Hmm, this brings up several strands of debate.
I wasn't presenting this as a 'moral' point of view, so much as a need to acknowledge that 'third parties' in this kind of situation have feelings/an existence as human beings that ought to be acknowledged too.
What I certainly wasn't saying that one has 'rights' over someone that one has slept with - I agree, this leads to very dangerous territory. Then again, when does one have such a continuing obligation to another person? In a 'relationship' (taking that word in the common, mainstream usage of the term)? As we've discussed before, and I think we both agree on, either party in a relationship has the perfect right to leave at any time, and therefore even in a seemingly rock-solid relationship, no rights can be evoked.
This would be the purely logical way to look at things, and I incline to such pure (and inarguable, I think) logic in my more pessimistic moments. But I can't live like that, with the knowledge that every relationship is rooted only in quicksand.
I think that some space has to be made for the human feeling that emotional interaction (see next paragraph) has
some sort of meaning. Logically it doesn't, and no-one owes (in a weak sense, not in a 'rights' sense) me anything, regardless of our relationship/past/feelings, but I don't believe anyone can live like that without becoming very cold indeed.
With regard to your point about casual sex being an activity comparable to many other activities in which one enjoys the company of friends, I don't think this is true, from experience and from the experience of many others I've talked to. And, (in the context of the debate about open relationships) sex between someone who is in a relationship, and someone else who may well not be, involves all kinds of power and emotional games that we are (blissfully) free from in going to the movies with a friend. I think it's overly idealistic to argue that they are somehow the same on an emotional level.
I don't take the point that, just because a notion can be applied as a double standard, or even is generally applied in that way (and I agree that rights-based notions of sex often are used as a double standard against women), it is a reason to reject that notion altogether. Surely you should reject the way in which mainstream society has applied the idea of 'owing' someone something because of sexual relations, which is a very different thing?
As regards statistics on sexual violence - given the unreliability of such figures for so many reasons (eg I think it's clear that in the UK or US for example, any figures on sexual violence based either on the number of cases brought forward, or on direct questioning of people's experiences, would hugely underestimate the rates of sexual violence), it's problematic to uncritically use these statistics to try to prove that "cultures that don't think this way about monogamy" have lower rates of sexual violence
I'm not saying that your point isn't correct (it may well be), but I don't think you can use such statistics to prove it. Nevertheless, I agree that it's a point that needs to be looked at more critically.
If any of the above is unclear, I am tired and wired on coffee. I know what I meant, but..
