Beyond Consent: A short essay exploring the connections between consent-based

models of sexual relations, gender equity and power dynamics, and sexual harm
endured by women during heterosexual encounters.

Author: Angela Northness

Over the past several decades, significant strides have been made toward protecting
women from sexual harm, including the creation of rape prevention programs, the
expansion of legal statutes against sexual crimes, and increased enforcement of sexual
assault laws. Since the vast majority of this attention has been focused on reducing the
most serious types of sexual offences like violent sexual assault and rape, considerable
emphasis has been placed on the notion of consent. The underlying belief being that a
proper and thorough understanding of consent acts as a basis of judgement to determine
when and if sexual assault has taken place and thus if legal ramifications are justified. While
these discussions have undoubtedly brought about improvements for victims, or potential
victims of forcible rape and other types of non-consensual sex crimes, critics have pointed
out that the consent-centric view of sexual harm has a serious side effect of “legitimating
consensual sexual transactions. If rape is bad because it is non-consensual… then it seems
to follow that consensual sex must be good because it is consensual.” (West, 391). This is
problematic because there are many ways in which women can be, and often are, harmed
from consensual sex as well. In order to effectively reduce sexual harm to women, we must
look beyond consent, considering all the types of sexual harms which affect women.
Moreover, that the root cause of these harms is gender inequity and that this is the issue
which we must address to truly bring about change for women in this very important area.
In “Consent and Sexual Relations”, Alan Wertheimer seeks to “consider just what the
analysis of the concept of consent can bring to the question, what sexually motivated
behavior should be prohibited through the criminal law?” (Wertheimer, 360), illustrating
the consent-based focus of most sexual harm prevention discussions. Wertheimer asserts
that consent is interesting because of its morally transformative property and offers an
account of consent intended to identify situations in which consent should or should not be
considered valid and criminal conduct can be said to have occurred. In his view, consent is
morally transformative “only in the absence of certain background defects” including
coercion, incompetence, or concealment of important information. (Wertheimer, 365).
Interestingly, Wertheimer’s confidence in what is, or is not, morally permissible or
problematic, seems to dissolve when the discussion proceeds beyond the bounds of
consent and criminal law. Although he posits that there are almost certainly principles of
sexual morality/decency outside of those concerning criminal liability, and that an ideal
model of sexual relations theory probably ought to consider these as well, he thinks that “at
present, there is no consensus as to what constitutes immoral behavior in this area”
(Wertheimer, 378). While he doesn’t deny that they exist, there seems to be a lack of real
acknowledgement of the type of morally suspect consensual sexual relations from which
women so frequently experience harmful effects.
Robin West’s essay “The Harms of Consensual Sex” details some of the reasons why
women consent to sexual interactions that are ultimately harmful to them, the types of
harm that they incur, and the ways in which feminist movements (such as those focused on
consent) serve to undermine women’s abilities to recognize and resist these problematic
interactions. According to West, there are many seemingly rational reasons why a woman
may consent to sex that she doesn’t want, including the need to maintain economic support
or protection, fear that her partner may become upset, angry or violent if she does not give
him sex, or because she feels a societal pressure to be sexually active, or please her partner.
At face value, these situations may seem like simple, individual decisions in which the
women have chosen to do something they don’t want to, to produce the most desirable
outcome. However, West asserts that these experiences cause damage to a woman’s sense
of self and that “these harms-particularly if multiplied over years or indeed over an entire
adulthood-may be quite profound” (West, 389). Moreover, she argues, women find it
difficult to recognize and articulate their experiences because of current thinking
conventions surrounding sexual harm. Liberal feminist rape law, which seeks to expand
rape laws by emphasizing the criminality of non-consent “has the almost inevitable
consequence of valorizing, celebrating, or, to use the critical term, “legitimating” consensual
sexual transactions” (West, 391) while radical feminism which claims that, in essence, all
sex is rape, undermines women’s ability to distinguish the harms that they experience from
sex, generally speaking.
Empirical research seems to strongly support Wests claims about women’s harmful
sexual experiences as well as their struggle to define, articulate, and understand what is
happening to them. For example, a 2016 study began as an investigation into the female
practice of faking orgasm, but shifted focus toward the topic of consensual, but unwanted
sex after noting that the women surveyed were repeatedly attempting to describe such
experiences and the distress that they felt as a result. The authors state that “Without
exception, participants alluded to or spoke explicitly of at least one unwanted and/or
unpleasurable sexual experience despite having been recruited to talk about ‘consensual
sex’. Within these accounts, we were struck by the degree to which participants were
connecting, and often troubling, the practice of faking orgasm to accounts of unwanted sex”
(Thomas et al., 2016). Often, the researchers learned, women reported faking orgasm as a
tool to end sexual interactions which they consented to, but which were unwanted and
unenjoyable, or even painful. Practically all of the women expressed feeling distressed, or
troubled by these encounters, but struggled to identify the nature of the encounters, as they
