Agnes:

Hi, Audrey.

Audrey Pollnow:

Hi, Agnes.

Agnes:

Hi, Robin.

Robin:

Hi, Audrey and Agnes.

Agnes:

So this is a very special episode of our podcast because, well, it's really our second episode with a guest but it's our first episode with a guest who appears visually. So, Audrey Pollnow wrote this really interesting review, book review of Amia Srinivasan's book, The Right to Sex. It was kind of like I see it as like book review plus, because there was a lot more to it. There was a lot... There was just a lot of your own thinking in it. And in particular, I feel like the complaint about her book that you land on is one that I had as well, which is just, what is sex? I want a book about the right to sex to start with like a definition of sex. And it's sort of surprisingly– that question is somehow surprisingly elusive. And I thought we could just start with actually I have that question for your piece, too. So like you, you do address this question, right? So here's like, the definition that I came to from reading your piece, and then I thought you could correct me. I thought your... here's what I came up with. A essentially reciprocal physical interaction that could produce kids. OK, correct that or add to it.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, that seems... OK, I think there's like two things that I would add to that. One of which is that it's an erotic interaction. So it's – there are other kinds of interactions that are reciprocal that aren't necessarily erotic. The other thing is that, what I mean by could produce kids is, the sense of "could" there doesn't have to do really with probable probabilities. So I really actually just mean that you're doing, like the act that characteristically does produce, that characteristically sometimes does produce kids. Whether or not kids could actually be generated, like if you've had a hysterectomy, and you're like engaged in coitus, I would still call that having sex, even though you are not – there's like a 0% chance that you will conceive a child, that's sort of that.

Agnes:

Good, right? So... But there might be certain forms of making of where you won't perceive, when you won't – when you know you won't conceive that you might differentiate between, say, like contraception, or having hysterectomy, or all those cases similar for you?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. So... so I would say that the act is altered when you have done something with the goal of altering the act, which sounds like a weird, maybe a weird distinction. But we do have that distinction in other areas of life. So like, for instance, if I offer to do you a favor, but I only offer to do it under the circumstances that I'm able to, like you have a– or maybe I'm going to do... You have a piano concert, and you're like, "Oh, can you come to my piano concert?" And I'm like, "Well, I'd love to come if I'm free. But like, you know, I'm a really busy person, like my schedule is almost always booked." So when I say, "I can come if I'm free." I'm like, I'm offering something that like may or may not happen. But if I say, "Oh, I can come if I'm free." And then I go find out what time your piano concert is. And then I go and like, schedule something then with the goal of avoiding your piano concert. There's obviously something like either disingenuous about my initial commitment to you, or I'm like, failing to follow through with what I said I would do, which was to come if I'm, you know, or come if I'm able to or something like that. So I think that the difference between having a hysterectomy because like, say you have uterine cancer, and having a hysterectomy because you're like, "I don't want to have kids." Or, you know, "I don't want these..." I'm like, "I don't want to have kids. I mean, I don't want these, you know, these sex acts that I'm having, that I'm engaging in to result in kids." That that's in some way, analogous to the thing where your sex is saying that, "Oh, well, you know, I'll have a kid if I'm free." And then like, I'm– but I'm going to make sure that I'm not, I'm not. And saying, "I'm going to come if I'm free." I'm like, "You know, I'm not free because I don't have uterus anymore." So those are... Yeah.

Robin:

So, if we could make a comparison to other things we might try to describe or define, like a job or a meal, or sleep, for each of these things we could perhaps come up with a similar description of its best or ideal or even hopefully typical use. But then we would allow or accept a wide range of other uses.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right.

Robin:

Whereas in this case, I think you are wanting to argue against that. So could you elaborate on why, not only is this a description of an ideal use of sex, but something where you would want to bound or limit other uses?

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. Yeah. So, I think the reason that sex deserves to be bounded. So I think there's actually potentially a lot of different ways that would be sort of like logically coherent that you could bound how you want to do sex. So any version that you come up with is just a proposal and you're saying, "Well, I just want to offer my proposal as sort of like, one coherent way of doing it." And I think a requirement that any coherent account of sex should meet is that it should... it should like correspond with the other beliefs that we have about sex. And specifically, I'm interested in pretty widely held intuitions we have about the importance of consent in sex. So, I'm just going to say what, like, I'm going to just give three examples of like, ways that are, we value sexual consent in special ways that are like pretty weird, and that I think most, most accounts of sex that I've met, don't like really grapple with how weird that was. And I know some people who just say, "No, these intuitions that you and most people have about consent, and how important it is in sexual sphere are mistaken." So that's one way you can respond to that. But I guess I'll just give like three examples of what I mean about sex being like, sexual consent being weirdly important. So one is that our, and when I say our, I'm just going to mean my book, like probably also most people, I know, this view of the importance of sexual consent. So, in our view, sexual consent can't really be explained by the other principles that we have about consent or bodily consent in general. So one example I think I gave it in the article would be, there are times when I can do something to somebody's body that I know they don't want to be done. And I can do it for the sake of, maybe they're good, but also like the good of other people. So, if there's a fire on a subway, and I'm in the subway, and there's like a guy in front of me and a bunch of people ahead of them. And that guy, like I know, his like religion is all about, don't ever touch me, like I would rather die than be touched. I can still like shove him and try to shove the other people off the subway to try to get away from the fire. That seems like kind of unproblematic to me. Like, as an example and we have like an exception of where I can use somebody's body in a way that is like sort of serving the good of that person, but also kind of the good of a group even in a way that they might not like. But if we're– if I'm in a situation where like, another person being, like sexually objectified in some way could help the group, I don't really think that I can like nonconsensually subject them to that. So like, I don't think if I want – if I'm in a group of people and we want help, and nobody's helping us, but one of the people is really attractive. And I'm like, "Here, take off your clothes." And they're like, "No, please, I don't want to take off my clothes to attract attention to our group." I can't sort of like say, well, you know, for the greater good and like strip them down and sort of offer them up as a sexual sacrifice. That's a – I would view that as a violation sort of related specifically sexual nature of it. So, yeah, and I don't think we have – I don't think we can really explain that without saying, OK, well, sex... like sex is clearly in some way an ethically special category.

Robin:

So if consent is especially important for sex, the obvious thing that would suggest is like make sure that all the other uses of sex have consent. But you want to go farther than that so somehow you're using the extra strength of consent in sex to draw a bunch of conclusions that would prevent what other people would think of as consensual sex.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, definitely. So I think having sexual consent is like a free standing property of sex, is just really weird. Like, OK, we have some activities, where like, we have tennis, we have like, handshakes, we have chatting, we have all these different activities. And then we have this one activity, sex, which then the only way it's ethically different is that consent is like super extra important. That seems like – that seems weird to me, especially given that sex also has some other characteristic things. It's like, oh, well, that's like the erotic activity. It's sort of that's like the focal erotic activity, not the only erotic activity. That's like the reproductive activity. And it seems very weird to have, like consents, extra special importance in the sphere of sex being totally unrelated to anything else about sex.

