| Summary: | The question of what is bad about rape is closely connected to the question of what is good about sex, when sex is good. Rape is an inversion of good sex. Yet writings about rape, with their emphasis on consent, have drawn us away from this way of looking at the subject. In this essay I reprise an earlier project of trying to keep consent in its place. Here my emphasis is on the idea that good sex is a joint activity, something done together. This is just one aspect of good sex, but it is the aspect that most directly challenges the centrality of consent. That is because consent presupposes an asymmetry in activity, a doer and sufferer. It presupposes, in that respect, bad sex. Moving into a more openly gendered way of thinking about the subject, I suggest that the policy objective of protecting women’s sexual autonomy by empowering them to grant or refuse consent comes at the surprising price that we continue to portray women as lacking in full sexual agency.
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