1 00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:09,640 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Victor Tedros, thanks very much for having this conversation with me. Oh, thanks very much for inviting me. 2 00:00:09,840 --> 00:00:14,520 Great to be here. Now you have a forthcoming book entitled consent and the Sexual Revolution. 3 00:00:15,840 --> 00:00:19,640 And you were very kind enough to send me the manuscript and give me a bit of a heads up. 4 00:00:19,840 --> 00:00:27,720 And it's an incredibly comprehensive kind of. It's like a treatise on everything to do with the ethics of consent and sexual wrongdoing. 5 00:00:28,840 --> 00:00:37,080 Um, but I guess in the broadest terms, you could say it explores the values of the sexual revolution and the way in which consent fits into that. 6 00:00:37,520 --> 00:00:43,080 So I wondered if, to begin with, maybe you could just give me your take on what are the values of the sexual revolution? 7 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:46,040 What have they been and what are they still today? 8 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:53,720 Okay, so the sexual revolution, I think, as it was commonly understood, was a kind of liberalising revolution. 9 00:00:54,480 --> 00:00:59,140 The idea was to try to remove restrictions on Sex. 10 00:01:00,020 --> 00:01:04,260 And so it was really about, um, 11 00:01:05,140 --> 00:01:10,780 trying to prevent the impact of pernicious social and legal norms which prevented 12 00:01:11,420 --> 00:01:15,380 people from exploring their sex lives in order to improve sexual liberty. 13 00:01:17,180 --> 00:01:27,260 And so the actual revolution, I think, was mainly about kind of negative constraints on consent, on, on, on sex. 14 00:01:27,820 --> 00:01:33,540 So it was about repression and removing repression in order that people could explore their sex lives more freely. 15 00:01:34,340 --> 00:01:39,420 And so you think about like, sex outside marriage or, or gay sex or, um, 16 00:01:39,660 --> 00:01:44,220 sex with more than one person or conservative forces that all these conservative forces are oppressive. 17 00:01:44,660 --> 00:01:48,940 And then we're trying to remove those conservative forces in order to achieve sexual liberty. 18 00:01:49,620 --> 00:01:55,460 And you think about like, the kind of key challenges to, for example, the publication of what was considered, 19 00:01:56,660 --> 00:02:03,010 um, problematic literature like D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and then the challenges to that. 20 00:02:03,210 --> 00:02:07,850 That was all kind of part of the idea of the sexual revolution. So as the actual sexual revolution had it, 21 00:02:08,410 --> 00:02:16,610 the main value was about promoting sexual liberty against the kind of repressive conservative norms that applied to people, 22 00:02:16,930 --> 00:02:18,610 especially to women, but to other people as well. 23 00:02:19,730 --> 00:02:26,490 But the way I understand the sexual revolution is to think about the values of the sexual revolution as it's best understood. 24 00:02:27,010 --> 00:02:39,170 And very, very quickly, we got especially feminist challenges to understanding the sexual revolution as just about removing constraints on liberty. 25 00:02:40,010 --> 00:02:48,130 And it was much more about sexual representation and the impact of social power, which was partly about producing sex. 26 00:02:49,010 --> 00:02:53,570 So sexual power was about the way in which we could, um, 27 00:02:54,410 --> 00:02:59,910 change people's attitudes to sex in a way that produced sex in a way that could be problematic. 28 00:03:00,950 --> 00:03:06,510 So the person whose book I kind of really launch off is, is Kate Millet's book Sexual Politics, 29 00:03:06,990 --> 00:03:12,190 where there's this challenge, which is partly about challenging conservative norms, 30 00:03:12,470 --> 00:03:17,550 but it's partly also about challenging the production of sex through sexual representation, 31 00:03:18,630 --> 00:03:23,670 sexual ideology, and where D.H. Lawrence became a kind of challenge to conservative norms. 32 00:03:23,950 --> 00:03:32,150 On the one hand, Kate Millett challenges Lawrence as a kind of figurehead for representing sex in a way that was deeply misogynistic and sexist, 33 00:03:33,150 --> 00:03:37,670 in a way that was about the production of sex, rather than about the the repression of sex. 34 00:03:38,070 --> 00:03:44,070 On the one hand, we need to challenge conservative norms, but on the other hand, we need to challenge social power in a way that produces sex. 35 00:03:44,310 --> 00:03:48,750 And that's the kind of two values that kind of underpin the book as it goes forward. 