Abstract
Despite efforts by feminists to educate people about healthy sexual interactions and to promote the benefits of affirmative consent, a heterogendered imbalance in sexual intimacy persists. Much of the societal and research attention has focused on clear cases of nonconsensual sex, but a wider lens that incorporates social pressures and coercion is needed. (Mostly) cis-men continue to pressure and coerce their partners (mostly people who identify as women) to acquiesce to sexual intimacy. Our heteropatriarchal culture continues to perpetuate the belief that men are owed sex from women in many situations. Feminist scholars have argued that, instead of a stark line between consensual and nonconsensual sex, there is a continuum or spectrum ranging from sexual consent to sexual assault, creating a large “grey area” in which partners must navigate sexual intimacy. This grey area is not gender neutral. Gendered structure, culture, discourse, and practices help to normalize heterogendered dominance in everyday life, undermining women’s sexual agency while also mobilizing rape. Drawing on interviews with university students (N=45) who have navigated this spectrum, we seek to map the grey area, exploring how consent is often hijacked through relentless pressure and coercion. When pressure and coercion are encoded into the gendered order as entitlements granted to men, the line between sexual assault and agentic, “consensual” sex becomes less and less discernible. We conclude that, in order to foster sexual autonomy, gendered power dynamics must be disentangled from sexual intimacy.
Highlights
Two decades into the 21st Century, the conceptualization, legislation, and practice of sexual consent on college campuses remains contested (Metz, 2021), shaped by larger social trends
We argue that, in order to understand the limitations of affirmative consent as it is typically defined within university policies and to prevent sexual assult, we must examine the power dynamics occurring in the “grey area.”
We find that subjects navigated the grey area of sex in their intimate encounters of all kinds—during casual hook ups, at parties and in bars, on dates, and in committed relationships
Summary
Two decades into the 21st Century, the conceptualization, legislation, and practice of sexual consent on college campuses remains contested (Metz, 2021), shaped by larger social trends. Many colleges and universities have adopted ostensibly sex-positive affirmative consent policies aimed at reducing sexual assault, while emphasizing mutual pleasure and communication (Kulbaga & Spencer, 2019). Consent must demonstrate that all individuals understand, are aware of and agree to the “who” (same partners), “what” (same acts), “where” (same location), “when” (same time), and “how” (the same way and under the same conditions) of the sexual activity (https://www.niu.edu/clery/annual_security_report.pdf ). This university goes on to specify that consent must be mutually understandable and sober, that no force can be used, and that consent can be withdrawn at any time. This means that people can consent to one form of intimacy and deny consent to another within the same sexual encounter
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