ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is, first, to locate rape within a spectrum of problematic sexual encounters. In sections 1 and 2, I discuss a range of sexual activities that are all troubling in varying degrees: rape, coerced sex, and so-called ‘bad dates’—the grey area that ‘me too’ has implicated in its analyses of predatory sexual relations. The second purpose of this chapter is developed in section 3, which draws Second and Third Wave feminisms into a shared history of how our thinking about consent has developed from the ‘no means no’ model to recent formulations of the idea of enthusiastic consent. I consider future possibilities of evolution in consent education, specifically, the possibility that consent models of thinking about sex—while having undeniably advanced our thinking about positive and negative sexual relations—may have outlived their usefulness. In many cultures grappling with the ethical issues ‘me too’ has raised for sexual encounters, we have reached a plateau from which we need to move to a new way of thinking, one that will develop constructs of mutuality to allow all sexual agents to own their own desire, to speak authentically of wanting, and to learn how to negotiate mutually agreed-upon ways of satisfying these wants.
