#1250 Quill Kukla - Sex Beyond "Yes": Pleasure and Agency for Everyone

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm joined by Doctor Quil Kukle. They are professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and a visiting fellow at Leibniz University Hanover. And today we're going to talk about their book, Sex Beyond Yes, Pleasure and Agency for Everyone. So Doctor Kuklo, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to everyone.

00:28 Quill Kukla: Thanks, I'm happy to be here.

00:31 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so before we get into the actual topic of the book, I would like to start by asking you perhaps a few general questions just for the audience to get acquainted with uh what we're going to talk about here today. So, what is sexual ethics?

00:52 Quill Kukla: Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. I'm not sure I believe in sexual ethics, if that means like a set of ethical principles for how we're supposed to have sex. Um, BUT when I talk about ethical sex, I just mean very simply. Sex where no one is wronged and everyone is treated respectfully. My basic interest is in good sex, but I think that for sex to be good, it has to be ethical in that sense. It has to not be a violation or a wronging of anybody. That's, that's my pretty minimal definition.

01:33 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And what is sexual agency? I mean, what does agency mean in this particular context?

01:44 Quill Kukla: Um, SO agency for me more generally is action that is self-determining and self-expressive. I like the word agency better than the word autonomy because I think that when people hear autonomy, they think about somebody sort of making a fully independent decision completely voluntarily without any context. Whereas uh a major theme in this book and just in my work in general is that To have agency, you often need to be supported by other people and by the environment. It's not something you have by yourself. It's something you have when you have the right kind of support to act with self-determination and self-expression. So that's really what I care about. So sexual agency is just agency in the domain of sex, and I care about people being able to have sex in a way that is self-determining and self-expressive rather than hijacked by other people's desires or conception of what that sex is supposed to be.

02:52 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh, when it comes to sexual pleasure, I, I mean, I, I need to ask you this question because I, I have tons of interviews with philosophers and many times what perhaps for most people seems to be obvious and common sense for philos. Philosophers, I mean, it gets more complicated. So, uh, uh, what constitutes sexual pleasure, actually?

03:18 Quill Kukla: I, I actually, I'm not surprised that philosophers get tripped up on that one because I think it's a really hard question. So, um, just to sort of move back one step and talk about what good sex is for me, right? Like when I talk about good sex, I mean sex that everybody involved wants and finds fun and pleasurable, right? So before we get to what sexual pleasure is, I just want to point out that sex could be ethical but not good, right? Like you could do everything right and not harm anybody. Um, BUT it could just turn out to be not that fun or not that pleasurable, right? So good sex has to be both ethical and pleasurable. But when it comes to what constitutes sexual pleasure, I don't think anyone is very good at drawing a bright line between sexual pleasure and other kinds of pleasure. It's very, very hard to say which pleasures count as sexual. Um, WHEN my kid was really little, They once defined sex to me. They were like 8 years old, and I asked them what they thought sex was, and they said sex is um when people who like each other play with each other's bodies for fun, including the private parts, which I thought was a actually kind of a really nice definition of sex, didn't have anything to do with reproduction or anything like that. Um, AND so for me, I guess sexual pleasure, the best I can do drawing on that is to say, it's like the pleasure we get from intimate play with bodies. Um, BUT that's, of course, imperfect because, you know, when you dance with somebody, that's also could be pleasure from intimate play with bodies. Um, AND I'm not sure that there's a bright line as to what makes it sexual, but I am comfortable saying that when we do think of pleasure as sexual, it does involve this kind of playful intimacies of the body. And beyond that, I don't think it's one of these concepts that has Nice, neat definitions. It's a bit of a messy concept.

05:31 Ricardo Lopes: Right. So, um, I, I mean, of course, er, we have to talk here and we're going to talk here about consent because it's something that people care a lot about and I think for a very good reasons, but in the book you go, um, you explore that question in very particular ways, but first of all, what is consent? I mean, is it easy to define it?

06:01 Quill Kukla: Yeah, um. Uh, ODDLY, you're gonna be surprised to hear that unlike with sexual pleasure, for my purposes, I think consent is very easy to define, and I think that part of the problem in a lot of the work that's been done on philosophy of sex is that people make consent, try to do something much bigger and more complicated. Then it should really do right. So for me, I'm really glad you asked this question because it's a really important point for me. So for me, like consent and agency are not the same, and consent and consensuality are also not the same. I try to keep consent very simple. I want to use consent the same way we use it in the rest of everyday life. So consent is agreeing. To a request or an offer that somebody makes, right? And this is how we use it everywhere. When we consent to medical treatment or when we consent to the, you know, our cell phone plan terms of service, or when we consent to, you know, the terms of our lease, we don't usually act like it's a very fancy notion, right? Somebody asks you to do something and you say, OK, and now you've consented. Um, BUT that's not a notion that I think is actually that interesting in the domain of sex. I don't think we do this very often in sex, and that's fine. You know, sex where one person is like, hey, can we have sex? And the other person is like, Yes, we can. It's, it's usually not the best or the most exciting sex. It's not usually how sex starts when it's good. So I really de-emphasize consent in that sense. However, Consensuality, consensual sex, that's different for me, and that is very important, right? So for me, consensual sex as opposed to the act of consent is sex where everybody involved is communicatively making it clear either through their body or words or however to everyone else involved that they're into it, that they wanna do it. And they're also making clear that they are paying attention to the fact that others are into it and want to do it. And everybody is making clear that they're going to stop if anyone stops wanting to do it, right? And that's kind of an ongoing tissue of communication, sometimes involving words, sometimes involving eye contact, sometimes involving gesture. That involves us like constantly making clear to one another that we're all here because we want to be and we all are ready to stop if somebody doesn't want to be doing it anymore. That I think is really key to ethical sex. But that might not involve any actual moment of consent where somebody is like, may I have sex with you? Yes, you may, right? That part might not happen, but the consensuality is still super important for me. Does that make, does that makes sense,

09:06 Ricardo Lopes: right? Uh, YES, I think it makes sense, but, but then, so when it comes to sex, consensuality in your understanding is sort of an ongoing process, correct.

