations about consent. Like i feel like theres a disconnect there, but then were not seeing it. I dont know if that makes sense to you or if thats all sort of what youre talking about, but i see a conflict there. Yeah, no, i see that i see that too. I mean, i think that it. It stems from a sort of mismatch that i feel like weve inherited around. Sex and how we think about it. You know on the one hand. Whether its through shows like literally sex in the city or girls or any of these other sort of Media Productions that make sex out to be the thing that sort of defines you as a person something that helps you selfactualize that makes you liberated in modern and sort of a real human in the world. Theres this idea that you should be having sex to to sort of be a full and fulfilled person and you know, so many of the people i talk to in this book hold me about this sort o this idea that ty had about what sex they should be having even if that wasnt necessarily what they wanted. You know, there was a young woman who told me about hooking up with somebody who she didnt really like well she liked him a lot actually but he was moving away and it was complicated and she had one chance to hook up with him and shes like well i mean i did it for this for the story, right . Because im supposed to like thats what im supposed to be doing in my 20s, even though it had emotional ramifications and she was fairly upset afterwards. So theres this idea that that to be kind of a full adult in some way. You should be having these encounters even if you dont personally want them. You should be adventurous and be pushing your boundaries and going for it. So thats thats sort of one angle. On the other side though. Theres this is kind of a paradoxical view of what sex is supposed to mean sex means everything in that its this selfdefining act, but its also supposed to be something that Means Nothing that you dont have feelings about actually. Its just one physical act like any other and so it would be weird if you had sex and then felt bad about it or that you didnt want to do something because you know, like what does it matter . Its its just a thing. So theres almost this like kind of dual idea of what sex is everything and nothing that makes it something that you have to do and also something that you shouldnt feel anything about you shouldnt feel emotional about and so in pursuit of that ideal, you know young people especially i think who are really open to kind of be social pressures feel feel like they have to go after these encounters feel like thats what they should be doing and that if they have, you know, some sort of emotional blowback or a bad experience thats their fault personally for not being as as with it or as liberated as they should as theyre told that they should be i want to ask more about what you just said one of the passages that i wanted to to read quickly you have this section toward the end of the book called what if we had less sex and you say the freedom of the sexual revolution seems to go and only one direction. We are certainly free to have sex in the manner in which we choose although for women the madonna construct and other forms of judgments to loom but not having sex is a stigmatized choice. And you know, ive spent a lot of time thinking about that too that that somehow in all of this freedom. And all of his conversation about consent and yes means yes, were were not allowed to say no or or it is this kind of stigmatized choice, and i was wondering if you could say a little bit more about that with regard to your own interviews or just just your feelings this particular issue. Well again, i mean to go back to kind of an earlier question. We talk a lot about liberation and freedom and how having more choices good but in the same way that you know being shamed for having sex. Is not free is kind of a boundary. Being shamed for not having sex is not free either. Thats just sort of. You know a constraint in the opposite direction. And so when we talk about liberation, you know, we want people to be free to to choose and pursue sort of the sexual life that helps them flourish that is fitting to them, you know a culture that actually helps them reach. Their goals and that could look like a lot of different things. I mean you know, oh go on go ahead. Sorry. No you got. I mean, i guess you know thinking about that chapter this this idea of reclaiming a pause or you know, what if we had less sex. In writing that it almost felt a little bit taboo. Like that was something that were not supposed to suggest and i think a lot of you know some of the early responses to this book were like, oh you must like dislike sex. You must be antisex because youre suggesting that people should have less of it. But you know what . Im actually pushing for in this book is for again people to rethink their experiences to really think about what sex means to them and what they want from it and to have fewer of those encounters that you walk into. You know you have but you dont really want to be there but youre just doing it because you thought you should one of the things that i love that you talked about this pause and one of the things that ive been advocating for a really long time as i usually tell students when i come to campus is you know, you should take a whole semester just to like and devote it to thinking about sex and what it means to you. Like thats your right. Its its your obligation to yourself like you get to do that and i think we often dont stop and think and we dont necessarily ask ourselves. What does this mean to us . And i want to go back to a word you used earlier that i think is related to this topic, which is you talked about the sexual marketplace. And when i hear that, you know, just