1 00:00:05,160 --> 00:00:09,000 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Robin West, thank you very much for having this conversation with me. Thank you. 2 00:00:10,440 --> 00:00:14,600 So I'm tentatively entitling this conversation what's wrong with consent? 3 00:00:15,440 --> 00:00:23,240 Because a lot of what we're going to speak about are certain harms that you have identified in your work as stemming from, I guess, this, 4 00:00:23,480 --> 00:00:28,680 this exclusive focus on consent, almost an obsession with consent, maybe, um, 5 00:00:29,080 --> 00:00:32,720 that has now kind of taken hold or has for a long time in the ethics of sex. 6 00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:40,000 Um, even though I think this is going to be made clear as we speak, your critique of consent is is starkly different, 7 00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:46,160 very importantly, different from what's understood to be the radical feminist critique of consent. 8 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:55,680 But I wondered if we could perhaps begin by talking about how we got to this point with the role that consent now plays both legally and socially, 9 00:00:56,280 --> 00:00:59,430 in regulating sex? Because clearly it wasn't always thus. 10 00:01:00,150 --> 00:01:04,030 Um, in the past, consent was was really not the issue. 11 00:01:04,350 --> 00:01:09,550 It's a relatively recent development that this is what everything turns on, that the licit of sex. 12 00:01:10,190 --> 00:01:13,910 So and you know, you've written about this extensively the history of this. 13 00:01:14,110 --> 00:01:18,310 So how was sex regulated before consent became dominant. 14 00:01:18,910 --> 00:01:22,590 And then, you know, when and how did that sea change take place as you see it? 15 00:01:23,390 --> 00:01:27,590 Yes. So it took place not at any particular point, but over time. 16 00:01:28,550 --> 00:01:33,110 Um, so I've, I think it can be described this way. 17 00:01:33,590 --> 00:01:41,150 Before consent rape was defined in all 50 states and much of the rest of the world as sex by force, 18 00:01:41,750 --> 00:01:44,750 with utmost resistance, with a woman, not one's wife. 19 00:01:45,870 --> 00:01:53,950 Um, and that eventually, as you said, gave way to a complete overhaul definition of rape as being sex without consent. 20 00:01:54,710 --> 00:01:59,190 So how did you go from the first to the second? Let me start with the conventional definition. 21 00:01:59,750 --> 00:02:03,790 Rape as sex by force, with utmost resistance, with a woman, not one's wife. 22 00:02:04,110 --> 00:02:09,030 Three separate requirements. So starting at the end of that, the woman, not one's wife part. 23 00:02:10,110 --> 00:02:16,470 This was the most important demarcation of sex from rape for centuries. 24 00:02:17,030 --> 00:02:18,710 So what did it signify? 25 00:02:19,430 --> 00:02:27,870 Well, the line between legal sex and illegal sex was drawn by marital status, not by anything having to do with force or consent. 26 00:02:28,430 --> 00:02:33,510 Even violent and non-consensual or forced sex within marriage was legal. 27 00:02:34,910 --> 00:02:38,830 Um. Within marriage. All sex legal. 28 00:02:40,110 --> 00:02:44,350 Uh, even what we today would characterise as rape or sexual assault and outside marriage. 29 00:02:45,390 --> 00:02:51,150 Likewise, it wasn't consent. Even fully consensual sex outside of marriage was illegal. 30 00:02:51,830 --> 00:03:02,500 So it was clearly the marriage status that, um, did the most work in demarcating, um, uh, legal from illegal sex. 31 00:03:03,220 --> 00:03:07,740 Okay, so that was, um, that's sort of the oldest chunk of this. 32 00:03:08,180 --> 00:03:14,900 The utmost resistance requirement. I'm not sure the history I don't know when it started showing up in in US state definitions of. 33 00:03:15,660 --> 00:03:23,660 Right. But it's but it was there for a long time. Um, and it was also the first of the three definitional criteria to fall. 34 00:03:24,060 --> 00:03:30,820 It fell even before the marital rape exemption felt the, um, likely it felt, in other words, utmost resistance, 35 00:03:31,500 --> 00:03:40,020 much that for sex to be recognised as forced and therefore as rape, the victim had to resist to the utmost. 36 00:03:40,940 --> 00:03:47,900 She had to fight back. She had to. She had to have. She had to have scars or scratches that evidenced that there was a fight. 37 00:03:48,820 --> 00:03:52,980 Um, she had to resist. Resist as much as she could. 38 00:03:53,980 --> 00:04:01,850 Um, Otherwise it was presumably desired, presumably consensual, presumably not something she cared about that much. 39 00:04:02,210 --> 00:04:05,330 So the the virtuous woman would resist to the utmost. 40 00:04:05,810 --> 00:04:09,370 Was the underlying idea there? Um, okay. 41 00:04:09,890 --> 00:04:15,130 Why did that one fall? This is pretty clear. Police forces as well as, um, liberal feminists. 42 00:04:16,010 --> 00:04:20,610 But police forces centrally started advising women not to resist rape, 43 00:04:21,170 --> 00:04:27,330 because resisting rape endangers your life in a way that, um, passive acquiescence does not. 44 00:04:27,610 --> 00:04:39,570 So, um, so that became the sort of standard part of, um, the the attitudes of police forces toward non-consensual sex. 45 00:04:39,810 --> 00:04:41,890 Was that the utmost resistance requirement is a real problem. 46 00:04:42,290 --> 00:04:48,610 It's it's endangering women's lives that got the attention of legislators, and the utmost resistance requirements started falling by the wayside. 47 00:04:49,650 --> 00:04:53,090 Okay. Then you're left with, um, and then the marital rape exemption. 48 00:04:53,530 --> 00:04:57,450 That's a 3040 year history of trying to get rid of the marital rape exemption. 49 00:04:57,970 --> 00:05:02,290 And it's largely a successful movement. Um, not entirely. 50 00:05:02,930 --> 00:05:05,770 There's still differences between rape within marriage and rape outside marriage. 51 00:05:06,130 --> 00:05:09,450 But for the most part, the marital rape exemption has also felt that fall. 52 00:05:09,730 --> 00:05:18,730 And that leaves the force requirement. So to a group of, um, first liberal feminists, but then legislators and then eventually the culture. 53 00:05:19,930 --> 00:05:31,890 Um, understanding rape as sex by force looked at first under inclusive that it did not reach sex that was not accompanied by weapons or fists. 54 00:05:32,930 --> 00:05:37,170 Um but um should be criminalised, should be at least regulated. 55 00:05:38,410 --> 00:05:48,410 Other forms of coercion include. Yes. Yes. Um, um, in part because it was in fact non-consensual, even though it was, um, 56 00:05:48,730 --> 00:05:52,560 it was forced, or it appears to some to have been not to have been non-consensual. 57 00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:58,120 To others it appears consensual. But at any rate, it looks like sex that should be criminalised. 58 00:05:58,880 --> 00:06:04,680 So that included a lot of date rape, a lot of marital rape and even acquaintance rape. 59 00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:13,840 The, um, the, the, the rallying cry among liberal feminists of the 80s was that all non-consensual sex should be criminalised, 60 00:06:14,480 --> 00:06:24,760 not just non-consensual sex that's accompanied by fists and weapons, but any sex that is non-consensual should therefore be understood to be criminal. 