09:21 Quill Kukla: Yes, it's ongoing and it's an ethical requirement for sex. I noticed, and I think this is important, that it's, it's not enough to necessarily make sex good because you could be communicating that you are definitely like, you know. Choosing to do something and wanting to do it, but you could be doing that for very bad reasons, right? Like you might be. Consensually having sex because you grew up thinking it was your duty to have sex with your husband whenever he wants it or for any number of bad reasons, right? And you might be doing it consensually and not enjoying it at all. Like when I go to the grocery store, nobody's forcing me to do it. I'm doing it consensually, but it's not fun or pleasurable. I still hate it. Um, SO consensuality of that sort for me is like a really important minimum ethical requirement for sex, but it shouldn't be confused with either sexual agency or sexual pleasure, with both of which require more as far as I'm concerned.

10:30 Ricardo Lopes: But do you think that it might be uh what's the word I'm going to use here, uh, limiting at least uh the fact that uh legally and socially when it comes to sex we focus on consent and not so much on consensuality.

10:56 Quill Kukla: Yes, I think it's extremely limiting. Although I'm going to be honest with you. So I'll give you a better answer to this than this. But I'm going to be honest with you that in the domain of law, I don't really know how to do any better because I don't know how to codify this because it is. Involves complicated human interaction and human and communication, and I don't think the law is capable of dealing with complicated human interaction and communication. So I don't know what to do about the law case, but I do think it's very limiting because, um, I mean people like talking about consent because it's like it's very simple, right? It's like you just give people the message like. Men are supposed to, it's also tends to be very heterosexual and very sexist. It's like men are supposed to ask. You're not supposed to do it without asking, and women get to say yes or no. That's a simple rule, right? But it's based on this very bad simplistic sexist picture of sex, which I think is inadequate in many ways. And it's a picture where like men are the ones who ask for sex. Women are the ones who either consent or refuse, and Maybe more importantly for this conversation, if you just focus on consent, it, it doesn't leave much room for any interest. And what happens after that, like what kind of sex you're gonna have? How do we make it good? How do we make it interesting? When should it end? How do we know when it should end? None of that stuff gets talked about. All people talk about is like, did you get a yes or did you get a no? And we don't have any tools for talking about it after that. And it makes us imagine sex as just about men trying to win a yes out of women somehow. It buys into what I in the book call an extractive commodity model of sex, where sex is like just this thing and it's a thing that men want and women have, and men and women kind of barter over it like a contract and try to figure out whether the woman is willing to give it up. And That's, um, I think it's. It's a bad model for men because they're always trying to like get sex out of women. It's a bad model for women because they're supposed to somehow like not really want it and try to hold on to it. And again, most importantly, even aside from that, it just doesn't tell us anything about how to make sex good. The most it tells us is like, how to not rape people, right? But it doesn't tell us anything about how we should be setting up the world or talking to each other in such a way that we are having good, pleasurable, agential sex. So yeah, I think it's very, very limiting. The problem is when it comes to the law. If there's, you know, if somebody is accused of sexual assault or, um, or of rape, there's not much to look at other than did the person agree to it, right? It's very hard to Get all of that rich conversation about good sex into any kind of legal framework.

14:10 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, WHEN you say it's, uh, the, the, the way we approach, uh, sex or the kind of sexual norms that we have in or that we tend to have in our societies that they are sexist, uh, I mean, could you explain that a little bit more? Is it because those kinds of sexual norms put women in a sort of a passive position? Is that it?

14:40 Quill Kukla: Yeah, uh, that's half of it. Um, YOU know, women are in a, in a path. So, you know, if your model is a consent model where it's assumed that men are doing the asking and women are doing the consenting, which is almost always what's assumed. Um, THEN sexual agency for women, like self-determination and self-expression for women becomes this incredibly narrow thing, which is like the most agency you get to have is agreeing to something that somebody else suggested, right? It's a very minimal kind of sexual agency.

15:17 Ricardo Lopes: It doesn't, it's like you, you're not expected to. Pursue it actively,

