Sex is emotion in motion.
(Mae West)
Sex neutrality is the view that, morally speaking, sex is like any other activity—subject only to ordinary moral constraints such as consent.Footnote 1 On the standard understanding of consent, I consent to you doing something to me when I communicate that I am ok with it and genuinely mean it. Thus, sex neutralists think that it is permissible for someone to have sex with me as long as I communicate my willingness and sincerely mean it. Just as it is morally fine for me to play tennis with another so long as we both consent, it is morally fine for me to have sex with another so long as we both consent, according to the sex neutralist.
By contrast, sex exceptionalism is the view that sex is morally distinct from other activities—that something beyond consent is necessary for permissible sex, or that consent in the sexual domain is importantly different from consent in other domains.Footnote 2 The sex exceptionalist agrees that playing tennis with someone is morally acceptable as long as both parties consent in the standard sense. But she maintains that, for sex to be morally permissible, something more than mutual consent—at least as it is standardly understood—is needed.
While himself agnostic about whether sex is in fact exceptional, David Benatar (Reference Benatar2002) highlights why attempts to avoid a binary between sex neutrality and sex exceptionalism are unstable. He argues that sex exceptionalists who hold that love and affection must be present for sex to be permissible can account for the judgment that rape is an especial wrong, whereas sex neutralists cannot. If sex is regarded as an activity like any other, subject only to ordinary moral constraints, then sexual violations become indistinguishable from other violations that cause comparable harms (Benatar Reference Benatar2002, 196). By contrast, if sex is exceptional in that love must be present in the act for it to be permissible, rape will always be especially wrong because it subjects its victims to sex in the absence of love. This suggests that the distinctive wrongness of rape, supposing that it always is distinctively wrong, cannot be explained solely by appeal to the harms it causes. Rather, it depends on the fact that rape involves subjecting someone to sex under conditions that fail to meet the moral requirements governing sex itself. Benatar aims to map the moral terrain by arguing that sex neutrality cannot fully explain rape’s special gravity, while leaving open whether a specific kind of sex exceptionalism is the correct view (2002, 198).
My project departs from his in three respects. First, I offer reason to accept, in terms intelligible to philosophical liberals, that sex is morally exceptional, rather than arguing for agnosticism on the matter. Second, I do not assume that sex exceptionalism must take the form of requiring love for permissible sex; as I explain later, I leave open which relational features might be required for permissible sex. Third, I ask not only what follows morally, but what follows politically from sex exceptionalism—specifically, what it would mean for liberal political theory to accommodate sex exceptionalism.
Liberalism can, of course, be construed in different ways (Courtland et al. Reference Courtland, Gaus, Schmidtz and Edward2022). For present purposes, I assume only a thin conception that most, if not all, liberals share: a commitment to institutional arrangements that protect and promote freedom and equality, and a commitment to pluralism, understood as respect for the diversity of reasonable worldviews among citizens. Of course, liberals disagree about what freedom, equality, and pluralism mean in detail, but most would accept them as core values (e.g., Rawls Reference Rawls1971, Lomasky Reference Lomasky1987; Rawls Reference Rawls1993; Kymlicka Reference Kymlicka1995; Gaus Reference Gaus1996, Reference Gaus2021). On this understanding, it appears that philosophical liberals should be committed to sex neutrality over sex exceptionalism.Footnote 3 Just as liberals would oppose the state’s endorsement of one religious worldview over others because of how doing so would fail to treat a pluralistic population as constituted by free and equal citizens, so too for similar reasons would they oppose state endorsement of a particular view about sex over others. If so, then liberals committed to sex neutrality would also have reason to regard sex exceptionalism as a controversial doctrine that ought not to be institutionalized. On this way of thinking, liberalism and sex exceptionalism are in deep tension.
The liberal commitment to sex neutrality shapes liberal policy positions, which explains why sex work decriminalization has come to be viewed as a liberal policy (e.g., Schwarzenbach Reference Schwarzenbach1991; Nussbaum Reference Nussbaum1998; Flanigan Reference Flanigan2019; Pepper Reference Pepper2024).Footnote 4 While one could oppose the decriminalization of sex work from a sex exceptionalist standpoint, liberals who think sex work should be criminalized, partially or otherwise, typically do not take that route. Instead, liberal critiques of sex work tend to be grounded in concerns about exploitation and systemic inequality rather than the moral distinctiveness of sex. For instance, Christie Hartley and Lori Watson (Reference Hartley and Watson2018) explicitly reject the view that “sex itself is morally special or should be reserved for meaningful intimate relationships” when defending the Nordic model of sex work regulation from the vantage point of political liberalism (164). Similarly, Debra Satz (Reference Satz1995) argues that her defense of regulating markets in women’s sexual labor is not based on the inherently sexual nature of such labor but on its role in reinforcing the social subordination of women. In a world where prostitution did not perpetuate the image of woman as sexual servant of man, it would not be problematic on Satz’s view (Reference Satz1995, 70–74, 80).
