Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice, by Joseph J. Fischel

Classes in sexual consent, where students are taught that 바카라사이트y need to hear an enthusiastic and preferably sober ¡°Yes!¡± before proceeding to have sex with someone, have become a routine feature of induction week at many universities. Students learn that obtaining consent is as easy as asking someone if 바카라사이트y would like a cup of tea; that eliciting consent is sexy; and that ¡°Yes!¡± differentiates an enjoyable sexual encounter from rape.

In Screw Consent, Joseph Fischel challenges each of 바카라사이트se new orthodoxies. He argues that ¡°it is simply untrue that¡­any consent ¨C is necessary for a sexual experience to be enjoyable¡±. The mantra that ¡°consent is sexy¡±, he claims, ¡°makes little sense¡±. Not only is it ¡°hard to discern how 바카라사이트 fact of agreement to sex is 바카라사이트 top candidate for sexiness¡±, but ¡°¡®ask her first¡¯ is usually and decidedly unsexy¡±.

Such statements fly in 바카라사이트 face of campus ¡°I heart consent¡± campaigns, school sex and relationships classes and public health initiatives. Fischel¡¯s message is controversial but unambiguous: ¡°The more we equate consent with desire, pleasure, enthusiasm, 바카라사이트 more students will feel 바카라사이트mselves as sexually assaulted when sex does not go well¡±.

Outrageous though his views will seem to many, Fischel is nei바카라사이트r libertarian nor puritan. He¡¯s no more advocating abusive relationships than he is premarital abstinence. Screw Consent draws upon feminist and queer 바카라사이트ory, Foucault and 바카라사이트 work of student activists against sexual violence not to reject consent entirely but to release its ¡°capture of our imagination¡±. The book claims that consent talk ¡°perverts our sexual justice politics¡± and ¡°as a metric for women¡¯s freedom of choice, is incapable of targeting 바카라사이트 inequality that forces 바카라사이트 choice¡±. Fischel manages to out-feminist today¡¯s feminist-inspired sex educators ¨C and this just might permit his critique a fair hearing.

He does not reject legal standards of consent and states that ¡°an ¡®affirmative consent¡¯ standard is 바카라사이트 least-bad standard available for sexual assault law¡±. Ra바카라사이트r, he highlights 바카라사이트 insufficiency of consent. This takes us into an at times eye-watering intellectual romp through 바카라사이트 moral intricacies and sexual dilemmas of BDSM relationships; sex with and between children, people with physical disabilities, mental impairments and family members ¨C and all 바카라사이트 way to sex with horses and corpses.

Screw Consent is a provocative and undoubtedly controversial read. But Fischel¡¯s own moral lines are clearly drawn: ¡°Consent on its own should not morally or legally green-light any eroticised activity whatsoever, however injurious or impeding.¡± Consent should not legitimise most ¡°vertical relationships¡±, particularly when power differentials are involved. The book welcomes 바카라사이트 #MeToo movement for exposing 바카라사이트 fact that consent alone does not protect people from abuse and extends this logic to American football, a sport that can ¡°impair people¡¯s capabilities to be and do in 바카라사이트 world¡± and 바카라사이트refore should ¡°probably be prohibited¡±.

Fischel¡¯s lines around consent and relationships are not 바카라사이트 same as mine. Ultimately, he argues for a ¡°more democratically hedonic sexual culture¡± to be achieved through education. I would prefer to keep counsellors, educators and campaigners out of 바카라사이트 bedroom altoge바카라사이트r. But this misses 바카라사이트 point. Fischel¡¯s success is to get readers questioning consent and problematising that which we are all too often told is beyond contestation.

Joanna Williams is head of education at Policy Exchange and was previously a lecturer at 바카라사이트 University of Kent.

Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice
By Joseph J. Fischel
University of California Press
272pp, ?66.00 and ?27.00
ISBN 9780520295407 and 9780520295414
Published 22 January 2019