15:22 Quill Kukla: right? Well, not only not to pursue it actively, but not to have opinions about like what you'd like to do, what, what your fantasies are, what kinds of things you want, what your limits are, what you'd like to explore, like all of that gets lost. But I also think it's sexist in the sense, just as importantly, it's sexist in the sense that it hurts men. Because it puts men in this position where they're always supposed to want sex, and their job is just to like, try to get it by like asking in the right way or offering the right thing. And so men are also not allowed to have any sexual imagination. About like, what kind of thing they want or the subtleties of that. They're just supposed to try to like get women to agree to sex. And they are also not really allowed to have any limits on this model. They're not allowed to be the ones who are just like, not interested in sex or have certain limits about what they want to do. So I think it really just narrows agency dramatically for both men and women. Um. It's sexist in the sense that it has a very unequal perception of men's and women's roles in sex, but I, I don't think it's sexist in the sense that it harms women more. I think it's just a bad model that gives nobody very much agency or room for sexual imagination. It's also, I want to just point this out, like it's not even sexy, right? Usually when you're actually having like a sexy flirty leading up to sex with people, you're not just like asking them to do stuff for you. Like that's a kind of an unsexy way of starting to sex to be like, will you have sex with me? Yes or no. It's not, it's not really great sex, right? Um, SO I don't, I don't even think it's like a good model of like how to make things fun. And um if I have time for just one more point about this because it is actually something very close to my heart, I think it's a mistake that analytic philosophers who talk about sex make all the time and don't even notice. There's a sort of a, a dominant model of consent in analytic philosophy. It's not even specific to sex, just in general. Where consent is understood as giving up your standing right to not have something done to you, right? So analytic philosophers will talk about consent as giving somebody permission to do something to you or take something from you that they normally wouldn't have had a right to. And I feel like this idea that like, the way we start sex is by agreeing to give something up or agreeing to like give up our right and let somebody do something to us. It's just very grim. It doesn't sound very fun. You know, I'd rather think that sex starts with two people being like, You know, again, through both their bodies and their words, sort of jointly figuring out what would be fun for both of them to do, not being like, OK, you have the right to trespass my body. Go ahead. I will let you do this thing that you're normally not allowed to do. It's a very bleak picture of sex, the consent model, I think. Mhm.

18:41 Ricardo Lopes: So, but I, I mean, I know, of course, there are many different kinds of sexual expression, many different kinds of sexual activities that people can have. Of course, I, I mean, I mean, probably all of them would require, uh, much more than just a simple Yes or no to initiate sex, but, uh, uh, do you think that there are particular kinds of situations or contexts where sexual agency really requires much more than the ability to just say yes or no?

19:20 Quill Kukla: Um, I, I guess I think that It always does, um, so the closest we get to a setting where Sexual agency involves this kind of contractual just yes or no situation is if you're, I mean, I can think of a few times, a few cases like one would be in a super like literally contractual setting like sex work maybe where you know the person either agrees to what is proposed in the context of a business deal or they don't. Um, OR sometimes in the context of like a very long term relationship where you've kind of fallen into a rut and you know what you're gonna do and you know what the other person more or less expects, and you just get to a point in your relationship where you're like, yeah, sex tonight, yes or no, you know, um, that can happen after a long time. But I think like, first of all, neither of those is our model for fantastic sex, but also Both of those, when they are OK, are only OK because they're against a background of better agency than that and better communication than that, right? Like the reason that a sex worker might be able to just have that kind of contractual relationship and not have it be a problem for their agency. IS because outside of that, they already have all other, all these other kinds of agency, right? They can leave sex work if they want to, they can turn down a client if they want to, they can do other things. If they don't already have all kinds of other agency, then we don't think that that sort of yes, no situation is OK. And it's the same for the long-term couple. We would hope that Their comfort with each other and their ability to just like negotiate sex with a yes or a no comes from a background, ideally of much more agency than that, right? You know, and a history of being able to do other things and communicate well and understand each other. So I think that sexual agency always requires more than just the ability to say yes or no, but there are specific contexts within that when maybe sometimes yes or no is enough, but only because there's all sorts of other understandings and supports on board, if that makes sense. I think that like, you know, if you imagine just a setting where somebody walks up to somebody randomly is on the, on the street and it's like sex, yes or no. It's, it's never gonna be, that's never gonna be OK, right? It, it's gotta be in some broader context that supports agency no matter what.

22:11 Ricardo Lopes: Right. And in your book you explore some uh situations and specific cases where, uh, I mean, uh, the, these exploration of consent and consensuality are perhaps more complicated. So, uh, what do you make of cases where people have sex while they're drunk or high?

