Abstract This article examines the philosophical underpinnings of reasonable belief about consent to sexual activity, in the context of rape liability. I argue that scholars are correct to underscore the centrality of social conventions around consent in every assessment of reasonable belief. Despite this, I argue that what makes for a reasonable belief by A that B consents to sexual activity is not merely determined by social conventions. Against one intuitive view about how social consent norms interact with reasonable belief, I argue that the fault element in rape can be present where one person’s belief that another person consents to sex is predicated on, and in line with, prevailing social codes. Consequently, the reasonable belief standard is not socially relative all the way down. A long-standing debate about hypothetical social consent conventions involving ‘token refusal’ is used to anchor the discussion.
Kate Greasley (Mon,) studied this question.