Sexual freedom as a fundamental human right

Victoria Woodhull
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Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) was a colorful activist who advocated women's rights and introduced sex-positive values to America over 100 years ago. She spoke frankly about sexual freedom, and for this she was demonized by in the press. In the drawing below, for example, she was depicted as "Mrs. Satan." She is also famous for her campaign to be the first woman for the United States Presidency in 1872. Women in the United States during this time were often forced into loveless marriages and had few options concerning how to live their lives.

Woodhull famously claimed:

To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination.…When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold . . .

A great many things have changed since the days of Victoria Woodhull but, according to modern advocates of sexual freedom, it is still the case that sexual prudishness and dogmatic judgmentalism are alive and well in America. In honor of Victoria Woodhull, the Woodhull Freedom Foundation works to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Through research and social activism, they promote the idea that sexual diversity can be a positive value in society. The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Watch, for example, monitors proposed administration initiatives that may affect sexual freedom. They work with agency officials, legislators and various sex-positive allies to "further the recognition and the reality of sexual freedom as a fundamental human right."

But what is sexual freedom? Why should we care about it? And why do organizations like Woodhull need to work so hard to achieve and preserve such freedom?

Freedom and human rights are notoriously complex, difficult topics to discuss in detail, but most of us share the relatively simple, general intuition once expressed by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. when he said:

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.

The obvious general idea is that we ought to be free to do what we want, so long as we do no harm to others. The idea of doing no harm to others seems fairly obvious, and in one form or another it is one of the moral foundations of all major world religions.

The importance of freedom is somewhat less obvious to some people; indeed, the concept of freedom is in considerable tension with many major religions, and this tension is the primary reason why the founders of American government saw a need for the "separation of church and state." This is commonly associtated with the idea of "freedom of religion" but it also implies "freedom from religion." Why is freedom of (or from) region so important? The answer comes down to what might be called the "dogmatic mindset."

The dogmatic mindset, which is not exclusive to traditional religious people (it can be found entrenched in the minds of many agnostics and atheists as well) is roughly this: "There is one right way to do things." Religious people generally have faith in a god who, as they see it, sets the absolute standards for right and wrong. A major problem, of course, is that people believe in many different kinds of gods, and they generally think that their god is the one, true god. The end result is that different people with different gods end up believing in different standards for absolute right and wrong. This brings us to the core of the issue regarding the need for freedom of choice. Given that we generally all want to get along with each other and live in a relatively civil society, and given that there are different standards for judging absolute right and wrong, how do we decide what people should or should not be allowed to do?

As suggested earlier, even atheists and agnostics can adopt the dogmatic mindset. In this case, the role of "god" is played by the capacity for human reason, deeply-felt intuitions, or simple personal preference. People reason differently, they have different values, different intuitions, and different preferences, so even without different commandments handed down by different Supreme Beings, people cannot seem to agree on absolute standards of right and wrong. So again we ask: How can we all live in peace?

The founders of American government adopted what seemed to them to be the only realistic option; the concept of freedom. Society should let people do what they want so long as what they do does not harm others.

Along with the notion of freedom comes the notion of fundamental human rights. In a democratic society, a great many things have to be decided on the basis of the idea that "the majority rules." But who says that the majority is right about everything? What if the majority of a particular society wants to cut the clitorises off of female infants? Does that make it right? The founders of American government decided that certain basic kinds of freedoms needed to be protected from majority rule. One of these basic freedoms is the freedom of individuals to selectively reveal information about themselves. We commonly know this as the right to privacy more or less clearly protected in various ways in the American Bill of Rights.

On the basis of everything that has just been said, it would seem that the sexual freedom ought to be a no-brainer. Most forms of sexuality do no harm unless practiced carelessly, or with a degree of coercion or deception, but virtually anything done carelessly or deceptively can cause harm, so there is nothing especially distinctive about sexual behavior in this regard.

For a variety of historical reasons, however, our common sense notions of freedom and human rights are thrown out the window when issues of sexuality are addressed.

