Editing Consent (section)

=== Critiques of affirmative consent ===
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The above concept of affirmative consent has become more mainstream and promoted in public discourse, institutions and the workplace, especially following the #MeToo scandals. However, feminists from varying political backgrounds have voiced concerns and critiques of affirmative consent as a solution to both sexual assault and creating sexual equality and autonomy between all genders.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sikka |first=Tina |date=May 2021 |title=What to do about #MeToo? Consent, autonomy, and restorative justice: A case study |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sgp2.12027 |journal=Sexuality, Gender & Policy |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=24–37 |doi=10.1002/sgp2.12027 |issn=2639-5355}}</ref> If women, queer people and other marginalized groups are not free to say no, why would they be free to say yes? <ref name="Harris 155–178">{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Kate Lockwood |date=2018-03-04 |title=Yes means yes and no means no, but both these mantras need to go: communication myths in consent education and anti-rape activism |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00909882.2018.1435900 |journal=Journal of Applied Communication Research |volume=46 |issue=2 |pages=155–178 |doi=10.1080/00909882.2018.1435900 |issn=0090-9882|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Feminists have been seeking for more transformative alternatives that go beyond a (verbal) agreement between sexual partners, examining the issue as a political question related to power structures, the influence of neoliberal perceptions of the self and the complexity of human desire.

==== Neoliberal contractualism and rationalism ====
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The common form of affirmative consent assumes that humans act as rational and independent beings who, at any point in any interaction, are fully aware of what they are (not) consenting to, whether they want to and are able to make a conscious, valid decision. Consent, as it is practiced now, thus requires us to rationalize desires and prioritizes thinking over feeling, and reason over emotions. The resulting consent is shaped in a neoliberal form of contractualism which makes a withdrawal of consent or a change in the conditions of the activity at stake rather challenging. This form of consent as a contract is assuming consent to happen between two (or more) individual and rational actors and it does not give room to forms of discomfort, vulnerability or discussion within the practice consented to. Additionally, this contractualism mostly relies on verbal, affirmative consent and overlooks non-verbal or alternative ways of consenting. The latter is rather essentializing signs of affirmation and, due to its reliance on verbal consent in form of understandable words, can be ableist by invalidating non-verbal consent. Furthermore, contractualism assumes consent to be rational by nature and implies that we always know rationally whether or not we want to consent to something. However, especially in the sphere of interpersonal sexual and non-sexual activities, our own needs or desires are not always rational but can rather be ambiguous, contradicting or unclear. Consent in the form of neoliberal contractualism is unable to include and reflect this ambiguity and the lack of rationality.{{citation-needed|date=August 2024}}

==== Socio-cultural vs legal debate ====
Arguably, there is a distinction that is rarely made in the debate around consent: the socio-cultural and the legal. While talking about consent, arguments are often informed and talked about in a legal framework: What do we need to be protected in the current legal framework? Which formulations give the best protection to victims of sexual violence? However, when talking about this particular protection there is also a need for protection through prevention, a protection by society rather than the law.

While it is not necessarily a given that affirmative consent provides the best legal protection for victims without taking away their agency, there is another danger in linking the legal debate and our overall understanding of consent. Relying on the legal framework and presenting these as the question of consent takes away the need for change and discussion on the socio-cultural level that has the potential to offer even more complexity, flexibility and room to rethink our sexual and overall encounters beyond the protection against violence. A socio-cultural debate would be one around our needs, attitudes and behaviors and the changes needed, which arguably is a more complex debate to hold and handle.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Meadows |first=Agnes |date=December 2021 |title=Between desire and uncertainty: ''Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again'' by Katherine Angel |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/criq.12646 |journal=Critical Quarterly |volume=63 |issue=4 |pages=126–131 |doi=10.1111/criq.12646 |issn=0011-1562|url-access=subscription }}</ref> With a certain level of protection this complexity is needed though to rethink our encounters beyond the mantras of 'no means no' and 'only yes means yes', something that is not reductionist to be applied in a legal setting and that gives the possibility to imagine interactions beyond the current status quo.<ref name="Harris 155–178"/>