Could There Ever be an App for that? Consent Apps and the Problem of Sexual Assault

Criminal Law and Philosophy 12 (1):143-165 (2018)
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Abstract

Rape and sexual assault are major problems. In the majority of sexual assault cases consent is the central issue. Consent is, to borrow a phrase, the ‘moral magic’ that converts an impermissible act into a permissible one. In recent years, a handful of companies have tried to launch consent apps which aim to educate young people about the nature of sexual consent and allow them to record signals of consent for future verification. Although ostensibly aimed at addressing the problems of rape and sexual assault on university campuses, these apps have attracted a number of critics. In this paper, I subject the phenomenon of consent apps to philosophical scrutiny. I argue that the consent apps that have been launched to date are unhelpful because they fail to address the landscape of ethical and epistemic problems that arise in the typical rape or sexual assault case: they produce distorted and decontextualised records of consent which may in turn exacerbate the other problems associated with rape and sexual assault. Furthermore, because of the tradeoffs involved, it is unlikely that app-based technologies could ever be created that would significantly address the problems of rape and sexual assault.

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Author's Profile

John Danaher
University College, Galway

Citations of this work

Presupposition and Consent.Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa - 2020 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 6 (4):1–32.
Agency, Responsibility, and the Limits of Sexual Consent.Caleb Ward - 2020 - Dissertation, State University of New York, Stony Brook

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References found in this work

Sex, Lies, and Consent.Tom Dougherty - 2013 - Ethics 123 (4):717-744.
Consent to Sexual Relations.Alan Wertheimer - 2003 - Law and Philosophy 25 (2):267-287.

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