Choice Is Not King

Now that I have expressed my philosophical objections to a moral framework grounded entirely in the concept of choice, I’ll be glad if people don’t appeal to it in discussions. I don’t find the idea that Choice is King either interesting or productive. This doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate individual choice at all. I do but I do not believe that it is the only factor that matters.

The previous post offers a clear example of what I mean. Cassie and Puff engaged in perverted, disgusting behaviors. We are not in a court of law, so it doesn’t matter to us which part of their activities was legal under the existing legislation. I propose that we discuss this issue outside of the framework of who consented to what. It’s simply not interesting.

During the #MeToo freakout, we were all hopelessly bogged down in the issue of consent. This made it impossible to discuss the larger and much more important issue of why so many situations arose where women (and a couple of men) sincerely thought they had been mistreated, even though there seemed to be consent.

Consent and choice are sucking all the air out of the room on many different topics. To see things from a slightly different perspective requires that we all look beyond the raging, overinflated egos and see what else is happening beyond the “But I wanna!” of individual choice.