61 00:06:25,400 --> 00:06:30,320 Okay, so, um, the valuation of women's autonomy was always really at the heart of this movement. 62 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:34,800 If you read all that literature, the rape scholarship from the 80s, from the 90s into the 2000, 63 00:06:35,760 --> 00:06:41,840 autonomy is clearly the value that is being promoted by the move from forced to consent. 64 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:46,360 The consent requirement respects women's choices to engage or not engage in sex. 65 00:06:46,960 --> 00:06:51,920 The value that's being promoted is autonomy and free choice. Um, okay. 66 00:06:52,600 --> 00:06:59,440 The worry that was initially expressed by Catharine MacKinnon and then by many others that you called the a minute ago, 67 00:06:59,640 --> 00:07:03,440 the radical feminist critique of the consent standard. I think that's correct. 68 00:07:03,800 --> 00:07:05,920 I mean, I do think that's a fair characterisation. 69 00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:12,520 Um, was basically this that the consent standard alone runs the risk that it will be under inclusive, 70 00:07:13,400 --> 00:07:19,520 that it doesn't pick up enough sex that should be criminalised. That isn't if all you focus on is consent. 71 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:25,240 Okay. Right. So there maybe is less could we say, you know, 72 00:07:25,400 --> 00:07:32,800 the idea of consent having to be the dividing line and maybe more to do with what we call consent and what we what what we're willing to do, 73 00:07:32,880 --> 00:07:35,920 or what the law is willing to call consensual and what it isn't willing to call. Yes. 74 00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:40,920 It puts all the weight on that, right? It puts all the weight on, um, 75 00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:50,950 deciphering and applying a standard that is overwhelmingly the content of it is overwhelmingly dictated by cultural attitudes. 76 00:07:51,910 --> 00:07:56,910 The conclusion drawn was that there's a problem with with putting so much weight on consent. 77 00:07:57,510 --> 00:08:04,350 So you need a different marker for the difference between legal and illegal sex and a society in which consent is so widely presumed. 78 00:08:04,910 --> 00:08:12,230 If you don't trust those, basically, if you don't trust whoever it is who is the arbiter of consent, then then you're going in trouble. 79 00:08:13,030 --> 00:08:18,670 You're in trouble. Can we? I wonder if we could backtrack to kind of where we're at now. 80 00:08:18,910 --> 00:08:25,510 So as we were saying, surely, yes, consent and caring about autonomy and this being the dividing line is an improvement over, 81 00:08:26,270 --> 00:08:31,790 you know, you can't be raped within marriage and resist to the utmost. Like for sure it's an improvement on that. 82 00:08:32,590 --> 00:08:38,710 Um, but then what I find really interesting about a lot of your work is that you've 83 00:08:38,910 --> 00:08:41,830 then got to kind of chart it some of the perils and some of the pitfalls, 84 00:08:43,350 --> 00:08:49,220 um, in what you describe as the overreliance on consent, maybe in the social and ethical domain, 85 00:08:49,820 --> 00:08:54,260 to demarcate ethically correct from ethically incorrect sex. 86 00:08:54,700 --> 00:08:59,500 And you call some of these harms and costs legitimation harms or sorry legitimation costs. 87 00:09:00,300 --> 00:09:03,900 Right. So this is not you saying, you know, consent doesn't matter. We shouldn't this shouldn't have happened. 88 00:09:04,260 --> 00:09:10,740 But you seem to be kind of just wanting to maybe flag some dangers of thinking that, well, 89 00:09:11,060 --> 00:09:16,300 as soon as we have consent or, you know, consent is the thing that that makes sex absolutely fine and perfect and. 90 00:09:16,460 --> 00:09:23,500 Okay, um, and then just come into the floor. So I wonder if you could say a bit about what you mean by this term legitimation costs. 91 00:09:24,380 --> 00:09:30,500 So I wanted to introduce, when I started articulating this, a different critique of consent and consensual sex in particular, 92 00:09:30,940 --> 00:09:37,020 although the same critique of consent can apply to non-sexual transactions such as sales and labour. 93 00:09:38,020 --> 00:09:40,060 Um um labour, I think more importantly. 94 00:09:40,700 --> 00:09:52,260 But um, defining rape as nonconsensual sex raises the problem that everything that gets a pass is is legitimated. 95 00:09:53,100 --> 00:10:01,540 So defining rape as non-consensual sex means that sex that is not rape, that is presumably consensual is thereby legitimated. 96 00:10:02,300 --> 00:10:07,740 It comes from celebrated, valued, celebrated valued, but minimally not criticised. 97 00:10:09,180 --> 00:10:14,980 You can't critique it. I mean, that's one thing that that's one way the MeToo movement got, I think, misunderstood, 98 00:10:15,620 --> 00:10:19,740 but also sort of invited misunderstanding because they tried to critique it. 99 00:10:19,860 --> 00:10:29,020 But you have to be clear. And so the consent requirement for rape versus sex leaves consensual sex ethically untouchable beyond reproach. 100 00:10:29,700 --> 00:10:33,860 And as you said at the extreme, just always celebrated, always a good thing. 101 00:10:34,380 --> 00:10:45,170 And I think particularly in sort of pro sex days, which were kind of in now, but not always, but not completely, not as much as we were in the arts. 102 00:10:45,570 --> 00:10:53,970 Maybe in the teens and the 1990s. Um, consensual sex is doubly celebrated as both consensual and as sexual. 103 00:10:54,370 --> 00:11:00,530 So if sex is always good and consent is always wonderful, then consensual sex is sort of doubly always good. 104 00:11:01,210 --> 00:11:04,290 Right. Um, so the a fallacy. Right. 105 00:11:04,690 --> 00:11:08,730 So it leaves it leaves a lot of consensual sex. Untouchable or beyond reproach? 106 00:11:09,850 --> 00:11:16,250 Um, I call. Um, I have identified in my writing, as you indicated, two different kinds of costs. 107 00:11:16,850 --> 00:11:20,650 One is legitimation costs, and the other is hedonic. Just, um, dysphoria. 108 00:11:21,770 --> 00:11:27,450 But the basic point underlying both is that in a culture that prioritises and I would say fetishise is consent. 109 00:11:28,330 --> 00:11:35,370 It leaves unwanted, unwelcome sex as well as unwanted and unwelcome transactions that are non-sexual really beyond critique. 110 00:11:35,970 --> 00:11:39,170 And that has harms. So what is unwanted sex? 111 00:11:39,450 --> 00:11:43,520 Before I move to the legitimation clause? What is it? What are some examples of it? 112 00:11:43,720 --> 00:11:47,320 Well, sex that is not wanted, not welcome, not pleasurable. 113 00:11:47,960 --> 00:11:52,040 That's the most restrictive definition. Um, but is nevertheless consensual. 114 00:11:52,800 --> 00:11:55,120 Why would one consent to unwelcome unwanted sex? 115 00:11:55,400 --> 00:12:01,280 Well, to ward off a partner's bad mood, to ensure that the money is left on the counter for the kids school lunches? 