Robin:

So then your stories, you have a simpler story that's easier to understand about why sex has extra strength of consent. And that theory happens to imply some other things about when it should or shouldn't happen.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, well, I guess when you are talking about the... I mean, I think everyone holds their own views for a variety of reasons. So like, I have, you know, everyone's views have a history. But I think one reason to destabilize a kind of a view that doesn't take account of that... So sorry, I guess I should say, I think I'd be very interested in learning about other views about sex to try to relate the importance of consent to the erotic and like, reproductive or any other salient aspects of it. And Agnes, I know you mentioned you were, like, looking at Roger Scruton's book about sex. So I was wondering if he was going to have some sort of like, really clever way of doing this.

Agnes:

I think there is an element of the Scruton book that I wanted to bring up with you. But actually, could I just follow up on this consent thing? Because it seems to me that there's on the one hand the datum that people certainly say that consent is very important for sex, and they put this emphasis on consent. But in some way, your way of thinking suggests that this is somehow a misplaced emphasis. Like, we might say, there's something especially important about sex. And one way we get a grip on that as by saying you have to consent. But it's actually not clear that we've gotten a good grip on it by saying that. And actually, it's not clear to me that this is unique to sex so I think that conversation shares this property with sex, which is that consent is not a good model. It's like, in some sense, you've consented to have this conversation with us, right?

Audrey Pollnow:

Right.

Agnes:

But you haven't consented, like to every speech act that I might say to you, right? So what do I have to do, oh, well, while I'm talking to you, I have to sort of think about like, what am I allowed to say to you?

Audrey Pollnow:

Sure.

Agnes:

And I could pass boundaries and I could say things I'm not supposed to say to you, and then you could get upset and I'm trying not to do that. Right? And so conversation has a kind of reciprocal structure and consent would be a ridiculous way to do that because I would be like, do you consent to my saying the following sentence to you? And then I'd have to say the sentence. And you didn't have a chance to consent, right? I think that's a really deep fact about conversation that it looks like this. So it actually seems to me like, it seems to be sex is more like conversation and less like a lot of other things where we might ask someone's permission.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yup.

Agnes:

And so the fact or the datum that we have to account for in our theory is not that consent is especially important for sex. But sex is somehow especially important, or especially sacred, or violating someone's will, when it comes to sex is really significant, even more significant than conversation. So even though it has the same structure, the same problematic structure, the stakes are somehow higher. And then the question would be why? But I do think actually, it's just, I think, in a way you and Amia, and I, share the view that there's just been an overemphasis on consent, and that emphasis on consent is part of the kind of liberal modeling of sex on just another thing that you choose to.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, I guess I'm not... in some sense, I think there's an overemphasis on consent in the sense that it's like the only concept we have. And so we have to, like, put everything into it. And this is something I was talking with somebody else. They were saying, like, someone was complaining, maybe it was Oliver Traldi, he was complaining that there's something weird about saying like, the main problem with your boss trying to have sex with you is that – sorry, not the main problem, the only problem with your boss trying to have sex with you is that consent is compromised. Which seems right to me. That's not the only problem. But I actually do think in a lot of these problems... I guess I do think consent is extremely important. And so, like most times when people say there's a problem with consent here, I think they're right even if the problem isn't necessarily mostly with the other person.

Robin:

So, isn't just the fact that it's very important enough to explain why consent is important? I mean, if you want– you’re looking for a single fact to use to explain other facts. Just saying this is really important is enough to explain why you would have to go through extra motions to sort of temporarily take it away from somebody or to take control over with something that they initially you know, had control over because it was always like, like somebody's life is would be a similar thing, right? Life is really important. And so therefore, you have to be really careful when you try to take someone's life. And similarly, you'd want really careful clear consent, perhaps that wouldn't even be enough to take someone's life.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

So my intuition is that the whole idea that consent is really important actually is a little bit connected to a background assumption that people are randomly having sex with lots of other people who they don't know. And so I have to check, is it OK if I'm– if it's like my spouse? And like, suppose we have sex every night, and you know, it's, "Wait, do you consent?" Right? It seems like less of an issue. So I do think the idea that the stakes are potentially really high and something could go really wrong seems much more of an applicable thought for having like lots of promiscuous sex than it is for having the kind of sex that you're thinking about. So that's why I'm also feeling like that emphasis on consent feels like it makes less sense in that context.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, no, I think that's definitely– well, there's definitely a practical way in which that's true. So, like, if I'm at a club, and I'm tipsy, and another stranger is tipsy and we go back and have sex together somewhere. There's like a real possibility that like one of us isn't perceiving how tipsy the other person is, one of us feels like they're going along with something they don't want to do or something like that. Whereas with a partner, or a spouse or something like that, if you have sex every night, and then one night, you happen to be tipsy, and you also have sex. It's not clear that like, you haven't done something that's morally dangerous in the same way.

Agnes:

Right.

Audrey Pollnow:

Because the context is such that it's pretty likely, I mean, again, you can come up with counter examples, right? You got in a huge fight right before and you said, "I'm never going to have sex with you again." And then they got you drunk and had sex with you. OK, that compromise– consent could be compromised there. Or, one person was secretly planning to never have sex with the other person and they got drunk and did. But in general, it's like a morally... consent is like less likely to be an issue unless you know it's an issue in like a context of like an intimate partner context versus a stranger context.

Agnes:

Right.

Audrey Pollnow:

So I think that's true.

Robin:

So we can agree that there's a higher danger here, right? We could say that there's a bigger, worst thing that could go wrong in many of these contexts. So that's a distinctive feature. And then that would also suggest why you might care more about consent and some of the other things we care about.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. Or likely a worst thing that could go wrong.

Robin:

Right. But then there are many things we let people do that are dangerous.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Robin:

Even though, you know, they are like, climb Everest or something where there's a 1% chance of dying. So we might wonder, is the danger enough to want to sort of set the conservative boundaries of just like, never, never risk the danger? Or, is there something else that sets the line there that says never risk this danger for some other reasons? Not the danger, I guess it's something else.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yes. Well, it seems like, you know, like, let's bracket the question of like the social question of how we approach it. But just like, OK, how should I, you know, how should I approach it in my own life or something like that? It seems like for a lot of things we do we try to make – we try to make models that explain and give reasons why the intuitions that we have that are strong would be upheld. And so that's partially what I'm trying to do with sort of an account of sex that includes an explanation of why consent is important. But maybe another area where you might think about this is like drug use. So you might think, OK, well, there are some cases of drug use that I'm like, clearly OK with. Like, I'm depressed, I take antidepressants, and I would like, this is an example, you know, that might – and then I go from feeling unable to do things to being like, I can do stuff. Or you might have, I have an anxiety problem, I take anti-anxiety medicine, I'm OK with this. And then you... but you might also have the situation where you're like, OK... or even more extreme drugs, like, "OK, I'm taking, you know, MDMA to deal with like PTSD or something like that. I'm recalibrating myself." But you also might have situations where you're like, "OK, I'm taking MDMA, because like, I just like to go, you know, have intense feelings." Or, "I just like to get high to escape from my life." And some people would approach these questions and say, "OK, well, that kind of fun has a place, but it's like a limited place." Like, you want to make sure that your drug use isn't interfering with the other things you value. But another way you might approach it is like, "Well, I think..." and this is something I think, like, "I think that my use of drugs should be oriented towards like reality." So you know, and I don't necessarily have an opinion about people using drugs in religious contexts, like maybe they're, maybe they're doing that as part of a pursuit of reality, they're pursuing religious reality, or what they perceive is that. But it seems like we often use frameworks like this, like, "Oh, OK, you know, my drinking has become problematic because it's about escaping things." But that isn't like... Yeah, so that's not... I guess what I mean is like we make a cost benefit analysis about whether something is harmful. But often, we use some kind of, like, more general ethical framework of like, "Am I doing this thing for the right reasons?"

