On college campuses and elsewhere, not everyone fully understands and embraces the importance of consent—or gets the basics of sex. And even when people have a sophisticated understanding of sex, American culture offers little to model healthy sexual encounters beyond the threshold of consent. Because the U.S. is such a pluralistic place, with so many conflicting viewpoints about how people should live their lives, American culture inevitably sends lots of mixed messages about what having a good sex life actually means—or looks like.
It’s one thing to ensure that all sex is legal, and that everyone is free to have sex based on their rights as individuals. It’s another to have a culture that encourages people, and particularly young adults, to seek out sexual encounters that are emotionally constructive and based on affirmative values of mutual respect, dignity, and care. As Catharine MacKinnon wrote in 1988, “It is not that life and art imitate each other; in sexuality, they are each other.”
In an interview, Esther Perel, a sex therapist and the author of Mating in Captivity, said, “I find it amazing that this country at this point is going to spill quantities of ink talking about Fifty Shades, when it doesn’t even have a basic education on sex. It’s like you’re introducing alcohol to people who haven’t had any water in years.”
Emma Green, “Consent Isn’t Enough: The Troubling Sex of Fifty Shades”, The Atlantic (10 February 2015) [http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/consent-isnt-enough-in-fifty-shades-of-grey/385267/]