Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

Abstract

This article ultimately suggests one way to address the problem of nonconsensual sex, assault, and rape on college campuses, but it does so by focusing on a topic that our conversations about nonconsensual sex have often marginalized: harms occasioned by consensual but unwanted sex. I argue that the party who does not physically desire, does not emotionally welcome, and does not take pleasure in sex, has sometimes been harmed by that sex by virtue of its unwelcomeness, and that the harm is serious enough that we need to attend to it. Further, the harms caused by this sex are not simply psychological or emotional; they are political. I label this political harm “consensual sexual dysphoria”—the alienation and profound discomfort within one’s body caused by the sufferance of unwanted, undesired, unpleasurable and unwelcome – albeit consensual – sex that, over time, undermines one’s equality in a social and legal world that presupposes the moral as well as legal sufficiency of consent as a measure of subjective wellbeing.

I further argue that the ubiquity of consensual but unwanted sex – caused in part by the casual “transactionalization” of sex – may have contributed to the rise of all forms of sexual assault, including nonconsensual sex and rape, on college campuses as well as off. Therefore, if we want to address the causes of the spike in the number of accusations of unwanted sex, as well as simply respond with disciplinary actions when these accusations are made, we should perhaps attend to the apparent ubiquity of unwanted consensual sex: by attending to the latter, and its causes, we may actually drive down the number of assaultive sexual crimes on campus as well as off. And to address the underlying problem of consensual but unwanted sex, we need to rethink our understanding of the moral goodness of sex. Consent alone is not a sufficient condition. Instead, the moral goodness of sex requires mutual desire, mutual welcomeness, and mutual pleasure.

Publication Citation

66 J. Legal Educ. 804-821

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