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The fifth chapter explicates a Connecticut case of alleged sexual assault committed against a significantly physically and cognitively disabled woman. The facts and fallout of the case facilitate an analysis of sex and sexual ethics that applies, synthesizes, and qualifies the three core criticisms of consent (insufficiency, scope, and inappositeness) leveled across the other chapters. The examination of the case shores up several ways in which consent fails to deliver sexual justice. Hilary O’Connell and I propose legal remedies and social reforms that would better facilitate sexual and intimate possibilities not only for the alleged victim in the Connecticut case and people similarly disabled but also, if more speculatively, for people positioned across the spectrum of ability. The legal remedies are grounded in a feminist reconstruction of sexual autonomy that rejects the equation of autonomy with consent. The social reforms are grounded in a disability-studies reconstruction of access that promotes institutional arrangements facilitating people’s equal participation in politics, education, employment and sex.

This introductory chapter traces the rise of sexual autonomy among young American women. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, urbanization presented opportunities for many young women to pursue sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage. This further developed in the earlier half of the twentieth century when immigrant and working-class young women explored the amusements and commercial opportunities of city life, often on the arms of young men who paid for sex. Younger girls joined in despite scrutiny from the new juvenile courts. The rise of dating practices eroded parental and community control, and prostitution lost ground to taxi dancing, stripping, and erotic dancing. The period also saw the legalization of contraception and birth control which accelerated the separation of heterosexual sex from reproduction. In all of these ways, the sexual culture before World War II was already shifting and changing, opening up certain possibilities for sexual independence.

This concluding chapter argues that the 1940s and 1950s gave rise to two alternative norms, both of which have exerted powerful historical influence in distinct ways. The first is relationship-oriented sexual ethics, or the belief that sexual activity is socially and culturally valid when it enables the members of a monogamous couple to express love and affection for one another. The second is individual sexual autonomy, understood to mean that individuals have the right to sexual self-expression and that sexuality need not be tethered either to interpersonal relationships or to state institutions. Each of these ethical standards had different implications for women than it did for men, and both of them stemmed from the actions of straight and queer women and girls. The chapter also describes how women continue to resist oppressive social forces that limit sexual autonomy in twenty-first century.

This chapter surveys several cases of transgender men or butch women being convicted of sexual misconduct for deceiving their partners as to their assigned sex at birth. The conviction and categorization of this sexual conduct as sexual offense is troubling and wrong. These transgender “rapists” are not rapists, the sex is not sexual violence, and consent is not necessarily polluted by the undisclosed absence of a penis, the fact upon which most such cases and convictions rely. At the same time, these cases dramatize a central problem of consent’s scope: what do we consent to when we consent to sex? In this chapter, I propose that the deliberate contravention of an explicit conditional to sex should be a legal wrong and that such a narrowly tailored solution to the problem of sex-by-deception best protects sexual and gender minority defendants from phobic juries and judges while also facilitating sexual autonomy.

Chapter 3 proposes reforms to age of consent laws via the principle of sexual autonomy. Conceptually, sexual autonomy envisions young people as volitional but vulnerable. Practically, sexual autonomy portends a lowered age of sexual consent, decriminalization of sex between minors, regulation over relations of dependence, and a more robust standard of consent. This chapter demonstrates too that concerns around age, age difference, and sex reflect and displace more difficult questions around gender, gendered subordination, and queer sexuality that are less solvable by law.

The possibility of causal feedback between human behavior and human environments resulting from behavioral and developmental plasticity combined with niche construction suggests that some small environmental changes could have cascading effects that would trigger substantial social change. An example of what this might look like is provided by Patricia Gowaty's "alternative sexual strategies" hypothesis, according to which both male and female reproductive strategies are flexible, adjusting according to the degree of female sexual autonomy with far-reaching behavioral and social effects.

This chapter critiques the dominant form of female sentimentality that animates the anti-prostitution feminist public sphere since the mid-1990s, showing how this affective mode, attached as it is to conjugal intimacy, propels a liberal form of state governance that intensifies the regulation of sexualities in present-day Taiwan. The chapter demonstrates how anti-prostitution feminism's redemptive project of sex constructs a pristine feminine sexuality within the institutionalised field of “sexual autonomy”. What inheres in the political unconsciousness of “sexual autonomy” is, the chapter argues, a profound sense of melancholia that mourns the loss of sexual innocence qua feminist ideal.

