Morality And Choice: Research On The Sexual Morality Of Contemporary College Students

As a common phenomenon in the biosphere,sex is a way of existence for life continuation and race subsistence.Sex of human beings is a social phenomenon established on the basis of natural sexual desire,sexual arousal and sexual gratification.It moves and exists in complex social environments and colorful social cultures.As Hegel puts it,"The natural regularity of two genders is given an intellectual and ethical meaning through their rationality."As a special phenomenon of social awareness,sexual morality is the sum of psychological awareness,principles and norms,behaviors and activities maintained by public opinions,traditions and individual's inner beliefs,based on the judgment of individual sexual behaviors.The private nature of sex itself decides that individuality and secretiveness is a distinctive feature of sexual morality.As a product of human's social life,sexual morality is the result of regulation and restraint that social civilization and progress puts upon individual's natural desire.The content of sexual morality changes with the development of social history,and has undergone a long,complex and tortuous process.Its nature and content is decided by the social,economic and cultural backgrounds in different historical periods.Sexual morality is of significant values to maintain marriage stability and social harmony,promote perfection and comprehensive development of individual personality.Its existence and values also decide the possibility and necessity of sex moral education.Education of sexual morality is born together with sexual morality itself and has taken on a significant development in nowadays.The goals,principles,contents and methods of domestic and international education on sexual morality have provided us with rich experience to learn from.Goethe has said,"All theory is gray,the tree of life evergreen".By means of researches and field studies combining quantitative with qualitative research,this article gives a systematic understanding and summary of the current status of sexual morality and sex moral education of college students in six universities in Gansu.On this basis,a comprehensive analysis and reflection has been given to college students'awareness,regulation and activities of sexual morality.Awareness of sexual morality is inclusive of sexual emancipation,sexual freedom,virginity and sex views;regulation of sexual morality contains the voluntary principle,no-harm principle,mutual-bond principle,wedlock principle and secretive principle;activities of sexual morality include evaluation activities of sexual morality,sexual aesthetic activities and sex education activities.Judged from the above,contemporary college students are caught in conflicts and confusion between desire and rationality,benefits and ethics,spirit and body,love and sex,sexual attitude and behavior,traditions and moderns.Overall,the situation of college students' sexual morality varies greatly.A considerable number of students hold ambiguous sexual values and are week in judgment and choice of sexual morality,reflecting that they are ideologically and psychologically immature,emotionally uncertain and behaviorally impulsive.These characteristics decide that they are hard to make a correct judgment and choice in the face of a contradiction between autonomy and heteronomy.Strengthening the sex moral education of college students is an important means to improve their sexual moral standards.The purpose of education on college students' sexual morality is to improve their cognitive ability,judgment and choosing capability with regard to sexual morality,turn heteronomy into conscious self-discipline,foster their ability of dealing with sexual morality in a rational manner and develop noble qualities.Choosing of sexual morality is a special kind of social choice made by an individual in a voluntary manner amongst different value standards or good-evil conflicts under the domination of certain moral awareness and in accordance with certain ethical standards.The basic contradiction of sexual morality is the conflict between sexual morality and sexual desire based on human rationality and desire.In other words,the conflict is to reject or indulge lust or pursue ethics-satisfying sexual desire.We are advocating that sexual morality must be rational regulation of sexual desire and right control of love and sex,so that individual love and sex not only meets the need of healthy,favorable and orderly production and reproduction of human beings,but also is conductive to the harmonious development of society and family as well as physically and mentally full development and perfection of the individual.However,due to the private and secretive nature of sex,the traditional culture has loaded it with too many complex factors,making sexual ignorance,inhibition and repression a long-term existence.After the founding of the PRC,especially since the reform and opening up,with the improvement in the level of social civilization and progress,people's sexual attitudes are gradually unleashing and sexual behaviors are becoming freer.At the same time,nevertheless,phenomena like confusion of sexual morality,open and random sexual behavior,and severe degradation of the sense of morality also come along.These problems have exerted a profound impact on the college students and made them obviously confused and contradicted in sex-related understanding,regulation and activities,resulting in various deviant behaviors.This study strives to explore college students' sexual and moral education from a philosophical level based on empirical investigation,aiming high to enhance their cognitive ability,judgment and choosing capability of sexual morality and improve their physical and mental development in a harmonious and healthy manner.To achieve these goals,choosing of sexual morality shall adhere to the dialectical principle of unification between ends and means,motive and effect of sexual morality as well as sexual rights and obligations.