How do we understand sexual pleasure in this age of ‘consent’?

March 6, 2018 1:26 PM

Liminal trust is a space in which partners can explore the value of sexual experiences precisely because they directly engage the line between permissibility and impermissiblity.
posted by semmi (43 comments total)

I'm not convinced that this argument works even on its own terms. If liminal space is sexy, then setting high standards of consent creates a greater space for sexiness to occur without danger. And, in any case, setting liminal spaces as the standard is a contradiction in terms. The whole point about liminality is that it is on the boundaries of transgression, it doesn't need to be socially sanctioned to exist; rather the opposite.
posted by howfar at 1:42 PM on March 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Unwanted, or partially wanted, sex can still be sexy and transformative.

To paraphrase Morty, that just sounds like rape with extra steps.
posted by Talez at 1:45 PM on March 6, 2018 [25 favorites]

Women’s sexual pleasure is often viewed as more complicated and less predictable than men’s. Historically, this assumption has contributed to the over-regulation of female sexual and reproductive capacities. Rather than the exception, ambiguity about exactly what is desired, and how that desire should be expressed, is the sexual norm. Women’s emancipatory projects should therefore focus on ways of incorporating this fact, rather than shunning it.

Holy leaps of faith, Batman! I read this paragraph about four times because I was so impressed by the number of assumptions that we're being asked to accept implicit in its words, with no defense or even elaboration:

-women's sexual pleasure being viewed as more complicated and less predictable than men's means that... by sentence three, that pleasure is more complex?
-How sure are we that this ambiguity about what is desired exists given that whole over-regulation of female sexuality thing, again?
-If assuming female sexual pleasure is more complicated and less predictable than men's leads to over-regulating female sexual/reproductive capacities--which I understand to mean leads to policing women's sexual and reproductive behavior and interfering with women's choices on a variety of levels--why are we celebrating this again?
-how sure are we that any individual sentence in this paragraph is true?
-how on earth does one follow from the previous sentence?
-Wait, hang on, usually when I hear people saying "incorporate this reality of women, don't shun it" I hear them framing those things as innately feminine for some reason. Are we even sure this is reality?
posted by sciatrix at 1:52 PM on March 6, 2018 [12 favorites]

I'd also argue that making "sexiness" (I don't really know what is intended to be meant by "transformative" here) the main standard by which we judge sex and its worth is extremely dangerous. People can be aroused by sex that is deeply damaging and abusive. This is a fact that is often employed by abusers to make their victims feel complicit in their abuse. I really don't think we benefit by promoting that idea.
posted by howfar at 1:53 PM on March 6, 2018 [21 favorites]

Jesus this argument is garbage top to bottom and conflates a lot of things that are in no way the same.

Women’s sexual pleasure is often viewed as more complicated and less predictable than men’s. Historically, this assumption has contributed to the over-regulation of female sexual and reproductive capacities. ... Women’s emancipatory projects should therefore focus on ways of incorporating this fact, rather than shunning it.

So because there has been a cultural myth that women have unpredictable and complicated desires that has, the article admits, actually lead to shitty outcomes (over-regulation), we should... acknowledge and accept this stereotype rather than dethroning it? What?

The author has no fucking clue what consent actually is, obviously. Consent is not comfort. Consent is not good sex. Bad sex is not rape. Vulnerable, trusting, terrifying, challenging, transformative, disgusting, sometimes violent-- any or all of these in sex is completely, totally, absolutely and in no way outside the realm of consent. You can consent to have sex that ends up being bad (bad as in, uncomfortable or unpleasurable for one or more parties.) You can consent to have sex that makes you feel shitty afterward. You can consent to have sex that you do not desire in the physical sense of arousal.

The same sexual encounter, taken as a whole, can be variously humiliating yet titillating, disgusting yet intriguing, frightening and yet compelling.

Jesus. It's like the author thinks real consenting sex has to take place in the dark in missionary position while listening to Enya.