36 00:03:49,310 --> 00:03:53,670 So you place a lot of attention on this idea of the power of production. 37 00:03:54,270 --> 00:04:01,170 You say the things that produce sex and the various social influences that cause sex to happen which wouldn't otherwise happen. 38 00:04:02,330 --> 00:04:06,410 Um, are there any particular social influences you have in mind in thinking about that? 39 00:04:06,770 --> 00:04:09,770 Well, there's tons of them, but what one way of thinking about it is just think about marriage. 40 00:04:10,570 --> 00:04:13,170 So marriage has two different kinds of effects on sex. 41 00:04:13,410 --> 00:04:19,450 On the one hand, it's repressive because there's this conservative, um, restriction on sex outside marriage. 42 00:04:19,770 --> 00:04:26,890 You have to be married to have sex with someone. And if you weren't married, then there was, uh, kind of social repression on on sex. 43 00:04:27,370 --> 00:04:33,290 But on the other hand, marriage was also about the production of sex, that there was an expectation in marriage that people would have sex. 44 00:04:33,450 --> 00:04:37,370 And it's particularly an expectation on women that they would consent to sex with their husbands, 45 00:04:37,810 --> 00:04:41,410 or even that the fact that they got married amounted to consent to sex with her husband, 46 00:04:41,730 --> 00:04:46,050 as we understand it, as it used to be, in the kind of legal norm which helped to explain why there was no, 47 00:04:46,850 --> 00:04:53,650 uh, criminalisation of rape within, within marriage. And so, um, so marriage plays these two kinds of roles. 48 00:04:53,970 --> 00:04:57,360 And I think typically it was understood in the sexual revolution as repression, 49 00:04:58,320 --> 00:05:05,520 but production was equally important and equally pernicious that marriage was a way in which you could pressure people into having sex, 50 00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:10,200 and people expected sex during marriage. It was it was about both of these things. 51 00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:15,800 That's just one instance of a ton of instances where there was a bunch of things that produced sex. 52 00:05:16,840 --> 00:05:22,040 People who didn't have enough sex were considered as being repressed. There was a lot of psychological literature around that. 53 00:05:22,600 --> 00:05:29,000 Pornography encouraged people to have sex of a certain kind, lots of other things which are about the representation of sex and sex, 54 00:05:29,480 --> 00:05:33,400 sexual power, which were about production, which were also really problematic. 55 00:05:34,320 --> 00:05:39,760 And so the organising idea here is that although the sexual revolution removed a lot of these restrictions, 56 00:05:40,440 --> 00:05:45,400 the conservative repressive restrictions that liberated people to have sex that they otherwise couldn't have, 57 00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:51,000 it didn't do anything or maybe didn't do enough to address those forces, 58 00:05:51,400 --> 00:05:57,700 those problematic forces and kinds of injustices that were causing people to have sex that maybe they didn't want. 59 00:05:58,300 --> 00:06:04,540 That's right. So the, the, the kind of feminist movement which, as I say in a way, was part of the sexual revolution, 60 00:06:05,060 --> 00:06:11,140 but also was critical to some of the way in which the sexual revolution happened was really about challenging those norms. 61 00:06:11,740 --> 00:06:14,900 But I think it's fair to say that the liberalisation norms were much more successful 62 00:06:15,460 --> 00:06:21,860 socially than challenging sexual production and problematic sexual power in that. 63 00:06:22,660 --> 00:06:26,500 Now, you don't find anywhere near as many people who think you can only have sex within marriage, 64 00:06:26,900 --> 00:06:31,980 or that gay sex is wrong, or that sex with more than one person is wrong. You know, most people are pretty open minded about sex. 65 00:06:32,180 --> 00:06:37,620 And then there's the kind of slogan around consent that says, look, if people consent to it, you can do whatever you want. 66 00:06:37,940 --> 00:06:41,220 That's like in a way, that's a way of understanding the slogan of the sexual revolution. 