ABSTRACT

The good reason for adopting the standard lies in the dangers of reliance on anything other than explicit affirmative consent. Sex is an opening up of one person to another, a mutual disclosure in circumstances of particular intimacy and vulnerability. This chapter discusses three different worries about the very idea of sexual consent: the privacy of sex, consensual sex is passionless sex and relationships beyond consent. The privacy of sex worry derives from the fact that sexual activity is in essence a private activity. The essential privacy of sexual behaviour presents a difficulty for the securing of any assurance that such behaviour is also consensual. The second, more serious kind of worry about the idea of sexual consensuality arises from the nature of sex itself. The third and final worry about the very idea of sexual consent is best broached by means of an example. There are reasons then to doubt that there are sexual conventions in the manner alleged.