On what basis, for example, can anyone argue that homosexuals should have less rights then heterosexuals? Some say that homosexuality is "unnatural" but what could that possibly mean? A significant percentage of the members of all animal species display homosexual behavior. Are they all "unnatural"? Is it more natural to drive cars or send text messages? Celibacy certainly seems "unnatural" – should it be outlawed? The bottom line is that all opposition to gay rights comes down to variations on one or both of the following: "It's yucky," or "It's immoral because, according to my religious beliefs, god doesn't like it." Given the foundational premises of American government, these personal preferences and religious beliefs simply cannot justify unequal treatment of homosexuals in America, yet do to these personal preferences and religious bias, many Americans do in fact believe that discrimination against homosexuality is justified. This is a form of conceptual blindness.

Open relationships introduce a similar set of questions. Given our rights to freedom of speech, people who don't like non-monogamous relationships have a legal right to say so. This is not a problem. From a philosophical perspective, however, there is a moral question concerning people's moral justification for speaking out against the sexual lifestyles of other people. Criticizing someone's lifestyle has the intended effect of bringing social/psychological pressure to bear on the people being criticized so that they will be dissuaded from practicing their lifestyle. This sort of pressure counts as a form of harm, from the perspective of the people who are being criticized. Certainly everyone has the legal right to criticize whoever they want to criticize, but should they be applauded for doing so? We criticize those who want to commit murder because committing murder does obvious harm and we are justified in bringing pressure upon those who want to commit murder because we want to prevent them from doing harm. The basic idea is that we are justified in harming others if the people we harm are, themselves, going to do even more harm. This is a form of self-defense, or the protection of another person. But those who criticize open relationships are criticizing people who do no particular harm. In other words, the people who criticize open relationships, or homosexuality, are doing harm to people who do no harm. And yet, for the most part, society applauds such critics. Again, this is a form of conceptual blindness.

Sex for money offers another opportunity to suffer conceptual blindness. No one doubts that there are tragic stories to be told about prostitution. Some prostitutes are desperate people who will do anything for money, or simply to survive, and such people can be a problem in society. Some sex workers are exploited children. Most of the problems related to prostitution, however, are intensified by the fact that prostitution is illegal in most states. On the whole, making prostitution illegal does more harm than good. Many scholars agree that prostitution, in itself, is not necessarily harmful. Many sex workers are people who freely choose their form of life, and take reasonable precautions to keep themselves and their customers safe. The problem is that society makes no distinction between the careless sex workers who are likely to cause harm, and those who benefit society. Society does not bother to make this distinction because society does not really care about the realities of relative risk. The emotional energy that drives the oppression of sex workers has almost nothing to do with rational assessments of risk. The real motivations come down to personal taste, religious beliefs, and unconscious social habits. The people around us criticize sex workers, so we do too.

One could reflect upon all of this and wonder "Why should I care if people in alternative lifestyles are being harmed, even though they cause no particular harm?" There are several possible answers. First there is the moral argument: We should not participate in, or encourage others to participate in, the harming of innocent people. But there are some practical considerations as well. Injustice creates variety of social problems, and it exacerbates a variety of problems that might otherwise be more manageable. A climate of sexual freedom would not solve all of our social problems or eliminate all crime, but there are good reasons to think that it would contribute to a more peaceful world overall. Perhaps we could even paraphrase Victoria Woodhull and suggest that when people overcome erotic oppression and discover sexual freedom - when people gain ownership and control of their sexual lives and learn to respect erotic diversity, then our sexual instincts will become more emotionally healthy and spiritually fulfilling; perhaps then we will all be raised from the spiritually murky swamp of dogmatic social control, and the intensity and glory of our creative functions will be increased a hundred-fold.

Thus we find organizations like the Woodhull Freedom Foundation (WWF) working to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right by protecting and advancing freedom of speech and sexual expression. A variety of organizations like the WFF work to promote the positive personal, social and moral values of sexuality through research, advocacy, activism, education and outreach. Links to some of these organizations can be found in the link lists on the right-hand column of this page.