67 00:06:42,340 --> 00:06:48,660 There's much less, I think, attention that's paid to the production of sex through power. 68 00:06:49,180 --> 00:06:53,720 And the MeToo movement, I think, can be understood in a way As a challenge to that. 69 00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:55,640 That's really one of the things that it was about, 70 00:06:55,840 --> 00:07:01,640 was about highlighting the fact that the challenge to the power around sex had been inadequately understood. 71 00:07:02,880 --> 00:07:10,000 And so thinking about the value of consent within that context, within that framework, in chapter four, 72 00:07:11,040 --> 00:07:14,320 you write this as quote, sex with valid consent can nevertheless be depressing, unsatisfying, 73 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:19,040 upsetting, painful, and unequal, which is, I think, again, one of the things that the MeToo movement was, 74 00:07:19,400 --> 00:07:25,280 was pointing out, um, and is of a piece with some other conversations I've had in this series. 75 00:07:26,040 --> 00:07:29,640 So I guess my question kind of stemming off of that is where does that leave consent? 76 00:07:30,120 --> 00:07:38,520 So if if it's true that sexual activity which is consented to can nevertheless be, you know, so problematic, so bleak, 77 00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:44,160 caused by unjust circumstances and the like, how do we, in light of that, 78 00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:49,640 then articulate the value that consent still has for the permissibility of sex? 79 00:07:49,920 --> 00:07:50,990 You know, and maybe beyond that, 80 00:07:51,870 --> 00:07:59,550 it's a one reaction to once we kind of highlight the significance of social power in in the production of sex and recognise that it's misogynistic, 81 00:08:00,910 --> 00:08:04,670 homophobic, racist, ableist, unequally in all sorts of respects. 82 00:08:05,230 --> 00:08:11,390 It's to say, look, you can't really have valid consent under those conditions, and consent just drops out of the picture as a norm. 83 00:08:11,870 --> 00:08:18,750 And some people think even more kind of directly about consent, that it's really fundamentally problematic in itself as an idea. 84 00:08:19,350 --> 00:08:22,790 But my view is much more ambivalent about consent than that. 85 00:08:22,950 --> 00:08:29,070 I think it's much more complex the way we respond to consent under both unjust conditions and as a norm, 86 00:08:29,310 --> 00:08:32,270 which we might try and realise as something which could achieve sexual justice. 87 00:08:33,030 --> 00:08:42,710 So in in unjust conditions, I think that it's wrong to think that consent is never valuable or valid, even when it's morally problematic. 88 00:08:43,870 --> 00:08:46,870 It could still be morally problematic, but still have some kind of force. 89 00:08:47,470 --> 00:08:51,690 And one of the critics of what some people call sex negative feminists was that 90 00:08:52,050 --> 00:08:56,370 they underestimated the significance of sexual autonomy under unjust conditions. 91 00:08:57,010 --> 00:09:02,250 And you still want to value autonomous choices that are made by women, even when they're compromised. 92 00:09:03,250 --> 00:09:10,210 And a lot of the reaction by what so-called sex positive feminists are, sex negative feminists was like, look, you still got a value. 93 00:09:10,610 --> 00:09:16,650 The fact that people are making genuine sexual choices, sometimes those sexual choices which are to do with challenging power in themselves, 94 00:09:17,090 --> 00:09:19,570 their kind of forms of resistance, sometimes they're not. 95 00:09:19,730 --> 00:09:24,690 But even there, it's really important to recognise the significance of women's agency, even under those conditions. 96 00:09:25,330 --> 00:09:33,450 And consent is a central way in which people express their autonomous agency around sex within the context of constrained conditions. 97 00:09:33,930 --> 00:09:40,050 The idea is that being able to consent to something still gives you some control over your life. 98 00:09:41,410 --> 00:09:44,530 Um, despite the fact that there are these unjust circumstances. 99 00:09:45,730 --> 00:09:51,590 Exactly. So you're still expressing your views about what you want with respect to sex, 100 00:09:51,790 --> 00:09:56,790 and also your attempt to kind of shape the way in which other people react to you in your sexual choices. 