This independence lends support to pessimist views of sexual desire
First, even if the goal of sexual desire is sexual pleasure, unless we assume that sexual pleasure is uniform across different contexts (an assumption with which the feature-based view saddles the object-based one), one might not be indifferent to how the pleasure is produced
The feature-based view, however, might pass the buck: either “sexual arousal” means what we usually mean by “sexual desire” (the examples of sexual arousal-erections, lubricated vaginas-might serve equally well as examples of sexual desire), or it does not. If the former, we would still need a definition of “sexual arousal”, much like we needed a definition of “sexual desire”. If the latter, we would need an account of what “sexual arousal” is, because now it does not mean what we thought it meant: if it is not the same as sexual desire, what exactly is it? (more…)