“[We need] to tell the truth about sex. Its emotionality, its biology, the sociopolitical frameworks that influence us,” Christine Emba said. “But it also means balancing our desires with our responsibilities to other people, and recognizing that consent isn’t enough.”
On Feb. 13, Emba spoke about how our misunderstanding of the role of sex is one of the primary causes of growing romantic disconnection in American society. Her lecture is the latest in the Humanities Studio “Connections” series.
Emba is a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of the book “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation.” Susan McWilliams Barndt — a professor of politics at Pomona College — introduced Emba and emphasized how the book significantly impacted her students.
“I watched [it] break my Pomona seniors … in the best possible ways. They loved the book because they didn’t like the book, and they didn’t like the book because they loved the book. They were inspired by it … They were troubled by it, and … provoked by it,” McWilliams Barndt said.
Kevin Dettmar, W.M. Keck professor of English and director of the Humanities Studio, explained that the talk is meant to challenge the existing consensus on intimate connection and examine romantic relationships as a site of connection.
“We’re trying to think about what connection can mean in a lot of different kinds of contexts, and this is about emotional, intimate or romantic connection,” Dettmar said. “I hope that [the audience] will come away with questions for themselves and for their relationships.”
Emba argued that we as a society have separated romantic connection and friendship in a way that contributes to the rise of loneliness. Instead, she said, these two forms of connection should coexist.
Last year, the U.S. surgeon general declared loneliness a public health crisis. Whether it is romantic or platonic, connections are few and far between. The health risks of this resulting loneliness are greater than those of obesity or physical inactivity. Emba said that men report having fewer than five friends, and emphasized that loneliness significantly shortens lifespan.
“Friendship between the sexes seems to be disappearing as a connection in any sense,” Emba said. “If we think about romance, we see that marriage rates and partnership rates are falling at a remarkable clip.”
Emba attributes this decline in romance to a broader individualistic cultural narrative that frames romantic relationships as inherently self-serving. She asked the audience to rethink this view.
“When you learn from the culture, even ambiently, that people are disposable, it becomes harder to remember to treat them with value, even in non-dating, non-sexual contexts,” she said.
“Emba said that men report having fewer than five friends, and emphasized that loneliness significantly shortens lifespan.”
Emba believes that youth education about sex tends to focus on consent too much at the cost of communicating a positive approach toward sexual relationships.
“Consent isn’t enough,” she said. “There’s a wide area between consensual, which is to say non-criminal encounters with other people, and the sort of encounters we actually want to have.”
Jason Alperin PO ’28 was particularly surprised by Emba’s view that consent is not the only key factor in romantic relationships.
“I thought it was really interesting [to] think of consent as a legal thing, and rethinking relationships as needing more than consent,” Alperin said. “I feel like people have never talked about those two things in the same sphere.”
In lieu of consent, Emba proposes a new sexual ethic with the goal of “willing the good of the other,” a theory proposed by philosophers Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle that defines the criteria for any mutually beneficial relationship: being present, paying attention and doing good for one’s partner.
“Attention is a necessary precondition for ethical behavior, looking for connection,” Emba said. “It would also mean holding in our minds the concept of every individual person’s intrinsic worth and realizing that our individual preferences shouldn’t outweigh someone else’s good.”
Attendee Zoe Dorado PO ’27 was intrigued by Emba’s reflection on the nature of desire.
“I liked that quote: ’Why do I want things that I want, and what would I want if I had the choice?’ Desire doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Dorado said. “The outside can influence the inside, and the inside can influence the outside.”
In an increasingly disconnected world, Emba argues that romantic connection, despite the challenges, is still worth pursuing.
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