This essay challenges the assumption that liberalism and sex exceptionalism are inherently at odds.Footnote 5 I argue that one can be a liberal, committed to liberal neutrality, while also affirming sex exceptionalism. What it means for the state to “affirm” sex exceptionalism, on my view, will be elaborated upon in section 2. I also argue that liberal sex exceptionalists need not be seen as imposing undue constraints on personal autonomy; rather, sex exceptionalism helps explain common liberal intuitions about respect for bodily integrity and bodily autonomy. Moreover, I contend that sex exceptionalism does not undermine other core liberal commitments and is fully compatible with what I call New Old Liberalism. Finally, I argue that New Old Liberals need not—and probably should not—advocate for heavy-handed state regulation of pornography and other kinds of sex work. Thus, they should not be dismissed as proponents of excessive government interference in sexual matters.
1. Sex exceptionalism and the special status of sex crimes
I begin by arguing that liberals who accord a special status to sexual crimes are implicitly committed to sex exceptionalism. To do so, I briefly consider three alternative attempts to ground the special status of sex crimes. I then argue that the only plausible grounds, absent further argument, on which liberals can justify the special status of sex crimes is by appeal to sex exceptionalism.
1.1. The special status of sex crimes: alternative accounts
Many liberal states treat rape and other forms of sexual violence as categorically distinct from comparable non-sexual crimes involving bodily harm (Gardner Reference Gardner2007, 2–3; Gruber Reference Gruber2023, 762–65). This is reflected in the widespread legal distinction between, for example, assault and sexual assault, or battery and sexual battery. Though all of these crimes violate the consent of those who are victims of them, it is only the sexual ones that are accorded a special legal status. Liberal theorists generally agree that it is at least permissible, and often appropriate, for the liberal state to recognize the unique moral and legal status of sexual violence (e.g., Gardner Reference Gardner2007, 1–32; Anderson Reference Anderson, Steven and Andrew2018, 185). So it is worth inquiring into the grounds for this common judgment.Footnote 6
The first reason a liberal might argue that rape deserves a special status is its role in the social subordination of women. On this view, legally distinguishing rape from other violent crimes acknowledges its unique function in reinforcing gender inequality. So categorized, rape’s special status might also serve to advance gender justice by drawing attention to the ways in which gender inequality still exists and needs rectification (see, e.g., Brison Reference Brison, Brian, Chambers and Watson2022).
But if this were the sole basis for treating rape as a crime of special status, troubling implications follow. It would suggest, for instance, that rape committed against men does not always merit the same moral or legal gravity. Admittedly, one could argue that when a man rapes another man—especially to feminize, humiliate, or subordinate him—the act still perpetuates problematic gendered power dynamics. In such cases, the rape targets the victim’s perceived deviation from masculine norms and punishes him through purportedly feminizing penetration. However, this reasoning does not extend to cases where, say, a woman rapes an incapacitated man who becomes involuntarily aroused. Unless defenders of rape’s special status are prepared to exclude such cases of rape as meriting this status, we lack a compelling explanation for why all rape should be considered uniquely wrong. Moreover, if rape’s special status depends entirely on its role in gender inequality, this would imply that in a fully gender egalitarian society, rape would lose that special status. But if one believes rape would remain a uniquely serious wrong regardless of social context, then this explanation for the wrongness of rape is insufficient.Footnote 7
Perhaps, however, the crime of rape has a special status because of the profound harm that it inflicts on its victims. But if harm alone explains rape’s special status, then we lack a compelling explanation for why cases of rape involving no physical injury or retained memory—such as those involving unconscious victims—should be treated as categorically different from other bodily intrusions that likewise involve no physical injury and no retained memory (Dougherty Reference Dougherty2013, 721). Imagine, for example, a case where someone’s organ is confiscated while they are unconscious, but without leaving any lasting impairment or trace. Such a violation could plausibly still count as harmful, even if the victim is never aware of it. Yet if we think that unconscious rape is worse or has a distinctive gravity beyond such a case, then appeal to harm alone cannot explain the difference. To capture why rape retains its special status even here, we may need to shift from asking how much harm is caused to what kind of harm is involved.Footnote 8 As Robin West (Reference West1993) argues, it is often the qualitative nature of the harm—rooted in the unique phenomenology of sexual violation—that shapes the experience of rape. If that’s right, then we may need a framework that treats sex itself as morally distinctive in order to fully explain rape’s special status.