Agnes:

By doing it in a healthy way or something like that.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. Or like, does this accord with reality? Not... So I guess, I mean, I think there's a difference between being like, "I'm going to get like, blackout drunk, but I'm only going to do it once a month." And like, well, I don't think, you know, "I'm going to try to not get blackout drunk, because, like, I don't like... it seems wrong to put myself in a context where like, I'm doing things that I'm not remembering." Right? Because you might think that the first thing is about health and the second thing is about like, that's just a state that like I as a rational being.

Agnes:

Oh, yeah, I meant health of your soul, not your body. But yes, I see your point.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robin:

If you had written an essay about the conservative position on drugs, then you might have similarly said, well, the function– the ideal or best function of drugs is to help you deal with reality, and this escape from reality function is less ideal or less approved. And then your stance might just be the conservative position is don't do it. Don't escape with drugs. And full stop, just draw the line there, right? That would be an analogous to saying the ideal thing with sex is to have this reciprocal thing related to procreation. And so you should do that, but just don't do the other kind.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

Right. I take it that's just what Audrey is saying. She is...

Robin:

Right. We're trying to summarize it. So I guess the question I want to ask is now like, what's the place of that sort of a stance in a world of people with diverse perspectives about drugs or sex or purposes? That is, is this a conversation among people who share the sense that you should only never escape reality? Or under the people who only think sex should be about reproduction? Or is there – what's the appeal to other people who feel inclined to sometimes escape reality, or sometimes just achieve pleasure? But what's the stance toward them? And are they just not part of the conversation? Or, because that's what people talk about, say sex in larger social worlds where we're often trying to find norms and principles we can share among a wide enough group of people that then agree on some of these rules or principles.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, so I think... OK, so I think there's sort of two answers to the question. Or maybe I think, I'm not sure. I think I'm perceiving two different questions. One is about like, given what I believe, how do I think society should respond to this? And one is just about like, who do I want to talk to? So to the second question, who I want to talk to? I think...

Agnes:

I'm more hearing the second question.

Robin:

Yeah, that's more of what I intended.

Audrey Pollnow:

OK, I think the main appeal of this argument actually just has to do with like, people who are interested in an intellectually satisfying account of why they care about some of the things with respect to sex that they do care about. So like... and like, and specifically the question of consent, like, if you really think sex is sort of like... it almost seems like superstitious to me to think that consent is so important in sex. And it actually is that important. But without having that importance be related to sort of like, a more specific understanding of what sex is. So that's like, I think my main provocation.

Robin:

So, the argument I might give, I can summarize before, is the reason why consent is important is because this is an important thing that can go really wrong.

Agnes:

Why is it so important?

Robin:

Well, so that – we may not know that but like, is that the full explanation for why consent is important, there's something else about sex that explains why consent is important other than the fact that it's important and it's something can go really wrong.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. And I don't think the fact that something can go really wrong really can explain the... and by something going wrong, I assume you mean the bad consequences, right?

Robin:

Yeah, right.

Audrey Pollnow:

Like someone being like, psychologically traumatized, or physically hurt, or impregnated or...

Robin:

Feeling shamed.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, all these things that would go wrong with sex. So, one reason to say that that's not the... one reason to think that that's not the main problem is that nonconsensual sex is still like, really bad even if, like, you know– you can, like know that none of those things are going to happen. So you have someone who's unconscious. And you know that they can't get pregnant, say it's a man. And you know you don't have any STDs and you know that no one will see you and you want to like sexually gratify your body against their body in some way, while they're unconscious. And you're like, you're a doctor or something, you know, they won't wake up, I don't know. You can make the examples weird as you want. But like, you know, if you think it would be like, absolutely wrong to like, I don't know, handle their genitals or something like that in that situation, that's not really about harm, like they're not going to have psychological harm. They're not going to experience physical harm. But if you think it is in itself a form of harm...

Robin:

So, how does the theory that sex is fundamentally about reciprocal procreation explain that fact?

Audrey Pollnow:

Well, if their unconscious it's definitely not reciprocal. That like that, I mean, that's like a sufficient reason, like a sufficient explanation for why it's...

Robin:

I mean, but that's this ideal use, right? So we need an explanation for why things deviating from the ideal use are especially horrible to be avoided.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. So I guess what I'm doing is I'm saying there's a lot of ways you could try to put the importance of consent. One is you can posit it by itself, right? You can, like in the void, consent, super important, mysteriously important, sort of a mystical property of sex. It's the consentee thing. Another thing is you can say, well, consent is this sort of like – or sorry, sex is this very special human activity. And it's special because it is the way that people can like erotically reciprocally give themselves to one another. In this way, that's like, sort of reproductively oriented. You know, asterisk, what I said earlier about what I mean by reproductively oriented.

Robin:

That's not sufficient to draw that conclusion, right? You'll have to add something more about what goes wrong when you don't follow that ideal path for sex.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, well, I guess what I mean is, there's not really a difference in terms of uh... so sorry. Positing the importance of consent in a vacuum is just like a premise that's unproven, right? We can't prove that consent is really important. It's just an intuition that like, most people in our society share. The thing I'm positing is also just a premise. This is like my premise. This is what sex is. And this is like, the only right way to intentionally use our sexual faculties. That's also totally unprovable, right? So I'm just positing it. This is the only kind of good sex. Obviously...

Robin:

So you need a concept of doing it the wrong way is so bad that we therefore need consent to make sure something about that, right? That that's the connection you'd be trying to make. You have the – sex is about X, and these nonconsent sex doesn't have X. And therefore, we shouldn't have nonconsent sex. But then we need the connection between why this X, you know, makes it go so wrong if you don't have X. That would be the key thing. Why is sex– so think of a screwdriver, right? You're supposed to only unscrew the screw screws. And if you try to pry something out with a screwdriver that your shop teacher will say "No, no, we've got this other thing for prying."

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Robin:

And so the argument for it, Yeah, but if I use the screwdriver here, I won't go that wrong. Maybe I'll dull the screwdriver a little bit but it's still go fine, right? So you need a story for why there's some kind of tools if you use them the wrong way, like things can go really wrong. And that you need a story like that here, it seems to me.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. So I guess... I think both claims are equally in need of a story, right? Like the claim, sex is the thing where consent matters, you can ask the question like, "Well, OK, focally consent matters, but like, what if you have a context where you can have nonconsensual sex and nobody will be harmed? Why is that a problem?" And the answer is, because the– it's like, by definition, the only kind of good sex is consensual sex. In fact, the only kind of OK sex is consensual sex. And so, the way I – the premise I've given instead is the only kind of OK sex is this reciprocal, you know, reproductively oriented coitus. And it has the same problem, right? It's like it doesn't – by positing that I haven't proved that the other kind of sex is not OK. I'm just claiming that it is, in the same way that people who value consent are claiming that nonconsensual sex is not OK. And in both cases, it's sort of like, equally mysterious. But I think, I just think the advantage of my account is that it sort of relates – it relates to things together like, obviously, my account rules out nonconsensual sex. Because it can't be, I mean, it can't be reciprocal, if it's not consensual. But it also... yeah, it relates it to like some other characteristics that most people sort of would identify as being, at least often if not always, true. You know, sort of related to sex in some way.

