Sexual desire and structural injustice

Is it unjust that some people are less sexually desired than others?We might have sympathy for the sexually undesired but supposing they suffer an outright injustice can seem absurd.My view is that this reaction is too hasty, and that sexually desirability can be a matter of political justice.This is a strong claim, which is likely to invite a torrent of objections, whether for confusing misfortune with injustice, licensing unwarranted political meddling, indulging in sexual moralism, or asking the impossible of us.But I shall suggest a compelling social philosophy of sexual attraction can be articulated by considering the scope and character of sexual desires through the lens of structural injustice, while looking to collective and political rather than primarily individual and ethical remedies to the problem of unjust desire.Sexual desirability is not a resource which can or should be doled out to the needy; nor is there a duty to desire, or a right to be so desired.Yet, sexual attractiveness matters in many of our livespotentially influencing not only our opportunities for sexual intimacy, but our self-respect, social standing, and access to romantic relationships.Going sexually undesired or under-desired can compound disadvantage in these respects.Mere disadvantage, however, is not sufficient for political injustice.Instead, I shall argue there can be grounds of justice for holding people responsible for transforming the socio-structural processes which shape the distribution and character of sexual desires when these processes underpin domination and deprivation. IWhen, in 1854, John Stuart Mill suspected he was dying of tuberculosis, he took to his diary.His entry for March 26 th tells us, "what any persons may freely do with respect to sexual relations should be deemed to be an unimportant and purely private matter, which concerns no one but themselves." 1 This may have been a particularly alluring proposition for Mill himself, who had courted scandal with an initially chaste but deeply intimate friendship with the married Harriet Taylor.His maxim is no more than a sketch, but it helpfully anticipates and condenses many contemporary liberal orthodoxies about sexacting as an appealing corrective to prudish moralism and supposing that consensual sexual activity should not draw social opprobrium.But like many appealing maxims, it happens to be false.Some recent philosophical discussions of sexual attraction begin to put pressure on Mill's claim that freely undertaken sexual relations are unimportant, purely private, and of no concern to others.The most common counterexample has been racial preference in online dating.Armed with statistics from dating sites like OkCupid, philosophers have noted with regret that in some places black women and Asian men are systematically passed over by other daters. 2Dating preferences depend upon more than sexual attraction, of course, but if these preferences are sustained by sexual desires which reflect and reproduce disrespectful attitudes towards certain racial groups, then there are grounds for moral concern.