Feminist Sexual Totalitarianism: "The Joy of Consent"

Except for occasional fads, women always come in last in the left's oppression Olympics. Straight white men are not even in the competition, of course...unless they're pretending to be women or whatever...in which case they can rocket right to the podium...

   But feminist sex totalitarianism is still in the mix. If you want to know what the left wants for all of society, see what they have done and are trying to do at universities. One of the things, of course, is micromanaging our sex lives, via a massive sex-bureaucracy. And, though the right wants you to behave, the left wants your soul...so they also demand that you have politically correct thoughts and attitudes about sex. One thing I can guarantee about the argument in the talk described below: it will not conclude that the left's current view of the matter is too restrictive:

The Joy of Consent: An International Perspective on Good Sex 

Manon Garcia (Freie Universität, Berlin)

Monday October 2, 6:30 p.m. (ET)
GC Room 9205/06
And online via Zoom
 

The Center for Global Ethics and Politics is excited to welcome feminist philosopher Manon Garcia at our upcoming colloquium. This talk is co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Women and Society. The lecture will be followed by a Q&A with the speaker.

This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and snacks.

If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.
 

---

Abstract

The Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement have thrust discussions about sexual violence against women into the global spotlight. Although feminist movements have long fought against "rape culture," the outpouring of public testimonies of #MeToo has finally captured wide-ranging attention. In this context, the concept of consent has become central in debates about gender equality, serving as the key criterion for differentiating sex from rape. Particularly in liberal democracies, the emphasis on consent has replaced an outdated moralistic framework that once stigmatized and pathologized any sexual activity deviating from heterosexual, monogamous, and procreative models.

However, this move toward consent has been sharply criticized: many conservatives think it has ruined sex, many feminists think it fails to address the problems of sexual violence, and a growing number of people all over the political spectrum are concerned about the “sex bureaucracy” created by President Obama’s Title IX regulations on American campuses. 

In this talk, I will argue that “consent” can and should be an important tool for our sexual emancipation, but that this work cannot be done by “consent” as we usually think of it. I will first show that the common view of consent is simplistic and harmful, then argue that any moral and political view of sex should understand sex as a social phenomenon shaped by structural oppression, particularly sexist oppression. This will lead me to argue that the limits of consent, the social dimension of sex, but also the phenomenological analyses of embodied subjectivity call for an understanding of consent as a conversation.
 

Speaker Bio

Manon Garcia is a French philosopher and a Junior Professor at the Freie Universität in Berlin. A Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, she has taught at the University of Chicago and Yale University. She is the author of We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women’s Lives (Princeton UP, 2021). Her new book, The Joy of Consent: A Philosophy of Good Sex is forthcoming in the US this October. Its French version, published in 2021, received the Prix des Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco, the annual award for the best philosophy book in France.