the idea that theres a theres a marketplace which means you know, were talking about business terms, which i then i feel like leads us to conversation but branding and all kinds of all kinds of things like that that i dont really want to associate with my humanity. And but i do think we we think about sex in terms of a marketplace like just even you know, tinder, you know, like the different apps we have that that support that notion. And im wondering how do you do you think that . Thinking about sex that we have now does that affect . Our ability to be able to think about sex as meaningful or how does it how does it affect that if at all . Yeah, the concept of a sexual marketplace is a depressing one and yet i think it really it really is relevant. You know, i have a whole chapter in rethinking sex actually where i talk about sort of the advent of tinder and hinge and bumble and all of these swipe dating apps and theyre is research that shows that as those apps became ascendant. They just shot up and became the number one way that people meet other people romantically where we used to meet people through friends or through work or even family that drops off sharply and its you know taken up by apps. But you know the thing about these apps is that again, they are theyre commercial tools. They make money off of people being on them and and staying on them and staying single and the way that they are set up promotes a certain vision. Of sex and a romance and of other people, you know if you look at any of the popular dating apps tinder and bumble especially are set up to look like kind of a deck of cards right where you see someones face and a few lines about them and then you just swipe left or right. Youre kind of flipping through people. And that does lead to a sort of transactional mindset where other individuals are viewed as commodities in a sense and you are sort of taking your pick as to whats the best fit for you and discarding what might not fit. And we might not think that were being affected by the setups that we have a certain idea of what sex means to us or for what romance should look like. In our society does in fact shape how we approach sex . I remember talking to one woman. As we talked about these dating apps and she told me that she had joked with her friends about ordering a guy off of tinder. Because you know she too wanted to prove that she could have no Strings Attached sex. And even as she said that phrase ordering a guy off tinder she herself paused and was like i dont. I dont know why i said that maybe thats not i mean that was a joke. Thats thats not how i should think about. Other people but i mean this sort of idea of the marketplace and people as sort of products that you can choose from was very firmly baked into kind of the mindset through which she was approaching dating. And i think that this you know is also in some ways a factor of again consent culture where it sort of feels like trading in some way you agree with somebody else to allow them to have sex with you or get sex from them. You know, its sort of a transactional approach in nature. But the thing is most people dont want to have transactional sex. You know their idea of a Good Relationship isnt you know two people bartering for this bodily act but actually something that sees them as a full person something that involves empathy and care and being seen for who they are. And something that leaves their humanity and their Human Dignity intact. And so while i think that we are sort of being trained to see ourselves as members of a sexual marketplace. Theres something within a lot of people that is really repelled by and wants to reject that framing. We just have to figure out how to do so you know, i ive one of the things ive thought for so long is this idea that you know true sexual empowerment. You know regardless of what you decide you want to do and you dont want to do true sexual empowerment requires us to become like critical thinkers about sex like we have to engage with that. You know, it doesnt just have to be this wave coming at us, you know, just because someone tries to sell us a sexual marketplace where the idea that sex should be a kind of marketplace doesnt mean that we have to interact with it that way but to be empowered we have to realize that we have choices to make around whats coming at us. And i feel like thats the part where i get stuck in. Everyone gets stuck. Is that we often dont realize we have any power to critique whats coming at us or to make decisions around it as opposed to just accepting it. And you know, im wondering what do you think we can do to get out of this cycle . Because it does seem everybody people have these feelings. But were so afraid to articulate them. Yeah, thats a really good question. I mean i can give to i have two thoughts on this. One, you know i started writing rethinking sex in 2019 and kept writing it through the pandemic and so there was an interesting shift that i saw happen. Prepandemic people were moving around. Theyre really busy. They were swiping away dating away. But when the first lockdowns hit, you know, when people finally had to pause sort of stay home alone or not alone and think about what they wanted from their lives from their relationships. A lot of thinking did happen actually people finally had a second to stop and think like is this thing . Im doing really bringing me closer to the goals that i have. And so a forced pause was helpful. That said i am not advocating for another pandemic or another, you know, sad reason for a forced pause. I i think sorry, im just catching my drain of thought here. I think another thing that we need to do and that i that was actually kind of the impetus for for writing this book too was