What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Consent? Four Conceptual Approaches

Rape is increasingly defined as sex without consent in public conversations, advocacy, and law. Yet, historically, feminist scholars have long identified a series of conundrums related to consent across these domains. As a result, it is not always clear what we talk about when we talk about consent. To respond, I present a synthesis of feminist scholarship on the political meanings and legal applications of consent in relation to sexual violence in US history. In this synthesis, several paradoxes emerge. They reveal four distinct but often conflated views of consent, which I term traditional, liberal, radical, and communicative approaches. Interdisciplinary scholars of sexual consent can draw on this typology and the feminist arguments that underlie it to place their own use of consent within the broader history of feminist advocacy and research.