Agnes:

Can I ask about... So, my inclination, like, in effect, you're starting with this data about consent, right? But then in a way, you have this story where really what's important isn't consent, but it's this particular model. So I would have classified sex as being somehow in the territory of the sacred, where, like what– I'm at least attracted to Gerard's understanding of the sacred as forces that become stronger when we try to master them. They're somehow and the, you know, the desire for revenge is like an example of that. So, the ways in which our psychologies connect up with both, with violence and with sexual desire, they're just very mysterious. And there's just this thing where like, the more you try to like, shut it down, or whatever, that can actually make it grow stronger. That's a weird, weird fact about only certain things in our lives. That's a place I would start in thinking about sex.

Audrey Pollnow:

OK.

Agnes:

That sex is sacred in that way. And part of what bothers me about the consent model is it seems to not at all acknowledge the sacredness of sex in that sense. I think there may be much more to the sacredness of sex than that. But that's, I wonder what you think about that.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, yeah, I'm just going to think about it. I mean, that certainly does seem characteristic of Eros that it has this kind of, you can't dominate it, it dominates you quality.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Audrey Pollnow:

And I think sacredness is also like a very hopeful concept for sex, which I think everybody actually – and everybody who believes in consent in this weird specific way, believe sex is sacred somehow.

Agnes:

Right. That's where I would have pointed to from the idea of consent, is that really, the thing they're getting at is the sacredness, and we should just throw the consent part away.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. I don't know that we should throw the consent part.

Agnes:

Right. Right. That's a place where we might disagree.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. OK. So, Agnes, you don't want to throw, or you want to throw away the consent part. But I assume you have the same intuitions as a lot of other people do about the not OK-ness of various kinds of nonconsensual sex.

Agnes:

Right. So nonconsensual sex is going to be profane or whatever opposite word for sacred.

Audrey Pollnow:

A violation of the sacred.

Agnes:

A violation of the sacred.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

But consent is not a sufficient, it doesn't get you over to sacred and that's why – so there's just this – there's this overlap that has confused people into thinking that the issue is consent.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, that makes sense. And do you think that the sacredness of sex means that... are there other ethical implications?

Agnes:

I, myself am very confused about this. So I think I share many of the intuitions about what is, you know, what goes wrong in many of the – both the non-consent and then the kind of para-consensual cases where it's like the boss and the employee and there's a bit of like coercion. So it seems to me that like one important concept that doesn't come out in your treatment of recipro– reciprocity is close to this concept of not quite as arousal, sexual arousal. So that's the thing Scruton talks about, and I'm like, "Yeah, anyone who talks about sex should talk about sexuality." That's a super interesting and significant fact about sex, where sexual arousal seems quite different from hunger.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yup.

Agnes:

And it seems direct, for instance, directed at an individual in a way that hunger is more generically directed at food. Right? And so like, one question I had for you with sexual, like with sexual reciprocity is actually it seems to me that quite possible that you could get sex that was reciprocal. That is both people wanted to have sex. I mean, there's a question what reciprocity means, right, but at least in some sense, fulfill the reciprocity condition, but not the arousal condition, at least on one person's end.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

Whether these be in principle possible. And it could be that the two people are married, and they at least could have children in your sense of could or whatever. And like, my question was, like, where does that fall for you? Is that totally fine sex-wise, or like, is arousal an independent part condition?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, so I think like arousal plays... So like, arousal seems like a very important piece of reciprocity, both in that like in focal good sex, like both people are aroused. And they're also like, they're aroused by the other person, but they're also aroused by the other person's arousal. And that there's – that that's sort of like, you know, that's sort of like going back and forth and like playing on it. Yeah, that's kind of like a mediating force. And I think it's wrong to have sex that doesn't involve seeking arousal. But I also think that arousal is probably something like actually being able to get pregnant or conceive a child, where like, when you know that the capacity is limited in some way, it can still be OK to have sex, but you should still be kind of like trying your best. So I guess I'm thinking of cases where like, for instance, someone is taking antidepressants. And so they find it very hard to get aroused, but they still like value as part of their relationship with their spouse or something, like having sex with them. Both because like, they're like, "Oh this, you know, my sex– my spouse would appreciate this." But also just like, that's – that's like, an important way of connecting. But it's like, maybe the sex is going to be kind of compromised at the level of like, experienced by this. I think it's still OK for people in that situation to have sex. And just...

Agnes:

Hold on, I want to ask a point about that.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, and just to know that there are – but like, you know, just like do your best. Like try to, you know, try to see what's arousable about your partner and like, try to arouse them. And like, if it's kind of like, you know, not so good, it's just like that might still be good enough.

Agnes:

So this is the way to coming back to Robin's question. Because we now have the idea that there's like an ideal case of sex, right, whereby people are like fully aroused. And then there's cases that fall away from the ideal. There are imperfect cases of sex, right? And I feel like Robin's question was, well, you seem pretty accepting of those imperfections. What about these other imperfections where two people who maybe are not married, you know, or maybe they they're not going to satisfy the reproductive condition, but they're going to try to make it as much like the kind of cases that are ideal as possible. Why are only some ways of falling away – like, once the only thing that anchors the ideal is the intuition of consent, right?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

It doesn't – it's not always clear to me how you're going to distinguish various falling away from the ideal, some of which you want to be very accepting towards and others of which you want to say, draw the line.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. OK, so, sorry. To be clear, first, I don't think... my account isn't fundamentally rooted in the importance of consent. The importance of consent is sort of what I'm using as an end for people who do find... my point is just like consent seems like a weirder superstition to hold than superstition that I hold. If you want to call sort of an un...

Agnes:

Uh-huh.

Audrey Pollnow:

An undefended promise.

Agnes:

I see.

Audrey Pollnow:

Like, a superstition, which...

Agnes:

