Consent as Rhetorical Ability in “The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield”

ABSTRACT

This essay draws on theories of rhetorical ability to analyze public discourse on sexual consent. By emphasizing the rhetoricity of disability, these theories underscore the environmental conditions of communication. Through an analysis of the discourse surrounding a controversial legal case, the author develops a rhetorical theory of consent that calls attention to the way that arrangements of power enable and constrain the communicative conditions that facilitate the possibility of consent.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• race
• rhetorical ability
• sexual consent

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ For an adult with cognitive disabilities over the age for legal consent, there is no single “test” for determining whether or not a person has the capacity to consent. The determination is usually based on a combination of factors including IQ tests, “mental age” designations, and other life skill tests, including self-care, the capacity for decision making, and communication (Harris 489).

² This is the name that the court transcripts and New York Times articles used to refer to D.J.’s brother, in order to protect D.J.’s anonymity.

³ I use the name “D.J.” rather than his given name because this is the name that the court used to refer to him. Given the particularly invasive nature of the media coverage of this case, I’ve opted to use this anonymized name as well.

⁴ By sexual expression, I mean any and all sexual and/or romantic and/or intimate acts with oneself or another person that engage oneself or another person. Sexual expression could range from holding hands to bondage play to the kind of clothing one wears. With perhaps the only exception of private, solo masturbation, and other isolated acts, nearly everything else requires some degree of negotiated consent. Even in the case of isolated masturbation, spaces are usually shared and so the right to sexual expression in this way can be in tension with another’s right to be free from the harm of witnessing such acts, and/or becoming a masturbatory aid.

⁵ While often articulated linguistically, oral vocality is not a necessary condition of enunciation; nonverbal communication, sign language, or other modes of visual and embodied relationalities are also modes of “voice” (Black).