ONLINE FIRST
published on September 2, 2021
Sarah Clark Miller
https://doi.org/10.5840/socphiltoday20219184
Criticizing Consent: A Reply to Susan Brison
In this article I engage Susan Brison¡¯s ¡°What¡¯s Consent Got to Do with It?¡± by offering multiple contributions regarding the limitations of the language and culture of consent. I begin by briefly appreciating what consent reveals to us morally about the harms of nonconsensual sex. I then offer five points regarding the language and culture of consent: (1) Conceptualizing rape as nonconsensual sex hides from view the moral harm of having one¡¯s will subjugated by another. (2) The framework of consent renders women¡¯s desires insignificant and invisible. (3) Epistemic gaslighting represents one major and underappreciated form of epistemic injustice that consent-based views of rape propagate. (4) Consent-centered accounts of sexual violence impede our ability to imagine better sexual futures. And (5) consent not only functions to normalize gender-based violence but also to normalize other forms of violence, such as those that erupt in light of race, ability, nationality, weight, and age.