Sexual acts are those acts that tend to satisfy sexual desire, where sexual desire is taken to be the desire for the pleasure of physical contact (Alan Goldman, "Plain Sex"). "Pleasures of physical contact" might not specify sexual pleasure accurately enough. An additional complication is that a gender difference in the experience and conceptualization of sexual pleasure might exist. Also, someone might experience sexual desire yet have no idea what to do as a result of having it, no idea that physical contact, or what kind of physical contact, is the next, but hardly mandatory.
Consensual participation in sexual activity implies that each person is respecting the other as an autonomous agent capable of making up his or her mind about the value of the activity.
If we are to understand sex and appreciate it on its own terms simply as sex, it seems that we should see it as a source of a distinct pleasure. What else could it be? What else is there when we put aside all the biological aspects and its romanticism.
Goldman rejects all instrumental accounts of sex. Every such account crushes sex to an inappropriate purpose and so misses its real nature. Such accounts usually have unbelievable ideals in sexual ethics.
Goldman says sex and love are different matters and the attempt to bind them together is a burden. This is a thought for avoiding disasters such as a terrible marriage or other disastrous mistakes that could only happen when we mistake sex for love. .