John Gardner and Stephen Shute argue that the reason the crime of rape has a special status is because “a rapist objectifies his victim by treating her as a mere repository of use-value” (Reference Gardner, Shute and Horder2000, 20).Footnote 9 However, if this alone justifies rape’s distinct status, then certain financial crimes should qualify as crimes of special status as well.Footnote 10 A scammer who deceives someone out of large sums of money without regard for their welfare similarly treats their victim as an object—as a source of value, not as a subject with claims meriting respect. Yet most would resist the idea that fraud, however morally reprehensible, rises to the moral gravity of rape. This suggests that objectification alone is not sufficient to account for the moral distinctiveness of rape. Something else—something morally distinctive about sex itself—is doing the explanatory work.
In short, these alternative accounts fall short of explaining why all cases of rape—not just those involving physical injury, memory, or gendered domination—merit a special moral and legal status. They leave unexplained why rape, even in cases lacking clear harm or symbolic subordination, is still widely and intuitively understood as a uniquely serious wrong. What these accounts lack is an explanation grounded in the nature of sex itself.
1.2. The special status of sex crimes: a sex exceptionalist explanation
Sex exceptionalism offers the most compelling explanation, compatible with liberal principles, for why rape warrants a special moral and legal status. On this view, rape is not wrong merely because of the harm it causes or the messages it communicates, but because it violates the morally significant conditions that make sex permissible in the first place—conditions that include not just consent, standardly understood, but an active recognition of the other as a subject whose autonomy must be respected and responded to in real time. Sexual violence, then, is not simply a bodily intrusion; it is a breach of a uniquely intimate and morally charged domain. Recognizing this helps explain why liberal states often do and should treat sex crimes differently from other crimes—and why doing so need not conflict with liberal neutrality.Footnote 11
The sense in which sex exceptionalism is compatible with liberalism becomes clearer when we see how sex exceptionalism aligns with a central aim of the liberal state: protecting bodily integrity and autonomy. By bodily integrity, I mean the protection owed against unwanted incursions into the body; by bodily autonomy, I mean the individual’s authority to decide what happens to their own body. The importance of protecting bodily integrity and autonomy is widely recognized across liberal theory (e.g., Eyal Reference Eyal2009; Satz Reference Satz2010; Carter Reference Carter2019).Footnote 12 If sex exceptionalism helps us better grasp what bodily integrity demands—particularly in the sexual domain—then liberalism has reason to accommodate, not reject, it.
David Archard offers one route to this conclusion. He argues that our interest in sexual autonomy lies “closer … to the centre or core of the space that, metaphorically, defines the self” (Reference Archard2007, 388).Footnote 13 Violations of sexual autonomy, then, are not merely physical intrusions—they are psychic incursions that compromise a particularly intimate form of agency. This point is reinforced in Martha Nussbaum’s discussion of Kantian sexual ethics. Sexual desire, the Kantian maintains, has a distinctive tendency to objectify—to treat others as mere instruments of gratification—and is uniquely powerful in its capacity to override reflective moral judgment (Nussbaum Reference Nussbaum1995, 266). While not irresistible, this tendency makes it especially difficult to remain attuned to another person’s subjectivity in the moment. Together, Archard and insights from Kantian sexual ethics show that sex is not simply another sphere in which consent, standardly understood, must be respected; it is a morally volatile domain in which violations cut unusually deep, and where the forces at play make those violations unusually easy to enact. These are not differences in degrees of risk, but in kinds of risk—and they demand a correspondingly distinctive ethical response.
The fragility of sexual autonomy is compounded by the fact that sex is a uniquely volatile domain: desires shift unpredictably, consent can become ambiguous mid-act, and encounters often take place in private, without external accountability (Israel Reference Israel2025, 315). These features make it difficult to ensure that sexual autonomy is continuously respected. As Lamb, Gable, and de Ruyter (Reference Lamb, Gable and de Ruyter2021) argue, navigating this moral terrain requires that sexual partners remain attuned to one another’s verbal and embodied cues—discomfort, fear, pleasure, withdrawal—and respond accordingly (274). This kind of ethical responsiveness exceeds what is typically expected in other forms of interaction and supports a central claim of sex exceptionalism—that sex is not morally permissible merely on the basis of consent, standardly understood. Rather, it requires a disposition to track and respond to the other’s evolving autonomy in real time.