OK.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, so, that's like the main point that I would make about consent. And also that the intuitions about consent are generally true and that my account actually also makes sense of those in a way that I think is more parsimonious. But to the question of various forms of falling away, there are a lot of ethical categories where we would have some forms of falling away that we'd be OK with and others that we wouldn't. So if you're like a person who thinks lying is always wrong, or a person who thinks that... yes, so say, you're a person who believes lying is always wrong. There are instances when you say something that turns out to not be true or you don't necessarily have an obligation to go back and correct it or something. Like I say something that I thought was true and it turn out I'm mistaken. I don't necessarily need to like track you down and tell you like, "Oh, I was mistaken." That might be a good thing to do, but like not, not morally necessary. But I, like, you know, I can intentionally tell you something that I believe to be false. And both of those are the ways of falling away from saying the truth, right? Like saying, like, accidentally versus intentionally saying something that's false. But like, we can distinguish them because it's like – and like the person who's saying something that's false intentionally, they might be describing what they're doing is like saying the truth to the best of my ability, which isn't really an accurate description of what they're doing, because they're, to the best of their ability is constrained by like, by things that they're unwilling to do, but they could – that they are actually like, literally capable of doing, right? So like my dentist says, like, "Oh, did you floss your teeth?" And I would say, "Yup, every day." And I didn't, and it's just that I really don't want my dentist to yell at me. And like, if I view myself as being incapable of making my dentist angry, then it's true that I'm telling the truth to the best of my ability, but like, I'm just not. So yeah, it seems like we can do the same thing with sex, where we can say like, OK, like, I'm... like, let's see, I want to be having sex with... OK. Like, here would be an example. Like, say, I don't want to get pregnant. Like, I know that I'm at a time in my life where like I'm very likely to have get pregnant if I have sex. And so I'm like, OK, I'm going to do some sort of, like other sexual act that's like not going to get me pregnant. But I'm going to, like, try to do it in a way that's as close to like, pregnancy is possible. So I'm going to like, try to like interpersonally make it feel like we're having intercourse. And like, it's going to be a different sex act, but like, sort of ape it as close as possible. But like, you're not really aping at as close as possible, because you literally – like in that situation, I literally could be having intercourse. I'm just choosing not to, because I'm like, well, I don't, I don't want that... I've chosen not to accept the consequences of that. And so that's... so yeah, I think that that would be like the main distinction for me between acts that would be like not... like me having a non intercourse form of sex, because I wanted to have intercourse but didn't want to get pregnant, would be a way of falling short, in a way that like, say, initiating intercourse and then being interrupted, so you don't complete it. But like maybe that maybe the act look the same, right? So maybe in the first case, I'm like, "Oh, like, I want to have an orgasm." And so like, I asked my, I asked my husband to have like oral sex with me or something. And the second case, I'm like, planning to have – like, my husband and I are planning to have sex. There's like foreplay, I have an orgasm. And then like, the doorbell rings, and we have to leave. Like those two acts both look the same but I would think that the first one would fall short in the sense that like, we were sort of like intentionally not... we really intentionally not having intercourse. And with, in the second one, we were trying to have intercourse, but it just kind of like fell apart because someone visited or whatever. And the first, yeah, that the first would be like, morally deficient in a way that the second one would just be like, sort of like, too bad, or, you know, whatever deficient in that way.

Robin:

So I'd like to explore the relationship between consent and reciprocity a bit more. So if I think of reciprocity as this physical process, social psychological process by which two people become in-sync and build off of each other, and develop the synchronized arousal and act because of that direct interaction, and, you know, in a context or pregnancy might result or at least sort of context. That scenario seems to me like, it's reportedly and in many fantasies quite consistent with a relatively low consent context. That is, all of that can happen, and reportedly does happen in situations of less consent. Say, a slave, even... or right? So supposedly, all of that stuff happens without consent. So are we going to change the definition of reciprocality so that we make sure that those cases are excluded? Or, are we going to embrace that this essential concept may on average happen to go better with consent, but that it doesn't actually directly require consent to be achieved?

Audrey Pollnow:

OK. So, you're saying, like in the slave case, that that act looks like it might look reciprocal, because...

Robin:

Right, it has a similar psychological arousal, physical buildup of interest, the body is synchronized together. They go through the all the motions, and people feel the same sort of way, they might feel, pretty similar.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Robin:

But consent is less involved.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. I guess it seems like probably reciprocity is also compromised in that situation. Because in the same way that, like most people who care about consent, they don't just mean consent, "Oh, it just means you agreed to it at that time or something." They mean something more like, "Well, you... You like freely agreed to it." So, I think reciprocity... So sorry, is your point that maybe the slave enjoys it sometimes? And so...

Robin:

Not just enjoy, but like off...

Audrey Pollnow:

And it's like, sometimes the slave has good sex, is what you're saying.

Robin:

In all the usual ways.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right.

Agnes:

Well, but it doesn't meet her criteria because the other criterion is, like, going to be inside of a committed relationship and also geared towards having children. So presumably, the first one is not there with the slave?

Robin:

Well, they could still be committed.

Agnes:

Through a marriage or whatever.

Robin:

Right. I mean, in some sense, a slave is more committed than anyone else. They really can’t get out of it.

Audrey Pollnow:

No, no, I think I want to say that it's like deficient at the level of reciprocity – that that kind of sex is deficient at the level of reciprocity. Because reciprocity isn't just teamwork. And part of the importance of it is that it's like...

Robin:

So it seems like here you're trying to import concepts of consent into the definition of reciprocity.

Audrey Pollnow:

No, no, sorry. This is very central to reciprocity that it isn't – it's neither teamwork nor is it just you want this thing that I have and I want this thing that you have, and we can kind of trade. Right? It's like, the two people have to be showing up to it, kind of like all the way through. And that like...

Robin:

I mean in the slave case, they would both be there all the way through.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, they will physically be there.

Robin:

They're all pros– probably emotionally there all the way through. They're both socially all the way through. I mean, just one of them doesn't have options the other one has.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure – I mean, I guess I don't really know what the psychological experience of being a slave and having sex with somebody is like. But it doesn't...

Robin:

I mean, the question is, like, where in your concept of reciprocity does this – are we going to make these distinctions? What is it about reciprocity that's sensitive to these consent-related sex?

Audrey Pollnow:

Well, like for something to be reciprocal, it necessarily needs to be free because...

Robin:

Well, isn't that the concept of consent? I mean, aren't you bringing in consent through the concept of free. If you're going to define reciprocity in terms of consent, then of course, that's going to explain the relationship by definition, but it's not very insightful.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. No, I think consent is just a precondition to reciprocity, if that makes sense. Like... or...

Robin:

OK, but then that's the full explanation for why your theory predicts consent, right?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Robin:

Because consent is built into your definition of your concept. But then it's not really explaining anything in the world. It's just... it's just...

Audrey Pollnow:

Well, except that like – except that like reciprocity, like reciprocity and eros are both like really – are both like pretty characteristic of sex in most people's experience in a way that just like consent mattering on its own in a vacuum, I guess it is part of people's experience. But...

Robin:

But your concept of reciprocity you're invoking is one that you, by definition, include consent in it. And so if you excluded consent from your concept of reciprocity, you just went to a more basic process, then you would no longer have this connection with consent.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. OK, so I'm trying to understand your objection exactly. So, is your thought something like this? Agnes pointed out earlier that reciprocity is a really important part of conversation. But we could have conversations that are free or less free, right? Like, someone could pay you to be part of a conversation, you might just do it for money, somebody could, like coerce you to talk to them, like they're pointing a gun at you and they're like, "Answer my questions. OK, like, what was your childhood like? or whatever." And you're like, you're talking to them, but it's not free. And it's like recip– the conversation is like reciprocal in some sense, right?

Robin:

Right. In the sort of functional building off of each other, understanding each other, or meeting each other's sort of way.

Audrey Pollnow:

Responding to other person. Yeah, good. Let's see.

Agnes:

Can I introduce a distinction that might help here or am I interrupting anyone's thought?

Audrey Pollnow:

No, no, I'm just thinking we should...

Agnes:

OK. So, I think that there is – we might distinguish a kind of ethical facet of reciprocity, which is something like a shared agreement from a psychological facet, which is closer to the arousal thing I was talking about. And I think what we're sort of doing is exploring that it seems like we can pull this concept of reciprocity apart. And you kind of want it to include both the kind of the volitional aspect, the ethical aspect, which is like you're choosing and you're choosing in the light of the other person choosing the same thing, right? And you might want to say, of the slave, but they can't make such a choice. And so the volitional aspect is gone. But you also want to include the psychological aspect, which is the building off of each other. And it's not actually clear how those two things are one concept.

