Diversity Reading List

 Though sex, and the philosophy of sex, are often serious if not solemn affairs, it pays to approach them with a sense of humor, as Greta Christina demonstrates. The philosophical topic at hand is what it is for a sexual act or encounter to be sexual (views about how to define “sex” properly are implicated in many issues, for example, in defining “rape” and “sexual harassment”). While laying out commonsensical definitions of “ sexual activity ” (say, that it must include penis-in-vagina coitus; that it requires that the participants be naked; that it involves sexual pleasure for all concerned), Christina reveals counterexamples, often from her own experience. This reflective exercise might lead us to be, as Christina is, skeptical about ever finding a final definition of “sexual activity.” Her essay has the virtue of forcing us to ask the analytic question and to realize that everyday understandings of “sex” are not very satisfying. Christina’s essay was reprinted by the magazine Ms. in its 1995 “Feminism and Sex” issue (November/Decem- ber, 60–62). The essay’s last two paragraphs are missing from that version, and there is no editorial warning that the essay was abridged. Those paragraphs, included here, are perhaps the most provocative in her essay: Christina admits to finding some sadomasochism “tremendously erotic, ” and she relates that when working as a nude dancer inside a peep show booth she had a “fabulous time” with one of her quarter-laden customers. These examples of “sex” are valuable to think about, both conceptually and normatively....