> Objection 1: Promiscuity is immoral because it creates risks of unwanted pregnancy and disease.
Reply: (a) If it’s the risks to oneself that count, then other unhealthy behaviors such as eating junk food and failing to exercise should be deemed even more immoral. (b) If it’s the risks to others that count (paternalistically, I suppose), then promiscuity should be more immoral on the part of men, since it is men who are causing a risk of unwanted pregnancy for others.
I don't think the claim in (b) is correct. You could say that promiscuous men are causing pregnancies by going out and impregnating women, but every pregnancy requires two people so in some sense both have half of the responsibility. You could try a Shapley value accounting, in which case maybe the men are less responsible because there are tons of promiscuous men who want to have sex, and if that man hadn't done it maybe another man would have done so. This might even explain why biblical-era morality took the form you quoted above: if you want to reduce pregnancies in your society, and men like promiscuity more than women do, you can either convince a large number of men to be less promiscuous, or a small number of women, so perhaps it is more tractable to direct the messaging at the few women.
It seems like the main way in which female promiscuity might legitimately be wrong (according to consequentialism that properly includes the experiences of the agent themself), is when the woman desires a certain long-term mating value in the future to a higher degree than the pleasure of the promiscuity, but irrationally underestimates the negative effect of promiscuity on mating value. It would be analogous to a male who played a bunch of fun video games rather than advancing his career or other form of social standing, while irrationally underestimating the negative effect on his mating value with women.
> Objection 1: Promiscuity is immoral because it creates risks of unwanted pregnancy and disease.
Reply: (a) If it’s the risks to oneself that count, then other unhealthy behaviors such as eating junk food and failing to exercise should be deemed even more immoral. (b) If it’s the risks to others that count (paternalistically, I suppose), then promiscuity should be more immoral on the part of men, since it is men who are causing a risk of unwanted pregnancy for others.
I don't think the claim in (b) is correct. You could say that promiscuous men are causing pregnancies by going out and impregnating women, but every pregnancy requires two people so in some sense both have half of the responsibility. You could try a Shapley value accounting, in which case maybe the men are less responsible because there are tons of promiscuous men who want to have sex, and if that man hadn't done it maybe another man would have done so. This might even explain why biblical-era morality took the form you quoted above: if you want to reduce pregnancies in your society, and men like promiscuity more than women do, you can either convince a large number of men to be less promiscuous, or a small number of women, so perhaps it is more tractable to direct the messaging at the few women.
It seems like the main way in which female promiscuity might legitimately be wrong (according to consequentialism that properly includes the experiences of the agent themself), is when the woman desires a certain long-term mating value in the future to a higher degree than the pleasure of the promiscuity, but irrationally underestimates the negative effect of promiscuity on mating value. It would be analogous to a male who played a bunch of fun video games rather than advancing his career or other form of social standing, while irrationally underestimating the negative effect on his mating value with women.
What about promises? Isn’t there an easy evolutionary debunking explanation of why we think they are morally relevant?