Audrey Pollnow:

OK.

Agnes:

You can use one word to refer to both, but it seems like you can pull them apart and then we can ask, "Which one are you going with?"

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. So your thought is like, maybe what I'm just talking about is sort of like, consent plus some kind of like dialectical, like, sexual interpersonal play or something like that.

Robin:

Chemistry, they call it.

Agnes:

Well, chemistry wouldn't be enough because the action has to be actual.

Robin:

Right, but chemical process by which the chemicals are reacting to each other and building off of each other.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, but I don't just mean a chemical process. OK. So I think part of the issue is that it seems like both things need to be present at every level of the process. So, if you're like – if someone is like you have to participate in this conversation, or you have to have sex with this person. And then you go and you're like, "Well, I'll just do the best I can, all things considered" or something. It seems like reciprocity has been damaged at the level of like, of entry. But you could also imagine a situation where two people are like farther along, right? They've like flirted with each other, they've danced with each other, they're like in bed together. And maybe like reciprocity has been fine up until then. But then there is some sort of like breakdown, either at the level of like response or at the level of will. And that seems like the thing that's happening between two people as they're getting to have sex, like going through the process of getting to the point where they're having sex. Like, it seems to involve like both of those things all the way through.

Robin:

So let me give an abstract rendition of what might be the logical critique here. So you say we observe A about sex. A is puzzling, standing by itself, it's weird. Well, I need the theory of A. You say, "I've got C. Note that C implies A, so C is plausible, and C implies A, so therefore, C is a better explanation than A." And then I know, well, C really is defined to be A plus B. And so obviously, A inside of C, A plus B implies A so the fact that C implies A is fully explained by the fact that you included A inside of C. The other B part isn't really necessary. So it's not really offering an explanation. It's just an additional claim.

Audrey Pollnow:

OK, so I think... all right. I don't know if this analogy is going to be at all useful. But I think in the same way, that the two people's interest in one another is going back and forth in a sort of like, it's not like a terminating thing, right? So it's not like, OK, A, like, sorry, I'll use different letters. With people N and M, I don't know, M is interested in N and is interested in M. M, is interested in the fact that N is interested in M, and– but so forth. But there's not like a terminating thing, where it's like, "Oh well, you know, I'm aroused by your body, and I'm aroused by your arousal on me, but I'm not aroused by your arousal and my arousal and whatever, wherever it goes in that."

Robin:

All levels of recursion.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. And so I think that, so there's something incomplete about saying that the sort of interest between the two people is just the sum of one person's interest in other and the other person's interest in them, because the interests are interacting in some way, right? And so this is, I guess, what I would think about this, on the one hand, this interactive process of just like arousal, or sexual response, or sort of dialectical sexual response. But also, the more like freedom or consent or whatever you want to call it component, because they need to be working together, all the way through, if that makes sense. So it's not I don't think it's...

Robin:

I mean like, again, a slave and a slave owner, they can have all these interactions, but somehow you define – or is there like a physical thing we could watch in the interaction that would be the failure of this thing? Or is this just a logical assumption declaration that, by definition, it can't possibly be reciprocal, if it isn't free?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yes, I think... I don't think it can be reciprocal if it's not free.

Robin:

But we see something and that would show us that the reciprocality had failed in some more direct interaction way, or is it just a logical declaration? However, it looks it's still can't by definition of free.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. No, I think it's just a logical declaration. But I just want to push back against the idea that the kind of reciprocity is like consensual plus, you know, the arousal is interacting in a certain way. Because... I'm trying to think about how I can put this. Because like, the reason... like I don't think the two things can be separated. Like, I think that two people need to be showing up to one another freely and responding to one another freely all the way through. And so whether the unfreedom comes at the comment – sorry, at the sort of the context of like, "Well, you have to have sex with me it's your job." Or, if it's happening at the level of like, "Oh, I realize this person will be offended if I don't – like they have asked me to do something in a sexual context. And I've realized they're going to be hurt if I don't. And I feel like I actually really don't want to do this thing, but I have to do it otherwise they will be upset." Like, that's also a point at which reciprocity can be harmed, even if the person chooses, like, even if they do have the freedom to do the – to not do the thing that would cause the person to not feel hurt. That that's sort of like a way in which reciprocity can be broken.

Robin:

So we don't have time to go into it, I don't think that much, but I actually took issue with the book you reviewed and yourself in this expansive concept of consent, wherein you sort of have to know the entire structure and the history of society to decide if any one thing is a consent, because it can't be consent, if it's in a, you know, wrong society or something. That seems to make it even harder to look at an interaction to decide if it's free or consent, because you know, by that account, you can't just look at the local interaction, and decide you have to look at the whole history and society, it's all in, in order to judge that, which seems to me intractable.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, I think it's definitely intractable.

Robin:

But which case, it's not, you can't apply the concept, right?

Audrey Pollnow:

No, no, I just mean, I just mean that like... I think that concepts can still be useful, even if there are edge cases where they're, where they're messy. And I think like power asymmetries really is an example of this. Like the example Srinavasan gave, which I talked about, which I was thinking probably you wouldn't like, is like the college student who, you know, starts having sex and then stops, and she says, "Oh, you know, I'm high, this doesn't feel right. I don't want to keep doing it." And the guy said, "OK, you know, just give me give me a minute or two to change your mind." And he's kissing her or something. And then she re-initiates the sex act, and later says, "Well, that wasn't it consensual, because I was actually pressured by this norm, about how girls need to start – finish what they start." Like, I mean, I definitely...

Robin:

But I don't think being pressured by norm counts as injustice per se. I mean, we're all pressured by norms all the time. There's a lot of complicated norms that push in a lot of strange directions.

Agnes:

I mean I take a part of what Audrey is trying to explain is why many people, me included, think in this particular case, it's worse to be pressured by the norm. But I actually wonder how your view avoids this, like, what if a couple is married? And the same thing happens inside of marriage...

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. They have an idea of a good spouse does this.

Agnes:

Exactly, right? And so it seems to me that if the thought is, "Look, sex is so risky that you want to make sure you have it in a context where you avoid this danger." I don't think marriage and even marriage gear to procreation is insured against it. And I actually wondered why universal celibacy wasn't your recommendation.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. So I think – I don't think marriage like destroys these problems. It just mitigates against some of them. And the reason universal celibacy isn't my recommendation is that I just, I think there actually are still real goods associated with sex, including the ones that have to do with you know, this expression of like, reciprocal erotic love and having children is good thing. And, but – that's like... yeah, so I'm actually pretty sympathetic to universal celibacy as a recommendation. Basically...

Agnes:

Mm-hmm. I could feel that.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. So I think that – I think the sex negative feminists have a lot going for them. And yeah, so I think if you... Yeah, so to justify sex, you need to have a really good reason to be having it.

Agnes:

So, if I just pick up on that, so it's like, suppose we were to discover that like that married people and especially as they get married for longer and longer, their sex just becomes less and less exciting. And there's less and less reciprocity just suppose this were just an empirical discovery, right?

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. They're just phoning it in. Yeah.