22:38 Quill Kukla: Yeah, this is a great question. Um, IF it's OK to loop back for just a second, I realized there's something that I didn't say just now when you asked me about the yes or no sex, which I, which I think is pretty important. Which is even in the cases that I talked about, like if it's in the case of contractual sex work or a long-term relationship or something where it looks like yes or no is enough, even in those cases, You don't really have any meaningful sexual agency unless you also have the ability to sort of adjust what's happening as you go and put, you know, establish some limits, point out that something else would be better, and very importantly, to like end the situation when you want to easily and without any kind of social or physical punishment. So even if it looks like it's just yes or no. A lot more is required for it to be agential, right? Like you could say yes to something, but if you're saying yes, means that you're stuck with it for as long as the other person wants to go, no matter what they do to you, then that's not agency, right? So even in those cases, we need more out of agency. But sorry, to get back to your point about drunk high sex, this is a really interesting topic for me. Um, SO a big theme of the book is that, and actually not just the book, a big theme of so much of my work is that, um, The idea of like perfect agency is a myth. Um, AND it's a myth that shouldn't even be an ideal for us because we're all imperfect, finite, vulnerable beings who are constrained by our circumstances and dependent on other people. This is something that I really have taken to heart from also doing a lot of work in disability studies. It's not a point about disability per se. But within disability studies, there's a real emphasis on the fact that all humans are, you know, imperfect and vulnerable and never perfectly autonomous or perfectly independent. And I think a realistic picture of agency is not about trying to make people perfectly autonomous. It's about understanding that Our agency is always partial and then figuring out how to support one another as best we can within that, right? So, having said that, The fact that being a little bit drunk or a little bit high compromises our autonomy a little bit, compromises our agency a little bit, to me does not mean that Sex is a no go or that, 00 well, now the person doesn't have perfect agency, so we're done. I think that's just realistically how most of us have sex. And I also think that Trying to get rid of all drunk, uh sorry, all drunk sex or all high sex would be just like a completely useless proposition because it's so entrenched in our culture that, you know, we go out to dinner, we have a couple glasses of wine, and then we go home and we have sex or we're hanging around with our friend and have, you know, we That's just the fabric of our social life. And some people don't do any of that, and that's fine, but to get rid of all of it is totally unrealistic. So for me, the question is not, um, how do we prevent people from having sex when they're drunk and high. The question is, how much is too much, and if somebody's just like a little tipsy or a little high, how can we make sure that that sex is still supported enough to be sufficiently agential? And to me that means things like If you and your partner are both having some drinks, make sure that you can still be having a complicated, coherent conversation as you go, you know, like if you, if, if when you are a little bit drunk, you start having sex with somebody and you're just like, sex, yes or no? And they're like, yup, then you really have good reason to worry. Like, did they really consent to it? Were they in their right mind? Who knows? But if as you're having sex with the person, You're like checking in with them. You're being like, does this feel good? Do you wanna do something slightly different? What are your fantasies? You know, um, what would you most like to get out of this evening? If both of you are able to like really have that kind of coherent conversation, first of all, that's a good sign you're probably not too drunk to have sex, but also it's a way of sort of offering support for the other person's slightly impaired agency, you know, and holding them in their ability to still be reflective about what they're doing and understanding what they're doing. So I think, you know, obviously if you're staggering, blackout drunk, or like disconnected from reality, high, you shouldn't be having sex. You can't have a genial sex under those circumstances. But if you're a little tipsy or a little high and you're constantly in good communication with your partner and checking in, To me, that's both making sure that you're not too high and it's at the same time, helping the other person stay grounded in what they really want and in the social interaction and so on. So that's where my emphasis is, like, ways of making sure it hasn't Gone too far and ways of making sure that we're helping people be agential. Another thing that's really important is things like is like your material circumstances like can you go home? So I think one problem that happens when people have sex when they're a little bit drunk is if they're in a place where their only option for leaving is to drive home and you shouldn't be driving when you're a little bit drunk. You can be trapped in the situation, right? And not actually really be able to say no or or stop it because you can't leave. Um, SO, part, I mean, I always like to move the emphasis from individuals to the situation. To me, part of what makes drunk or high sex possible are really basic things like 24 hour public transportation. It's just like the ability to leave when you need to, the ability to have freedom, the ability to not feel like you're financially dependent on this person, or like your career is dependent on this person, or your ability to physically get home is dependent on this person. All of this can help us have a genuinely pleasurable agential sex, even when we are a little bit compromised. But again, because I don't want anybody thinking I'm saying something horrible, not to compromise, you know, if you can't form a coherent sentence and you don't know what you're doing, then I think sex should be off the table.

29:42 Ricardo Lopes: No, but you touched on a point there that I was wanting to explore a little bit later, but let's explore it now. So, you said that it's better if people, of course, can leave the situation if they are not, for example, financially dependent or if it doesn't involve a. Situation where uh there's sort of uh I guess a power dynamic where's also some sort of oppression over the person or some some sort of coercion for uh her to have sex. Uh, I mean, what, how do you approach those kinds of situations?

30:25 Quill Kukla: Yeah, well, I mean, I do think this is a good time for us to talk about that because my approach to that is very similar to my approach to the drunken high case in the sense that I think this ideal of perfect freedom and no power inequality is unrealistic, right? I think that when people say, oh, you can't have sex if there's a power inequality or you can't have sex if there's any oppression. They're thinking of like very stark cases, right? Like they're thinking of a very sexist um relationship where the man is completely controlling over the woman or you're, they're thinking of like a boss and an employee where the boss can fire the employee immediately if they don't have sex with them. Those are like very extreme power inequalities. Um, BUT the reality is, first of all, none of us is ever gonna Fully escape a world with oppression in it, right? If we wait around for there to be no oppression in order to have sex, none of us are ever gonna get to have sex. But similarly, none of us ever can be completely Extracted from all power relations, including with our partner, right? So if we're waiting around for a partner with whom we have absolutely equal power and no power differentials, we're never going to get to have sex because people focus on things like employment or extreme sexism or whatever, but there's power inequalities even in things like um You know, two people are having sex and one of them has lived in the city for a long time and has a wide range of friends and a big support network, and the other one is new to town and doesn't know anybody. That's already a power inequality, right? Or, you know, one person's a little bit wealthier than the other one and can afford more stuff. That's already a power inequality. Um, WE can never get out of all power inequalities, even just like one person is more extroverted and has less social anxiety than the other person. That's already a power inequality. So, I think our job when we're supporting sexual agency is not to like unrealistically try to end all power inequality. Our job, much like what I said in the case of being a little bit drunk or high, is to think, well, given that, you know, everybody's agency is always a little bit compromised by these things, how do we make sure that it's not too extreme, and then how do we set up support and scaffolding so that even given this imperfection, people have agency, right? So, for example, um. As long as we live in a culture with some measure of sexism and some measure of misogyny, heterosexual sex is always going to be across a power inequality of some sort. But It makes a big difference if, like what we were talking about, both people have enough, enough financial independence to end the relationship if they want to. It makes a big difference if both people feel physically safe leaving without being punished for doing so. It makes a big difference if both people have really good quality communities and social networks where they can. Turn to if anything goes wrong or talk through their concerns or just like. You know, network about how to think about sex well. All of these things are forms of support that can compensate for some power inequality and hold us in our agency despite the fact that there's always gonna be some power inequality. But I'm just always very suspicious when I hear people say, oh well, that wasn't consensual or that wasn't ethical cause there was a power inequality. Because you could go through every single person you know and there's always going to be some power inequalities there, right? Like we never live in a world of exactly equal power or like freedom from any form of oppression. So we got to do the best we can within that. And the good news is despite the fact that we live in a world that's like Fully woven through with power inequalities and imperfections, we do manage, most of us to have like a lot of pretty great sex that we really enjoy and feel good about, right? So the question is like, you know, so many philosophers of sex focus on how do we prevent people from being harmed by bad sex that has, you know, bad power inequalities, and that is a very important question. But my focus is more on like Let's look at those cases where it's good and everybody's having a great time. And think about like how that happened and how we can make it happen more often, and how we can create social conditions where that can happen more often, just without being some sort of utopianist or idealist and think, well, OK, the answer is get rid of patriarchy or get rid of class inequality or whatever it may be. That's that would be great, but that's too big of a job, you know, we want to have like good sex sooner than that. Yeah, um,

