The limits of consent

In 2017, the accusations against Harvey Weinstein broke the glass. Subsequently, the

hashtag

#MeToo - a slogan created by Tamara Burke in 2006 to draw attention to sexual violence against young women of color - spread on social media, inviting women to share their own experiences of sexual assault. In the months that followed, there was extensive media coverage, largely about abuses of power in the workplace. And, in the midst of this climate, publicly confessing personal experiences was seen as positive, obvious, and necessary.

I was happy with the media coverage, and I was also scared, to the point of sometimes having to jump to turn off the radio and its incessant parade of sordid stories. At the height of #MeToo, it sometimes seemed as if women were forced to tell our stories. The accumulation of stories online - on Facebook, on Twitter - as well as in person, gave rise to a kind of pressure, of expectation. When are you going to count yours? It was hard not to perceive the collective hunger for these stories, a hunger formulated in terms of concern and outrage, a hunger that fit like a glove on the belief that being open is a fundamental and axiomatic value of feminism. The #MeToo highlighted the story of women, but it also ran the risk of becoming an obligation,an indispensable demonstration of one's own feminist powers of self-improvement, one's determination to reject shame, one's own ability to challenge humiliation. It also satisfied a lascivious hunger for tales of abuse and humiliation of women ... albeit selectively.

When do we ask women to speak and why? Who benefits from what they say? Who is asked to speak first and what specific voices are being addressed? Although all accusations of sexual violence made by women tend to face strong opposition, the stories of well-to-do white women enjoyed a certain privilege during #MeToo to the detriment of, for example, young black women whose families had spent decades demanding that they be do justice to musician and sex offender R. Kelly. Studies have shown that statements of sexual violence crimes made by black women are less likely to be believed than those made by their white counterparts (as black girls are considered more adult and sexually experienced),and that the penalties for rape are more severe when the victim is white than when she is black. Not all voices are the same.

In recent years, two requirements for satisfactory sex have emerged: consent and self-knowledge

In any case, women are not only encouraged to talk about the past, but also about the future, as a protective measure: speaking clearly is a necessary ingredient to prevent future evils, not only to address the past.

In recent years, two requirements for satisfying sex have emerged: consent and self-knowledge.

In the sexual arena, where the concept of consent is the supreme king, women must speak ... and must speak about what they want.

They must also, therefore, know what it is they want.

In what I will call the “culture of consent” —the widespread rhetoric that asserts that consent is

the

key to transforming the evils of our sexual culture — the explicit verbalization of her desire is demanded as much as it is idealized, it is impertinently claimed as a sign of political progressivism. "You have to know what you want and know what your partner wants," urged an article in the

New York Times

in July 2018, ensuring that "satisfactory sex occurs when two objectives coincide." "Talk to your partner", exhorted in September of that same year a sex educator in the program

The New Age of Consent

, on BBC Radio 4, referring to talking directly and honestly about sex: first, if you want to have it, and, if so, what exactly do you want. Speak

before

reaching the bedroom, they told us; Talk in the bar, talk in the taxi on the way home: any awkward moment will have been worth it later. "It's a must," wrote Gigi Engle in

Teen Vogue.

- that there is enthusiastic consent on both sides to enjoy the experience ”, a widely agreed position that academic Joseph J. Fischel has refined into the concept that“ enthusiastic consent, from which we can infer desire, is not only the point starting for sexual pleasure, but practically guarantees it ”. Here, the voice of the woman carries a great weight: that of guaranteeing pleasure, that of improving sexual relations and solving violence. Consent, as Fischel says in

Screw Consent

, brings "moral magic to sex."