Agnes:

They're just falling it in, there's less reciprocity, but they're kind of OK with having the sex to preserve closest in the relationship where one person wants it more than the other, the other one goes along with it. The other one might even have like, slight fears that if they didn't go along with it, things would go worse, or they might, you know. And could that maybe tilt the balance, like, and now it's like, "OK, maybe it looks like some kinds of extramarital sex." And I don't mean affairs, I just mean outside of marriage...

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, yeah.

Agnes:

...sex are going to like, overall, give you a better risk package, right, than the sex one where you have these other risks. And especially at over time, the sex risks, the risk of the stuff I'm talking about sex goes up, right? So yeah, I just wonder what you think about that.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. So, yeah, I guess what I think about that is that like, I think the dangers you described are definitely like real, and people should be careful. Like they should be like morally careful about them. But I guess I don't really see like a great comprehensive justification for the other kind of sex. And so...

Agnes:

That's why you're drawn in the celibacy direction.

Audrey Pollnow:

Exactly, yes. Celibacy or like, you know if you have to.

Agnes:

Right.

Audrey Pollnow:

No.

Agnes:

OK.

Robin:

And so is there a default here that if not strongly justified, you should just skip it? Because there's substantial harms possible?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, I think so.

Agnes:

Yeah, I did – I mean, for me, that's one of the problems for me with that is just that that contradicts the idea of sacredness. The whole point of the sacred is, the more we try to resist it, the more it overpowers us, if that's what it is. So the idea of like, "Hey, this is sacred, but just abstain." It's like, "Wait, didn't you hear me? I said it was sacred." That's the sort of thing where that kind of response doesn't work.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

So I mean, that's presupposing you agree with me about that idea about its being sacred. But that's why it– for me that, yeah, like I can imagine abstention as a solution to a lot of different kinds of problems, but not ones that concern the sacred.

Robin:

Even without invoking the sacred. It's just a common presumption with a many people that you can't just stop people from having sex. They're going to do it one way or another. And you can run best channel their inclinations in one direction or another, but...

Agnes:

But unless you see it as sacred, you might think, yeah, but there are ways around that or something, or just, you know, from a resolve or with like, if you see in a certain way, then that route is any blocked in principle.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I'm not sure I have an answer. But Agnes, I do have a question for you, which is, if you think like the Spartan model of marriage is really good, because...

Agnes:

What is this Spartan model?

Audrey Pollnow:

Well, I think the men all lived in like, it was basically like, they would have sex with their wives but it was considered kind of like embarrassing. And I think the men lived in like a big barracks together, and the women would like have their own tents. So like, the men would like sneak off, and like have sex with their wives. So they would still like keep. But like, I sort of wonder, like, maybe this is a solution to the question of like, both the sacredness and what you were talking about, like the danger in marriage of reciprocity falling away. That like, you kind of like, you sanction the sex but you make it like a little bit shameful, and therefore, like, exciting or something. And so people are like, you know, they're like, sneaking off basically. Yeah, I don't know, do you think this would solve like, your concern about sacredness?

Agnes:

I think there's really something to that. I'm not, I'm not sure it would – there's... the problem with sacredness is you can't produce systemic solutions. Because it evades the solution, right? But I do think, so something that Scruton gets right I think is that shame is really deeply rooted with sex and the... Another thing that goes along with the consent obsession as I would call it, is the idea that we should just get rid of sexual shame. There's nothing to be ashamed of or something, where I'm like, "No, no, there's tons to be ashamed of. That's the right feeling about sex." And I see why that would draw you in the sex negative direction. It doesn't draw me in that direction because of the sacredness point. But at least the people who are sex negative get the shame thing, which is that's getting something important, I think. So, but I think what that seems to be an attempt to do is like, let's reintroduce the shame somewhere so as to keep the dynamic sexual, rather than somehow – there's something too healthy or something about the, you know, let's just have like, you know, we'll all have contraception and prevention from STDs, and we can all have sex and enjoy it, and it's kind of like we're all eating meals together or something. And there's like a insufficient – it's been... that doesn't look like sex to me. It looks like we've turned it into something. We sanitize it to the point where nobody will even want it.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Agnes:

Can I– like, I know we're going to, we're a little over our time but there's something from the very beginning I wanted to get back to. Your definition, OK? So I proposed reciprocal physical interaction that could produce kids, you said it has to be erotic. And my immediate thought, but I wasn't able to follow up with them, I was like, wait a minute, that just means sexual. So can you tell me what you mean by erotic if you don't mean sexual?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. I don't think I'm going to give a good answer. So I can try, but it will be kind of bumbling I think. I mean, I mostly mean sexual, but I guess what I mean is... OK, I think what I mean, though, is that the reciprocity is characterized not just by... OK, you can imagine someone, two people who are really into improv and are not interested in one another sexually, having sex as part of an improv game that they're playing, right? It's like, OK, what if like, I take off this garment? OK. And like they're not, neither is like sexually – neither is... neither person desires the other, what they're doing is reciprocal because they're responding to and saying yes, as you do in improv, to the other person's proposal. Right? But they're doing it as part of a game that actually is sort of only... it's like physically sexual, but you could have sex in a way that was reciprocal but that wasn't erotic if it wasn't characterized by like reciprocal desire. Yeah.

Agnes:

Right. I mean, it was just occurring to me that actually – well, part of your definition is it has to be able to produce kids, right? So the improv one wouldn't meet it. But...

Audrey Pollnow:

No, I mean, if you actually had sex, you could actually like go through with it.

Agnes:

Go through with it. OK, OK. I get it. I get it. Right. And...

Audrey Pollnow:

but I just thought it up.

Agnes:

But it could just be... right, OK, now, I'm undersanding. Right, I mean, without that, you could even have, you know, a reciprocal interaction, physical interaction that involves like implantation of sperm or whatever, right? But then it is not sex at all. And that would then meet the sex, unless we put in something like...

Audrey Pollnow:

I know, I guess, by the, you know, I really do mean coitus. I don't mean, you know, I don't mean you're inseminating a person's...

Agnes:

Right, right. But that's what I mean and so there needs to be – and so, you thought is, OK, so in addition to ruling out those cases, we're going to rule out the improv case. I feel like though, that there, some of the work that's being done by erotic really should be done by recip– that is, there's a lot that hangs on what is this reciprocality. And I take it that it's not like, reciprocality plus erotic, it's somehow and intrinsically erotic reciprocality, right?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah.

Agnes:

And so, I feel like my next step for what I would want to hear from you is just like breaking down that concept of reciprocality and bringing out like the arousal component, the volitional component, and the – like, in what way is it essentially sexual or erotic, right? Which you may just get out of the arousal part.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, yeah.

Agnes:

But then also what glues all those things together.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. Probably we could think...

Robin:

So I think Agnes and I both admired the way that your book review made explicit sort of some implicit rhetorical strategies in the book you were reviewing. And that was one of its delightful parts. And you talked about how the author is trying to sort of, you know, send away the dogs, I guess, or the ones people who might be distasteful in the readers' eyes, through this concept of, I guess, a reverse implicature or whatever. And it's at one point, you said the dog should have their day that maybe it wasn't entirely fair to exclude them from the conversation. So clearly, in our discussion, it's actually even when people make their positions pretty explicit, it's still often hard to understand them and we can misunderstand each other. My question or comment would might be about, like, when we allow people to draw these implications of what other people have said, how reliable are we in assigning those implications? And how far can it go wrong to allow people sort of to freely claim that other people imply things without a check on that? That is how wrong can – or is our conversation going in sort of allowing these widespread claims about implications without sort of verifying with the person that they in fact, meant the things that were implied, supposedly implied?