The conclusion offers four postscripts to the four corresponding chapters of the book. It suggests that my assessment of sex panics (Ch. 1), constructivist critique of the sex offender (Ch. 2), relational defense of sexual autonomy (Ch. 3), and figuration of adolescence (Ch. 4), offer productive ways to evaluate 1) contemporary anti-sexual violence activism on college campuses, 2) 2013 Supreme Court rulings on sex offenders and same-sex marriage, 3) recent legal theoretic criticisms of sexual autonomy, and 4) revivified attention to the child in queer studies.

The right of sexual autonomy occupies a central place in our constitutional scheme of individual liberties. Consensual sexual relations, including fornication, adultery, and sodomy, now presumptively lie beyond the reach of law’s regulatory power. But as this chapter shows, there is one long-standing law banning consensual sexual relations that remains solidly on the books in every state: the prohibition on adult incest. The subject of adult incest opens the door to a psychoanalytic perspective on the right of sexual autonomy and the modern laws regulating sexual choice. The chapter explores how powerful unconscious forces deriving from the parties’ close familial relationship render the “choice” to have sex a potentially tragic illusion. Similar kinds of unconscious coercion can happen in other contexts as well. For example, the therapist-patient relationship also involves forms of unconscious coercion not known to the parties themselves, and deserving of some regulation. Understanding in close detail the unconscious dynamics in adult incest and the therapist-patient relationship can illuminate less obvious forms of sexual coercion in more common types of professional relationships. A psychoanalytic perspective has a crucial role to play in defining the range and meaning of sexual autonomy as a fundamental right in our constitutional culture.

This chapter looks at the emergence of the category ‘sexual offences’ in the criminal law and explores the consequences of this recognition for criminalization. It looks first at the diverse ways that crimes which had a sexual element (rape, sodomy and prostitution) were categorized in the law prior to 1956. The second section then examines how a range of offences were grouped together to form the category ‘sexual offences’ after 1956 and how this category was informed by new understandings of sex and sex offenders. It finally goes on to look at how this category of sexual offences has been transformed by the recognition of a distinct interest in sexual autonomy understood as a right to sexual expression.

Queer Bangkok has been much more influenced by, and become a source of influences for, gay Asia than the gay West. This chapter argues that at the same time that capitalism provides avenues of opportunity for some Thai gay men, it also erects barriers of exclusion for others. As a highly commodified identity with a middle-class caché, Thai gay identity comes literally with a price tag, often excluding men with lower incomes from participating fully in this market-based zone of sexual autonomy. The chapter analyzes possibilities for queer autonomy and rights under capitalism. It also examines market-based aspects of autonomy gained by queer purchasing power and considers the extent to which market-based societies provide opportunities for institutionalizing queer rights in law.

This chapter addresses criticisms of the sex equality approach from those who argue that pornography is a right flowing from a right to freedom of expression—the free speech defense of pornography, by self-styled feminists, who claim that pornography (its making and its use) is a part of sexual liberation for women, and by gays and lesbians insofar as they allege it plays an important role in the communities of sexual minorities. Finally, I examine the arguments to those, like Altman, who locate a “right to pornography” in the right to sexual autonomy. I argue that none of these arguments sufficiently establishes their conclusions.

This chapter analyses the disjuncture between the Abstinence and Be Faithful (AB) programmes of HIV prevention supported by many transnational FBOs and funded by PEPFAR, and the implementation of those programmes in urban Zambia. While AB messages are conveyed to some sub-populations, they are noticeably absent among Zambian support groups for people living with HIV, groups that have increasingly become involved in HIV prevention. This disconnect results from different understandings of prevention, assumptions about personal responsibility and autonomy in sexual choices, local groups’ desire to develop non-prevention programmes, and the need for poverty reduction among many Zambians. The multiple layers of policy implementation evident in a programme like PEPFAR created space for these nuanced interpretations, demonstrating how local organisations may exhibit power in their relations with donors.