Crucially, the kind of moral responsiveness that sex demands does not require formal relational commitment, such as being in a marriage or another socially recognized relationship. As I argue in what follows, what matters is a willingness to remain attuned to the other’s subjectivity in real time, and this attunement is available to partners regardless of their formal relationship status. Nor is such commitment sufficient for moral responsiveness: intimate partners are frequently the perpetrators of sexual violence (NSVRC 2025), which shows that formal relational status alone does not guarantee the relevant ethical attentiveness.
Still, certain relational features—such as mutual trust, love, vulnerability, or emotional attunement—could reasonably be argued to be preconditions of such responsiveness in a sexual encounter. It is hard to imagine, for instance, that someone could be attuned to their sexual partner in the relevant sense when neither party trusts the other. Some might say the same about the absence of love, or vulnerability, in a sexual encounter. Sex exceptionalists, thus, might disagree about what relational features must hold between parties to a sexual encounter in order to ensure that the parties will remain attuned to one another in the way that sex exceptionalism demands.Footnote 14 But what fundamentally matters on the sex exceptionalist view is the presence of a minimal moral disposition that is promoted through particular relationship structures: a willingness to remain attuned to the other’s subjectivity as it unfolds in real time. Rape is morally distinctive not only because it violates consent, but because it places someone in a sexual relationship that entirely lacks this moral baseline.Footnote 15 Rapists deny their victims the kind of attentiveness that sex morally requires, thereby forcing them into a relation they have a right not to be in. This makes rape not merely one wrong among others, but a uniquely serious violation—one that sex exceptionalism helps explain, and one that liberalism is especially well-positioned to condemn in the name of bodily integrity and autonomy.Footnote 16
If you are inclined to accept my explanation for why rape is a crime of special status, you should conclude either that consent is insufficient for morally permissible sex, or that consent in the sexual domain carries with it special normative demands—demands that do not apply elsewhere. Either way, sex emerges as morally exceptional. Rape is not merely non-consensual sex, but sex that occurs in the absence of the distinctive moral preconditions that make sex permissible in the first place.Footnote 17
I cannot, in the space at my disposal, offer a full argument for why the liberal state should confer a special status on the crime of rape. Doing so would require a more systematic critique of sex neutrality and a comprehensive defense of the liberal state’s authority to affirm sex exceptionalism. Still, I hope to have shown that liberals face a meaningful choice: either reject sex exceptionalism and, with it, the claim that rape warrants special moral and legal treatment; or embrace sex exceptionalism and affirm its compatibility with liberal principles. While further argument is needed to determine which path liberals must ultimately take, there is conceptual space for a sex exceptionalist liberalism—and, at minimum, a defeasible case in its favor. This is especially valuable to know given liberalism’s traditional hesitation to impose contested conceptions of the good, sexual or otherwise, on its citizens.
At this point, a critic might respond that affirming sex exceptionalism leads to implausible conclusions. My critic might worry that if we can only ensure the moral baseline for sex by accompanying sex with love or trust or mutual attraction, then all loveless or untrusting or asymmetrically attracted sex—even if consensual—would be morally on a par with rape. Or she might worry that rape within relationships where there is love or trust or mutual attraction (e.g., marital/intimate partner rape) would no longer qualify as distinctively wrong. But these are not necessary consequences of liberal sex exceptionalism.
Rape’s moral distinctiveness arises from the conjunction of non-consensuality and the absence of moral care requisite for permissible sexual interactions. Uncaring but consensual sex may be morally flawed, but it does not share the specific wrongness of rape. Nor does sex exceptionalism preclude marital or intimate partner rape from meeting the criteria for rape’s special status. There are at least two reasons why. First, one might argue that coercing sex is incompatible with the kind of care requisite for permissible sex. If that’s right, then marital rape—even where such care is professed—would still fail to meet the baseline of moral care required for permissible sex. Second, as Elizabeth Barnes (Reference Barnes2009) suggests, care grounded in unjust social conditions (e.g., objectionable financial dependence) might be diagnosed as a problematic adaptive preference that lacks normative authority. A person who “cares about” their partner only because they have internalized unjust expectations may not be expressing care in the morally relevant sense. Thus, sex exceptionalism can account for marital rape and preserve important intuitions liberals rightly hold about sexual criminality.
Someone might think that, if the liberal state affirms sex exceptionalism and this is reflected in its institutions, we must conclude that the liberal state would be justified in regulating the sexual activities of its citizens to a disturbingly high degree. Even if affirming sex exceptionalism promotes the values of bodily integrity and autonomy in some respects, it might lead to limiting the extent to which liberal citizens can exhibit control over their bodies, which would be objectionable by liberal lights. Ought the liberal sex exceptionalist to support the criminalization of sex that, even if consensual in the standard sense, lacks love, trust, mutual attraction, care, or some other relational feature that informs the moral baseline for permissible sex? Explaining my answer to this question is what I now turn to. It will become clear from this that it’s possible for the liberal state to affirm sex exceptionalism without having to forgo other crucial liberal aims by doing so, thereby rendering the affirmation of sex exceptionalism consistent with liberalism.
