consent is an instrument of freedom

I have a lot of thoughts about this Twitter conversation, archived at Alyssa Rosenberg's blog, about media depictions of sex. Some of it, I agreed with. Some of it, I disagreed with. And some of it left me concerned about its rhetorical and political success, about how well this sort of conversation actually functions to reach beyond the group of like-minded people who have them. My particular fear, though, is my perception that in some venues, any disagreement about sex is often conflated with a lack of conviction when it comes to the need for consent, which is unfair and ultimately self-defeating.

So to start with the obvious: I believe that there is one rule about sex that must be followed at all times and by all people, the rule of consent-- that informed consent be given by all parties, that all parties be mentally and emotionally cognizant of the act and its consequences and in a state of mental and physical health sufficient to grant consent, and that all parties choose entirely free of coercion, explicit or implied. Without constant consent, there is no sexual behavior that is not a crime. With constant consent, there is no sexual behavior that is morally impermissible. There is certainly unsatisfactory sex with consent. There is no immoral sex with consent. I do not believe in perversion.

I also believe that, beyond the rule of consent, there is a world of freedom and choice to be had, one which that conversation seems to constrain in ways that produce no more justice, or safety, to me. If those are being expressed merely as the personal proclivities of those involved, fair enough. But I think you'll find that there's a constant slippage in the conversation between what constitutes sexual preference and what constitutes appropriately consensual sexual conduct.

I think (I hope!) that everyone in that conversation would agree that sex can be fully consensual and mutually enjoyable for both parties without being, for example, silly and filled with laughter. (I simultaneously recognize the point that they're making, that sex is almost exclusively a very serious affair in the movies.) That seems like straightforward preference. But what about the discussion of "how many love scenes start wordlessly, with man grabbing woman and kissing her passionately"? Certainly, grabbing someone and kissing them can be an impermissible act of sexual aggression. But I'm going to stake out a controversial space here and say that one person wordlessly approaching another and embracing them in a passionate kiss is a behavior that has very, very often been fully consensual and an act of utter human joy. For men and women, gay and straight alike. I'm gonna really go out on a limb and say that in fact lots of people derive deep pleasure from spontaneous passionate kissing, and not only would consent to same but would very much like it to happen more often.

I am also disturbed by Rosenberg's implication that either consent is explicitly voiced or it is merely intuited. I agree: intuiting consent is deeply problematic. But consent can be communicated without being explicitly voiced. Many, many people (gay and straight, men and women) engage in fully consensual and mutually pleasurable sexual behavior every day without anyone giving explicit voiced consent. The use of nonverbal communication to assent to sexual activity, when paired with the ability of each participant to verbally or nonverbally indicate the desire to stop and the firm commitment of the other participant(s) to stop in that case, is not somehow untoward or on a spectrum of rape. It's the way many people undergo their sexual lives. In my own life, consensual and mutually enjoyable sex has happened without explicitly vocalized consent, and that has led to future sex and long-term romantic relationships. I believe I join many, many people in that regard. I also have had sex where explicit consent was proffered and received, and that was great too. The very meaning of sexual freedom is that sex will not always be the same.

Now for those who always want explicit, voiced consent to be the expectation in their own lives and their own sexual activity, great. That's a stance I understand and value. If the complaint is merely that pop culture does not depict that kind of activity, it's a valid criticism. But the slide into acting as though consent that is not vocalized is somehow inherently problematic worries me. Not out of the feeling of being personally judged, but because I think that stance is the kind of casually politically self-defeating attitude I encounter in social liberalism all the time. I have to tell you: concern trolling passionate kissing does not strike me as a way to build a bigger coalition. The sex positive turn in feminism occurred because feminist women argued for their right to the enjoyment of consensual sex while maintaining their status as feminists. It also emerged from an understanding that a movement that was unfairly depicted as anti-sex was not going to enjoy long-lasting or broad political success.

If I have misread this conversation (constrained, as it is, by an unnatural limitation in characters-per-expression), then I apologize. If the point is simply to open up our cultural definition of what good sex entails and looks like, then that is a purpose I applaud. If I have assumed otherwise, it's because of a constant effort on the part of some strains of social liberalism to define all disagreement on a spectrum of the worst possible behaviors. Take the necessary and principle effort against anti-Semitism. The tendency to make accusations of anti-Semitism more and more common has not made the effort more successful. Just the opposite: the constancy of the accusations has threatened to undermine the effort against anti-Semitism by making the accusation meaningless. In a similar fashion, the failure to adequately differentiate between what we see as sexual practice that is most conducive to enjoyment, and the specific and immensely important discussion about what constitutes consent, threatens to make the pursuit of zero sexual violence harder, not easier.

As I've said: the first commitment must be to continue to insist on the absolute and non-negotiable necessity of informed, non-coercive, adult consent between all parties. Given the way in which sexual violence is still a deep and widespread problem in our society, and given the culture that excuses it, I will work with anyone who is committed to that effort. Beyond consent, there is a world of difference and personal preference, one in which mutually consenting adults can find pleasure and fulfillment in a myriad of ways that might not appeal to the rest of us. Part of what social liberalism has fought for, over the past decades, is the right for consenting adults to engage in sexual behaviors in their own beds that others would not want to undertake in theirs. The fight for consent and against sexual violence is among the most pressing moral requirements of all people. But we should not allow that effort to become the sole lens through which we view sexual activity, which produces human flourishing as surely and as deeply as any other aspect of human life. And discussing sex in a way that at once insists on consent and yet sees beyond defining sex only in relation to sexual violence is a key political strategy for engaging the world beyond our followers on Tumblr or Twitter.

To the degree to which that conversation is a part of such a broadening of the conversation, I applaud it. To the degree to which it obscures the difference between issues of personal preference and issues of consent, I am concerned. In either case, the way forward is the same, which is to the continued effort for sexual justice, against sexual violence, towards the end of rape culture, and to the celebration of a world of sexual pleasure and sexual freedom.