after the metoo moment. You know. With the media men list with the aziz ansari story cat person etc it did seem like there was a moment where people had. Through conversation through these stories that were finally bubbling up into the public eye. Stopped and said, oh, yeah, theres this is bad. Im not enjoying this scene something something is off here. But that almost felt like where the conversation stopped with the recognition that things were bad. I think that the next step in pushing people to actually take a moment and really think aloud is to have the next step. In an open conversation to kind of propose substantive, you know statements or claims about say what sex means what we want from it. What is ethical what is not ethical etc and do this in public in conversation with each other not just whispered at bars or among our friends. So that these questions can be sort of argued about debated we can correct our assumptions if theyre false and in that way move forward to Something Better. I mean rethinking sex is subtitled a provocation, but you know, its meant to be a provocatn to this kind of conversation actually by making claims about what sex is say that its that its meaningful that it could in fact be spiritual about what our experiences with sex might be that we might want to catch feelings. Actually, you know that some longings maybe shouldnt be acted upon because theyre not good for us. By actually proposing claims that we can talk about and build understandings from there. We can move forward in the discussion. There are so many thoughts i have and i feel like you just set up the next set of questions. I wanted to ask you about really perfectly but one of the things i was thinking so much about when i was reading your book was i feel like this book is is really offering permission. Because often i think we were afraid to you know, talk about these things or assert things that seem to be maybe a little bit countercultural or that that make us feel vulnerable and is that something that you thought about when you were writing this book that that you because youre also offering your your offering your own feelings, but youre some of your own stories stories of others like do you feel like do you want this book to be permission . I do. Absolutely. I mean i think in you know, just the introduction to the book. Theres a part where i say. Youre not crazy right to the reader. Youre youre not crazy. The thing you feel is off is off. Its not crazy to want Something Better than the sexual culture that we have now. Its not crazy to be asking questions about whether whats going on is is really right for for you or for society at large. And i think by just allowing people to speak up about what they feel to not necessarily feel like they have to abide by a certain vision of what sex positivity looks like or a certain vision of you know, girl boss or leaning feminism that expands the conversation and you know also allows uso change change the culture if we wish i want to ask about sexual ethics which and you know, you brought up earlier in our conversation the idea of the good and like the sexual good and you just brought up sexual ethics again in a second ago, and i wanted to theres a passage in your book. In this chapter called some desires are worse than others and you know, youre youre talking before this section about how we fear being asked to look closely at our own desires. And so so heres the section you say the consent paradigm gives us a way out of this discomfort or at least makes it easier for us to stick to a position of moral neutrality. And the contemporary era we have settled upon consent as a lowest common denominator that we can all agree on once we see that is established consent functions as an iron curtain a social and political divider that cuts our experiences in half. We use it to separate our intimate lives into those parts that are up for discussion and those that are seen as exempt from critique. But in allowing consent to be that divider, we have arbitrarily and incorrectly set many of our deepest tensions and disagreements behind a veil consent has helpfully give us a way of dodging difficult questions about morality and autonomy, but they are unhealthy ones to dodge because some things are worse than others or at least should not be mainstreamed and we should be able to say so and you go on about how hard its is to express our discomfort. And and then you say when we do want to object to a particular act or practice often the best we can do is frame it as not a moral failing but a failure of consent and i want you to say more about that that you know, you like consent is sort of our only way through but were we still cant seem to talk about ethics or morality in the context of sex. Right, i mean i think one thing one of the things thats interesting about the current sexual landscape is that again as as you said at the very beginning we have a fairly robust sort of legal doctrine about sex we are able to talk about whats allowed and whats not allowed. But again consent and you know, the legal questions leave so much out, you know practices that are consensual can still be damaging, you know . The lack of consent alone is not the only indicator of problematic sex. And then theres the fact that we can consent to things that are still harmful to us, and we dont really have a language to talk about that when were only talking about consent. I think that we also just dont really have a Strong Language for for talking about what is good or you know, what is bad in some sense we have in some ways in the modern era sort of pushed the idea of morality or at least a shared morality kind of out of the Public Square in within the Public Square in public. You can talk