2. Epistemic uncertainty, cost, and sex exceptionalist liberal policy
In this section, I first argue that the sex exceptionalist liberal state need not, for reasons related to endorsing sex exceptionalism, criminalize or highly regulate pornography and other sexual services. Then, I suggest some policies that sex exceptionalism might countenance in a liberal order to show how liberal sex exceptionalism is meaningfully distinguishable from liberal sex neutrality.
2.1. Criminalizing sexual services?
I argue that the sex exceptionalist liberal state need not criminalize pornography and other kinds of sex work because doing so would be too costly. To be justified in criminalizing these activities, the state would have to affirm a particular version of sex exceptionalism that it would not be justified in affirming. This is because reasonable people disagree about how sex is morally different from other activities, even if they can agree that sex is morally different from other activities somehow. My suggestion, as will be made clear soon, is that the liberal state may affirm sex exceptionalism without affirming a particular version of it, and an implication of this is that the liberal state that affirms sex exceptionalism need not criminalize pornography and other kinds of sex work.
As I suggested in the previous section, there are different candidates for the relational features that must obtain between sexual partners for an assurance of care that is requisite for permissible sex: love, trust, mutual vulnerability and recognition, etc. Different proponents of sex exceptionalism might favor one of these kinds of relationships over the others on theoretical or empirical grounds.
Theoretically, there is a debate to be had about how much care is required to sufficiently reduce the risk of compromising a partner’s sexual autonomy. Just as there are debates about, for example, how inebriated someone can be before their capacity to consent to get a tattoo is compromised, there are debates to be had about how uncaring someone can be toward their sexual partners before their partners’ sexual autonomy is objectionably risked. Clearly, someone who is blackout drunk cannot validly consent to a tattoo, while someone who had a glass of wine an hour ago can. But it’s not so clear whether someone who has more than a buzz is always incapable of giving valid consent to get a tattoo. Analogously, there might be clear cases, such as in rape, where the moral baseline for permissible sex is not met, but there are murkier cases where it’s not obvious whether the moral baseline for permissible sex has been met. Surely, reasonable people are bound to disagree about these matters.
Empirically, there is a debate to be had about what relational features correlate most strongly with those in a relationship caring about each other in sex to the appropriate degree. Reasonable people will disagree about the extent to which sexual partners should care about each other in sex, even if they can agree that sexual partners should be held to a higher standard of care than those participating in other activities. And there exists a dearth of conclusive empirical data about the kinds of relationships most conducive to disposing those party to them to care about each other in sex to a sufficient degree.
In light of this epistemic uncertainty, the sex exceptionalist liberal state should affirm sex exceptionalism without affirming a particular version of it. At first blush, this suggestion might seem ad hoc. It is no more ad hoc, however, than the way the liberal state often affirms, and is assumed to have the authority to affirm, another arguably controversial doctrine—body exceptionalism. Body exceptionalism is the view that our body parts are morally distinct from other kinds of goods and commodities (Eyal Reference Eyal2009, 233). And liberal institutions demonstrably affirm body exceptionalism—violence against the body is treated differently, legally speaking, than the destruction of property. Yet body exceptionalism, like sex exceptionalism, can be reasonably iterated in different ways.
Perhaps the body is morally different from other goods and commodities because the body, unlike other goods and commodities, is intimately bound up with who we are as individuals (Eyal Reference Eyal2009, 236–37; Chambers Reference Chambers2022, 9, 11). Or maybe the body is morally different from other goods and commodities because we start out with our bodies in a way that we do not start out with other goods (Eyal Reference Eyal2009, 236). Alternatively, the body could be claimed to be morally different from other goods and commodities because the costs of treating it like other kinds of goods and commodities would be too high. As Ronald Dworkin suggests, we should draw “a prophylactic line [around the body] that comes close to making the body inviolate” because failing to do so might lead to liberal rationales for draconian policies such as mandatory organ confiscation (Reference Dworkin1983, 27).Footnote 18 Regardless of what the “correct” rationale is that explains the moral significance of the body, though, the liberal state affirms body exceptionalism and is thought to have the authority to do so—the details of what makes the body special need not be agreed upon to justifiably treat the body as special, it seems.