101 00:09:57,230 --> 00:10:00,710 Consent is really all about that kind of this relational kind of idea. 102 00:10:01,550 --> 00:10:06,590 And so you still value that even when it's expressed in unjust conditions. 103 00:10:07,110 --> 00:10:11,390 One of the ways I would love to think about this was to think about my I'm half Egyptian and my Egyptian family. 104 00:10:12,230 --> 00:10:15,630 They live in this extremely kind of sexist kind of culture. 105 00:10:16,350 --> 00:10:20,790 My the women in my Egyptian family grew up under deeply sexist conditions. 106 00:10:21,630 --> 00:10:24,390 And if you'd said to women under those conditions, look, 107 00:10:24,710 --> 00:10:28,390 none of the consent you gave to sex was valid, even though that was part of your relationships. 108 00:10:29,070 --> 00:10:34,550 They had children, they had marriages which were which they and they had relationships which they thought were valuable and said, look, 109 00:10:34,710 --> 00:10:38,550 your agency just didn't matter at all because he lived in this really deeply misogynistic culture, 110 00:10:38,830 --> 00:10:42,710 which no doubt it particularly was for the women of my dad's generation. 111 00:10:43,230 --> 00:10:46,830 It still is now. But he said their agency just didn't matter at all. 112 00:10:46,950 --> 00:10:51,420 I think they would really strongly reject that as an idea, even though their conditions, I think, 113 00:10:51,780 --> 00:10:58,580 are much worse than the conditions of where we're at least some way closer to gender equality here. 114 00:10:58,820 --> 00:11:03,980 Than, than than my Egyptian family are so thinking about that kind of basic claim, 115 00:11:04,220 --> 00:11:08,820 then, that consent to sex in unjust circumstances could be valid, but might not be. 116 00:11:09,580 --> 00:11:16,380 I guess your view is it depends, um, in the context of, say, coercion or pressure, which I think a lot of people think a lot about. 117 00:11:16,940 --> 00:11:22,020 How how would we figure that out? How would we determine that across a bunch of cases? 118 00:11:22,460 --> 00:11:28,780 Because, you know, they're obviously going to be clear cases, you know, gun to your head kind of situation where of course this is invalid consent. 119 00:11:30,020 --> 00:11:33,460 Um, there may be clear cases of very, very minor pressure, which doesn't seem to make a difference. 120 00:11:33,740 --> 00:11:36,940 And then a lot of argument about these more grey area borderline cases. 121 00:11:37,420 --> 00:11:43,660 So does your view kind of help us figure out the answer to the validity of consent in those kinds of cases? 122 00:11:44,260 --> 00:11:50,240 I mean, yes and no. I mean, some of these cases are just difficult cases. And a good theory of consent is not a theory. 123 00:11:50,640 --> 00:11:54,920 That's like an algorithm that's going to give you the answer to all the moral questions. 124 00:11:55,400 --> 00:12:02,040 A good theory is going to be one that helps you get a grip of how to articulate your judgements about about those cases. 125 00:12:02,440 --> 00:12:06,000 Sometimes there are competing kind of considerations and they're really difficult ones. 126 00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:08,160 And there's a spectrum of cases, as you rightly say. 127 00:12:08,560 --> 00:12:14,280 Everyone's going to be accepting the kind of two party case where someone puts a gun to someone's head and say, 128 00:12:14,640 --> 00:12:17,920 says, have sex with me, I'm going to shoot you. There's no valid consent. 129 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:20,800 Even if the person says yes, there's probably no consent. 130 00:12:21,400 --> 00:12:25,440 If the person says yes because they're not actually consenting, they're just pretending to or something like that. 131 00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:32,200 On the other end of the spectrum, you can think about really minor social pressure, which doesn't play much of a role in the person's decision. 132 00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:36,480 So you can imagine a person making a decision partly because of a little bit of pressure, 133 00:12:36,760 --> 00:12:39,240 but there's lots of other reasons why they choose to have sex. 134 00:12:39,640 --> 00:12:45,500 And then to say the content is valid, I think, really undermines the fact that the persons exercise sufficient agency in making their choice. 135 00:12:45,940 --> 00:12:49,100 And then there's lots and lots of cases which. Which are in the middle ground. 