35:52 Ricardo Lopes: uh, how about, uh, when people, uh, get older and of course with age, people become usually more forgetful, their memories don't work as well anymore and some Sometimes even people develop dementia, so, uh, what, uh, how should people deal with situations like that where there's a decreased sense of agency, I guess.

36:27 Quill Kukla: Yeah, and I think it's a really important question because one thing that people don't often talk about or even like to think about. IS that older people tend to be quite sexual. They tend to have very high libidos. And this idea that is sort of a myth that has gone through the culture for a long time that as you get old, you stop being interested in sex. There's just not any evidence to back that up. It turns out that Older people generally have very strong libidos and in particular, people with dementia. If anything, it seems that moderate dementia tends to increase people's libidos and On top of that, people who have moderate dementia and are still sexually active show um less depression, less suicidality, um, a slower decline of their cognitive capacity. So it's like, it's actually good and important that we try to find ways for older people and people with some dementia to be able to keep having agential sex. And this is something that doesn't get talked about very often at all. Um, Again, you know. Because I don't want to be misheard. I want to say this again, just like I said it in the case of being a little bit drunk and just as I said in the case of power relations, if it's too extreme, there comes a point where you can't do it anymore, right? Like if somebody really is just checked out of reality and isn't in a position to make a self-determined choice of their own because they don't really know who their partner is or who they are or what they're agreeing to. Then, you know, sadly, there's really no room there, I think, for ethical or agential sex. So at a certain point when it gets extreme enough, we need to call a stop to it, and it's a tricky question to know what, when that is. But when people are a little bit compromised, a little bit forgetful, have a little bit of dementia, I think that we could do so much better at enabling those people to still have good sex lives. One of the problems I think, is that, um, Long-term care facilities, um, either for just people who are quite old or more specifically for people with dementia tend to be Spaces that. Don't make any room for acknowledging that sex is a thing that the people who live there need or want, right? They tend to be these very sex negative spaces where the idea of the people who live there having sex is treated as unthinkable or disgusting or obviously nonconsensual. Um, THERE'S no support for their sex lives, and this is built into the spaces usually, right? People have no privacy. They either don't have their own room or they don't have a room to go to, they don't have doors that lock and close. We make it kind of physically impossible for people in those circumstances to have sexual agency, and they also don't have sexual agency in the sense that because their existence as sexual beings is like basically denied by their entire circumstance. They don't have anyone to go to, to talk to about STDs, to talk to about worries about sexual assault and coercion. They just have absolutely no support system, right? If we treated Older people and people dealing with dementia as people with sexual needs and desires that were not disgusting but just a fact of life, you know, we, we, we could do so much of a better job at setting up infrastructure and systems to be like, OK, here's the room that you can go, you know. Let us know when you're going there so that somebody can check in. We could do more education with partners about how to like check in with their partner to see if this is a day where they're really with it or not because people's capacities fluctuate over time. We also know that people's forgetfulness. Depends a lot on like literally where they are and how comfortable they are. So, you know, people tend to have much better cognitive capacities when they're at home and comfortable than when they're in a weird circumstance. So we could increase sexual agency by making sure that people have those kinds of comfortable spaces that enhance their capacities. But instead, what we do is we just Um, out of any of that context, where like, it's some combination of like, oh, old having old people having sex is gross. Oh, I don't want to talk about that. Um, PLUS, oh, surely old people don't want sex anyway. They're, they're past that. They're asexual. They're, you know, they're non-sexual now, so, and asexual, so we don't need to worry about it, right? Plus, this sort of just purely precautionary culture of like, we just need to keep people from having sex cause it would be bad and non. Consensual without giving people, which is also, by the way, how we treat teenagers. It's just like, keep them from having sex. It's, and in both cases, teenagers and old people, it would be so much better if we were like giving them resources for having good ethical sex rather than just being like, how can we stop them from doing it? Because they're not going to stop doing it. Teenagers aren't going to stop doing it. That's really obvious, right? But also, old people aren't gonna stop doing it. And that's one we don't think about as often, but it goes wrong. So, yeah, so, that was a long-winded answer, but that's my general set of concerns.

42:13 Ricardo Lopes: No, that, that's great. So, uh, I, we also have to talk about, uh, cases where people want to explore, for example, uh, new kinks. I mean, how about, uh, expressing uh our agency when doing that and. I guess, uh, there is some, at least sometimes uh there are situations where our hesitations and ambivalence are part of the thrill.