This chapter considers the concepts of sexual autonomy and consent. Sexual autonomy is conceived of as a “bundle” of prima facie rights organized around the idea of securing for the holder various forms of sexual self-determination. There is a distinction between negative sexual autonomy (the right not to engage in, or be subject to, one or another form of sexual conduct) and positive sexual autonomy (the prima facie right to engage in such conduct). Sexual autonomy is violated either when a person is subjected to nonconsensual sex (usually by another individual) or when a person is prevented from engaging in consensual sex (typically by operation of law). To consent to sexual contact is essentially to waive the right not to have such contact. Consent also relieves those to whom it is given of the obligation to refrain from contact. Consent involves a “binary” judgment reflecting various “scalar” qualities (meaning that it is a yes/no kind of judgment that typically turns on the existence of a property that is a matter of degree). Of particular concern here is the distinction between consent and mere “unwantedness.” A fundamental distinction is also made concerning consent in an “attitudinal” or “mental” sense (a state of mind of acquiescence), consent in a “communicative” sense (consent that is conveyed to another in words or actions), and consent in a “prescriptive” sense (consent that is regarded as normatively or legally valid). Further, for consent to be prescriptively valid, it must be voluntary, knowing, and competent.

In a scene from Neil Strauss’s The Game, Ross Jeffries turns his “Speed Seduction” techniques on a waitress. Jeffries evokes remembered feelings of sexual attraction in the waitress, then hypnotically “anchors” these feelings to himself. He thereby seduces her, and in a morally problematic way. To see this, consider subliminal advertising. Subliminal advertising creates consumer demand by purposefully altering motives using means that bypass rational capacities. Jeffries creates demand in the waitress for sex with him by using similar means. As we frown upon subliminal advertising, so should we frown upon such unsavory seduction. But it is not generally morally problematic to purposefully alter someone else’s motives to get that person to do what you want. And it is not generally morally problematic to motivate someone else by bypassing his rationality. So where is the problem with unsavory seduction? This chapter develops and assesses one possible answer to this question.

This chapter argues that the right to sexual satisfaction of severely physically and mentally disabled people, and elderly people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases, can be fulfilled by deploying sex robots. This would enable us to satisfy the sexual needs of many who cannot provide for their own sexual satisfaction without at the same time violating anybody’s right to sexual self-determination. It does not offer a full-blown moral justification of deploying sex robots in such cases, as not all morally relevant concerns can be addressed here; rather, it puts forward a plausible way of fulfilling acute sexual needs without thereby violating anybody’s sexual rights.

This chapter details the importance of family attitudes to the success, or failure, of lesbian relationships in Thailand, and specifically the extent to which parents may intervene to break up a daughter’s relationship with another woman. This chapter also discusses expressions of female sexual desire and sexual autonomy in the letters to lesbian letters to Uncle Go.

This chapter reviews the book The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (1999), by Michael Warner. Warner's book explores the tyranny of public conformity and the irrational desire for sameness, even among people who, as social outsiders, ought to know the damage that this kind of tyranny can inflict on others. Warner argues that even the intense desire of many gays and lesbians for same-sex marriage may itself be an example of this tyranny. To the aspiration to conformity and the domination of the “normal,” Warner opposes a moral argument based upon an ideal of autonomy and liberty, and upon the idea that a democratic culture needs to encourage, rather than stifle, innovations and deviations in living, in order to discover the most fruitful ways to realize its ideal of human dignity. Warner's target is what he calls the “politics of sexual shame” which he contends is behind sodomy laws and many other rules through which a majority seeks to define its own sexual activities as superior. Warner argues that public policy should protect people's “sexual autonomy” from the tyranny of an interventionist moralism.

This chapter draws on lawsuits, first-person accounts, and social science research in exploring the damage that intimate deceivers can inflict on the intimates they target as well as on third parties and even society at large. At the start, it is important to recognize that intimate deception can cause financial and bodily injuries—the sorts of harms that the law is usually most eager to redress. Intimate deception can also create unexpected vulnerability to criminal prosecution and other legal harms. Deceit frequently costs deceived intimates wasted time and lost opportunities. And of course, people often suffer psychologically and emotionally when their intimates deceive them. Indeed, some deceived intimates report that what hurt most was that their trust had been betrayed. Others emphasize that the most damaging aspect of being duped was that the experience undermined their confidence in their ability to judge people.