Why the “Redistribution of Sex” is a Tale Told By Idiots

This is going to an ugly, disturbing essay. I apologise. I don’t like wading into the filthy waters of American discourse. In this case, Ross Douthat, that fine young cannibal, arguing for the “redistribution of sex” — something that fringe right wing intellectuals in the States think is a thing. It is not a thing. Shame on my fellow economists and intellectuals for not debunking it more swiftly. They haven’t, or perhaps can’t, because American thought is barely able to think at all anymore, so let me.

Here are five fallacies about the (thoroughly repugnant, transparently fascist, and intellectually incoherent idea of the) “redistribution of sex”.

1. What we redistribute in the economy, at least in democratic societies, are commodities. That person doesn’t have enough grain. That group doesn’t have enough money. This person, this group, has too little. Let us redistribute. What we do not redistribute are human beings. Why not? Because human beings, quite, obviously, have will, agency, freedom, and dignity — they are not commodities, products, goods, or services. They are not means, but ends. So when we begin to speak of the redistribution of human beings, we violate all the above — and we end up in places of atrocity, whether rape, slavery, or genocide. Isn’t, after all, genocide, ethnic cleansing, just a “redistribution” of human beings? You see my point. Let us explore it a little further.
2. The reason that we redistribute commodities, in some cases, is so that everyone is better off. We call this, sometimes, “Pareto efficiency” — it only means that I am better off without making you worse off. This person has too little money, food, shelter, education. Let us give it to them. Perhaps they will be tomorrow’s Malala — and the rich person is not using them, anyways. But when we cross the sacred line of violating human dignity, freedom, and agency, then what happens? Well, the person that we have “redistributed” from is not better off. Their losses cancel out the putative gains. This is transparently, obviously true in the case of sex. If I force you to have sex with someone, you are not better off —in fact, you have been raped. The most basic efficiency criterion has not been satisfied — but that is not even wrong, because we should not think of human beings as commodities to begin with. How should we think of them?
3. The fundamental principle by which we govern democratic societies in society is consent. It’s true that the rich man might not want to give up his money, to feed the poor man. But if he lives in a democratic society, he has consented to be governed by the rule of law. But even the rich man cannot consent to sell his children or wife or self away. For precisely that reason, to say that one can consent to have one’s consent taken makes a mockery of consent. That means that one can sell one’s self into slavery, into bondage, can sell one’s kids and so on. Consent at a social level, then, does not abrogate consent at an individual level. Let me translate all that.
4. Democracy is based not just on “the majority rule”, but first upon rights. Don’t believe me? Which comes first — elections, or the Constitution? You see my point. Now the principle within and behind rights is that there are things which are inalienable and inviolable — which cannot be taken away from you. In other words, you cannot consent to revoke them. Such things in America are the right to bear arms, to a free press, and so on. Unmentioned in all these rights is the sanctity of the human body. That right is present in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though. It means that I cannot revoke consent over my own body — that is, it is my fundamental, inviolable right to retain agency over my own body, always, everywhere, in every moment, no matter what. In just that way, when we begin speaking of “redistributing” human beings, we chip away at the fundament of democracy — rights themselves.
5. What happens if we forget that most basic lesson — that democracy depends on rights, the most fundamental, perhaps, of which is the inviolable sanctity of one’s own body? When human beings stop being ends in themselves, but only become means to someone else’s pleasure? To “redistribute” human beings effectively makes some chattel. People become things that can be owned. Bought. Sold. Traded. Possessed, hoarded, abused, raped, killed, ruined, destroyed. With impunity.

I want to make this point very clear, so I will sketch a scenario for you.

Tomorrow, the sexual redistributionists take over. They pass a National Sexual Redistribution Act. That means that every man who hasn’t sex in a month has the right to have sex with whomever he wishes — all he has to do is show the first woman he likes his sexual ration card.

But how is he to prove he hasn’t had sex in a month? Let us not bother with such details — they already prove how unworkable and foolish the idea of “redistributing sex” is. Let us assume that we take his word for it — even though, of course, he is likely to lie.

What happens next? Well, he chooses the first woman he finds attractive, or unattainable, and. But she is maybe someone’s wife. Maybe someone’s partner. Maybe she is not straight at all.

Whatever the case, she has effectively become his property. In fact, the situation is much worse than that. Because every man now has an option upon sex, in financial economics terms, which he can exercise at any time, it’s more accurate to say that any man owns every woman. But for just that reason, such a man could also auction his rights to that woman, too, couldn’t he? Sell them in a gray market, an so on. How terrible. How disgusting to even have to contemplate such a thing.

And in that way, every woman has lost dignity, agency, and freedom. They have become chattel, reduced to the status of slaves, subjects.

Now. All that is where this foolish discussion of the “redistribution of sex” takes us. All this brutish folly that American discourse has degenerated into. Go ahead. Come up with a “more reasonable scenario”. I dare you. I think you will find it very hard. Why?

When we decide that some people have the right to force themselves upon others, simple to slake their animal desires, we have lost it all. Civilization. Virtue. Nobility. Truth. Beauty. And in the end, even ourselves. Because in the end, what we seek, through our animal desires, is the higher things in us. Love. Belonging. Meaning. Grace. Purpose.

It’s probably true to say that this age of vast inequality makes things worse and harsher for men at the bottom. But that means that their challenge is seeing why a fairer, gentler, nobler society is needed. If all they can see is themselves at the top, only in even more animalistic and violent and repugnant ways — why, then they have learned less than nothing at all.