Consent, desire, arousal, vulnerability. An essay on how these elements are interconnected… or not, when it comes to women and sex. Consent is a nice concept but what if the boundaries of our desires are not as clear cut as a yes or no ? What if desire and arousal emerge separately and similarly can fade away quickly ? Can my body say something else than my brain and which is correct ? Why do we have to carry the burden of articulating a clear-cut consent ? Angel builds her essay with references to multiple studies and it’s quite amazing to see how much has been explored on the subject. A very interesting piece on women’s sexuality and consent.
“We may like to believe that the body doesn’t lie, but all the body does is provide us with complicated information. The body is no arbiter, should be no arbiter. If we care about pleasure, and if we care about consent as well as enthusiasm, then the subjective is precisely, vitally, what we should attend to. We should prioritize what women say, in all its complexity, rather than fetishizing what their bodies do in the name of a spurious scientism.”