136 00:12:49,620 --> 00:12:54,980 I tend to think that a lot more cases are invalid, though, than probably people think socially. 137 00:12:55,900 --> 00:13:03,700 And I think that what happens in a lot of cases is that the person says yes, but the person who's applying the pressure, 138 00:13:04,100 --> 00:13:07,540 even if it's not that significant, the pressure should still remove the pressure. 139 00:13:08,380 --> 00:13:11,900 Right. And they shouldn't really have sex with the person until they've done that. 140 00:13:12,260 --> 00:13:14,740 So it's still wrongful for the person applying the pressure to do that, 141 00:13:15,100 --> 00:13:18,900 even if it's not an implication of that, that the consent would then be invalid. 142 00:13:20,060 --> 00:13:24,580 Well, I think because it is invalid precisely because the person hasn't removed the pressure. 143 00:13:24,940 --> 00:13:31,140 So the thing about the person who hectors someone intersex, which is a really increasingly familiar phenomena through the MeToo movement. 144 00:13:31,580 --> 00:13:33,500 So we saw it in the Aziz Ansari case, 145 00:13:33,860 --> 00:13:40,100 and then there was lots of other kind of instances which were like this where the person wasn't wasn't using threats, really. 146 00:13:40,340 --> 00:13:45,370 They were just hectoring a person over and over again Into into saying yes. 147 00:13:46,050 --> 00:13:50,090 And in those cases you might think, look, the person could just walk away. There's no real threat there. 148 00:13:50,370 --> 00:13:55,650 But I don't think that's the right response to those cases, because the person who's applying the pressure to say, look, 149 00:13:55,970 --> 00:14:02,890 no pressure and just take the pressure away and then the other person has a much freer choice and then the content is invalid. 150 00:14:03,450 --> 00:14:05,090 Now things are much more difficult, I think, 151 00:14:05,450 --> 00:14:11,650 in what we can call three party cases or multi-party cases where the pressure doesn't come from the person who's seeking consent, 152 00:14:12,290 --> 00:14:18,170 it comes from all sorts of other people. So you think about the wider society that pressurise people into having sex. 153 00:14:18,450 --> 00:14:22,130 And there's a lot, as I said earlier, of wider pressure, which is about sexual production. 154 00:14:22,770 --> 00:14:26,650 So the wider pressure that says if you don't have enough sex, you've got a problem. 155 00:14:27,410 --> 00:14:31,290 The wider pressure that that people say you've got to have sex within marriage. 156 00:14:31,890 --> 00:14:35,650 Now, that pressure doesn't necessarily come from the person who's relying on consent. 157 00:14:36,130 --> 00:14:38,610 It's coming from a much wider range of people. 158 00:14:39,130 --> 00:14:45,150 Now, in those cases, I tend to think because the person who's seeking consent doesn't have much control over that much, 159 00:14:45,510 --> 00:14:51,430 but over that kind of pressure, then consent is it's easier to make consent valid under those conditions. 160 00:14:51,990 --> 00:14:59,030 So thinking about that kind of wider, more diffuse social pressure, which I guess also determines who is deemed sexually desirable, 161 00:14:59,670 --> 00:15:04,630 which which is also in the background, kind of affecting what people do and don't consent to. 162 00:15:04,830 --> 00:15:10,830 I wonder whether outside the law of consent or outside the law of rape and sexual offences, do you think, 163 00:15:11,670 --> 00:15:17,590 you know the state or institutions should do anything about alleviating these kinds of influences? 164 00:15:18,950 --> 00:15:26,030 I mean, it's a really interesting question. I mean, when the state gets involved in sex, um, to put it brutally, it always [INAUDIBLE] it up. 165 00:15:26,270 --> 00:15:30,350 Yeah. And so, yeah, so that's kind of what tends to make the right calls. 166 00:15:30,750 --> 00:15:33,270 Exactly, exactly. I put it more bluntly than you can. 167 00:15:33,870 --> 00:15:44,570 So, um, you know, you worry about state engineering, sexual justice because state power is just the worst place to try and see. 168 00:15:44,810 --> 00:15:51,610 Kind of social engineering around sex and social movements might do a much better job than the state in generating norms. 