Sexual Consent as a Scientific Subject: A Literature Review

ABSTRACT

Despite the presumed centrality of sexual consent to definitions of sexual violence, it remains an ambiguous and often unexamined concept both in lay and professional/scientific discourses. The following literature review of peer-reviewed research studying sexual consent as a scientific object will thematically present major findings from said research and discuss the applications of these findings for educational measures. A reading of existing research in the social sciences on the topic demonstrates the incongruence of many definitions and representations of consent that are used both by researchers and educators alike with the everyday experiences of young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Consent
• sexual violence
• gender
• sexuality education
• prevention

Notes

1 Interestingly, there was little available research from the UK and other European countries on consent.

2 As of 2007, there were only 40 articles published on the subject in sociology, psychology, and feminist studies (Beres, 2007).

3 Initial interest for this article came from research on sexuality education for young people and question the role of consent in this education, specifically regarding the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence.

4 In addition to psychology and sociology, there is a considerable corpus of research on sexual consent in both law and philosophy. For the sake of a more focused analysis, research in these disciplines is not discussed in this article.

5 The studies summarized in this article present populations and results according to the gender binary and do not consider nonbinary identities.

6 Though it remains uncommon, there is some available research on same-sex interactions, namely Beres, Harold, and Maitland, 2004. In this study, the results on consent practices in same-sex interactions were similar to results from other studies on heterosexual consent communication practices.

7 Referring to Bourdieu's theory of spontaneous sociology.

8 However, studies have found that young people claim verbal communication is used more commonly than nonverbal cues to express nonconsent than it is for consent (Burkett and Hamilton, 2012; Jozkowski et al., 2014).

9 For example saying “is this ok?” rather than “will you have sex with me?” or such as kissing, removing clothing, agreeing to go home with someone, engaging in oral sex, etc.

10 In other words, the terms explained on page 12: “sexual compliance,” “sexual acquiescence,” or “willing unwanted” sex.

11 This term was chosen here, as opposed to “rape survivors” for example, because it is the term used by Peterson and Muehlenhard in this article.

12 As discussed in Part I, B on wantedness.