The "As Long As You're Not Hurting Anybody" Fallacy

i think everyone should sex w/ anyone they want as many times as they want as long as its legal/consensual/safe

how very conservative of me

— shoe 🎀 (@shoe0nhead) October 10, 2016

This is libertarian boilerplate, and people who describe themselves as "liberal on social issues," subscribe to this. But the question whether people should be free to make mistakes is different from endorsing any degeneracy as long as it's safe.

Earvin "Magic" Johnson had sex with tens of thousands of women, all of whom conceivably "consented" to it. However, somewhere along the line, Johnson contracted HIV and unwittingly exposed thousands of women to the disease. He also brought the specter of AIDS into his marital bed. Not so magic anymore.

Infidelity is but one reason to be wary of this fallacy. Consider the production of pornography. Both parties "consent" to the activity. But the production of pornography depends on a steady stream of damaged young women willing to be consumed. These are not whole women. These are sick women, virtually all of them at one time the victim of sexual abuse.

A mentally ill woman, impaired by her haunting memories, cannot be said to be offering her fully informed consent with anything approaching a sound mind. Therefore, her "consent" itself is corrupted.

Another exception is the practice of prostitution, at least in places where it is legal. We have been fed this narrative that prostitutes are savvy, noble creatures who are putting money aside for a house or for college. Just like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman, or the Jamie Lee Curtis character in Trading Places.

However, the majority of these women are not heroic single mothers, but drug abusers paying for their narcotic. Then there is the question of supply, which the prostitution industry solves somewhat with human trafficking. So, yes, the encounter feels "consensual" but ignores the very real suffering that goes on.

All of these counter-arguments are merely temporal concerns. There are also spiritual concerns that are beyond the capacity of the self-described "rational, skeptical," minds like Shoe to consider. But the emptiness of a sexual encounter that is little more than mutual masturbation transcends the space and time of what the "rational, skeptical" mind believes takes place inside a vacuum.

When you drop a rock into a pond, it sinks to the bottom and may not disturb any other on its path downward. But it does create a wave on the surface of the pond. A single wave may seem inconsequential. But as countless pebbles and stones are being cast into the abyss, the aggregate collisions eventually reach the shore, and swamp the bystander.