ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how sexual consent frameworks are constructed and sustained through two examples of digital technologies where sexual consent frameworks and technologies coalesce. This is conducted via an in-depth analysis of two retired technological artefacts, originally available for download in 2018, to scrutinise the impact that their use may have on in-person interactions: a smartphone application LegalFling that digitally records consent in a quasi-legally binding agreement on the blockchain; and a Dress for Respect garment that records physical interactions of how many times its wearer is non-consensually touched in nightclubs. Focusing on retired technologies can enable us to identify what consensual frameworks might be at play in digital technologies designed to mediate sexual consent. At a high level, this analysis draws attention to how existing sexual technologies promote limited and potentially damaging conceptions of sexual consent that rely on inflexible, static, and contractual expectations of relationships between two people. For objects that seek to expose or protect against sexual violence, this work problematises restricted and ill-informed notions of what constitute harms, promoting incorrect assumptions about sexual abuse.