Consent isn't difficult. It just means that, whatever else they are feeling, all parties involved want to be there, doing what they're doing. I can be repulsed, I can be absolutely ashamed of myself, I can be in incredible pain -- and I can still be consenting. This reads like it was written by the vanilla version of one of those doms who refuses to have safewords.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:53 PM on March 6, 2018 [25 favorites]

Fairly confident that most MeToo proponents don’t believe, as she suggests, that consent is synonymous with good sex. Continuous consent is a prerequisite for sex, after which the enjoyability and pleasure of the event will vary greatly depending on many factors (the participants, their history, novelty/familiarity, what acts are involved, skill, emotion, etc).
posted by scantee at 1:54 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

I want to clarify that when I say bad sex isn't rape, what I mean is sex that is not super fun or pleasurable for both parties isn't rape, not bad sex in the way it's sometimes used to talk about the female experience of bad sex, which often includes coercion.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:55 PM on March 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

In these moments, allowing ourselves to engage in intense personal vulnerability can make space for the production of liminal trust. This trust is based not on consent, but on a shared commitment to embrace the fact that sexual pleasure and danger often occupy the same space.

How in the actual hell can you have trust without consent? How? For me, acting without my consent is inherently a breach of my trust. What the fuck is this woman arguing for?
posted by sciatrix at 1:56 PM on March 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

wait guys i figured it out maybe this was written by a bot trained to read five million wannabe daddy doms' tumblrs
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:59 PM on March 6, 2018 [13 favorites]

Experimenting with pain or fear can shift previously anticipated sexual boundaries precisely because it engages vulnerable states of being. One can imagine that the appeal of choking, for example, resides at least partly in the genuineness of the fear that it provokes.

Okay this is precisely my wheelhouse and I'm here to say this is complete fucking garbage. Any responsible dominant (choker, in this example) gets the explicit consent of the chokee before this happens, or it is assault, period. You can have a LOT of fun provoking genuine fear in a consensual manner. Your partner knows (or should know) you're not going to do permanent damage, but you can override the prefrontal cortex and get to the lizard brain. The appeal is precisely that you are safe and "in danger" at the same time.
posted by AFABulous at 2:00 PM on March 6, 2018 [20 favorites]

One can imagine that the appeal of choking, for example, resides at least partly in the genuineness of the fear that it provokes.

Oh one can, can one? Am I misunderstanding the thrust, here, or is this author genuinely stating that one problem with affirmative consent is that it'll take the frisson out of BDSM? Because in my experience, if someone attempts to choke me without enthusiastic prior consent, the genuineness of my fear response is not sexy at all.

(On preview, jinx AFABulous!)
posted by merriment at 2:01 PM on March 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

"The same sexual encounter, taken as a whole, can be variously humiliating yet titillating, disgusting yet intriguing, frightening and yet compelling." Pure Bollocks! reads bad "Shades of Grey" porn.

This all reminds me too much of the sexual liberation garbage in the 60s, that mostly meant that women should screw any creep who asked them if his politics were right, and expect nothing in return. And of course no meant maybe. If a woman is humiliated, frightened and disgusted, she is not consenting, she is bearing it until she can escape.
posted by mermayd at 2:04 PM on March 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

I really didn't like the way she fancied up her sentences into logical corkscrews.

So, lady, if you want to bone someone scary and revolting, just walk up to him and say "I'd like to bone you" or do it the old-fashioned way and tell him "No, I would never, never, never, never bone you." (You can stamp your feet and tee-hee if you want to.) But stop trying to build a case that all women would be happied-up by the chance to have less consensual sex and wallow in more disgust. I don't think you're even close to right. Stop trying to suggest that I want what you want, and I want it ugly and scary to boot.
posted by puddledork at 2:05 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

Proof positive that being able to plausibly string together a bunch of fifty-cent words doesn't equal having an argument that's worth a damn.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:06 PM on March 6, 2018 [7 favorites]

Yeah. I'm really struggling to see anything that could be seen as of any value in this article, even if one were to take the issue of consent as a cosy academic game, rather than a matter of pressing concern for real people on a moment to moment basis.
posted by howfar at 2:08 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

Women’s sexual pleasure is often viewed as more complicated and less predictable than men’s. Historically, this assumption has contributed to the over-regulation of female sexual and reproductive capacities

If I believed for one minute that society's regulation of female sexuality had John Aloysius Diddly-Squat to do with women's sexual pleasure (or lack thereof), I'd be the proud owner of a bridge in Brooklyn.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:11 PM on March 6, 2018 [9 favorites]

I usually like Aeon, and this is a pile of sophomoric style without substance that engages, at best, with feminism and the dialogue surrounding consent by fundamentally misunderstanding what activists and workers concerned with sexual consent are talking about.

