Non-Domination and Consent: A Defence of Consent Theory’s Role in the Best Analysis of Sexual Wrongdoing

Here I defend the consent model against Garcia’s competing analysis of domination as the organizing moral problem of wrongful sex. I do not reject the centrality of dominance to the phenomenon of sexual wrongdoing, but argue that sexual consent, when correctly conceived as being the power that prevents an invasive wrongdoing in the domain of the body, is a concept that is tightly bound to non-domination. In making my defence, I distinguish the culture of dominance manifest in the actions of individuals from the interpersonal wrong of domination—and argue that truly consensual sex is, at least, incompatible with the latter.