In a similar manner, the liberal state could affirm sex exceptionalism. The fact that sex exceptionalism can be iterated in as many ways as it can, and would condone different kinds of policy regimes depending on which version the liberal state affirms, provides us with reason to think the liberal state should cautiously affirm sex exceptionalism, if it does. When it comes to, say, recognizing the special status of rape as a crime, the liberal state may do so because when an already criminal act is, in addition, sexual, the criminal act will be distinctively wrong, regardless of one’s views about which version of sex exceptionalism is correct. However, when it comes to, say, affirming sex exceptionalism by criminalizing certain forms of consensual sex that fall below the supposed bar for permissible sex, there are significant risks that hang in the balance.
If, for example, the liberal state criminalizes loveless sex but, in fact, all that is required for permissible sex is mutual trust, the liberal state would jeopardize the rights of those who engage in mutually trusting, but nevertheless unloving, sex. The liberal state, if it is to affirm sex exceptionalism, must take into account potential costs of being wrong about what it is that makes sex morally different from other activities when affirming a particular iteration of sex exceptionalism. Any plausible account of sex exceptionalism will classify rape, as compared to other acts of violence that cause roughly the same amount of harm to their victims, as especially wrong. So the liberal state does not risk violating the rights of rapists by bestowing a special status on the crime that they committed. And if this is so, it would be good for the liberal state that affirmed sex exceptionalism to recognize the special status of rape as a crime.
But it would be positively bad for the liberal state to affirm sex exceptionalism by criminalizing loveless sex. And this is not only because of the immense practical difficulty with enforcing the law. (I don’t imagine that people will be calling the police when they hear people through the thin walls of their apartment complex having a one-night stand, and I don’t imagine that it would be easy to settle in court whether two people love each other in the way that makes sex permissible.) Suppose that the sex exceptionalist liberal state did not criminalize all loveless sex, but instead criminalized markets in the sale of sexual services because those who sell sex, be they performers in pornographic media or full-service sex workers, are having sex for money, not love, and those who buy sex, be they pornography consumers or clients, are having sex for pleasure, not love. (Set aside, for our purposes, that there might be cases in which one could sell sex for both money and love, and that another could buy sex for both pleasure and love.) The only account of sex exceptionalism that would, if embraced by the liberal state, tolerate such criminalization would be the one that affirmed specifically that love—not something else like trust, etc.—must be present in sex for it to be permissible. Since there are other accounts of sex exceptionalism and it’s unclear which account is superior to the others, the liberal state risks jeopardizing the sexual freedom of those who would otherwise engage in sex they are entitled to engage in by criminalizing markets in the sale of sexual services. This risk provides us with strong reason to think that the sex exceptionalist liberal state should not criminalize markets in the sale of sexual services, at least for reasons related to affirming sex exceptionalism.
If the sex exceptionalist liberal state is committed to a form of social egalitarianism that recommends criminalizing the purchasing of sex because it recognizes markets in sexual services as “a system of gendered inequality,” it would be acceptable for it to (partially) criminalize markets in sexual services (Hartley and Watson Reference Hartley and Watson2018, 166). But importantly, this would not be because the state is justified in affirming sex exceptionalism by (partially) criminalizing markets in sexual services. Footnote 19 I understand sex exceptionalism as a view about the special moral status of sex itself rather than as a view about socially contingent features of our world that make sex subject to a distinctive moral evaluation, which is why I distinguish the social egalitarian view just mentioned from a sex exceptionalist view.
I have so far been emphasizing the potential costs associated with the liberal state embracing particular versions of sex exceptionalism. It should be noted, though, that if the liberal state should reject sex neutrality and embrace sex exceptionalism, there would also presumably be costs associated with people engaging in sex impermissibly that need to be taken into account. If it turned out that sex is only permissible when those engaged in it love each other, then the liberal state’s failure to get more involved in citizens’ sex lives so as to thoroughly dissuade them from having unloving sex would result in many rights violations.
If we were really confident that this was the version of sex exceptionalism that is right and true, then perhaps the liberal state would be justified in highly regulating, if not criminalizing, pornography and the sale of other sexual services, provided that doing so would be feasible in terms of its costs. But my point is that we are not and should not be confident in this version of sex exceptionalism being right and true. Additionally, it’s not clear that the costs associated with vast state intervention in the domain of sex would ever be outweighed by the benefits, since vast state intervention in the domain of sex threatens important liberal aims such as ensuring that citizens have control over their sex lives. Moreover, the costs associated with less state intervention for the sake of sex exceptionalism are costs shouldered by individual citizens through their own choices, whereas the costs associated with more state intervention for the sake of sex exceptionalism are costs shouldered by all citizens who subsidize law enforcement. The latter costs are more urgent to avoid because individuals are made complicit in the state’s exercise of excessive control over the sex lives of liberal citizens, and our epistemically precarious circumstances about which version of sex exceptionalism is true makes this urgency even more, well, urgent.