I am actually contemplating a letter to the editor.
posted by sciatrix at 2:17 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

Aargh what a pile of crap this article is! Seriously it reads like someone in high school wrote it at 3am by cut-and-pasting a bunch of other people's opinions and trying to make it sound more plausible by chucking in some jargon. So aggravating!

I would like to protest by going off and having some completely, enthusiastically consensual liminal sex but I have a headache now.
posted by Athanassiel at 2:28 PM on March 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

Well that essay makes me pretty angry.
posted by radiocontrolled at 2:41 PM on March 6, 2018

This person is an idiot.
posted by runcibleshaw at 2:48 PM on March 6, 2018

The judge must then decide whether, on the whole, both the claim of non-consent is believable, and whether the accused knew, or should have known, that consent was not present or had been withdrawn. From beginning to end, the law relies on different kinds of evidence and signs, direct and indirect, to build a construct of consent.

What this means is that consent is not a thing-in-itself, out there to be found, either by a sexual partner or by a judge or jury.

Good God. I have never before wanted to coerce somebody to do a law degree without their consent, but this nonsense argument is getting me there. You can write the sentence “the law relies on different kinds of evidence and signs, direct and indirect, to build a construct of” any fact whatsoever. Was A’s death caused by B strangling him? The law relies on medical evidence, evidence from witnesses, signs direct and direct, to build up its construct of “homicide”. Or “causation.” Or “death.” It in no way follows that the fact that the law is trying to discover means nothing, morally, or legally, or as a crude physical fact; death is not a socially constructed made-up thing, and neither is consent.

2017 and 2018-so-far have not been good years for public discourse. Despite all the competition, this still makes it to almost the stupidest thing I’ve ever read in my life; only a choice handful of Trump tweets and MRA blogs are worse, by the skin of their teeth.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:48 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

This all starts to boil down to me to one core idea: People think that a pretend version of getting ravished in their chosen manner is going to be less fun because everybody knows what's going on. But it ignores this vast part of the human experience which is that we actually kind of suck at objectively experiencing fiction as artificial. Our brains are completely, happily, set up for pretending.

Human beings love all kinds of shit in fiction that we absolutely do not want in real life, and there's all kinds of cases where responsible adulthood means not really doing the things you like in pretend because you understand that they hurt people in the real world. I'm totally behind the idea that perceived deviancy or danger can have a lot of tie-in with sex... but there's no need for it to have any actual proximity to real danger, any more than I need to go risk actually getting killed when I've got video games.
posted by Sequence at 2:52 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

Any responsible dominant (choker, in this example) gets the explicit consent of the chokee before this happens, or it is assault, period.

Not to mention a great way to "accidentally" injure someone.

It's like she doesn't understand that part of the point of acting out these kinds of fantasies is to have those experiences, but in a way that is fundamentally safe (within the parameters of the action, at least) and consensual!

Imagine substituting in "rape scene-in-the-technical-sense-of-scene" for "choking." "One can imagine that the appeal of [a rape scene], for example, resides at least partly in the genuineness of the fear that it provokes." Following this line of reasoning, we could have really good transformative exciting sex with the appeal and the genuineness by having the man enact such a scene without that apparently profoundly unsexifying advance consent. Let's experiment with the pain and fear!
posted by praemunire at 2:52 PM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have never before wanted to coerce somebody to do a law degree without their consent

Supposedly the author is an assistant professor of law. The mind boggles.
posted by Athanassiel at 2:55 PM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I couldn’t get past the subscribe-or-make-a-donation popup. I don’t want to be that intimate with the article. Thanks for the pull-quotes, ideally they will publish a retraction and an apology. Yikes.
posted by childofTethys at 2:56 PM on March 6, 2018

Supposedly the author is an assistant professor of law. The mind boggles.

