In working with my students on understanding and exploring sexual assault and consent policies, I found an interesting and recent article on the lack of scholarship about precisely what "consent" is:
"‘Spontaneous’ Sexual Consent: An Analysis of Sexual Consent Literature" by
Beres, Melanie A (of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology). Feminism & Psychology, Volume 17, issue 1 (February 2007), p. 93-108.
I have access to it, but you probably don't, unless you're afiliated with a university.
So here's the abstact:
Sexual consent is an understudied and undertheorized concept despite its importance to feminist researchers and activists interested in sexual violence. Literature on consent, although sparse, has been produced from a variety of disciplines, including law, psychology, and sociology. This article is a critical review of current literature and current understandings of sexual consent. Different conceptualizations of consent are analysed including implicit and explicit definitions from legal theorists and sexual violence and consent researchers. Alternatives, including communicative sexuality, are discussed and feminist understandings of the social context of consent and the social forces that produce understandings of consent are examined. Directions for future research are suggested.
And here's a nice long quote from the beginning of the piece:
On a warm sunny day in a mountain resort town in the Canadian Rockies, I am sitting on a grassy slope interviewing a young transient worker about his experiences with casual sex, including how he and his partners communicated their willingness (and consent) to engage in sex. He sums up by saying, ‘it’s obvious, but it’s really hard to know’ when someone is willing to have sex with me. This man’s comment highlights the complex and often confusing quality of consent. On the one hand consent is a concept that is taken for granted. Many scholars use it without defining it explicitly, or questioning its use, assuming a shared understanding of the concept (see Hurd, 1996; Jones, 2002–03; Ostler, 2003; Walker, 1997). Additionally, sexual consent plays a pivotal role in discussions and debates about sexual violence because the absence of sexual consent is most often the defining characteristic of sexual violence (sex without consent). The purpose of this work on sexual violence and sexual consent is to prevent continued acts of violence; however, despite decades of feminist research, activism and legal reform, incidents of sexual violence have not declined (Carmody, 2005; Schulhofer, 1998).
While consent is critical to the understanding of sexual violence, it remains a nebulous concept. We are not privy to the details of the sexual experiences of others, and therefore we cannot learn how to communicate sexually based on others’ experiences, and talking about sex with a prospective partner is often considered taboo. This was reflected in lack of literature on sexual consent. I recently conducted a series of literature searches using psychology, sociology, and women’s studies academic databases. Searching for the term ‘sexual consent’ yielded between 30 and 42 results, while searching for ‘rape’ yielded between 2705 and 8145 results, and ‘sexual assault’ yielded between 1016 and 2006 results. The paucity of articles on sexual consent reflects the lack of scholarly attention to this critical concept. Even within the literature on sexual consent there is no consensus on what it is, how it should be defined or how it is communicated.
My introduction into discussions about the meaning of sexual consent came while I was coordinating a sexual assault education program in the mid-1990s. At that time I defined consent using the ‘I know it when I see it’ definition. While finding it difficult to articulate a comprehensive definition of consent, I was confident that given a description of a sexual event I would be able to distinguish a consensual from a non-consensual experience. Since I ended my position as coordinator of the sexual assault education program, I questioned my understanding of sexual consent and started examining a variety of scholarly writing on the topic. I have since abandoned my previous confidence in my own understanding of consent and I am left with more questions than answers. What is sexual consent, and how is it defined? How are these definitions used to enhance (or cloud) understandings of sexual violence?
...
I argue that current understandings of consent are underdeveloped and rely largely on assumed and implied definitions. There is a lack of empirical work on the communication of willingness and ‘consent’ to sexual relations. This empirical work is vital to increase our understandings of sexual consent and sexual violence.