2.2. Other policy recommendations?
So far, I’ve shown that, when sex exceptionalism is affirmed by the liberal state, it helps explain why we recognize that rape is a crime of special status in liberal society. I’ve also shown that the sex exceptionalist liberal state need not interfere excessively in the domain of sex by criminalizing pornography or other forms of sex work. Affirming sex exceptionalism, then, need not entail letting other aims of liberalism, such as the aim of ensuring that liberal citizens can exercise control over their sex lives, fall by the wayside. One might now wonder whether sex exceptionalist liberalism could countenance any policies that sex neutralist liberalism would not, beyond specially designating rape as a crime of special status. In what follows, I briefly and tentatively sketch out some such policies.
The liberal state that affirms sex exceptionalism might be justified in requiring that students in sex education classes be advised to treat the decision to have sex unlike other decisions they make in that the decision to have sex should be given especially careful thought. Doing this would help ensure that liberal citizens internalize the significance of sex such that they are well-positioned to treat it with an appropriately high level of moral significance when they engage in it.
In addition, the liberal state that affirms sex exceptionalism might also be justified in preserving the institution of marriage or something akin to it.Footnote 20 Insofar as the institution of marriage incentivizes citizens to enter into committed unions in which they treat sex as morally significant in ways that other activities are not, then the institution of marriage could be legitimated by appeal to sex exceptionalism.Footnote 21 My thought is not that, by preserving the institution of marriage, the liberal state should hope to encourage its citizenry to only have sex within the context of marriage. Rather, my thought is that by preserving the institution of marriage, the liberal state communicates to its citizens, through the public recognition of unions that are culturally marked by the way in which they specially regard sex, that sex is worth regarding specially.
Moreover, the liberal state that affirms sex exceptionalism and allows for markets in the sale of sexual services might be justified in offering, say, tax breaks to sex sellers who meet regularly with loyal clients or to performers in pornographic media who only film and share their content with people with whom they have or intend to be in longstanding relationships. It would only be so justified, of course, if doing this is more likely to incentivize sex being treated with a greater level of moral significance than other activities. That is, more likely than if sex sellers met with one-off clients and performers in pornographic media filmed and shared their content with just any consenting, adult human of sound mind.
The potential policy implications of sex exceptionalist liberalism that I have so far sketched could be explained in roughly the following terms. The interest that people have in sexual autonomy is closely tied to their sense of self such that a violation of sexual autonomy is graver than a violation of some other facet of autonomy. Moreover, there are features of sex, such as the fact that it takes place in private spaces and involves dynamic desires that threaten to undermine rational thought necessary for appreciating the full moral worth of persons, that make sex distinctively morally risky. Showing minimal respect for bodily integrity in the sexual domain looks different from showing minimal respect for bodily integrity in non-sexual domains, given these distinctive features of sex. In particular, respect for bodily integrity in the sexual domain requires those involved in a sexual interaction to care about each other in ways that they are not required to care about each other in non-sexual domains. Thus, the liberal state might be justified in instituting the policies I gestured to above because these policies, if they are effective, foster attitudes in liberal citizens that dispose them to respect the bodily integrity of others in the sexual domain. And since liberal citizens are required only to care about others in the sexual domain, my arguments about liberal sex exceptionalism do not entail any particular conclusions about the extent to which the liberal state may incentivize people to care about others in other, non-sexual domains.
It is not the task of this essay to convince you that the policies I gestured to above are necessary entailments of sex exceptionalist liberalism. Rather, I hope that my brief discussion of these policy suggestions illustrates that a sex exceptionalist liberal state could implement policies that liberals who believe the state should embrace sex neutrality might find objectionable, but that nevertheless these policies need not excessively intrude into the sex lives of liberal citizens. The liberal state that affirms sex exceptionalism, in other words, may do so in ways that are meaningful without doing so in ways that are tyrannical. Moreover, these modest but meaningful endorsements of sex exceptionalism by the state do not require us to abandon a broad commitment to liberal neutrality, or “the view that the state should not reward or penalize particular conceptions of the good life but, rather, should provide a neutral framework within which different and potentially conflicting conceptions of the good can be pursued” (Kymlicka Reference Kymlicka1989, 883). If the liberal state’s affirmation of sex exceptionalism is integral to helping citizens enjoy the degree of bodily integrity they are entitled to enjoy in the sexual domain, then it would be no more objectionable for the liberal state to affirm sex exceptionalism than it would be for the liberal state to affirm other kinds of rights-respecting behaviors, provided that doing so is feasible in terms of its costs.