116 00:12:02,440 --> 00:12:08,920 Because it's expected by one's faith, because it's expected by one's community to ward off threats of future violence, 117 00:12:09,400 --> 00:12:14,240 which may not even count as coercion legally, but certainly don't count as force or violence. 118 00:12:15,040 --> 00:12:19,680 Sex to satisfy the expectations of one's peers in a hook-up culture, etc.. 119 00:12:20,360 --> 00:12:27,720 Guilt or shame induced sex where one believes that it's unwanted or unwelcome because of some flaw of one's own sex, 120 00:12:28,080 --> 00:12:33,280 because it's the expected return for a dinner on a date, sex because it's expected by the culture, etc.. 121 00:12:33,800 --> 00:12:37,920 So there are many, many, many reasons why you, in your writing, kind of underscore, 122 00:12:38,920 --> 00:12:43,240 um, what you call hook-up culture, a sort of culturally mandated sex, 123 00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:51,200 because I think when most people think about kind of sex in softly coercive circumstances, which maybe passes the bar of consent, 124 00:12:51,560 --> 00:12:55,280 but but is in some way kind of tainted or grey area, I think they usually think about kind of power imbalances. 125 00:12:56,960 --> 00:13:00,720 Um, you know, the wife who can't afford to divorce her husband, you know, that sort of thing. 126 00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:05,720 But it's interesting that you pick on this as well, which is much more diffuse, kind of it's peer pressure. 127 00:13:06,080 --> 00:13:11,120 Basically. It's the kind of the infinity in college kind of, uh, sort of pressure. 128 00:13:12,560 --> 00:13:20,520 It's more diffuse. It's also, I mean, thinking about all of this as the result of power dynamics might be descriptively true in some ways, 129 00:13:20,680 --> 00:13:28,600 but it also is, um, isn't all that helpful, and I don't think that it always identifies the harm correctly. 130 00:13:29,880 --> 00:13:39,150 Power imbalances are pervasive. There's a disparity of power in any transaction between any two people, so it isn't clear that it's helpful. 131 00:13:40,230 --> 00:13:48,870 Um, there may be a power imbalance between a faculty member and a graduate student who is not in that faculty members program, and so on. 132 00:13:49,230 --> 00:13:57,030 If one thinks it's the power imbalance per se that, um, makes sex suspect, then those relationships are out of bounds. 133 00:13:57,470 --> 00:14:08,430 And the same is true of all workforces. And so, um, focusing on the power, I think both, uh, further hides the subjectivity of these harms, 134 00:14:08,790 --> 00:14:15,470 which I think needs to be articulated, but also as introduces an over inclusive problems of its own. 135 00:14:16,150 --> 00:14:24,190 Okay, legitimation cost as a phrase just means that you're overvaluing whatever was consented to by virtue of the fact that it was consented to. 136 00:14:24,310 --> 00:14:26,790 And again, that can happen in non-sexual as well as sexual realms. 137 00:14:27,350 --> 00:14:34,350 It also on another legitimation course using consent is the demarcation of legal versus illegal also legitimate, 138 00:14:35,710 --> 00:14:38,100 um, the conditions that made the consensual attraction, 139 00:14:39,060 --> 00:14:45,100 that made the consensual attraction transaction appear to be good, and those conditions might indeed involve a lot of coercion, 140 00:14:45,540 --> 00:14:50,100 but they might involve some of these more diffuse, diffuse cultural elements as well. 141 00:14:50,580 --> 00:14:56,740 So if the labour contract is consensual, if it's presumed to be good for both parties, then it legitimate. 142 00:14:57,300 --> 00:15:02,700 Whatever is wrong with that? With that labour site, which might be a lot, right. 143 00:15:03,020 --> 00:15:07,420 It might be unhealthy, it might be dangerous, it might be low paid, it might be too many hours and so on. 144 00:15:07,780 --> 00:15:11,100 If consent. If the if the fact that the Labour contract was consensual. 145 00:15:12,300 --> 00:15:17,140 Um. Everything okay? Yeah. Everything's okay and beyond critique, then you're never going to get there. 146 00:15:17,940 --> 00:15:21,740 Um, this was Marx's early point. It's pretty basic. 147 00:15:22,220 --> 00:15:25,620 So there's an analogue there that that's. Yeah, there's an analogue to Labour. 148 00:15:26,220 --> 00:15:27,940 Yeah. There's also an analogue to sales. 149 00:15:28,380 --> 00:15:36,740 If you um, if you think that every term in a sales contract is, is legitimate because the contract was consented to then. 150 00:15:36,940 --> 00:15:43,660 You're legitimating a lot of things like non-disclosure clauses and mandatory arbitration and, um, and so on. 151 00:15:44,020 --> 00:15:52,060 So, um. Okay, it doesn't follow from the fact of consent that that which was consented to is good. 152 00:15:52,460 --> 00:15:59,980 It only follows that it's not bad because it was non-consensual. So the fact that a labour contract is not slavery doesn't make the labour good. 153 00:16:00,660 --> 00:16:04,780 The fact that a transaction is not theft doesn't make it good. 154 00:16:05,260 --> 00:16:09,420 It just means that it's not bad because non-consensual it might be bad for other reasons. 155 00:16:10,260 --> 00:16:14,820 Okay. Likewise, the fact that sex is consensual doesn't mean it's therefore good, right? 156 00:16:15,300 --> 00:16:25,140 It might be bad, but for other reasons. And that's really and um, so that's really all that legitimation cost means kind of analysing something, 157 00:16:26,060 --> 00:16:30,540 you know, masking maybe a whole panoply of problems. The problems just disappear. 158 00:16:31,140 --> 00:16:34,850 And then liberal society in which, um, You know, we vote. 159 00:16:35,130 --> 00:16:43,090 So we've consented to all of this crap. We've we consent every time we get in our car, every time we walk down the street, we're consenting to it. 160 00:16:43,330 --> 00:16:47,210 You know, it can. It can be at such an extreme level that it looks absurd. 161 00:16:47,690 --> 00:16:54,330 But nevertheless, in a democracy with where the sole rationale for democracy is that it rests on the consent of the governed, 162 00:16:54,850 --> 00:16:58,650 you have that legitimation cost problem writ large. 163 00:16:59,370 --> 00:17:06,650 Yeah. Okay. If if patriarchy is like democracy in that way, then you have the legitimation problem writ large in the sexual realm. 164 00:17:07,650 --> 00:17:13,770 Um, in the same, in the same sort of way. So I guess, okay, thinking about the kind of the problems that are masked, you know. 165 00:17:14,250 --> 00:17:17,850 Right. What could be wrong with all this consensual sex, I guess many things. Many, many things. 166 00:17:18,130 --> 00:17:26,210 But you kind of zero in on on very particular things that haven't really received very much attention, especially with this idea of hedonic dysphoria. 167 00:17:27,050 --> 00:17:32,810 Correct, correct. And so some of the, some of what's legitimated is the power imbalance, as you suggested a moment ago. 168 00:17:33,010 --> 00:17:40,050 And that's what most people are criticising consent, but who, like me, nevertheless think consent should be the demarcation, 169 00:17:40,690 --> 00:17:45,490 but who nevertheless are critical of consent, have focussed on the legitimation of the power imbalance as the problem. 