about whether things are legal. You know what theyre consented to whether theyre not whether something was actively criminal. But to go deeper and ask you know, what does this say about us . What are our moral standards and frameworks . Do we do we share those when we talk about sex . What should they be what i deal should we hold up thats seen as something private and personal something that maybe you can hold for yourself, but you know you cant put on another person. But then that becomes a little bit strange, you know when it comes to sex because that is something that youre doing with another person where ideally you want to be sharing the same standards and then sex in and of itself is such. Such a social act in some ways, you know, its something that were all doing. Its something that we all talk about, but it also kind of shapes our society up to you know, the creation of another person. Its implicated in so many other factors. So if we cant really make judgments there then we leave a lot of space open for you know problems to arise that. We cant really address. I keep trying to get try to figure out why why are we so afraid . Of talking about sexual ethics and you know even as a baseline our conversation about consent is is an ethical conversation, you know, its it has to do with relational ethics because any time youre relating to someone else youre engaging in relational ethics whether you want to name it or not and you know and so our conversation about consent have to do with sexual ethics period but were so afraid to name that and to go there and why do you think were so afraid of ethics and morality . Well, i think there are a couple of reasons and one actually i think is really justified. You know one of the pushbacks that people have against, you know talking about sexual ethics or sort of old School Sexual ethics is that theyve been repressive in the past and we we know this right the sexual revolution happened for a reason the feminist movements happened and are happening for a reason. Weve seen how sort of topped down hierarchical understanding of whats right and whats wrong in certain moral codes have been used to oppress and you know reject people for centuries, whether its women whether it was sexual minorities whether it was people of unfavored races or classes. Weve seen how moral judgments can be used as you know. Not moral as actually just a way to sort of oppress and and hurt other people and we dont want to do that. We very justifiably sort of moved away from that on purpose because weve seen the harm that it can cause but i think that you know, theres still space to talk about morals in the Public Square. I think what we have to do, you know to avoid those harms. Is talk about them in public and in common making sure that we are inclusive of the views of you know groups that have been marginalized in the past and that we make our assumptions courageable as we learn more about other people who we didnt know as we sort of get more input from other groups who we might be thinking about making decisions for we actually bring that information into play into how we make up our boundaries today. One of the topics that you you bring up here and there throughout the book and you devote a chapter to the is faith and spirituality and relation to this topic and you know you really have this expansive open inclusiveness about how youre approaching faith and relation to sex and i think you know, we often see faith and sex as competing and you know, youre really opening the door, i think for readers to to contemplate. Their own faith commitments whatever they may be in relation to this topic, and i was wondering if you could say more about that choice you made with this book to include faith. Yeah, you know writing this book was. It started out as almost an academic question in some ways thinking about the sexual culture post me too and being like whats wrong here. How do we fix it . And then in the course of writing a book about sex and sexual ethics . I became implicated myself and you know, i had to think about where did i get my ideas about what is good and not good or whats right and whats wrong and how relatable are those . And you know the way that i think about these questions about a lot of questions is influenced by my faith. Im im catholic christian, but i also wanted to write a book that was you know relevant to not just christians or not just people of faith, but anybody who wanted to enter this conversation about our sexual culture and how to make it better. So in the book i talk about for instance. What might be a better standard for sex a better sexual ethic and i propose the idea of willing the good of the other and thats aristotle by way of saint thomas aquinas, you know and willing the good of the other implies that you think about the other persons good as much as you would think about your own, you know, you you way care for them. As highly as you way care for yourself. And it also suggests that you have to figure out what the good is right . You actually have to be searching for the good the common good. And i like this ideal, even though it sort of it does spring in some ways from faith and catholic social teaching because its legible to anyone, you know in some ways the golden rule crosses crosses all sort of faith and religious boundaries, even if youre not religious, you can still have a sense for what the good is what you might be searching for. We all have a sense of what Human Flourishing might look like and we all want that for ourselves. But i also i think talk about religion in the book too because religion is in some ways a record of how people across millennia have tried to grapple with these Big Questions right about again what the good