The Weirdness of Thinking Contraception Weird

This musing is intended as a playful, though serious, response to Russell DiSilvestro’s recent blog post, which I view as playfully inviting us to think about contraception in a new light… perhaps as weird. Reading broadly, I take Russell to be inviting us to consider weird any determination that something is good but which we opt not to pursue, some of us, for the entirety of our lives. No, he wasn’t speaking of broccoli or abdominal crunches. He offers that we’d view it weird for a community in some possible world, exactly like ours, to take sexual pleasure worthy of preventing, much like many of us view preventing sexual reproduction. Not that we or they would not engage in sex; just when we and they do, some of them prevent the pleasure it ordinarily brings just as some of us prevent the reproduction it ordinarily (heterosexually-speaking) brings.

So, here’s my suggestion – this, better than most, shows the limitations of thought experiments. Don’t get me wrong, I have a soft spot for thought experiments. They are among the few truly creative and inventive opportunities in a discipline ordinarily bound by the rigors of logic. Thought experiments, at best, get our intuitive juices flowing, and offer insight into our conceptual frameworks, ideological commitments, and sundry biases. It was in this spirit that Russell offered his thought experiment about contraception. At worst, though, they distract, distort, allowing biases or ideology to creep into our analysis.

One problem with Russell’s thought experiment has already been pointed out in the subsequent comments from Randy Mayes– that this community’s wanting to prevent sexual pleasures requires some explanation, as it seems too far from what we understand about pleasure as to stretch the credulity of the claim that theirs is a world exactly like our own except for this one difference. But, let’s put that aside. I’ll grant that their world is exactly like ours, with this one difference.

What my concern hinges on is the apparent equivalence of the goods of sexual pleasure and sexual reproduction in a world exactly like our own. We need an account of what makes each good good, since in this world, they are not self-evidently equivalent. One way to do so is to consider their likely effects. On closer examination:

The Good of Sexual Pleasure

1.       Entails nothing beyond the reciprocal, consensual, experience of the pleasure itself.

2.       Lasts the duration of the experience, and can be enjoyed in memory thereafter.

3.       No risks normally arise from pleasure (laughing ‘till you cry excepted).

The Good of Sexual Reproduction

1.       Entails the creation of a child, which is a being with moral worth.

2.       Entails the creation of a being with material needs of care, which someone will have the obligation to meet.

3.       Brings into the community another member, toward whom others, otherwise uninvolved in the act of reproduction, will have some moral and other practical obligations.

4.       Economic responsibility lasts, at least, for the duration of the child’s dependency. Moral responsibility lasts, typically, for the child’s entire life.

5.       Risks reproductively related illness, including the possibility of death. These risks are born entirely by the woman, and the fetus.

6.       Risks economic repercussions for lost time at work for birthing and related medical care, which may extend for the duration of the child’s dependency. These may be extensive as the birth/rearing parent loses work-related experience and the economic benefit that normally accrues thereto. These risks are born in large part by the woman, child, and any other dependents she has.

Even granting the belief that both pleasure and reproduction are good – both in the practical sense of being “good for you” for those who participate, and in the moral sense of being “worthy of pursuit” universally – it seems clear why one might be interested in limiting the frequency and the timing of the good of sexual reproduction. It’s also pretty clear why a community would be interested in everyone being able to do so. The implications of pursuing this good are born not just by those pursuing that good. The morally and practically significant responsibilities of bringing a child into the community affect everyone in the community, directly or indirectly. It’s also clearer what is so weird about preventing the good of sexual pleasure, since doing so seems to have no down-side for anyone (except, maybe, for an ex).

Clearly, sexual pleasure and sexual reproduction play fundamentally different roles in people's lives, and have dramatically different effects.  These two goods are incongruous in important ways, such that concluding their practice is weird for its prevention of the good of sexual pleasure tells us absolutely nothing about our own practice of preventing the good of sexual reproduction. The thought experiment at best misses this significant difference. At worst, it obfuscates it. What’s weird here is the thought experiment.

Reproduction is serious business. Pleasure is decidedly not.  In a world exactly like our own, reproduction is not to be undertaken lightly, at least not without planning, without attention to one’s own and others’ willingness to assume the responsibility it creates. The downside of failing to do so is significant and grave not merely for those who reproduce, but for the product of that reproduction – the child – and the community into which that child comes as a new member. Perhaps this is why women, and men, have been so concerned to try to find reliable contraceptives… for millennia… no, that’s too short a time… for ever-since-we-figured-out-that’s-not-a-stork-bringing-those-bundles-to-the-cabbage-patch.

“Hey, cutie, how about a little reproduction?”
“Maybe in a few years, when we’re economically stable.”
“Right, when I’ve finished my degree?”
“Sure, when we’re not living in my parents’ basement.”
“Oh, when my life is in order?”
“Yeah, let’s enjoy the pleasure of sex… at least for now.”
“OK, pass the condom…”

Christina Bellon
Department of Philosophy
Sacramento State