There's quite a bit of interesting stuff going on in that article, and if anyone wants it, I can probably work out some way of emailing it to you. It references the Antioch College Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, which was controversial when it was first introduced, but which has become a model for many progressive colleges and universities. Beres states that
Antioch College has adopted a sexual consent policy similar to the model that Pineau (1989) suggested. The consent policy requires members of the campus community to verbally ask permission for each type of sexual activity, and also requires a positive verbal response in order for consent to be given (Antioch College, 2006). This policy is viewed as inconsistent with the progression of sexual activity according to students in Humphreys and Herold’s (2003) study. Most students said that they would not endorse a similar policy on their campus because it was unrealistic and hard to implement and enforce. Giving or asking verbally for consent was viewed as incompatible with the way it’s believed that sex takes place because it is seen as lacking romance and spontaneity(Humphreys and Herold, 2003). In addition, Schulhofer (1998) suggested that the social change required to implement this type of communicative sexuality would take too long, and leave women at risk throughout the process of change.
It may be possible that a communicative model of sexuality does not call for a complete metamorphosis of sexual behaviour as perceived by Humphreys and Herold’s (2003) respondents. Pineau (1996) made it clear that a verbal negotiation is not required, only that there are cues that communicate consent. These cues and behaviours may be embedded in the ways in which people already engage in sexual behaviour. Pineau gave an example:
If you undo one of my buttons, and I help with the rest, you may presume that I am happy to get undressed. If you undo my button, and I try to do it back up again or clutch at the gap created, then you should presume the opposite. (p. 97)
Pineau (1996) referred to the switch to a communicative model of sexuality as a paradigm shift. She assumed that this shift requires not only a radical shift in the way we think about consent, but also a shift in the way that we engage in sex. I am not convinced that a move towards communicative sexuality requires such a large shift. In order to determine consent, attention is often placed on whether or not, or to what degree, a woman resisted, or demonstrated her lack of consent. A shift to communicative sexuality changes the questions – it does not require that a woman prove she did not consent, but instead asks what happened to show and demonstrate consent. This opens spaces to interrogate the ways that women and men are already communicating a willingness to participate in sexual relations. Rather than assuming that this communication does not already take place (so we must legislate it), we can start by assuming that there is some communication there and begin interrogating it.
When I introduced the Antioch/communicative model to my students at a college with a much more standard policy of harassment/assault, I was prepared for resistance, so I began by explaining that it had been mocked and derided in this press, and why I still think it's important to take it seriously, even if they didn't find it workable. Then we had a discussion about the way sex appears in movie--underwear often sort of effortlessly disappearing and everything in soft focus and an expectation that it's sexier to have a kind of "silent understanding"--"ze looked into my eyes and I just knew...." So my often pretty conervative students were actually largely favorable to the basic idea of encouraging explicit consent, and working to make that more standard at our university.
One thing that I found most difficult to parse about the Antioch model, and I'd like to talk to some Antiochians about it, is this passage:
All parties must have unimpaired judgement (examples that may cause impairment include but are not limited to alcohol, drugs, mental health conditions, physical health conditions).
I think I get what it's saying--that mental and physical health conditions might impair one's judgment in some but not all circumstances so sexual activity cannot take place in those circumstances--but does it also inevitably suggest that anyone with a mental or physical health condition may never fully consent to sex? How do you read it?
Finally, further on discussions of campus consent policies, this feminist blogger (US) is concerned about the "flattening" effect of her university's consent policy, which seems to put rape and sexual assault at the same level as, to her, much less threatening activities, and still to reinforce gender norms. Here's the nub of her argument:
This post is part of my rethinking feminism series, because it highlights to me the ways in which institutions adopted what seemed to be "feminist friendly" policies, but only to serve their self-interest and not to actually prevent rape or sexual assault. My college has instituted an incredibly protectionist policy, that most conservatives would lambaste as the legacy of the P.C. era, but I believe there is something far more nefarious afoot. While the subtext of this college policy does suggest a 2nd wave view of woman's sexuality as passive and helpless to men's predatory sexual behavior, that is not the real problem with the code (although I do find it insulting). The real problem is that the college adopted this "feminist friendly" code, ultimately, to keep its rape statistics low and to protect itself from liability--either angry parents or the federal government. This policy does nothing to create a campus that is more respectful of women, nor does it promote healthy self-image or sexual behavior.
What do you think? |