My mind is now too boggled to make sentences. I assume she is trying to be daring and contrarian but dfjdsaljjljk what???
posted by Aravis76 at 2:58 PM on March 6, 2018

I was hoping this post was just going to go away, but I guess not. It’s obviously a terrible idea, like saying a roller coaster can only truly be exciting if it’s in such poor condition that you are rightfully and legitimately afraid for your life. Otherwise the terror and excitement is just fake.
posted by rikschell at 3:04 PM on March 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

She is researching sexual violence as a war crime...including allied sexual violence against German women at the end of WWII. She should get in touch with Harvard’s Title IX Coordinator, stat!
posted by childofTethys at 3:06 PM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

That definition of liminal trust strikes me as a sick perversion of the beauty when one person trusts so completely that they are enabled to have a transformational experience. It makes the whole thing gross, as if changing some sexual act from non-permissible to permissible is the only goal of the transformation possible in such a space.

Permission is the lowest standard of consent, and there's no liminal trust at that level. Engagement, enablement, nurturance, encouragement, compassion, and empathy are the basis of transformational experiences that come from within, rather than pushing boundaries from the outside.

Gah. *twitch*
posted by Revvy at 3:10 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

I don't know what it is about sex that makes people think like this. Is there any other human interaction that you could argue is harmed and cheapened by consent? Are conversations best when one participant doesn't want to be there? Is it important that every business meeting include people that wish they were anywhere else? When you ask someone to spot you at the gym do you pick the person that seems to not enjoy being there? So why is it so important for sex to involve someone who wishes it didn't involve them?

I get that transgressive acts can be thrilling, but transgression and consent aren't mutually exclusive. I'm a strong proponent of enthusiastic affirmative consent, but it doesn't have to be like that. Consent doesn't have to be anything more than the ability to say "stop" and the knowledge that your decision will be respected by your partner(s). How can that possibly be too much to ask? It's the baseline level at which all human interactions should occur.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:10 PM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

It was badly written essay, but I think the author is touching on the idea that consent is not a substitute for trust, and nonviolent sex has to do with trust which leads to the concept of liminality. I think that's a better way to translate the questions and issues.

And further what that means is a criticism of a kind of reification of 'consent' where this term serves a reductive and unnuanced role in activist discourse. That's quite obviously the piece's apparent concern. And then there's a paragraph in the middle which is basically saying, if there's consent you also have to consider the question of meta-consent. And from that again a point that it's ceding the discourse to the patriarchy if "we" don't try to develop these notions better.

So overall I think it's fair to say the essay was bad, in particular badly organized—why throw in these terms (liminality) that most people aren't familiar with without a fuller development? 1300 words is not enough. But some of these questions can be synthesized. Maybe it's an academic privilege thing, the author is law school professor.

My personal experience with consent was when I was sharing a room while traveling and when I was brushing my teeth the guy comes up and kisses me. Was that consensual or not? I'd say it depends on the theoretical lens, on the power dynamics present, etc.
posted by polymodus at 3:14 PM on March 6, 2018

This utter pile of garbage horseshit did get me to watch The Love Witch again today though so, like, that's a minor win.
posted by WidgetAlley at 3:15 PM on March 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I usually like Aeon and lately I have decided I should be ponying up when these sites ask for donation. So I made the donation and then got to the article. Now I feel like a terrible garbage human for paying for THAT. Seriously WTF is this? It's partially gibberish and partially deplorable. Yuck!
posted by elizilla at 3:16 PM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

A criticism of a kind of reification of 'consent' where this term serves a reductive and unnuanced role