This rhetoric is not entirely new; The feminist struggle has been very much focused on consent, especially since the 1990s, and in doing so it has sparked a great deal of controversy. In 2008, Rachel Kramer Bussel wrote that “as women, it is our duty to ourselves and to our partners to be more explicit in asking for what we want in bed, as well as sharing what we don't want. Neither member of the couple can afford to be passive and just wait to see how far the other person will go ”. That we should say what we want and, of course, know what we want, has become a truism with which it is difficult to disagree if the autonomy and pleasure of women in sex is taken seriously. And this requirement for women, that they know and speak clearly about their desire,it is seen as intrinsically liberating, as it emphasizes the female capacity for - and her right to - sexual pleasure.

Philosopher Michel Foucault, with a megaphone, together with Jean-Paul Sartre, during a demonstration in 1972.INA / INA via Getty Images

For a long time, progressive currents have given sexuality and pleasure the role of substitutes for emancipation and liberation.

It was precisely this that the philosopher Michel Foucault criticized in 1976 in

The Will to Know

, when he wrote that "we leave satisfactory sex for tomorrow." He sarcastically paraphrased the position of those who promoted sexual liberation from the counterculture of the sixties and seventies: the Marxists, the revolutionaries, the Freudians; all those who thought that, to free ourselves from the moralizing clutches of the past, from the repressive Victorian tradition, we had to finally be honest about sexuality. Foucault, on the other hand, was skeptical about the way in which "we endeavor to forget the present and appeal to the future," and argued that stiff Victorians were actually very talkative about sex, even though such talkativeness manifested itself in a very of pathologies, abnormalities and aberrations. Not only did he challenge the classic concept that Victorians were cheap,repressed and committed to the vow of silence, but also opposed the undisputed certainty that talking about sex equals liberation and that silence equals repression. "We should not think," he wrote, "that by saying yes to sex one says no to power."

Sex has been, and continues to be, forbidden and regulated in a thousand ways, and women's sexuality in particular has been heavily restricted and controlled, but Foucault's idea is worth delving into. We are, again, at a time when it seems that it will be tomorrow — a morning that is already looming on the horizon, so close that we can touch it — when sex will be satisfying again; a time when we forget the present and appeal to the future, equipped as we are with the necessary tools to amend the repression of yesteryear: the tools of consent and, as we shall see, of sex research. But the mere act of speaking and sincerity are not emancipatory, just as neither speaking nor silence are liberating or oppressing

per se.

.

Furthermore, repression can operate through the mechanisms of speech, through what Foucault called "the incitement to discourses."

Consent, and its equating to absolute clarity, carries the weight of satisfying sexual interaction on the woman's behavior, on what she wants, on what she can know and say about her desires, on her ability to exercise a self. Self-assured sexual assurance that sex is mutually pleasurable and non-coercive.

Woe to the one who does not know herself and does not express that knowledge.

This, as we will see, is dangerous.

The woman is brought up to care about the feelings of the man;

she is instructed to feel responsible for her well-being and therefore also for her anger and violence

In an interview, a victim of Weinstein's sexual intimidation campaign said she had been afraid of "provoking the beast." Fear, when faced with their demands, of doing something that ignited his anger, violence, or desire for revenge. At Weinstein's 2020 trial in New York, a witness told the court that for Weinstein "hearing the word 'no' was like a spur to him." The woman is educated — not least by the coercive men themselves — to be overly concerned with the man's feelings; she is instructed to feel responsible for the well-being of the man, and therefore also for his anger and violence. In addition, he is taught that if he is "signaling," he must anticipate reactions; that if she says "no" after she appears to have shown interest, she will be the only one to blame for the repercussions.The wounded male ego is prone to attack, and considering that much of social communication is indirect - especially when fear comes into play - the woman may say no cautiously, cautiously, indirectly, as to allow the man keep up appearances and avoid upsetting him.

Verbalize the desire

A cautious refusal, however, may not be understood as a refusal, and the caution and delicacy with which it is expressed can play against a woman in the courtroom, in the field of allegations and scrutiny of her behavior.

Did you say not high enough?

Did he reject the beast?

Therefore, it is difficult to say no.

So is saying yes;

and also express the desire.

