Sexual Morality

I found each view on sexual morality ultimately unsatisfactory. The analysis that I most align with is Goldman’s view. I appreciate this analysis because I believe that many forms of intercourse are acceptable, unless sex violates some other categorical imperative, i.e. rape is wrong because it because it is “an extreme violation of a person’s body. However, I am confused about the logic of the argument in that he denies the “means-end-analysis” as being extraneous and not relevant to plain sex, which he asserts has no morality in and of itself. For humans, in a Kantian analysis, could this ever actually be true? I do not really see how just viewing sex as a pleasurable act, and carrying out sex for no other reason, would not also be a means to an end. Wouldn’t Kant say that this violates the categorical imperative to not use any person as a mere means to an end? Further, I think his argument is fairly week in stating that sex is morally neutral. He addresses the negative feelings many people get from having sex without extra means to an end such as love and relationships, and says that this “psychological toll often attached may be a function of the restrictive sexual ethic itself, rather than a legitimate apology of it.” I am really on the fence about this point and do not think he adequately defends it. I think it is just as easy to say that the psychological toll may be a result of not viewing sex as something with moral weight when it actually does. I think here I go back to the paradox this analysis faces that sex for just sex does seem to ultimately violate a categorical imperative. Further, if ethics asks how I should be living my life, from my experiences I do feel a degree of right or wrongness when I have engaged in meaningful versus meaningless sex. I don’t necessarily believe that anyone else should care, but if I am asking these questions and going with my gut, accepting that sex is morally neutral and that using people for pleasure with the lack of care and emotion, does not hold for me personally.