ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that a false consciousness lens is troubling when it is applied to sexual behavior and desire, particularly in terms of the consequences of the perspective on validations of some persons' and groups' consent and the invalidation of others'. It focuses on legal cases involving sadomasochism. The chapter explains that framing consent to perversion as false consciousness elides the distinction between willing and/or wanted and unwilling and/or unwanted sexual interactions. It describes that framing consent to 'perversion' as false consciousness elides distinctions between willing and/or wanted and unwilling and/or unwanted sexual interactions. The chapter describes that excluding bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism from legalist feminist visions of sexuality was never restricted to the sex-negative camps of the feminist sex wars. In embracing institutional legalism and in adopting legalistic forms of community formation, such feminisms often replicate the law's tendency to disempower sexually marginalized subjects.
