ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on nonaggravated or acquaintance rape and the role of consent in its determination. Failure to secure consent, particularly over significant matters such as sexual access, is harm to a person's worth or value as a fully fledged equal moral agent. The criminal law to support sexual autonomy should stay away from most areas of sexuality except those involving harm to others – infractions of negative autonomy. Like many liberties, those that make up sexual autonomy are reserved for competent adult agents. There is a lot of confusion over consent, particularly in rape cases, because there are a variety of ideas of consent at work in law and in the vernacular generally. To ensure autonomy, consent must be voluntary and deliberate since its 'understood purpose is to change the structure of rights of the parties involved and to generate obligations for the consenters'.