42:47 Quill Kukla: Yes, I think it could be very much part of the thrill. Yeah, this is sort of a pet peeve of mine, and this is now a new topic from, I mean, the last bits of what we've been talking about have been kind of similar because I've been emphasizing imperfect agency and the kind of support for that. Um. This is a, a very different form of imperfect agency, and this is a real pet peeve of mine. I think there's a very strong message out there in the culture, including in um Parts of the culture that think of themselves as very sex positive and progressive that says, you know, maybe means no and all sex has to be enthusiastic consent, otherwise, it's not consent at all. This is a very strong message we get, right, that anything short of Certainty and maximal enthusiasm should count as a no. And I think that, um. This is a, I understand why people say this because they're so worried about nonconsensual sex or bad sex that they feel like they need to like put up a wall. But I think it's really damaging because sex aside, if we went through our life only doing things that we were sure we wanted to do, and we were sure that we would like them, and we knew how they were gonna turn out. Our lives would be so tiny and boring, right? I mean, we would never move to a new city. We would never have a child. We would never switch careers. We would never do anything risky. The only reason The reason that our lives get to expand and be interesting is because we are willing to take risks and, and do things that we're ambivalent about and we're not sure how they're gonna turn out and maybe they're gonna go badly. Um, SO being able to try things that, you know, we're not sure where our limits are, whether we're gonna like them, is essential to having a full human life. I'll get back to sex in a moment, but for me, this is really not a sex-specific point. The other thing is like sometimes when we're pushing ourselves in that way, that's really when we feel most agential and self-expressive and in ourselves, right? Like that feeling of like pushing our boundaries can be really empowering. You know, if you're scared to take a trip to some part of the world you've never been to, and you do it anyway and you go off and you have the adventure, like that's when we feel really agential. And when you tell people, um, maybe means no, or if it's not enthusiastic consent, it's not consent. You act as if doing things that we're unsure of is like a compromise of our agency. Makes our agency lesser. And I think often it's quite the opposite, right? Like we feel most powerful when we're doing stuff that we feel like we're pushing ourselves and taking risks. So the question then is like, so first of all, I think all of that is true of sex too, right? If you only have sex that you're like completely certain. What it's gonna be like and that you want it and that you're gonna enjoy it. You're never gonna try anything and your sex life is gonna be very narrow. And especially in a world with things like homophobia, for example, right? If you're a kid trying to figure out if maybe you're queer. Chances are that you're gonna feel like having your first queer sex is probably like kind of risky and you're not sure if you're gonna like it and you don't really know what that's about. That, it would be like impossible to come out if we told people, oh, only do things that you feel absolutely risk-free and certain about, right? Like we need to explore. So, I do think exploration is Important, and I think risk is important for agency and ambivalence and pushing through ambivalence is important through agency, but All of that can only be a gent show when. We have the genuine safety and support to Say yes or no to it and to like back out of it if it's not going well, right? So an analogy I use in the book, which I really love is imagine that you're not sure if you want to jump off the high diving board. Um, That could be really scary, and you could be really uncertain, right? It could be, it could be a moment of like real ambivalence. I mean, I've had this, I'm not with the high diving board because I'm a baby in water, but even with the low diving board, I get to the edge and I'm like, I don't know. Um. If you get yourself to jump off it, it's probably, it's not gonna feel like a compromise of your agency. It's gonna feel like a huge thrill, right? That you got yourself to do this. Very empowering. But you can only be a genial about that decision whether to jump off the diving board. If, for example, you feel safe walking to the end and then deciding no and going back, right? Like if you don't feel like you could change your mind, you're never gonna get up there in the first place. Or if you do, it's gonna feel very coerced. It's not gonna feel agential. To feel agential about it, you need to feel safe walking to the end, looking down, and then Making a decision then and there, am I gonna do this or am I not gonna do this? And so you need to have that background, safety and support. So for example, if there's a bunch of people sitting at the bottom who are gonna like mock you and tease you if you don't jump off it, then that's not agential, right? That doesn't really give you an exit. Um. To get back to the sex domain. I think what we need is not to tell people maybe means no or you have to be enthusiastic. We need to make space for people to do things they're unsure about, but we need to make that really safe for them, and we need to make them feel like they really get to express their agency either by doing it or not doing it, right? And leaving that open for them, or, or, you know, stopping once they've started. And we can do that through good communication. We can do that again by like making exiting easy. There's lots of steps we can take to make people feel safe to take risks, um, but being forced into taking a risk is never agential. But just as much being prevented from taking risks is also never agential, right? This is one of the reasons that I talk a lot in the book about safe words because You know, one way of helping people do things that they feel ambivalent about or risky about is by setting up a safe word system so that at any moment they can say, they can opt out and be like, nope, and there's no consequences and there's no argument, they're not gonna get in trouble and they're not gonna disappoint anybody. That's actually another point I want to fold in, right? One of the big ways to make, to undermine people's agency when they're trying something risky. IS to make them feel like if they don't do it, they're gonna make their partner disappointed or angry cause that's a lot of pressure. And conversely, one of the ways of supporting people in their ability to try things that they're ambivalent about or feel are risky is to find mechanisms for insuring them. And making them feel confident that if they change their mind, nobody's going to insult them, nobody's gonna be angry at them, nobody's gonna be disappointed at them, you know, those are, these are the ways that we can make people be able to do these things agentially. And it's really, again, not a sex-specific point. I just think this is how we should treat one another in all domains of life. We should make it safe and possible for people to push themselves and try things and also Punishment free if they decide that they're not ready to do it.

50:57 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I, I mean, the, the, the bit you mentioned about, uh, safe words, it reminded me that it's something that people, I, I, I mean, I, I, or I, I guess it is something that people very commonly use when they practice BDSM, for example, right? I mean, it's like, OK, I have this safe word, if I use it, please stop because this is already too much for me or something like that, right.