170 00:17:46,210 --> 00:17:52,730 I my thought is that it is that there's another legitimation cause, and that is that it legitimate. 171 00:17:53,770 --> 00:18:00,730 The subjective being that follows, and part of that subjective being is what I started calling hedonic dysphoria. 172 00:18:01,610 --> 00:18:05,210 So, um, okay, so what is that? 173 00:18:05,490 --> 00:18:10,770 Well, um, I don't think it happens every time somebody has sex that they don't want. 174 00:18:11,090 --> 00:18:19,770 That was an answer to one of your questions. But if one consents to sex and consents to a lot over it over a long time, such as an entire adulthood, 175 00:18:20,690 --> 00:18:26,810 then I do think it leads to what I call hedonic dysphoria, by which I mean a girl or a woman. 176 00:18:27,170 --> 00:18:34,440 It can also be a boy or a man or cis whatever who no longer regards her own pleasures and pains as determinative, 177 00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:42,160 even partially determinative of herself, or of her choices, or of her desires, or of her preferences. 178 00:18:43,080 --> 00:18:46,720 Pain and pleasure to sort of disappear from one's eternity. 179 00:18:48,120 --> 00:18:54,080 Jeremy Bentham famously said in his defence of utilitarianism, pleasure and pain determine what we do and what we don't do. 180 00:18:54,800 --> 00:19:00,320 But what if over an adult life, they don't determine what we do and what we don't do, 181 00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:04,400 but the pleasure and the pain of someone else determines what we do and what we don't do. 182 00:19:04,640 --> 00:19:09,160 Okay, in a way, that's the definition of servitude. But it also may be the definition of oppression. 183 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:10,880 But it also, I think, 184 00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:21,600 and quite sort of vividly is what happens when when one's own very physical pains and pleasures are regarded as irrelevant to one's choices, 185 00:19:22,160 --> 00:19:30,470 one's desires, one's preferences. And then what one does in the world, pleasure and pain not only become muted, they lose significance. 186 00:19:31,430 --> 00:19:34,710 We're not doing what pleases us. We're not avoiding what pains us. 187 00:19:34,990 --> 00:19:38,190 And and in some profound way, I think that destroys selfhood. 188 00:19:39,070 --> 00:19:45,870 That. Yeah. So that even if Bentham overstated it and all of that, there's something to the idea, right? 189 00:19:46,550 --> 00:19:50,030 That pleasure and pain determine your desires and your desires. 190 00:19:50,470 --> 00:19:56,750 Determine your preferences and your preferences. Determine your choices. And your choices is what makes you an individual and impactful in the world. 191 00:19:57,230 --> 00:20:03,870 Well, if that chain is broken at the very beginning, where your pains and pleasures are not determining any of that in some important way, 192 00:20:04,030 --> 00:20:10,310 you're not as self as constructed in liberal culture. You're I mean, in early writing I call this your giving self. 193 00:20:10,750 --> 00:20:14,390 But at any but at any rate, the traditional liberal understanding of selfhood, 194 00:20:15,030 --> 00:20:18,510 right, is that it's your preferences and your desires that determine your choices. 195 00:20:19,430 --> 00:20:24,070 What's determining those preferences and desires? Well, a whole bunch of stuff. But pleasures and pains in part, right? 196 00:20:24,430 --> 00:20:29,790 I mean, you may have I mean, this is super interesting to me also because, you know, when I read this, you know, I'd never read anything like it. 197 00:20:29,910 --> 00:20:32,630 I hadn't read, you know, a critique about precisely this. 198 00:20:33,190 --> 00:20:37,790 And I was kind of wondering, you know, how, I guess, how would you recite this concern to say, 199 00:20:38,030 --> 00:20:44,830 like an 18 year old girl, um, you know, having, like, loads of sex with different guys, and they're saying. 200 00:20:45,070 --> 00:20:48,310 But the truth is, I, you know, none of it is really doing anything for me. 201 00:20:48,430 --> 00:20:51,950 I just kind of do it, I don't know. Um, would you be talking to her about. 202 00:20:52,390 --> 00:20:59,150 I don't know, I guess you're kind of alienating in some way. You're parts of a part of you from important parts of who you are, or you're, like, 203 00:20:59,310 --> 00:21:05,950 denigrating yourself because you're behaving as if your own pleasure and pain doesn't matter. 204 00:21:06,350 --> 00:21:09,870 Is kind of that the kernel of the. Yeah, I think both of those are true. 205 00:21:10,350 --> 00:21:14,710 And both of those, um, might spark some self-understanding or recognition. 206 00:21:15,150 --> 00:21:16,430 But I do think that's the relevant question. 207 00:21:16,830 --> 00:21:25,780 I, um, I at one point I was talking to a bunch of people that do sex education for Planned Parenthood, including my, uh, Stepdaughter. 208 00:21:27,900 --> 00:21:33,060 Yeah. And I asked her if, um, I'm going to ask her a number of people. 209 00:21:33,260 --> 00:21:38,380 This. The answer was always the same. What is taught to teachers of sex ed? 210 00:21:38,580 --> 00:21:43,500 And what do the teachers teach in sex education classes about the ethical conditions of good sex? 211 00:21:43,780 --> 00:21:48,220 And the answer was always consent. You have to make sure that both parties are consenting. 212 00:21:48,940 --> 00:21:56,020 So one way to put this point, and it seems trivial and obvious, but it's not apparently, is that consent is necessary but not sufficient. 213 00:21:57,060 --> 00:22:02,820 And so what both parties should be asking is if the sex is wanted and welcomed and desired. 214 00:22:04,020 --> 00:22:09,460 Um, and each party should be asking that of him or herself and of the partner. 215 00:22:10,260 --> 00:22:20,580 And so, um, just to effectuate that shift in the way we talk to teenagers and it's not just 18 year olds, it's 14 year olds, 15 year olds, 216 00:22:20,740 --> 00:22:26,090 16 year olds and 17 year olds about their budding sexuality and talk about it so 217 00:22:26,450 --> 00:22:30,810 that they understand that pleasure is a precondition and pain is an absolute no. 218 00:22:31,450 --> 00:22:35,850 Then, um, then that I think is in advance. It's a hedonic advance for everybody. 219 00:22:36,530 --> 00:22:39,130 You get more pleasure in the world and less pain. But it's also, I think, 220 00:22:39,330 --> 00:22:43,210 an advance in the way that you were saying you have less self alienation and you have less self denigration 221 00:22:44,090 --> 00:22:49,730 because it's clearly denigrating to think about your own pleasure and pain not mattering in this realm. 222 00:22:50,290 --> 00:22:56,090 It might not matter in other realms if you're engaging in, you know, altruistic community service or something, right? 223 00:22:56,610 --> 00:23:00,330 I mean, I was thinking about this when I read about was reading you on hedonic dysphoria as well. 224 00:23:00,450 --> 00:23:04,730 I was wondering if the point is very specific to sex, or maybe just the weightiness of it. 225 00:23:04,890 --> 00:23:08,730 The importance of it is specific to sex, because, you know, I was imagining, I don't know, 226 00:23:08,970 --> 00:23:12,850 someone who goes to the theatre a lot, you know, because that's what their friends do. 227 00:23:13,210 --> 00:23:19,250 And they kind of tell themselves they enjoy it. But really, um, you know, it's like pulling teeth for them. 228 00:23:19,610 --> 00:23:23,370 And they do all the time, you know, is there kind of a hedonic dysphoria problem. 