“Consent exists in a gray zone between legalistic framing of sexual conduct and psychological rationalization”

Consent has become the watchword of the current phase of the sexual revolution. The term is acquiring additional legalistic accretions, such as “affirmative consent,” which requires the participants to make many repeated inquiries about the willingness of the partner before they proceed.

But “consent” is really no answer to the deeper questions that sexual intimacy inevitably raises for men and women. And ramping up consent with stronger affirmations of willingness doesn’t change the shiftiness of the idea.

Consent exists in a gray zone between legalistic framing of sexual conduct and psychological rationalization. It is the all-purpose permission slip and excuse of the hook-up culture. In any and all subsequent recriminations, the dispute turns on whether consent was granted—or withdrawn, or exceeded, etc. This has a readily grasped logic based on the premise that people make well-deliberated choices about sex; they know what they mean and they mean what they say. Everyone admits that a woman’s consent can be impaired by intoxication, but this stops short of admitting that both women’s and men’s consent is often impaired by immaturity, lust, peer pressure, and the thousand other things that lead people in doubtful situations to make doubtful decisions.

College students who seemed to have “consented” to sexual encounters at the time, upon reflection decide that they were coerced. These late-blooming allegations typically have little credibility with law enforcement officials and courts, but they are worth taking seriously as evidence that sexual behavior has its biocultural logic that cannot be wished away.

Peter Wood, “The Meaning of Sex”, The Weekly Standard (4 May 2015) [http://weeklystandard.com/articles/meaning-sex_928461.html?page=3]