Integral Sexual Ethics: Notes on Baratta's Thesis

Emily Ann Baratta posted her MA Thesis, dated December 2010, online. I have reviewed the 179 page document. Here are some thoughts about this groundbreaking work.

I begin by applauding Baratta’s courage to pioneer this controversial topic with new insights. Her work may serve to reduce suffering in the world. I particularly lift up her courage in the amount of first person accounting she gave to indicate her personal expertise and bias regarding the topic. The book is about ethics and Baratta indicates that she is an Enneagram Type One, the enneagram type that focuses on ethics!

Baratta primarily focuses on three levels of development, pre-Conventional, Conventional and post-Conventional. These broadly indicate Tribal & Warrior, Traditional, and Modernist & Pluralist memes. Someone new to the integral worldview would probably write a whole thesis just on the levels of development as they apply to sexuality, but Baratta continues to other topics. First, though, a brief summary of why the distinctions of pre-C, Conventional and post-C are important. Pre-Conventional people are likely to be younger as well as more impulsive in their sexual behavior. That is, more impulsive because of youth in addition to more impulsive because they lack the Conventional morality that would likely restrain some of their sexual impulses. Conventional people have very strict ideas of sexual behavior and attempt to follow them. Post-conventional people are familiar with social conventions, are able to restrain themselves, and are free to choose their individual sexual mores. Baratta refers several times to Ken Wilber’s pre-post fallacy, in which the sexual freedom of both groups can be wrongly seen as the same phenomenon. (Wilber’s pre-post fallacy includes many ways the two are mistaken for each other, not just in matters of sexual behavior.)

Much of Baratta’s thesis speaks in terms of first person versus second person versus third person sex. First person sex is sexuality only from the perspective of one view: masturbation or using another’s body as a form of masturbation. There are things one can learn from these practices, and altered states attainable, but first person sex is not ideal for most people. Second person sex means that both (all) parties having sex are aware of and considerate of the interiority of the other person (s) as well as themselves. Third person sex looks at some of the social implications of sexuality. Baratta discusses pregnancy, abortion and STDs at some length. To me, more needs to be said about the social implications, but I will address that later.

One new perspective was Baratta indicating that those practicing BDSM (and likely other kinks) are seeking an altered state experience, many instead of orgasm. This makes sense in some ways. Baratta mentions Jenny Wade’s groundbreaking book Transcendent Sex, which lifted up the powerful, frequently unspoken, altered state experiences that many have spontaneously had while engaging in sex. I have read Wade’s book, and discussed it with several Integral groups. I also have had altered state experiences while engaged in sex. However, my bias is clearly in favor of orgasm as the expected outcome of sex, with any altered state as a bonus.

In Baratta’s discussion of third person sex she indicates directions for public policies. I would like to see this conversation carried much further, either by Baratta or by other pioneers who will bring an Integral view to this vexing social problem. To me, much suffering happens in Conventional America due to so few legitimate outlets for the creative and pleasurable forces of sexuality. As a society do we wish to perpetuate this suffering? Make it a requirement that all public figures be conventional or non-sexual in order to hold high offices?

I would like to see a lessening of public condemnation of sexual behaviors of public figures, which is not to say all sexual behaviors are honorable or suitable for public consumption. However to forever disqualify individuals who have active sex lives, in which their partner(s) are treated as individuals of worth and dignity, from all public life is unreasonable. Is not the public also caught in the morality play of a conventional bias and confusing pre-conventional sexual misbehavior with post-conventional sexual ethics?

Lalia Wilson