Audrey Pollnow:

So I'm not excited about how far society has gone in this direction. I do think... Yeah, so I think if you have a society where there's a few phrases that everybody knows have really, really specific meanings. Like, you know, after Nazi Germany, it's like, they're all these words... I think actually, in Germany, there's like a problem where you can't use the word, like leadership conferences have to have these weird names, because you can't use the word "Führer."

Agnes:

You can't use "Führer." You can use "Leiter" but not "Führer."

Audrey Pollnow:

Exactly. So it's like, there's all this kind of like, talk around in German. And like, OK, when you have something like that happen, yeah, I guess you just, you have, it's going to be complicated to deal with it.

Agnes:

No, kids name Adolf.

Audrey Pollnow:

Exactly. No kids named Adolf.

Agnes:

No.

Audrey Pollnow:

But yeah, I think I think it's a major problem that we have these layers of things or phrases or even inferences that have become like, right coded or left coded or center coded or coded in some way, where often people who are using them won't even necessarily know. That makes it very, very hard for normal people to have conversations about stuff. Because you say something that seems like you're like, "Hey, I don't know. I'm just a person who knows some things, not as much as everyone but like, I have opinions. We're a republic. I want to talk about them." And then you make some argument and then people are like, "Oh, this is a dog whistle for you know, everyone knows when you say family values you mean, you know, something..."

Robin:

Rape.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, rape. Like I love rape, yeah. I don't know how that is. But you know, but that's like a very, very hard way to have a conversation in public. Like people... Yeah. So, I think it would be good if – and I'm not sure I have like a path to this but like, in general, I think it's not a good idea to assign, like, some sort of like implicature to people unless you have like, a really strong basis for doing it. And...

Robin:

And I'd hoped you'd say, but I just wanted to make you say it.

Agnes:

So, presumably, I thought there was something– there was a tension in the thing you said, Robin, which is like you started with, I love how you drew all these implications from Amia's book that she didn't actually explicitly say, but you ascribe them to her anyways.

Audrey Pollnow:

Well, aren't you...

Agnes:

Isn't it terrible people do that?

Audrey Pollnow:

Yes.

Agnes:

Yeah. So like, actually – so I think that this is, maybe this is me annoyingly saying the same thing over again. I think that language is also part of the sacred. And this is an example of that. That is, this implicature thing gets out of hand. We literally can't control it, right? So like, you may be annoyed at someone else doing it, and you're doing it by being annoyed at them doing it. And it's so frustrating, like, I can't tell you how frus– because I've tried to catch myself. And I think maybe there should be like a general thing, like a class of like, solutions to sacred problems. Because these are super hard problems. And it's not a matter of how well-meaning or well-intentioned you are, or they're on the right side or whatever, both sides are just doing it. Like, you just keep, you're just caught in it.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. Yeah and both consciously and unconsciously, right? Because like, you're just, sometimes you're writing to a particular audience, right? So you're like, I'm just going to write in sort of the language that these people use.

Agnes:

Right.

Audrey Pollnow:

And then to other people – and I think to probably some people, and maybe this is how Srinivansan experienced writing the book herself. Like, maybe she wasn't thinking like, "Oh, ha ha, I'm going to make these like, I'm going to consider these arguments that aren't really like, considered OK on the left to think about. But I'm going to do them by like, repeatedly, like sort of trash talking, like the people who people on the left assume or the people who would make these arguments." Trash talking is too strong of a word, but like, you know, sort of, you know, saying things...

Agnes:

Excluding in a certain way.

Robin:

Right.

Audrey Pollnow:

Cast suspicion on, Oh, we all know that most people who think this kind of thing are privileged White guys, but, you know, actually, there are...

Agnes:

Reasonable people who think this.

Audrey Pollnow:

You know, there's a reasonable way to think about this. And like, so maybe there is an audience that needs to be reached in this way. Right? Like, they can't be reached any other way. And so Srinivansan is like helping them. But like, it's also – it just seems, yeah, I don't have a solution. It's just very unfortunate that this is – and it's, I mean, it's also something that's clearly ratcheted a lot.

Robin:

I think the most harmful form of it is where you look at someone's credentials. And so if they're sufficiently, you know, colored, gendered, progressive, et cetera, then you give them a lot of latitude for what expressions they use, or what interpret– you give them a sort of favorable interpretation. But if they have all the wrong characteristics, then you're sort of justified in making the worst possible attributions to whatever they said. And so there's asymmetry in there – there's which means that those other people have to be extremely careful how they talk, and even then they maybe thought foul. But we good people can sort of be sloppy and joking and, you know, and talking directly, because, you know, we can be assumed to be having a good intention.

Agnes:

I don't think that's the worst part.

Robin:

It's pretty bad part.

Agnes:

I think the worst part is just that we are caught up in it ourselves, and that we harm our own souls, every time we try to fight it.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. So do you have a solution, either of you?

Agnes:

My solution is everybody should just be super literal all the time.

Robin:

I agree. So I that I just tried to respond to what things people say directly and try not to describe intentions.

Agnes:

We both fail at that all the time.

Robin:

Yes.

Agnes:

For instance, we fail on it by approving in some sense of the whole first part of Audrey's review, right? We like that. That was ascribing stuff to Amia that she doesn't literally say, the literal reading when just be ascribing to her what she says.

Audrey Pollnow:

Right. She actually just thinks that white men are more likely to hold this opinion.

Agnes:

Right.

Audrey Pollnow:

You know, but here's some other reasons. Yeah.

Agnes:

That that would be another approach. I mean, that's an ideal. I'm not saying I can do it all or even most of the time but that is, my solution is if you could just get yourself just commit to actually being little, rather than saying that that's what you're doing. OK with not just saying it but actually doing it. I kind of just the – and I try, but I fail. But yeah, that is my, the best solution I've come up with so far, but I'm open to other ones.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. Well, I'm not sure because it seems like we still do need to have this capacity to evaluate this thing. It's just that like, it would be good if collectively less of our attention socially were spent doing it. And, you know, it's hard to... it's hard to fix that without just drawing attention to it.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

That's the sacredness part right there.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, do you both think the reason it's gotten so much more intense in the last, I don't know, five years, is mostly about like the structure of social media, or the Trump presidency, or any ideas?

Agnes:

I think Robin and I have different views. Maybe we should each say our views and then we should stop because we're kind over our time.

Robin:

OK, all right. You first.

Agnes:

OK. My view is that a big part of why it's gotten so much worse is that we have tried to master it and it is sacred. So a lot of the dynamic is fueled by the people fighting.

Robin:

I'd say we are in the midst of a rare religious revival period. There's a new religion on the scene and people are energized and eager to support it and show their support for it. And this is part of that sort of process. It's where they go out of their way to interpret things in that lens and show that they're on the right side of this.

Agnes:

OK, well, thank you so much for talking to us. This is a great conversation.

Audrey Pollnow:

Yeah. Thank you, both.

Robin:

Thanks for hanging out, bye.

Agnes:

Bye.