229 00:23:23,690 --> 00:23:27,450 I mean, I'm guessing you would say, well, no, it's not. It's it's not kind of the same level of seriousness. 230 00:23:28,170 --> 00:23:30,810 And that's kind of key to the to the argument here, 231 00:23:31,450 --> 00:23:36,050 to the harm that it's specifically to do with one's body and one's kind of immediate pleasure and pain. 232 00:23:36,330 --> 00:23:41,530 It's, um, you know, it's not just anything it has to do with the fact that it's the body. 233 00:23:41,970 --> 00:23:49,250 And and again, um, with the longevity of it, if this extends over time is always the case. 234 00:23:49,730 --> 00:23:58,650 And, and and then, I mean, the person who goes to the theatre because their friends like it, um, is aware of it, 235 00:23:59,170 --> 00:24:05,090 is aware of that disjunction, even the way you just put it, it's like it feels like pulling teeth, but I do it anyway. 236 00:24:06,330 --> 00:24:14,090 Um, because I'm getting other sorts of pleasures or because I enjoy giving pleasure to my friends and, um, you know, that's that's harmless. 237 00:24:14,530 --> 00:24:17,770 It could be admirable. The same is true, of course, with sex. 238 00:24:18,130 --> 00:24:23,400 And you ask that at some point. Is this always harmful? No, of course not. And, um, unwanted, unwell. 239 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:28,240 I don't know that unwelcome, unwanted, unpleasant sex can be a part of a loving relationship. 240 00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:31,880 That is that. And so it's worthwhile for that reason. 241 00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,800 If if it contributes to the strength of the of a healthy relationship. 242 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:44,440 So it's not that you think it's always the case that if somebody engages in sexual activity that they don't particularly desire in the moment, 243 00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:47,280 you know, there's this hedonic dysphoria is going on. It's right. 244 00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:53,000 It's a right question of longevity and maybe the circumstances to some extent as well. 245 00:24:53,280 --> 00:25:01,480 And that the motivations may be. Yeah, I mean, the, the my point is that this can be harmful, not that it necessarily is harmful, 246 00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:06,160 but that it can be harmful, and it is particularly harmful if it's indulged in over time. 247 00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:10,280 I do think it relates to other forms of female denigration. 248 00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:18,840 Um, one example I used to use there was this, um, there was a movement in law schools. 249 00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:24,190 Wait, I'm sorry I never asked you. Are you a lawyer? I am, I'm so sorry. 250 00:25:25,870 --> 00:25:28,950 Okay, okay. So you may remember this. 251 00:25:29,150 --> 00:25:31,150 It was a big movement in the 80s, I guess, 252 00:25:31,710 --> 00:25:37,150 to track the number of times women volunteer in law school compared to the number of times men volunteer in law school. 253 00:25:37,390 --> 00:25:41,750 Who raises their hand? Who gets volunteer? Yeah, yeah. Who raised their hands? 254 00:25:42,350 --> 00:25:48,590 How they're responded to how their peers respond when a woman talks to or there is their eye rolling? 255 00:25:49,150 --> 00:25:52,190 Is is she treated respectfully by the professor and so on. 256 00:25:52,990 --> 00:25:58,470 Um, but the main one was just quantitative. How often do men raise their hands versus how often do women? 257 00:25:58,750 --> 00:26:03,230 There's a pretty shocking disparity. I don't think it would be shocking to me having having any records. 258 00:26:04,550 --> 00:26:07,150 Right? I mean, it certainly does continue. Yeah. 259 00:26:07,630 --> 00:26:13,710 I don't know if it's as bad as it used to be, but at any rate, I think that that's that's a that's a manifestation of some of this. 260 00:26:14,110 --> 00:26:21,150 I mean, I don't know if there's a 1 to 1 correlation, but if one constantly denigrates one's oneself in this physical realm. 261 00:26:21,830 --> 00:26:25,470 Its that's not far from denigrating oneself intellectually. 262 00:26:26,230 --> 00:26:29,150 I think these two things are not unrelated. If someone is kind of not unrelenting, 263 00:26:29,750 --> 00:26:34,510 which they are just routinely kind of subjecting their body to something which people are telling them is enjoyable, 264 00:26:34,990 --> 00:26:36,630 but which they don't find enjoyable. Right. 265 00:26:36,990 --> 00:26:43,150 It's kind of does does something to the psyche or the, you know, the way the person thinks about themselves, which which runs in, 266 00:26:43,270 --> 00:26:48,590 in a direct line to they're the kind of person who might not want to kind of put them to push themselves forward. 267 00:26:49,470 --> 00:26:58,430 That's right. So it leads to this thinking of, um, I'm in pain, but it doesn't matter because I don't matter. 268 00:26:59,150 --> 00:27:04,190 I'm in pain because it doesn't matter. Because the pain is actually trivial or I'm in pain. 269 00:27:05,070 --> 00:27:06,750 But it doesn't matter because I'm misunderstanding. 270 00:27:07,710 --> 00:27:13,950 The pain actually is pleasure, and I'm feeling it as pain is kind of gaslighting, because I think at one point you put this in terms of gaslighting. 271 00:27:14,830 --> 00:27:21,820 It's kind of social gaslighting into thinking something is must be pleasurable, because it's this and it's consented to. 272 00:27:22,660 --> 00:27:31,300 Um, right. And then if you're not consenting, there's either something wrong with you, um, or you just don't matter or you're confused. 273 00:27:33,140 --> 00:27:38,820 And, um, that leads to a lot of confusion and a lot of self denigration. 274 00:27:39,780 --> 00:27:50,340 I think we we mentioned me to very briefly, um, earlier in relation to this, and I was wondering, you know, if you have a view on what, 275 00:27:51,140 --> 00:27:58,660 you know, a general view on what what the MeToo movement has done with regards to buy in to the ethic of sex, you know, 276 00:27:58,860 --> 00:28:05,900 has it I guess, has it kind of bolstered consent as the be all and end all of the ethics of sex or and 277 00:28:06,220 --> 00:28:10,420 might there be an argument to say in some ways the MeToo movement has kind of exposed, 278 00:28:11,780 --> 00:28:15,530 um, the problems with regarding consent as the only thing that matters. 279 00:28:16,570 --> 00:28:27,610 Okay, so yeah, it's a double edged thing. First of all, um, to back up just a second, sexual harassment law does not define the actionable sex. 280 00:28:28,610 --> 00:28:33,930 Think about just quid pro quo as as non-consensual. It defines it as unwelcome. 281 00:28:34,930 --> 00:28:36,090 So that sort of opens the door. 282 00:28:36,690 --> 00:28:45,810 Sexual harassment law and sexual harassment itself is, um, unwanted and unwelcome sex in the workplace or in various places, schools and workplaces. 