51:26 Quill Kukla: Right. I mean, so I do think it's main home so far has been in the BDSM community and that's people's main association. I would describe it a tiny bit differently than you did, but only a tiny bit. I think that, you know, the way that Safe words work. You negotiate them upfront and you may never need to use them, right, but the value of having them negotiated upfront is that what you've agreed is that if somebody uses one, it's not please stop it or even stop for this reason. It's just a nice, clean, communicatively clear way that everybody has decided in advance that it just stops there. And you don't have to give a reason, right? Or put it as a please, and the other person doesn't have to say, oh, what did I do wrong? Like, are you sure you want to stop, you know, did I, did I mess up? It's just, it's designed to be a very clean, you know, it doesn't always work. Of course, people sometimes still get angry or feel guilty or whatever. The world isn't perfect, but at least ideally it's designed to be a clean, clear way of being like. I don't need to give you reasons. You don't need to give me apologies. We don't need any negotiation here. We're just done. We don't, we're out, right? And that's a really powerful thing to be able to do because normally, if you're doing something with somebody and you want to stop. It's a whole stressful negotiation because we're all so worried, especially when it comes to something as intimate and vulnerable as sex. We're all worried about like hurting the other person's feelings or disappointing them or whatever. So we don't want to just be like, no, stop, right? It's always like. Um, ACTUALLY starting to feel a little uncomfortable, and then the other person's like, oh, I'm sorry, did I do something wrong? And it's like a whole long negotiation, right? And the beauty of safe words is you can just like they, they, they're not supposed to have any of that interpersonal or moral baggage. It's just like we're done. And the point is, like, yes, you're right, the home is in BDSM, but I just think this is so valuable as a way of doing so many different things, right? So like I am very scared of heights, um. I get a lot of vertigo, but sometimes I like to do things that involve heights, and I always, I don't always make a big official deal out of it, but when I'm doing it with somebody, I sort of do the equivalent of establishing a safe word with them, right? I'm like, I want to tell you in advance. That I may need to just end this, and it doesn't mean you did anything wrong, and I don't want to have to give you my reasons. It just might be too much for me, so like. You know, if I say I'm done, then I'm done, right? And that helps a lot in because otherwise you're like up there and you're like, oh, I think I may need to turn around, and the other person's like, no, no, you can do it, and oh, I'm sorry, did I make you do something you didn't want to do? It's just so much cleaner to just be able to have a safe word and be like, I really did want to try this. Turns out, no, I'm done, it's over. And I think it would be so fantastic if we taught. Like little tiny kids about safe words, obviously not for sex purposes, but like from the very beginning, like so that they could try things that they don't, that they're not sure that they're up for and have a safe way of getting out of it, you know, like with a 3 year old. Do you want to go to a birthday party? I don't know. Sounds scary, maybe fun, right? Give them a safe word. The minute they say that safe word, they get to go home. They don't have to have a meltdown. They don't need to justify why they want to leave. The parent isn't gonna try to talk them into staying past that, you know, it's like, OK, we'll go to the party. And when you say this word, we'll leave and we're done. And then they can try things that they might not have wanted to try before. They might have been anxious or stressed out about trying, or like eating a new food that they might want to try, but they don't know if they like it, right? It's very stressful and anxious even for little kids to try things that they're not sure about, and we should be giving them what I like to think of as tools for agency, like safe words just are a good example, but there's many. Right. Tools for agency where they grow up having scaffolding and tools and, and tricks available to them for how to be more agential. I just think this would be fantastic across the board.

56:03 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So earlier we talked about the issue of power dynamics, but even in just, uh, let's say everyday sex, I mean sex among, er, I mean people, partners, couples, whatever, I, I mean of course there are. Are usually are very commonly differences when it comes to enthusiasm, even when it comes to experience, is that something that you also consider in your approach to sex? I mean how, uh, perhaps some of that might uh play a role in how we should consider consensuality or not?

