An adequate sexual ethic does more than insist that no harm be done to others.  It strengthens people’s well-being and self-respect.  Good sex is good because it touches our senses powerfully but also because it enhances our self-worth and deepens our desire to connect more justly with others.  The key concerns of this ethic are how power is shared and the quality of caring.  Sex is not something one “does to” another person or “has happen” to oneself.  Rather sexual intimacy is a mutual process of feeling with, connecting to, and sharing as whole persons.  We enhance our sense of self-worth by attending with care to what is happening to the other person as well as to ourselves.  In the midst of sexual pleasuring with a partner, we do not “lose” ourselves as much as we relocate ourselves in the in-betweenness of self and other, as we receive and give affection and energy.

–Dr. Marvin M. Ellison, Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality, p.89