283 00:28:46,730 --> 00:28:54,610 So that at least introduced the concept and the MeToo movement in the most literal sense, just exposed how widespread that is. 284 00:28:55,090 --> 00:29:01,770 Unwelcome and unwanted sex in the workplace or in schools is is this, um, is is a large problem. 285 00:29:02,250 --> 00:29:09,650 So the on the plus side, the MeToo movement exposed and set out to expose and did expose the amount of sexual harassment in the world. 286 00:29:10,090 --> 00:29:15,810 If people understand that sexual harassment is defined in that way as unwelcome sex rather than as non-consensual sex, 287 00:29:16,170 --> 00:29:22,330 then that goes a long way toward resetting the line between what's acceptable and unacceptable sex, 288 00:29:22,650 --> 00:29:31,170 because it resets the line in a legal context, not a criminal law context, but in a nevertheless in a civil rights and tort based, um, understanding. 289 00:29:32,050 --> 00:29:36,410 And it did lead then to some success, to a lot of successful lawsuits. 290 00:29:36,770 --> 00:29:43,010 The MeToo movement led to a lot of successful lawsuits and at least some criminal convictions as well, of powerful men. 291 00:29:43,810 --> 00:29:46,970 Okay. On the other hand. First of all, there was a backlash. 292 00:29:48,370 --> 00:29:59,330 Um, but it and but part and part of the backlash was that some of what women are complaining about in the MeToo movement just looked like bad sex, 293 00:30:00,370 --> 00:30:04,130 right? As opposed to anything that is a worry, right? 294 00:30:04,530 --> 00:30:09,810 And so bad sex can't just be a worry. So that's what's wrong with these movies? 295 00:30:10,250 --> 00:30:16,400 Yeah, not so much, because I feel like in some of the cases, these cases, these kind of famous MeToo cases, not all, but of course, 296 00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:23,040 but some of them, you feel like there's almost a kind of a a desperate effort to, uh, to understand an interaction as non-consensual. 297 00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:30,080 Right. You know, and to have an argument about it purely in terms of consent, because if it's not non-consensual, 298 00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:33,960 I think people are at a loss to then explain, to say what's wrong with it. What was the problem? 299 00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:40,240 If anything. That's correct. That's correct. And so, yeah, you did see that all over the place. 300 00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:46,280 Um, you saw it in women's centres on universities that women would come in and they would 301 00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:51,200 have some unease about what's going on with their sex lives and with their sex, 302 00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:57,120 and they would try to express it in a way that emphasised non-consensual, um, features, 303 00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:04,960 in part because I think we lack a language to talk about what's wrong with sex when it is consensual, but nevertheless bad. 304 00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:18,280 And so, um, it so the so the backlash to me too was in part that it contributed to this sense that consensual sex, 305 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,560 no matter what else is true of it, is going to be harmless. 306 00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:30,120 So I guess the kind of there's an implied premise here, which I think is a correct premise, which is that, you know, 307 00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:41,000 consent is a kind of a like a minimum condition, um, on sex being legitimate, good, valuable, all of these things. 308 00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:49,480 And then I suppose that kind of, you know, raises the question about the law because you're thinking about outside of the law and, you know, 309 00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:52,000 how would you advise, you know, young people, you know, 310 00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:56,440 on the precipice of becoming sexually active, to engage in sex, to think about the ethics of sex. 311 00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:02,560 And that's sort of one question. And I think the legitimation costs of consent are clearly very, very salient there. 312 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,360 And then there's kind of the question of what should the legal threshold be? 313 00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:07,880 And we're talking about problems with consent. 314 00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:12,590 But but I guess a lot of people will always want to hear bring bring things back to that and know about that. 315 00:32:12,750 --> 00:32:23,790 So I mean, do you think that there ought to be space for lawful sex that is nonetheless bad sex in, in various ways, possibly one of those ways being, 316 00:32:23,990 --> 00:32:27,590 you know, power imbalance, you know, abuse of power imbalance, um, 317 00:32:28,030 --> 00:32:31,790 which nonetheless meet the threshold of consent, you know, so long as consent is present. 318 00:32:32,950 --> 00:32:42,070 Um, I mean, do you think it's important that we have, um, you know, that gap between what the law insists on and what is ethically ideal? 319 00:32:43,630 --> 00:32:46,870 Yeah, I think it's very important that we insist on that. 320 00:32:47,070 --> 00:32:51,470 First of all, obviously you cannot criminalise all consensual sex. 321 00:32:51,750 --> 00:32:58,910 That's bad. And so that's not that can't be understood as a as as a, as a goal, as a sensible goal. 322 00:32:59,150 --> 00:33:07,780 We wouldn't want to do that. Um, um, one way to put this problem is that, um, critiques of consensual sex run. 323 00:33:08,020 --> 00:33:13,900 The danger of being, um. Of having to go through what I call a force funnel. 324 00:33:14,540 --> 00:33:22,580 That you have to describe it as forced. It has to be coerced. It has to be, um, involuntary, you know, involuntary, violent, forced, 325 00:33:23,100 --> 00:33:30,460 coercive in order for the criticism, even one's own reflexive criticism to gain traction. 326 00:33:31,620 --> 00:33:33,380 And so that's the lack of a gap. 327 00:33:33,980 --> 00:33:42,940 What a gap would do would be to give you a way to describe, um, sex that you have or have had or that you're contemplating having, um, 328 00:33:43,260 --> 00:33:54,060 as not forced, fully consensual, not coerced, but nevertheless something to be avoided because of some harm that it might that it might occasion. 329 00:33:55,300 --> 00:34:08,820 Um, okay. I think that this tendency to understand rape as forced sex and then to understand everything that's bad if, when and if sex is bad as. 330 00:34:09,620 --> 00:34:13,100 As the, um. As a function of force and power. 331 00:34:13,740 --> 00:34:17,300 Right. Is, um, is is just a mistake. 332 00:34:17,780 --> 00:34:23,060 But it's a very understandable mistake in, particularly in a liberal culture, like leave sex out of it altogether. 