To begin with, the verbalization of desire does not guarantee pleasure for the woman, despite the encouraging and enthusiastic tone of much of the discourse of consent.

In the Michaela Coel series

I could destroy you

Arabella, who is a writer, and her friend Terry, an actress, are in Italy in a luxury apartment where Arabella tries to finish a manuscript. They go clubbing and Terry ends up coming home early, stopping at a bar along the way, where he is approached by an Italian. Before, we've seen him with a friend, spotting her, but he's already alone when Terry bumps into him. They dance, a sexual tension is established; clearly something is going to happen. Then the other man arrives; they do not reveal that they know each other. From Terry's point of view, the resulting trio is natural, fortuitous. After they've had sex — or rather, after they come — both men dress unceremoniously, in a rush to go home, and leave Terry hanging. They have already obtained their pleasure, they have reached orgasm,but what about hers? She wanted to sleep with them, but that doesn't stop her from feeling used and let down. Dejected, she watches them walk down the street together with complicit camaraderie; now their friendship and artifice seem obvious. Terry has a disturbing hunch that her own sexual curiosity has been matched by their maneuvers to direct it, using a subtle and ambiguous ruse. Consent, access and express the desire, are they guarantees of pleasure? Do you prevent men from using women? Of course not. Pleasure and the right to experience it are not equitably distributed.Terry has a disturbing hunch that her own sexual curiosity has been matched by their maneuvers to direct it, using a subtle and ambiguous ruse. Consent, access and express the desire, are they guarantees of pleasure? Do you prevent men from using women? Of course not. Pleasure and the right to experience it are not equitably distributed.Terry has a disturbing hunch that her own sexual curiosity has been matched by their maneuvers to direct it, using a subtle and ambiguous ruse. Consent, access and express the desire, are they guarantees of pleasure? Do you prevent men from using women? Of course not. Pleasure and the right to experience it are not equitably distributed.

Saying yes and expressing your own wishes clearly is also difficult, due to the sexist scrutiny that women are subjected to.

Saying yes and expressing your wishes clearly is also difficult, due to the sexist scrutiny to which women are inexorably subjected. Many rape and sexual assault trials do not revolve around whether the events occurred, but rather whether the victim consented to have sex. Thus, consent is confused with enjoyment, pleasure and desire. The ideal victim, as one prominent British lawyer has put it, "is preferable to be sexually inexperienced or at least respectable." Evidence that a woman has used apps like Tinder to find sexual partners can be used against her in court,even if it is irrelevant to the arguments in court and the predisposition of a woman to have sporadic sexual relations with a stranger often weighs heavily during a trial. If the case under trial has its origin in "a contact made through a website to flirt, there is little chance of conviction." In other words, you cannot be raped by someone you have met on Tinder, someone who is considered to have met because you are sure of your sexual desire.

Often times, a woman's sexual appetite is precisely the tool to exonerate male violence.

Why else, for example, would a lawyer show a plaintiff's underwear in court, as happened in a rape trial in Ireland in 2018?

The lawyer argued: “Look at how she was dressed.

She was wearing a thong with a bow on the front ”.

The applicant's underwear appears to be clear evidence of her sexual desire.

When a woman is considered to have agreed to something, she can no longer refuse anything.

Sex "out of the ordinary"

The female desire was also crucial in the review of the trial of the Welsh footballer Ched Evans, in 2016. Evans had been convicted and imprisoned for the rape of a nineteen-year-old woman. The review of the trial weighed evidence that the Court of Appeal had judged relevant, evidence related to the woman's sexual history, provided by two other men, who declared that she had a predilection for “

unusual

sex

": Supposedly, he had practiced intercourse on all fours with vaginal penetration from behind and had said" fuck me harder ".

The displays of pleasure weigh against a woman;

displays of pleasure and "perversion" which, by the way, women's magazines and sex advice manuals have been encouraging women to explore for decades for the sake of sexual liberation.

So that later they say of the ambiguous signals!

