ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what it means to consent to sex, and discusses its negative counterpart, nonconsensual or coercive sex. It focuses on the more abstract problems that surround efforts to define sexual consent and coercion. The chapter examines some specific questions about of how laws and policies should be crafted to protect victims and punish aggressors, while also protecting everyone’s rights. Communicative sexuality can be understood as one interpretation of affirmative consent, one in which nonverbal as well as verbal cues are appropriate markers for interest. Some critics of verbal affirmative-consent policies question whether asking permission and checking in during sex is compatible with sexual passion. In eighteenth-century common law, rape was characterized as sex outside marriage “by force and against a woman’s will”–and the characterization held roughly until the mid twentieth century. The chapter also considers different ways of understanding affirmative consent, before turning to broader questions about sexual autonomy.
