Whores, Tarts and the Modern Person

Sex is everywhere. You walk into a corner shop, you will see lads magazines on the racks. Go into a clothes shop, you will view revealing clothes. People do not go to Church anymore, but to clubs like Gatecrasher and Snobs, dens of drink, fun and primal urges. It is everywhere. And it has infected the characters in our societies.

Many girls have been brainwashed into thinking that they have to be sexual objects for other people by the media, their friends and their culture. It is just expected of them. As such, many embrace it full heartedly, viewing hedonism as the purpose of life, having pleasure and providing satisfaction for others. This, to me, is very sad.

I guess it is similarly true of men. Men are expected to be tonk, manly, sporty, getting drunk, pulling girls etc. The list goes on. The same stereotype manifests itself in both men and women.

It is not a new thing though. Some of the earliest philosophers, called the Sophists, supported this kind of view, celebrating hedonism, pleasure and fulfillment of basic desires. Many other thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Existentialism, have followed a similar pattern. It is a recurring theme.

But is it wrong? On a relativistic world view, so popular these days, there is no problem with it. All views are equally true or false, for they all share assumptions that cannot be justified. Therefore, if you want to be a sexual object and spend your time getting pleasure, that is as equally valid as not doing it. And relativism seems to be the logical conclusion that many existentialists have seen of scientism, secularism and naturalism.

However, I do not find this very convincing. Firstly, a rejection of relativism. Aristotle, the philosopher as St. Thomas Aquinas called him, introduced fully the Principle of Non-Contradiction, the concept that something cannot be both X and Not-X simultaneously. This is the foundation of all logic, and thus rational and meaningful thought. One cannot justify this by appealing to anything outside of experience or a further reasoning, for it presupposes those things. However, to deny this principle's validity, one must use the principle. So for example, to say that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is false, is to say that it is not true, or Not-X, as opposed to X. It is not both at the same time. Thus, we all use this principle. Now relativism asserts that an object can be X and Not-X, but if you believe logic is correct, which we all do, then it follows relativism is false. So this foundation is fallacious.

Thus, absolute values exist. Some things are really bad, and some truly good, regardless of what we think. So does this mean the sexual nature of this culture is also objectively and truly wrong?

I think it does. If we look at all the absolutist systems of morality, such as Plato's, Kant's, Christianity's, Islam's, Communism etc. They all have an emphasis on family and cohesive community. Now hedonism is essentially an individual pursuit. The type of sex in our culture is based on individual pleasure, not union of anything like that. This prevents family love being created, for you think of yourself, not others. Now I am not arguing from one system, but all of them. And so, it follows that only people who are ignorant of the basic principle of reason can assert a system on which hedonism is acceptable. And thus, this culture is filled with unjust acts of sex, promiscuity and whorism.

Of course, these systems may be wrong. But if you accept rational and meaningful thought, I think that you should adopt one of the absolutist systems of morality. And the vast majority of accepted ones claim that the way our current sexualisation of girls and boys is wrong, and we should try to change this.