looks like. What a good life looks like you know talking about sex through the lens of faith. There are many traditions that have helped us think through what sex might look like what it might mean again what the good might look like there and theres richness to draw from that has helped inform my beliefs and you know is still relevant to people even who dont share my faith. I love that you brought up aristotle. Youre speaking my language and i loved seeing aquinas in this book. I feel like im always the person whos bringing up aristotle. So it feels really wonderful to be in conversation with someone whos thinking about aristotle, i love then it can became ethics. Anyway one of the things i wanted to ask you. So in your in your life is a journalist. You do a lot of interviews and and you do a lot of interviews for this book and i wondered if in talking to all the different people that you did talk to for this book if there was a person an interview that you did that really stuck with you that. You want to talk about now that you feel you felt was a really important part of the book when you were writing it. Oh wow. Well universal say one thing if you write us about sex. If youre writing a book about sex or even if youre just writing on these topics, at least i found that people just tell you things. Sometimes its an interviews, but sometimes many times actually people just seek you out because they have things that they want to unload or questions that they want to ask that, you know, they didnt feel that they could ask someone else without being sort of judged for it. And even just those encounters kind of shaped how i felt about the book in many ways and the direction that i went. But theres one encounter that i that i relay in the book that seem to encapsulate. So many of the the problems with our current sexual ethic and the questions that weve talked about even now. I was at a holiday party, you know Holiday House party in dc and i was talking to people i mentioned that i was writing this book and a woman who had never met, you know pulled me aside to a sensibly chat about sex. And you know, she told me about how she was dating this guy. It was early. She really liked him. But he joked her. During sex and you know she consented to it i guess but she didnt really like it and was that okay . And so she was sort of asking me basically a perfect stranger whether it was okay to dislike being subjected to this surprise extreme act during a sexual encounter. And that was a surprising thing to occur. Just add a at a party. This wasnt even an interview and it was a seemed to to show so many of the the feelings of our culture. The fact that this woman didnt feel comfortable. Judging in somewhere, you know having boundaries as we talked about before that. She felt that it might be kind of like a bad or out there thing to to not like this extreme act to the point that she had to ask a stranger if it was okay for her to not like this. The fact that she felt that she you know consented to it and so like maybe it was her fault that was hot, but this was happening that she was just like putting up with it because thats what you do now and this is normal as if you know consenting to this made it made it better. There is and then i think also just this, you know, i didnt have anyone to ask about this because like who do we really talk to about the problems that were facing in sex because were supposed to be so sex positive. Its like kind of a downer to say that you dont like something so i guess ill like pull this stranger aside and sort of reveal myself to them because i dont feel comfortable saying anything negative, you know to my partner. There was just so much in this conversation and in this encounter that that informed, you know, thinking through questions of power questions of how we talk about sex questions of what consent can and cant do that really stuck with me as i was thinking through the questions throughout the entire book. Not just the chapter that the stories featured in i have one last question for you. And and that is you know, you wrote this book that is so open and honest and questioning about this topic that is so complicated for so many of us and im wondering who are you . Speaking to when he wrote this book like who is your audience and your in your mind . And what do you hope . For them to take away from reading this. Wow. Well, i mean i would say that my audience is kind of anyone whos thinking about sex, but ill ill say that in writing this book i was thinking about my peers, you know, my my friends like this girl who asked me this question about this encounter that she felt that she couldnt say no to you know. College students and you know my younger siblings who are encountering this culture and you know may feel that its not quite right, but dont, you know know exactly what to say about it. Talking about you know talking to i guess people who realized during the Metoo Movement that they had had encounters that might have been consensual but were still bad and its okay to say that, you know, they were still bad whether you consented to them or not. My hope for this book is you know as we talked about earlier for people to realize that, you know, theyre not. In the wrong for wanting something more for wanting Something Better that they should be able to talk about this out loud to have honest conversations about what sex means to them and to you know, society more broadly into actually shape what the culture looks like rather than just be shaped by it. Well christine, thank you so much for a wonderful conversation today and congralations on a really exceptional book. Thank you so much. It was great talking to you. It was great talking to you, too. With , apostle of freedom