333 00:34:23,780 --> 00:34:26,100 The same thing happens with capitalism generally, right? 334 00:34:26,780 --> 00:34:33,580 The fact that we're not in a slave society doesn't mean that everything that happens is consensual in our work life and in our, 335 00:34:34,100 --> 00:34:45,740 um, transactional life is good. And, um, and, uh, you know, that assumption underlies the entire virtually the entire administrative state, right? 336 00:34:46,100 --> 00:34:54,860 There are going to be harms in sales and in commerce and in labour that aren't captured by these images of theft or rot or slavery. 337 00:34:56,540 --> 00:35:04,850 And we just haven't made that step in with sexuality, that there are harms of, um, fully consensual sex. 338 00:35:05,690 --> 00:35:12,330 Sex? That's not rape. Sex is nowhere near sex. It's not even sexual harassment that nevertheless need to be articulated spelled out. 339 00:35:12,490 --> 00:35:15,530 It doesn't mean we need an administrative apparatus to to cope with all that. 340 00:35:15,810 --> 00:35:20,010 And so and so your question, you know, what should be the legal response to all this? 341 00:35:20,570 --> 00:35:24,690 I'm not sure that there should be a legal response other than to, um, 342 00:35:25,410 --> 00:35:31,130 take care to avoid this slippery slope other than to take care to avoid the legitimation costs. 343 00:35:31,330 --> 00:35:36,090 So the legitimation cost is a cost of the legal system. I think it's a cost that's a function of law. 344 00:35:36,810 --> 00:35:36,810 Right? 345 00:35:37,450 --> 00:35:45,730 Because when the law articulates a certain standard as being these standards, there's a kind of temptation to just take it wholesale as a moral ideal. 346 00:35:46,450 --> 00:35:49,770 Yeah. It obliterates, obliterates the moral realm. 347 00:35:50,290 --> 00:35:56,730 Right. Which is a problem generally in legal systems with a even a very well functioning rule of law. 348 00:35:56,930 --> 00:36:02,570 There's that problem that, um, if morality is associated with sort of 19th century Victorian norms, 349 00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:12,960 then there's no there's no space in which to engage in serious critical moral thinking about transactions that you don't want touched by law. 350 00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:17,320 Okay. The, um, but it doesn't have to be. 351 00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:22,080 That law exits the field altogether. It's already entered the field in the sexual harassment context, as I said. 352 00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:26,240 I do think that the MeToo movement, as well as the anti-sexual harassment movement, 353 00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:30,520 would benefit by a rich vocabulary to describe what is meant by unwelcome sex, 354 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:35,240 since that has become the legal standard in the realm of school and work. 355 00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:39,520 Now it's the legal standard there because of power imbalances, right? 356 00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:45,040 So in work and school, it's it's that sex that's unwelcome and that can be actionable, 357 00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:52,400 is embedded in a, um, in what's recognised quite formally as a imbalance of power. 358 00:36:52,960 --> 00:37:01,960 And so the tricky, tricky thing is to figure out how to think about unwelcome sex that is not necessarily tied to any such, um, 359 00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:11,120 any such formal power imbalance and then how to talk about it and then how to talk about the up costs and the benefits of, of of worrying over it. 360 00:37:11,240 --> 00:37:15,880 I think. I mean, this is implied by one of your thoughts about how you talk to an 18 year old. 361 00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:22,720 I think that a lot of the weight here has to be on education and just on the promulgation of cultural norms, right. 362 00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:29,320 I just think it would be a big step forward to encourage people to have those conversations. 363 00:37:30,720 --> 00:37:37,160 Yeah. About consent. But if you think you're going to have good sex, either morally or physically, just because somebody consented to it, you're. 364 00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:48,680 That's ridiculous. That's silly. Right? I wonder if finally we could return to the radical feminist view and kind of and your critique of that. 365 00:37:49,320 --> 00:38:00,390 Okay. We spoke about it a little bit earlier. Um, but, I mean, it's often understood who this view, 366 00:38:00,590 --> 00:38:06,230 the radical feminist view of consent and rape to entail this idea that in conditions of patriarchy, 367 00:38:07,350 --> 00:38:13,110 all consent is kind of so tainted because of inequality, because of lack of genuine free choice, 368 00:38:13,910 --> 00:38:20,630 that all heterosexual sex is in some sense a rape, you know, or or in some sense a kind of a violation. 369 00:38:21,470 --> 00:38:26,790 And I wondered if you could kind of clarify, you know, for me, do you think, I mean, do you think that is the view? 370 00:38:27,070 --> 00:38:31,150 Do you think that's kind of a fair representation of the view? It's one that I, that I hear kind of bandied around. 371 00:38:31,950 --> 00:38:36,910 And then do you think that's a helpful way of thinking about, you know, 372 00:38:37,110 --> 00:38:42,710 a lot of this problematic kind of coercive type sex as, as, I mean, making this as politically, I call it rape. 373 00:38:42,910 --> 00:38:47,110 She then says, I don't want to put everybody in prison for that. But politically, I call it rape. 374 00:38:47,630 --> 00:38:51,470 You know, this is all much of a muchness. Almost seems like the idea. 375 00:38:51,950 --> 00:38:57,110 I think it's possible to make sense of the radical critique of consent without reaching 376 00:38:57,910 --> 00:39:04,140 the reductio ad absurdum conclusion that all heterosexual sexes should be criminalised, 377 00:39:04,740 --> 00:39:13,340 and that is what she was doing when she was talking about the, um, over inclusiveness of consent. 378 00:39:13,980 --> 00:39:21,860 The way that that just about any sexual transaction, in my words, is understood as, as resting on express consent. 379 00:39:23,140 --> 00:39:29,900 Marital is the obvious example, but so is sex work implied consent because of the way people are dressing the [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] thing. 380 00:39:30,780 --> 00:39:40,860 Um, or hypothetical consent that you're just you're just assumed to have to have consented to sex because of your particular faith. 381 00:39:41,900 --> 00:39:49,300 I mean, remember, in the Catholic Church, to withhold sex from your husband is a greater sin than it is for him to go get sex, 382 00:39:49,660 --> 00:39:55,980 whether consensually or not, with some outsider? So withholding of sex was regarded as the greatest sin. 383 00:39:56,580 --> 00:40:03,500 So, um, that's an example of what I would call hypothetical consent, that the sex is hypothesised as having been given at. 384 00:40:04,140 --> 00:40:09,060 At, um, at the altar. That makes it express, but as implicit in the role. 385 00:40:09,700 --> 00:40:16,140 Right. If it's implicit in the role of being married, it might also be implicit in the role of being and cohabitation relationship, 386 00:40:16,780 --> 00:40:21,060 or in a relationship or on a date or as part of sex work. 387 00:40:21,380 --> 00:40:27,100 And then that makes you sort of unreasonable. So much of what she said was about that phenomenon. 