That’s Robin West’s argument, in the piece this author links in order to criticise. West argues “consent is not sufficient”; there’s more to coercion, in her view, than a binary distinction between consent and non-consent. This author spells out that she means the reverse—that consent is not always necessary—and goes on to say that the law should change to reflect this. That’s not a problem with structuring an argument. It’s a fundamental moral blindness.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:17 PM on March 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Never date this person. Never ever play with them in a kinky nightclub.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

elizilla, there has never been a better time to ask for your money back with a polite letter explaining exactly why.
posted by tobascodagama at 3:22 PM on March 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I’m now reminded of sitting in a workshop last year, listening to a scholar defend a paper ‘problematising’ human rights discourse that gradually—to the blank amazement of everyone in the room—became a straight-up case for decriminalising torture. That was quite something, an example of ‘critical’ scholarship that so uncritically applies critical deconstruction to every concept that it becomes both dangerous and nonsensical. This is straight out of that tradition.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:32 PM on March 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I would prefer it if people would not post rape apologias to the front page of MetaFilter, thank you.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:39 PM on March 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

Is there any other human interaction that you could argue is harmed and cheapened by consent?

Maybe not consent exactly, but there is certainly a strong current of doing things because they are "good for you" even when you don't want to which underpins the whole suffering-as-moral-improvement line of thought. You don't want to play sports? You have to, it's good for you. You don't want to eat your peas? You have to, it's good for you. You don't want to have sex? You have to, it's good for... okay, well not you, but the person who wants to have sex with you even when you don't want to and hey! You might just find it a transformative experience! Damage is transformative, right?
posted by Athanassiel at 3:44 PM on March 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I flagged it, thinking that since every comment was people being horrified someone would even make that argument, mods might consider we were well enough without it. But I guess it's whatever the Metafilter equivalent of clickbait is.
posted by rikschell at 3:44 PM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

You know how someone wants to argue some reactionary, contrarian point against some glaringly obvious facts, and so they first pretend that the glaringly obvious facts are actually not only complex but incomprehensibly so, and then offers instead a hot take that is basically "let's turn the clock back 200 years or so" but couches it in a heap of pseudointellectual jargon?

Yeah.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:44 PM on March 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

The title gave me a...shudder of horror.* The body of the argument just reinforced that.

Of course you can have all kinds of sexual pleasure involving power and trust. That's BDSM 101. You also... NEED GODDAMN CONSENT, ASSHOLE, NOT 'CONSENT'.

THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, NOT EVEN WITHIN THE FAIRLY LIMITED BOUNDS OF ROCKET SCIENCE.

Jesus Christ, it's like nothing has happened since the 80s.

*and, I assure you, dear OP, not in a good way.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:45 PM on March 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

For background, I'm not vanilla — my husband and I were both kinky when we met, and he proposed to me at Living in Leather XI after bottoming in public for the first time. "Flog your way to a marriage proposal" worked great for me, and it's worked for both of us for 20+ years since then.

But not all sex can be – or should be – reduced to an atomistic meeting of the minds of two individuals. Sometimes what we want is not fully known to us in advance. The details of desire and satisfaction are often discovered, and produced, in the sexual moment.

The idea that active consent means a contractual agreement up front where both/all parties agree "we are open to A, B, and C; willing to explore G, H, and I; completely unwilling to engage in P, Q, or R" fundamentally misunderstands how active/affirmative consent works.

Rather than the exception, ambiguity about exactly what is desired, and how that desire should be expressed, is the sexual norm. Women’s emancipatory projects should therefore focus on ways of incorporating this fact, rather than shunning it.

So, because we as a culture previously haven't bothered or been willing to openly and honestly discuss female sexual desire means that women who want to change this should… actively embrace the "ambiguity" that's resulted? This makes no sense.

The actualisation of the sexual self can happen at the same time that degrees of fear, repulsion and uncertainty – as well as excitement and intrigue – are present on both sides. In these moments, allowing ourselves to engage in intense personal vulnerability can make space for the production of liminal trust.

You've got to have basic trust before you can hope to reach this kind of "liminal" trust, IME.

Consent is no more, or less, than an indicator of how a given society understands particular sexual behaviour.

What.

That's not a question, that's the sound of me nopeing out of a piece. This is badly reasoned nonsense.

(The entire thing is painfully heterocentric as well.)
posted by Lexica at 3:45 PM on March 6, 2018 [4 favorites]