著者

佐藤 拓司

出版者

日本医学哲学・倫理学会

雑誌

医学哲学 医学倫理 (ISSN:02896427)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, pp.97-105, 2005-10-26 (Released:2018-02-01)

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This paper analyzes the notion of sexual perversion from a philosophical stance. Sexual perversion is difficult to analyze because the notion of sex is itself ambiguous and unclear. Alan Soble identifies five central distinctions within the conceptual philosophy of sex that define the concept of the sexual act as 1) involving contact with a sex organ, 2) serving a procreative function, 3) producing sexual pleasure, 4) relying on intention or purpose, 5) being defined in terms of sexual desire. However, none of these definitions is sufficient. The philosopher Thomas Nagel set out a psychological standard that remains useful today. He defined the purpose of sexual desire as one of communication among the participants. According to Nagel, sex has an overlapping system of sexual perceptions and interactions: it involves a desire that one's partner be aroused by the recognition of one's desire that he or she be aroused. Nagel's theory, known as the "communication model", proposes a purpose for the sexual act and attempts to explain the essence of perversion. It proposes that the act of blocking off the communication results in the perversion. This model has a number of problems, however. For example, it implies that sexual relations between regular partners are inferior to novel encounters because less remains to be communicated sexually. Why is such a conclusion derived? Because the communication model is built up with equivocal and ambiguous structure, it involves both external and internal moral criteria. The coexistence of both types of criteria is the source of the model's problems.

著者

佐藤 拓司

出版者

日本医学哲学・倫理学会

雑誌

医学哲学 医学倫理 (ISSN:02896427)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.136-150, 2001-10-20 (Released:2018-02-01)

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How should we treat intersexual individuals? It has been standard pediatric practice to recommend surgery for infants with ambiguous genitalia or loss of panis. In females, any large clitoris is to be reduced or removed. In males with less than an adequate penis, the preferred surgical approach is sex reassignment. This management philosophy is based on 2 beliefs: (1) individuals are psychosexually neutral at birth and (2) healthy psychosexual development is dependent on the appearence of the genitals. This philosophy was strongly supported by the classical and well-known "John/Joan" case. But reports of the success of John/Joan were premature and wrong. Diamond and Sigmundson recently reported that John failed to identify as a female, and she had in fact chosen to resume life as John. They conclude that the evidence seems overwhelming that humans are not psychosexually neutral. If they are correct, we need a new philosophy for dealing with intersexual individuals. I propose that we have to realise that there are several limitations in our capacity to clinically manage intersexuality. At first.it appears impossible to draw any distinct, line between males and females. And we are unable to predict with confidence the gender that an intersexed newborn will settle into during adulthood. And finally, it is unlikely that surgical reassignment will ever truly "normalize" an individual. In accordance with these limitations, we have to be more careful when undergoing gender reassignment for infants with traumatized genitalia.