The Ethics of Sexual Attraction

Paul-Mikhail Podosky

“Look, I find you hilarious, intelligent, kind, and all-round lovely... I mean I should be, but I’m just not attracted to you.”

Late one night, I was scouring through the darkest corners of Facebook and I came across a screenshot of this obnoxiously candid remark made by a man to his date. Despite how obviously rude the comment was, what struck me as particularly peculiar was how the term ‘should’ was functioning in this statement: Are there ethical requirements surrounding sexual attraction? The ethical question here isn’t about anything weird, strange, or vulgar. Instead, it is meant to raise suspicion of the common ways that people assess the sexual attractiveness of others.

Through the feminist frameworks of Sally Haslanger and Judith Butler, I identify ethical issues that arise from differences between men and women in what it means to be sexually attractive. Such differences are responsible for structural power injustices that subjugate women. In light of these injustices, there is an obvious ethical requirement to disrupt practices involving the assessment of sexual attraction that reiterate gender discrimination; in others words, we must use different standards to assess sexual attractiveness.