3. New old liberalism
The argument I have developed thus far shows that liberalism can accommodate sex exceptionalism. Why does this matter? Because liberalism has faced persistent critiques from multiple directions, each claiming that it cannot take sex seriously. Unless liberals can respond to these critiques, those with sex exceptionalist intuitions may be drawn toward illiberal alternatives. To illustrate the stakes, I briefly consider three culturally significant strands of critique. Some of these perspectives, such as radical feminism, are deeply engaged within academic philosophy, while others, such as reactionary feminism and Catholic integralism, have more limited academic uptake. Yet one of philosophy’s strengths is that it equips us to scrutinize even culturally salient but academically marginal views, exposing their weaknesses and clarifying more defensible alternatives.
Certain radical feminists of the political left excoriate liberals for their laissez-faire attitudes toward prostitution, pornography, commercial surrogacy, and the sexual objectification of the body on the grounds that these practices exploit women (e.g., Lawford-Smith Reference Lawford-Smith2024; Phelan Reference Phelan2025a, Reference Phelan2025b).Footnote 22 Some also reject heterosexual marriage as exploitative of women (see Srinivasan Reference Srinivasan2021, 79–80).Footnote 23
Beyond this group, self-proclaimed reactionary feminists of the right agree with the radical feminists described above about prostitution and the like, but additionally charge that norms of sexual practice that liberalism has generated after the sexual revolution unjustly disadvantage women (e.g., Bachiochi Reference Bachiochi2021, 5–15).Footnote 24 These feminists assert that biological differences between women and men mean that a culture largely permissive of casual sex only benefits (some) men and, on the whole, militates against the interests of women. Unlike the radical feminists, reactionary feminists defend heterosexual marriage as offering “the best social protections for women” (Kay Reference Kay2024, 5).Footnote 25
Liberalism also faces scrutiny from outside feminist thought.Footnote 26 Catholic integralists believe “the state should promote the authentic human good with coercion if necessary” (Vallier Reference Vallier2024, 590). For the Catholic integralist, the authentic human good is communion with the divine, which implies that Catholic integralism in part finds fault with liberalism because the norms of sexual practice it tolerates fail to give sex its moral due.
These sketches are not meant to provide an exhaustive history of liberalism’s critics. Rather, the point is to show that liberalism’s assumed commitment to sex neutrality has made it vulnerable to attack from diverse quarters, and that this vulnerability might draw people away from liberalism. This is not to say that those who are fully committed radical feminists, reactionary feminists, or Catholic integralists will abandon their commitments and embrace liberalism on the basis of my arguments. Rather, it is to say that those whose commitments leave them without a clear political home who are antecedently committed to sex exceptionalism will have a liberal alternative to these doctrines to embrace, consistent with their views about sex.
What unifies these otherwise divergent critiques is a shared dissatisfaction with liberalism’s apparent inability to take sex seriously at the institutional level. Despite deep disagreements about gender, power, and the role of the state, each treats sex as morally distinctive in a way that liberal neutrality is thought to obscure or deny. The attraction of these views does not lie solely in their positive prescriptions, but in their promise to acknowledge the moral weight of sex itself. By showing that the liberal state can recognize the moral distinctiveness of sex without abandoning pluralism or individual freedom, what I call New Old Liberalism offers an alternative to both moral indifference and moral authoritarianism in the sexual domain. New Old Liberals are liberals who believe the state may promote the view that sex is, morally speaking, different from other forms of activity.
As someone enamored by liberalism who cannot bring himself to give up on sex exceptionalism, I felt the need to defend New Old Liberalism—new in that I know no liberalism of this kind, but old in that it embraces intuitions liberals have historically held about sex’s moral status. Of course, more work is needed to argue that New Old Liberalism conclusively entails a particular policy regime, or that it is the correct account of liberalism. But it is nevertheless worth knowing that liberals can be liberals while favoring the institutional recognition of sex exceptionalism. Perhaps this will attract to liberalism those otherwise drawn to illiberalism and press skeptical liberals to justify why concerns about institutional sex neutrality are mistaken. Regardless, I suspect recognizing that New Old Liberalism is open to liberals will enrich philosophical discussions about the liberal state’s relationship to sex—humanity’s most enduring enterprise.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Tim Burkhardt, Brian Earp, Raja Halwani, Christie Hartley, Holly Lawford-Smith, Rebecca Tuvel, and two anonymous referees at Hypatia for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I also thank David Boonin for a conversation on a hike that inspired this project.
Connor K. Kianpour is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA. He works across ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy, with published work in sexual ethics, the moral status of children, bioethics, and the philosophy of humor, among other areas. He is the philosophy literature’s foremost defender of strong comic immoralism.