Talking about one's sexuality as a woman is reckless.

Writing publicly about my sexuality could, could on the day of my death, be used as evidence against me

A few years ago, when I wrote a first-person book about sexuality — about its pros and cons, its joys and shadows — I was asked a thousand times how I had been encouraged to take the risky and revealing step of writing about my own life. sexual, and a thousand times they told me how brave I had been. Those who liked the book told me that it had been brave, and they said it with a tone of praise and admiration; those who did not like it said - or wrote - the same in a much more scandalized tone. The common denominator was, as I came to understand, a certain ojiplot incredulity; the confirmation that talking about one's sexuality as a woman is reckless.

I, for my part, saw them and wished myself to keep at bay the concept that underlay all those reactions: that writing publicly about my sexuality could, until the day of my death, be used as evidence against me. I could not forget, even though I tried so hard, that if I were to accuse a man of assault, this black-on-white exploration of my sexuality could harm me: it could exonerate a man of guilt.

When I sensed that chill — that wave of horror — running through others, I took it as the typical rejection of a woman who talks openly about sex: gender-biased disapproval, double standards.

But perhaps part of that rejection reflects what we all know: that the woman who exposes herself, in a world that desires and punishes that impulse, becomes vulnerable.

In turn, their vulnerability provokes a fear that can easily turn into contempt or admiration.

The chill is a spasm of recognition and a collective warning: be careful.

Innocent and guilty

The emphasis on the clear expression of desire - on knowing what one wants, on expressing enthusiastic consent, on what Lola Olufemi calls "the pretty face of consent" - overlooks another important question:

whose

yes

is relevant? ? The sexuality of women of color is still perceived many times from the colonialist and orientalist fantasies of animality and exoticism. Racist stereotypes about the black woman as a hypersexual creature are deeply ingrained; when in 1753 Linnaeus classified human types, he defined African women as "shameless", and, in the South before the American Civil War, the rape of black slaves was not a crime, since the stereotype that black women it was promiscuous, it excluded her from the legal sphere.

Beyoncé, during her Formation World Tour, at the Barcelona Olympic Stadium in 2016.13thWitness / getty

These ideas have had long-lasting effects: recent studies of the behavior of American juries suggest that jurors are more likely to hold the offender of a white woman guilty than the offender of a black woman. The perception that black women are always willing to agree to have sex puts them in an unfair situation: the refusal is less likely to be understood as negative, while the yes is presupposed. If her desire is seen as a confirmation of what is already presupposed, then what she herself says about her desire is irrelevant, which therefore means that sex can never be violent, that rape is impossible. If a "no" is irrelevant,How is a "yes" going to be relevant? And what is the use of insisting on the emphatic expression of desire on the part of women whose explanation of yes and no is devoid of meaning?

Furthermore, how to counter racist allusions to black women's sexual desire without stifling what could be a crucial and radical expression of that desire? How to aspire to justice without denying pleasure, asks Adrienne Brown? Joan Morgan argues that, given the abundance of dehumanizing stereotypes, it is essential that black women stand up against inattention to their relationship with pleasure. Kehinde Andrews, in a review on the

Formation

of Beyoncé, wrote that “for me, the political position is completely lost, wrapped as it is in the 'succulent' sexualization of the black woman that we already expect from Beyoncé”.

For Andrews, sexualizing the body inevitably overshadows any political message.

If black women have historically been sexualized, should they avoid using or flaunting their sexuality in their work?

Should the female body - its pleasures, powers and pains - remain inane or absent in the face of a racist past and present?

It is a rather difficult dilemma to solve.

Translation by Alberto García Marcos.

Katherine Angel

is a doctor in the history of sexuality and psychiatry from the University of Cambridge and the author of the essay 'Daddy Issues.

An analysis of the father figure in contemporary culture '.

This text is excerpted from his new book,

'Good sex tomorrow.

Woman and desire in the age of consent '

(Alpha Decay), which is published this Monday.

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