388 00:40:27,740 --> 00:40:33,660 It was about the way in which consent is presumed so widely that it's just unworkable. 389 00:40:34,820 --> 00:40:37,500 I mean, she never used that word, but it's I think that's what she meant, 390 00:40:37,660 --> 00:40:42,980 that it's unworkable as the divide between consensual and non-consensual, between rape and legal sex. 391 00:40:43,380 --> 00:40:48,140 And what she wanted to say instead was that in some very important sense, yes. 392 00:40:48,860 --> 00:40:49,580 That's why she said yes. 393 00:40:49,780 --> 00:40:59,930 In that context, all all heterosexual sex is rape because it's all coercive, because the culture mandates that women always want it, 394 00:41:00,090 --> 00:41:03,130 that women always desire it, that women always say yes to it, that that's what women are for. 395 00:41:03,410 --> 00:41:06,850 And so what she wound up concluding was that you shouldn't use it as a criteria. 396 00:41:07,290 --> 00:41:10,730 You should use force as the criteria. And there's problems with using force. 397 00:41:11,210 --> 00:41:13,010 But to get back to the more global claim, 398 00:41:14,250 --> 00:41:18,890 one reason for the disconnect between what she was saying and I think what she meant and the way she was heard, 399 00:41:19,210 --> 00:41:21,490 and it was often because of the way she was expressing it. 400 00:41:21,650 --> 00:41:30,210 Right, was that is this there's a common phrase used right among critiques of capitalism that all property is theft. 401 00:41:31,170 --> 00:41:36,570 Right, right. I mean, you hear that bandied about, and so no one understands that. 402 00:41:36,970 --> 00:41:43,450 I don't think as meaning that everybody that owns even a sliver of property should be in jail for theft crimes, right? 403 00:41:43,650 --> 00:41:47,890 They understand it to be a political statement, that it's a political slogan and it's a metaphor. 404 00:41:49,210 --> 00:41:59,810 Um, okay. But in a time period in which other groups of feminists are trying to expand the definition of rape, the definition of what's illegal, 405 00:42:00,290 --> 00:42:08,930 so as to include a lot of sort of amorphous things that not everybody can get their head around to say something that is heard as all sexes rape as, 406 00:42:09,210 --> 00:42:15,650 as a in contrast to saying all property is theft doesn't have an anchored set of meanings. 407 00:42:16,330 --> 00:42:18,850 Right? So that if you're saying all sex is rape, 408 00:42:19,170 --> 00:42:24,330 while another group is trying to expand the definition of rape to include a lot of sex that previously wasn't rape, 409 00:42:24,930 --> 00:42:31,530 it sounds like it's not so crazy to think that you actually mean that all of this sex should be illegal in some way. 410 00:42:32,090 --> 00:42:36,330 Not necessarily criminal, but illegal in some way. And I think that's where the disconnect was. 411 00:42:36,730 --> 00:42:40,250 But your view is that, you know, regardless of this question about criminalisation, 412 00:42:40,890 --> 00:42:49,450 and what we should call rape is also that there are very different harms associated with same sex studies consented to, 413 00:42:49,730 --> 00:42:53,720 but in these kind of broadly socially coercive circumstances. 414 00:42:55,320 --> 00:43:00,400 Yeah. Sex that are great in that it involves the literal, the literal overpowering of of a person, 415 00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,560 you know, whether locally or with kind of coercive threats that amount to correct. 416 00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:10,120 So, so there's, so there's two problems with the radical feminist critique of all heterosexuality, basically. 417 00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:21,120 One is that it it makes more difficult the liberal feminist movement, as well as theoretical move to try to expand the, um, 418 00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:26,320 to expand the definition of rape, to include some forms of sex that people previously had not understood as, 419 00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:30,040 as rape or as deserving of criminal sanction. It just confuses things hugely. 420 00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:35,920 Um, but the second is that it, um, in some ways it's just over inclusive. 421 00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:44,880 As I said before, there are there are, um, sexual relationships, sexual encounters, marriages, relationships and all the rest of it that are, um, 422 00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:57,550 morally unproblematic that, um, that get swept in if one ties the critique solely to power imbalances because power imbalances, again, are pervasive. 423 00:43:58,510 --> 00:44:01,990 I mean, you have to look pretty hard to find somebody who's at exactly your level. 424 00:44:02,590 --> 00:44:09,670 And so and so to return to the school context, I remember when all this was being bandied about in the 80s in terms of defining, 425 00:44:10,270 --> 00:44:16,110 in terms of writing codes of what sexually permissible and not on university and college campuses. 426 00:44:17,070 --> 00:44:24,150 And some of the complaints were coming from people who were in liberal arts colleges and rural settings, 427 00:44:24,750 --> 00:44:30,430 rural America, where it was your only I mean, that's the dating pool. 428 00:44:30,950 --> 00:44:38,150 And so and so the thought was, look, as long as you avoid students who are either, you know, 429 00:44:38,390 --> 00:44:42,350 under 18 or who are undergraduates, define it however you want, as long as you avoid the population, 430 00:44:43,150 --> 00:44:49,190 that's that really is at risk of being exploited and avoid, um, relationships with your direct underlings, 431 00:44:49,790 --> 00:44:55,830 whether they're students or your graduate assistants or your researchers, whatever. It shouldn't be regulated at all. 432 00:44:56,310 --> 00:44:59,830 And so and that struck me a sense of sensible. 433 00:45:00,270 --> 00:45:10,790 It still strikes me as sensible. And, um, I think that where we got to the point of, um, over regulating sex between people at a, 434 00:45:11,030 --> 00:45:15,350 at different levels of hierarchies, but which, but who are not impacting each other. 435 00:45:15,590 --> 00:45:21,510 It's the same in a large workforce. If you're just at a higher rung and you want to have a relationship with a co employee who's not in, 436 00:45:21,670 --> 00:45:28,070 you're not in your jurisdiction at all over whom you don't really directly exercise power, 437 00:45:28,470 --> 00:45:34,430 but you do have more institutional power, um, that that starts looking over inclusive. 438 00:45:36,110 --> 00:45:39,750 Robin West, thank you very much for this conversation. Okay. Well thank you, Kate. 439 00:45:39,990 --> 00:45:42,710 Thanks for. Thanks for inviting me. And I enjoyed it very much.