169 00:15:51,930 --> 00:15:57,730 That's not to say the state doesn't have any role to play. It may well have more of a negative role to play than a positive one, though, 170 00:15:58,010 --> 00:16:03,370 which is the role of trying to remove people from having influence who are really problematic. 171 00:16:04,010 --> 00:16:05,170 So you think about the way in which, for example, 172 00:16:06,210 --> 00:16:14,210 religious leaders or faith schools might create problems around around sex because they're insufficiently interested in sex education. 173 00:16:14,930 --> 00:16:20,210 And so they don't promote the right kinds of norms and sexual education or promote all the wrong norms and sex education. 174 00:16:21,530 --> 00:16:24,890 That's the kind of thing where the state has a role to say, yeah, we don't tolerate that. 175 00:16:25,370 --> 00:16:28,890 And alongside religion, if we're thinking about forces, 176 00:16:29,530 --> 00:16:37,210 ground forces that brainwash people about sex and sexual desirability and ideology, pornography kind of very obviously comes to mind. 177 00:16:37,490 --> 00:16:40,760 And you do write a little bit about this. So I mean, are there any. 178 00:16:41,640 --> 00:16:47,040 Are there any implications there for when we're talking about things the state should do to take away these forces, 179 00:16:47,640 --> 00:16:51,760 you know, kind of mute their impact? Do you think pornography is a candidate? 180 00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:57,800 It's definitely potentially a candidate. The question is whether the state can really do anything about it now. 181 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:03,920 I mean, in the days when people used to write about the regulation of pornography, it was under the assumption that this was really possible. 182 00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:11,040 But now you just doubt that it's really possible. And even if they started to do it, you worry that they would do it badly. 183 00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:15,120 So obviously there's a lot of extremely negative pornography out there, 184 00:17:15,280 --> 00:17:20,240 which creates a lot of real problems around sex and kind of reinforces sexual injustice. 185 00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:24,440 But there's also important positive influences of pornography. 186 00:17:25,040 --> 00:17:33,280 So gay pornography, for example, is pretty important in helping people who are same sex oriented to realise their sexual ambitions in a way that was, 187 00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:37,200 you know, a real problem when gay pornography wasn't so widely available. 188 00:17:37,680 --> 00:17:42,260 And so it's much more complicated the pornography thing and just say, look, we just got to regulate. 189 00:17:42,700 --> 00:17:48,620 Because if the government starts to regulate, you think, okay, are they going to also get rid of the potentially good effects of pornography? 190 00:17:49,380 --> 00:17:51,140 There are obviously lots of very bad effects of pornography. 191 00:17:52,060 --> 00:17:56,540 Would they really be able to challenge those effectively now, given the way in which pornography is distributed? 192 00:17:57,220 --> 00:17:58,540 And the answer to that is probably no. 193 00:17:58,900 --> 00:18:04,380 So in principle, I think this is all candidates for state power, because I think it's perfectly okay for the state to get involved. 194 00:18:04,780 --> 00:18:08,100 And those people who think they're a kind of free speech kind of worries here. 195 00:18:08,380 --> 00:18:10,420 I'm like a little bit unsympathetic to all of that. 196 00:18:10,540 --> 00:18:14,820 I think, look, a lot of this stuff is about really serious harms and the fact the harms are a bit further on down the line. 197 00:18:16,540 --> 00:18:19,500 The free speech worries, I think, sometimes get overridden or exaggerated, 198 00:18:20,300 --> 00:18:26,700 and I think a bit of regulation might be okay, but in practice I have some doubts about that, that being effective. 199 00:18:27,660 --> 00:18:34,460 Also in this domain, we have a debate that's got a bit of traction recently about this idea of a right to sex, 200 00:18:35,460 --> 00:18:39,280 which very problematically has been taken up by the incel movement. 