1st Edition
Dynamics of Sexual Consent Sex, Rape and the Grey Area In-Between
How does sexual consent work? How do we know that another person really wants to have sex with us? Why do people sometimes give in to sex that they are not in the mood for? And how come it is sometimes difficult to draw a sharp line between sex and assault? Dynamics of Sexual Consent addresses these questions based on deeply personal interviews with twenty Swedish women and men of various ages and sexual orientations. In doing so, it contributes to understandings of sexual consent and sexual grey areas through its combination of conceptual rigour, analytical detail and empirical richness.
While starting in the legal definition of consent as voluntary participation, the book broadens the discussion to a wider sociological and philosophical sphere where gendered power dynamics and relational dependencies challenge simplistic understandings of voluntariness. Contesting tendencies to see miscommunication as the key problem related to consent, it shows that emotional aspects are often the main factor standing in the way of genuinely consensual interactions. While the analysis is informed by a gender perspective emphasizing the gendered power asymmetries of heterosexuality, it also foregrounds men’s vulnerability and the power dynamics of same-sex interactions. A key argument of the book is that, given the contextual and ambiguous nature of sexual interactions, it is impossible to delineate unequivocal and concretely applicable and guidelines for what counts as consent. To compensate for the lack of universal, fail-safe rules, what is needed is an intensified collective reflection on consent and sexual grey areas, which can make individuals better equipped to identify and respect their own and others’ boundaries.
An empirically rich and conceptually sophisticated contribution to understandings of sexual consent and sexual grey areas, Dynamics of Sexual Consent will be of interest to scholars and students of gender studies, sociology and criminology.
1. Introduction
Consent as voluntary participation
The relational, affectable human
Sexual consent in the law
Consent in research
How is consent communicated?
The complexity of wanting
Perspectives from legal philosophy
Gender and power
The relationship between normative heterosex and violence
Sex wars
BDSM and consent
Men’s consent
The gender of sexual vulnerability
Beyond heterosexuality
Boundaries and grey areas
This book’s contribution
2. How does consent work?
Lennart: “It’s ridiculously simple signs”
Stella: “If you didn’t want to, you pushed the other person away”
Nils: “In that case, I could choose to hug her instead”
Elias: “It’s really tricky”
Oskar: “It’s, like, you feel it in the air”
The transgressive pub milieu
Can a partner “grope”?
Will I get elbowed or will she pull down her pants?
The failed morning gift
Consent: simple and utterly complex
3. Seduction or assault?
Julia: “Then you’ve persuaded them until they actually want to”
Stina: “I thought he probably wanted to anyway”
Nils: “Even if your head doesn’t want to, your body gets going”
Oskar: “I manipulated her into sex by exciting her”
Pernilla: “I let her take the step instead of me suggesting sex”
Gunnar: “I’m very restrained about what signals I send”
Human affectability, for good and bad
4. Giving in
Stina: “I thought that then he’d love me”
Anas: “I don’t want to make anyone unhappy”
Kristina: “You don’t have any reason to say no”
Nils: “As a guy, it’s hard to say no”
Oskar: “Saying no has always been connected to me feeling bad”
Gunnar: “She agreed so I’d be satisfied”
The agency of the victimized
5. Giving in – because you want to
Gunnar: “She wanted to do it for my sake”
Mariam: “You have to say yes sometimes”
Thomas: “It was a little unfair that I did it for him while he refused”
Stella: “I really worry that she wanted it because I wanted it”
Rikard: “Sex was a way of overcoming our problems”
Anders: The gender asymmetries of give-and-take sex
The larger context of “maintenance sex”
6. Sexual templates
Men’s burden of taking the initiative
Sexual liberation as imperative
Women who are too much
When there is no template
The tyranny of reciprocity?
The roles of the gay male scene
Five dicks as threat or treat?
Templates versus individuals
7. Knowing what you want
Cecilia: “I’ve always been bad at knowing what I want”
Stina: “I didn’t even reflect on whether I wanted to”
Wanting to want
Michael: “Horniness goes past fear and common sense”
Having no will
The boundary between me and you
8. Dominance and submission
Taking patriarchal degradation to its limit
Escaping the burden of wanting
Dominance and submission as a dynamic of validation
Where does the responsibility of the dominant start and end?
Norm-transgression versus self-harm
9. Beyond consent
When consent is not what is most important
Not being “sensed”
“Mentally raped”
Participating in one’s own violation
What happens afterwards
Our need for respect and care
10. Sexually invulnerable men?
Nils: “Like doing the dishes when you don’t want to”
Rikard: “Like when my favourite comedian isn’t funny”
Elias: “As if someone had been in my home against my will”
Turning away from one’s own vulnerability
The gay scene’s hypermasculine ideals
“Just fuck”
The paradox of (in)vulnerability
11. We must – still – talk more about sex
In favour of a collective reflection on the grey area
Consent can be emotionally difficult
Committed relationships do not protect people from assault and unwanted sex
The need for respect and care
People do not always know what they want
The participation of the victimized party
Same-sex dynamics of consent
The ambiguous significance of gender
Do we really need to talk more about sex in an overly sexualized world?
Appendix: Methodological approach
The participants
The interviews
Biography
Lena Gunnarsson is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Head of Gender Studies at Örebro University, Sweden. Her work explores gendered power dynamics of sexuality and intimacy and has contributed to conceptual debates on gender, sexuality, love and power as well as empirically investigated phenomena like consent dynamics, sexual grey areas and commodified sex and intimacy. Her work also includes meta-theoretical contributions where the philosophy of critical realism is used to intervene in feminist debates on ontology and epistemology. She is the author of The Contradictions of Love: Towards a feminist-realist ontology of sociosexuality (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of Gender, Feminism and Critical Realism: Exchanges, Challenges, Synergies (Routledge, 2017), Feminism and the Power of Love: Interdisciplinary Interventions (Routledge, 2018) and Critical Realism, Feminism, and Gender: A Reader (Routledge, 2020).
"This book is an essential resource for students, researchers, practitioners, and anyone seeking to comprehend sexual violence. Gunnarsson compellingly demonstrates how the line between consensual and coercive sex is recurrently blurred as sexual encounters often involve mixed feelings and desires and are shaped by gendered perceptions of sexuality."
Lucas Gottzén, Professor of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden
"Through close engagement with interviewees’ narratives, Gunnarsson weaves a complex analysis of the individual and collective contexts in which modern sexual desire, agency and activity are navigated. Concluding with a call for society to talk more, and more candidly, about sex, this book makes an important intervention into debates over sexual freedom."
Vanessa Munro, Professor of Law, University of Warwick, UK
"In this must-read book, Gunnarsson explores the intricacies of sexual consent and the social contexts that influence the 'if' and 'what' of sex. The result is a compelling account which broadens our focus to addressing a wider continuum of sexual harm, whilst not losing sight of the powerful role of positive sexual interactions to the human experience."
Anastasia Powell, Professor of Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University, Australia
"Sexual wanting is ambiguous, Gunnarsson recognizes in this intriguing contribution to understandings of consent. She does not provide easy answers, nor is she invested in binary understandings of gender, but rather invites us to reflect on sexual grey areas and attend to emotion and affect as key to the negotiation of consent."
Mary Lou Rasmussen, Professor of Sociology, The Australian National University, Australia