56:55 Quill Kukla: Um, So just so I make sure I'm understanding the question, is, is the question about whether it, it is like a compromise or a problem for consensuality that in everyday sex there are going to be these little differences in enthusiasm and experience and so far, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's inherently a problem, no, because Like I said, because I'm such a non-deal theorist about this stuff, because I never think that agency is perfect or encounters are perfect. I think small inequalities are not intrinsically problematic as long as everybody. Involved, you know, as long as there's basic consensuality in the sense that we talked about before where people are communicating each other that they're doing what they want and as long as everybody involved has basic agency, not perfect agency, but you know, basic agency, um, but I do think, of course, that what often happens with everyday sex, as you put it, or long-term relationships that aren't especially. Kinky or edgy or whatever is that people can fall into a pattern where the difference always goes the same way, you know, where it's always one person who's more enthusiastic, it's always one person who has more power, and then that could be a problem. I don't think it's necessarily a problem for consensuality. But it's definitely a problem within a relationship in the sense that, you know, you're, you start to entrench that inequality over time and it becomes a fundamental part of the dynamic. So I don't think it's a problem if you've got a couple and you know, Sometimes when they, you know, again, let's just assume a long-term couple having relatively vanilla everyday sex. I sometimes they might both be incredibly enthusiastic and into it. And then sometimes one of them is really enthusiastic and the other one is like, all right, you know, sure, not a terrible idea. It'll make my partner happy, no problem. And then another time it goes the other way and it's the other partner who's a little less enthusiastic. I think all of that is part of the like. Normal ebb and flow of a relationship. But if you find yourself in a situation where one person is always feeling like they're doing it as a favor to the other person and it's only the one person who's enthusiastic or if, you know, everything that Happens during sex is catering to the slightly more powerful person's desires, then I think the problem there is less with consensuality and more just that that's a bad relationship, you know, that's, that's, that's just not how you want your relationship to go. And, and, and my advice to people in that situation is to sort of take a reflective step back and think about like, How can we make this not exactly equal, but how can we make it so that there's more of an ebb and flow of who's more excited and who's more in control and who's having their relate their needs met. And I think one of the problems we have as a culture is that um Especially among kind of like monogamous heterosexual vanilla couples. It's not just that they don't talk about sex a lot, but that talking about sex is almost stigmatized. Like you're not supposed to do it. It's like, it means you must have a problem or you're being a little bit vulgar or it's not so sexy, right? Like the ideal, and I find this a very weird ideal as somebody who talks constantly and can't shut up. Um, BUT the ideal is like you're supposed to just like do it and not talk about it, right? Otherwise, there's a problem. Um. Whereas if you move to like a queer context or a kinky context or a poly context, in those contexts, people are talking about it constantly, partly because they can't just like Internalize the most mainstream norms of the culture and just kind of go along with the flow, they have to talk about it because there, there isn't just sort of like conformist scripts sitting there for them to fall into and adopt, right? So they have to be having discussions about what do we want, how do we treat each other, what kind of relationship do we have? So I think unfortunately, you know, people who are in very kind of everyday traditional heterosexual relationships, they're often not pushed to talk about it and in fact discouraged from doing so. And that's a real disadvantage they have compared to other kinds of couples. So, my advice in those cases is like they need to find a way of getting some sort of critical distance from their own sex lives and getting over the idea that talking is bad. And actually like have conversations about how do we make this more interesting for both of us? How do we make this more equal for both of us. It's not gonna happen on its own.

1:02:21 Ricardo Lopes: Right. So, Doctor Kuchler, we're reaching our time limit, so I would like to just ask you one final question. So, I mean, would you, would you like to perhaps leave one final message about your book? I mean, uh, If you were to summarize uh what you would like people to take from your book in terms of, uh, your approach to sex, what would, uh, how would you do it?

1:02:55 Quill Kukla: That's a great question. Um, I think, um, If I can cheat and give myself to. 2 hotshots. Um, THERE'S 2 things I really want people to take from the book. One is We've spent a whole lot of time in our culture from both the right and the left, from very diff various different perspectives talking about how to try to prevent bad sex from happening, how to prevent rape, how to prevent unwanted sex, and that's all very important, and I'm not putting a stop to it, and we need to do it, but we also need to spend time talking about how to have good sex. We are not as a culture given any tools, language tools, or other kinds of tools, or even good infrastructure to help us understand how to have good sex. And that's just like a huge missing half of the conversation. Avoiding bad sex is great, but we want to have Great sex, we want to have pleasurable sex, and so we need to be explicit both in philosophy and elsewhere about like, well, how do we do that? What does it mean? What, how do we get there, right? So my emphasis, I'm, you know, I, I'm, I'm not somebody who is discarding the importance of preventing bad sex, but what I want to contribute is the beginning of some real conversations about how to have good sex. That's one point. And then the second point that's just as important to me that I want to get out of this is that having good sex and avoiding bad sex and having sexual agency is never going to be something that we do on our own or even just in conversation with a partner. It's always going to be something that requires social support and social change. It's about having Legal systems and material spaces and economic systems, and cultural resources and scripts around us that support. Good sex and a gentle sex, and our ability to have a gentle sex, right? Like one of the things that I talk about in the book is you could have two people with exactly the same intentions and desires to have gay sex, and they're both well-intentioned, and if they're doing it in a country where gay sex is illegal and nobody talks about it and they have no resources and then they have no support. Their sex is not going to be agential. If they're having that same sex in like, you know, their queer commune in the middle of a big liberal city, it's gonna be highly agential. It's not about their communication with each other or their own desires or their own intention to treat each other well, right? So it's just as important to me to like shift seeing sexual agency and good sex to the level of society. And seeing it as a social justice issue and a social structures issue and emphasizing less individual capacities and individual conversations and really trying to broaden that conversation. So those are really the two things that are most important to me to get out of this.

1:06:18 Ricardo Lopes: Great, so the book is again Sex Beyond Yes, Pleasure and Agency for Everyone. I will be leaving a link to it in the description of the interview, and would you like to just tell people apart from the book where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:06:38 Quill Kukla: Oh yeah, that's a, that's a great uh question. So, um, I'll say a few things really quickly. Um, I have a website which is www. Quilrcuula just by name.xyz and it has lots of my writings and also information about um various places that I'm speaking. Um, I have some online discussions about this on YouTube. Um, I'm also, if by any chance people happen to be in the, um, Baltimore, Washington, DC area later this month, I'm gonna be giving a couple of very public lectures on, um, February 23rd in Baltimore and February 24th in DC. The series is called Profs and Pints. You could look that up and those will be very much accessible lectures for Anyone, not just philosophers, anyone who wants to come talk to me about good sex. Um, AND yeah, I'm kind of everywhere. I've been giving talks and podcasts and so on around the world lately, um, but my, um, website is a great place to find them, but the most immediate thing is that I'm hoping that people who are in the right area would consider coming to the DC and Baltimore talks because those will be really fun.

1:07:54 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a fascinating conversation.

1:08:00 Quill Kukla: Yes, thank you so much. It's a great conversation. I appreciate it.

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