Abstract

It’s a commonplace principle that ‘ethical (sexual) interactions must be consensual.’ But what is involved in abiding by this principle? The first two chapters of my dissertation give partial answers to this question. While the first chapter focuses on consent-undermining coercion, the second chapter focuses on consent-undermining ignorance. In each chapter, I argue that consent can be undermined in far subtler ways than we often recognize, especially within close relationships. My specific focus is on illuminating how people can be blamed into nonconsensual sex, though my arguments generalize beyond blame and beyond sex. Once we identify a sexual interaction as nonconsensual, how should we respond? The third chapter of my dissertation is about one dimension of this question. One might think that nonconsensual sex is the kind of wrong that is everyone’s business; anyone can blame perpetrators of nonconsensual sex. By contrast, I argue that in some cases of nonconsensual sex, it is impermissibly meddlesome for a ‘third party’ – someone who is neither the victim nor the perpetrator – to express blame to the perpetrator. This result, I contend, will help us to stop neglecting certain kinds of nonconsensual sex. By the end, I have illustrated three main themes. To begin, we cannot theorize well about consent and blame without attending to relationships. Conversely, we cannot theorize well about relationships without attending to consent. Finally, the language of consent comes along with a lot of associations, which behooves us to identify which associations to hold secure and which to let go. For instance, we should weaken the association between nonconsensuality and ‘public’ sanctions, such as third-party blame or criminal punishment. In sum, my dissertation explores different aspects of the relationship between consent, blame, and sex.