Consent,Legitimation, and Dysphoria |
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| Authors: | Robin West |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy at Georgetown University. I would like to thank David Kirwin, Virginia Mantovalou, the London School of Economics and the Modern Law Review for inviting this article as a part of their Chorley Lecture Series. 2. I would also like to thank Deborah Epstein, David Luban, David Grant and the participants at the University of California Irvine Law School and Georgetown University Law Center's faculty workshops for comments on early drafts. All URLs were last accessed 1 October 2019. |
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| Abstract: | Ideals of consent and consensuality are rapidly displacing ideals of legality as the demarcation of lawful from unlawful, legitimate from illegitimate, and good from bad. This is a particularly pronounced trend in the areas of sexual and reproductive rights and ethics. Consensual sex has almost completely displaced marital sex as the demarcation of not only criminal from laudatory sex but also good from bad sex. Likewise, the consensuality of a pregnancy is increasingly the demarcation of a celebrated rather than mourned pregnancy, rather than its marital province. This development is justly celebrated as a breakthrough in women's rights and equality, but it carries costs. This essay develops some of the limits and perils of an over-reliance on consent and consensuality as the primary criterion of the morality of sex and reproduction. Consent is not always a trustworthy guide to wellbeing, for both general reasons, and reasons specific to sexual and reproductive life. |
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