IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v21y2022i4p393-414.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social constraints on sexual consent

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Dougherty

Abstract

Sometimes, people consent to sex because they face social constraints. For example, someone may agree to sex because they believe that it would be rude to refuse. I defend a consent-centric analysis of these encounters. This analysis connects constraints from social contexts with constraints imposed by persons e.g. coercion. It results in my endorsing what I call the “Constraint Principle.†According to this principle, someone's consent to a sexual encounter lacks justificatory force if (i) they are consenting because withholding consent has an adverse feature, (ii) they are entitled to withhold consent without it being the case that withholding consent has this adverse feature; and (iii) it is not the case that the consent-giver has sincerely expressed that, out of the options that are available to their sexual partner, they most prefer to go through with the sexual encounter in the circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Dougherty, 2022. "Social constraints on sexual consent," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 21(4), pages 393-414, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:21:y:2022:i:4:p:393-414
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X221114620
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X221114620
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X221114620?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:21:y:2022:i:4:p:393-414. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.