www.almendron.com/tribuna/consent-is-not-enough-we-need-a-new-sexual-ethic/
This topic reminds me of this fantastic article I read in the Washington Post about how consent is the bare minimum and simply redefining consent to be "enthusiastic" is not enough. It's quite long so I'll post some excerpts:
"More clarifications of consent — or ever-more-technical breakdowns of its different forms — won’t rebalance power differentials, explain intimacy or teach us how to care. Making the standard of consent our sole criterion for good sex punts on the question of how to conduct a relationship that affirms our fundamental personhood and human dignity."
"Setting consent as the highest bar for any encounter effectively takes a pass on the harder questions: whether that consent was fairly obtained; whether it can ever fully convey what our partners really, ultimately want; whether we should be doing what we’ve gotten consent to do."
"Early in the #MeToo movement, many commenters argued that women should simply get better at saying no, at withholding their consent and exiting uncomfortable situations. There’s some truth to that. But it also felt like yet another burden placed on women: to be gatekeepers, whose comfort and safety were predicated on having the right level of self-confidence and self-possession even in their most vulnerable moments. What about those of us who are not always perfectly self-assured?"
"And making the issue “being firm about consent” sidesteps a critical question about what our standards should be. There are some sexual practices — Kaitlin’s surprise choking encounter among them — that eroticize dehumanization and degradation, ones for which the issue should not be whether they are consented to but whether they’re ethically valid at all.
"Instead, “between two consenting adults” has become a stock phrase, a conversational yield sign indicating that whatever is detailed next might raise eyebrows but remains beyond critique. This obscures the fact that not all sex is the same. Some things are worse than others. Yet the bias toward acceptance makes it difficult to say so, even when something feels obviously wrong.
"And when we do object to a particular act or practice, there isn’t language to do so. Since we have made it effectively impossible for anything apart from nonconsent to be wrong, we end up framing issues in that prevailing standard — the consent given wasn’t the right kind, we say: It wasn’t verbally affirmative or visibly enthusiastic. There’s no clear way to talk about the underlying problems of sexual acts agreed to in order to “be polite”, to please a pushy partner or to avoid something worse."
"There are many situations in which a partner might consent to sex — affirmatively, even enthusiastically — but in which sex would still be ethically wrong. In general, “willing the good of the other” is most often realized in restraint — in inaction rather than action. This involves a certain level of maturity and self-knowledge on all our parts: an understanding that if we aren’t able to manage this level of consideration — in the moment or more broadly — we probably shouldn’t be having sex. And, yes, it might lead to less casual sex, not more."
The whole article basically makes the case for love, and it's so deeply sad to me that in a generation love as a concept in intimacy is virtually obliterated. Porn is robbing us of our humanity - it has to go.