seem to fall somewhere outside the borders of the accepted framework by which sexual
relations are defined binarily as either good, consensual sex or bad, non-consensual sex (i.e.
rape/sexual assault). That is to say that the “dominant discourses fail to ‘speak to’ women’s
unwanted sexual experiences beyond legalized terms of rape and coercion. As such, women
are left having to attempt to speak out and around these recognized terms” (Thomas et al.,
2016).
If these troubling encounters are, as researchers found, very common within
heterosexual relations, and also very detrimental to the women involved, sometimes to a
similar extent as overt sexual assault (Broach, et al., 2006), the questions that naturally
follow are: what are the causes of this phenomenon and how might we address these issues
to reduce instances of unhealthy sex for women? Within the available literature, the most
frequently identified underlying causes of these consensual/unwanted sexual experiences
are societal expectations and norms concerning sexual behavior. “Acquiescence may be a
conscious decision made to avoid physical, threatened physical, or interpersonal coercion,
and challenging everyday expectations for gendered heterosexual interactions in intimate
relationships may have serious social consequences for some women, so the pressure to
conform to the legitimized behaviors becomes a form of social coercion” (Conroy, 2015).
When viewed in this light, it is easy to see how deeply entangled issues of sexual harm to
women and gender inequity truly are. While males can be, and are also victims of sexual
harm, “women are taught to be passive while simultaneously being charged with the task of
pleasing their sexual partners to maintain the relationship, and men are encouraged to take
a “body-centered” approach (with a focus on sex) to intimate relationships” (Conroy,
2015). The results of such gendered sexual standards are that women are routinely and
systematically subjected to sexual harm at a level so disproportionately high compared to
that of men that this issue simply must be recognized as one of gender inequity.
This line of reasoning serves to illuminate the fact that our society’s interest in
preventing sexual harm is focused almost exclusively on the area of sexual criminal
behavior as considered from a genderless perspective. Doing so overlooks the fact that
when rape, sexual assault, and other harms affect women, they also fall under the umbrella
of women’s rights issues since they stem from gender inequity/sexism. Ironically, seeking
to enhance rape laws may have inadvertently amplified other sexual problems for women
by focusing on consent, and in doing so implying that gender is irrelevant in sex crimes. All
people deserve to be protected from sex crimes, however, focusing exclusively on this angle
serves to divert attention and concern from the particular and distinct nature of women’s
experiences in this area, much as the proclamation that “all lives matter,” in its undeniable
truth, serves to detract attention from the plight of those who are experiencing
disproportionately high levels of harm as a result of racial discrimination. The solution to
this problem thus needs to begin by reframing our understanding of the problem of sexual
harm to include the unique position of women in society, and to recognize the role in their
sexual experiences which is played by the sexism in-built into our societal constructs of
sexuality. A significant component of reducing sexual harm then, ought to be pursuing the
ideal that “sexual activity should only take place with the mutual consent of the individuals
involved, motivated by shared sexual desire” (Conroy, et al., 2015); an ideal that is based
fundamentally on gender equality.
 In the end, it seems as though we as a society have thus far failed to address in any
holistic way, the problem of sexual harm to women in its various forms and manifestations.
Consent based legal theories have improved conditions for rape victims, but have also
detracted from the bigger picture of the sexual harms endured by women by “legitimizing”
consensual sex and imposing a framework of language and thought which makes it difficult
for women to articulate the problematic consensual sex experiences that they have.
Additionally, this conceptual format hides from view the central role played by gender
inequity and the need to recognize sexual harm as a women’s rights issue rather than
simply as a criminal justice issue. In order to protect people from the deeply impactful, life
changing effects of sexually harmful experiences, we must begin to acknowledge that when
the full range of sexually harmful experiences is considered, the term “people” becomes
largely synonymous with the term “women”. From this point, the underlying processes,
namely the sexism inherent in our fundamental understandings of gender roles in sexuality
must be scrutinized and its toxic nature exposed. Only when this is done, and when gender
equality has been achieved, will a genderless, consent based legal system work to protect
all people from the damaging effects of sexual harm.
 References

Broach, Jennifer L., and Patricia A. Petretic. "Beyond Traditional Definitions of Assault:
Expanding Our Focus to Include Sexually Coercive Experiences." SpringerLink, 30 Nov.
2006. Web.

Conroy, Nicole E. ; Krishnakumar, Ambika ; Leone, Janel M. “Reexamining issues of

conceptualization and willing consent: The hidden role of coercion in experiences of sexual
acquiescence.”. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, July 1, 2015, Vol.30(11), pp.1828-1846.

Thomas, Emily. Et al., "Faking to Finish-women Feign Sexual Pleasure to End 'bad' Sex."
Medical Xpress - Medical Research Advances and Health News. Medical Xpress, 08 July 2016.
Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Wertheimer, Alan. “Consent and Sexual Relations”. The Philosophy of Sex, edited by Nicholas
Power, Raja Halwani, Alan Soble, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013, pp. 359-
384.

West, Robin. “The Harms of Consensual Sex”. The Philosophy of Sex, edited by Nicholas
Power, Raja Halwani, Alan Soble, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013, pp. 387-
406.