201 00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:44,000 You know, these guys saying all these women are wronging us by not making sex available to us? 202 00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:51,160 Um, but also linked to, I suppose, a true fact about the world, which is that social attitudes, 203 00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:55,520 discrimination and social injustice feeds into sexual desirability, 204 00:18:56,240 --> 00:19:00,560 and then the sexual desires that people actually have, uh, in ways that, you know, 205 00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:05,080 causes distributive problems when it comes to who who has access to sex. 206 00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:15,120 And you very interestingly argue in the book for, I guess, a version of a right to sex, which you do kind of heavily qualify and nuance and explain. 207 00:19:15,800 --> 00:19:18,520 But I wonder if you could say a bit about that. Okay. 208 00:19:18,840 --> 00:19:28,120 So, um, Amy Srinivasan, in her very well-known piece, The Right to Sex, raises the idea of the right to sex, but ultimately, I think, rejects it. 209 00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:32,360 He doesn't really think there is a right to sex, but she kind of thinks the right to sex has a point, 210 00:19:33,160 --> 00:19:38,670 which is that, um, although people aren't ever entitled to sex from some other person. 211 00:19:39,950 --> 00:19:46,070 Nevertheless, there's a lot of distributive injustice about the way in which people have access to sex. 212 00:19:46,510 --> 00:19:51,070 Those people who are considered sexually attractive have lots of opportunities for sex. 213 00:19:51,350 --> 00:19:55,110 Those people who are considered sexually unattractive don't have much opportunities for sex. 214 00:19:55,470 --> 00:19:57,790 And the way in which the, um, 215 00:19:58,110 --> 00:20:04,710 being sexually attractive and sexually unattractive is distributed in a society reflects lots and lots of discriminatory norms, 216 00:20:05,070 --> 00:20:13,470 racist norms, ableist norms. It's extremely problematic how, um, sexual attraction is distributed within a society. 217 00:20:13,870 --> 00:20:22,670 This stuff is not just purely natural, it's stuff that is generated in us by social media, and the social media is racist, ableist and so on. 218 00:20:22,790 --> 00:20:26,510 So it's deeply discriminatory how the opportunity for sex is distributed. 219 00:20:27,070 --> 00:20:31,070 And then we might think, look, sex is a central value in the lives of many people. 220 00:20:31,750 --> 00:20:38,330 The opportunity for sex is incredibly important to people not having any opportunity for a sex life is really bad, 221 00:20:38,610 --> 00:20:42,010 and having a much better opportunity for a sex life. It's really good for a lot of people. 222 00:20:42,490 --> 00:20:50,250 And so then we might think, look, justice is concerned with allocating and distributing goods which are central to people's lives. 223 00:20:50,690 --> 00:20:54,410 And that at least gives us some pressure to think that there's a right to sex. 224 00:20:55,490 --> 00:20:58,610 Okay. Now think okay, who is that right? Held against. 225 00:20:59,370 --> 00:21:03,610 Is that right? Held against particular individuals. And this is where I think the incel movement. 226 00:21:04,010 --> 00:21:09,890 This would be quite a problem. Well, this would be a real problem to say this person has a right to sex against the other person, 227 00:21:10,370 --> 00:21:12,770 and the other person exactly is required to give it. 228 00:21:12,850 --> 00:21:16,970 And that's what marriage was all about, that that wives were required to give sex to their husbands. 229 00:21:18,690 --> 00:21:21,570 That kind of idea obviously is is deeply wrong. 230 00:21:21,810 --> 00:21:28,570 And that's the thing I think that Amir Srinivasan is railing against when she thinks really ultimately there is no entitlement to sex. 231 00:21:29,170 --> 00:21:32,050 But we don't need that idea to think there's an entitlement to sex, 232 00:21:32,250 --> 00:21:38,430 because maybe the entitlement isn't held against particular individuals who have an obligation then to provide sex. 233 00:21:38,950 --> 00:21:48,270 It's rather held against lots of other people who these people have a right that their opportunities for sex aren't undermined by social justice, 234 00:21:49,070 --> 00:21:53,470 by social injustice. They're not undermined by racist pornography. 235 00:21:54,110 --> 00:21:58,590 They're not undermined by ableist attitudes, they're not undermined by problematic sexual education. 236 00:21:58,910 --> 00:22:05,550 And people have a right that those social influences which restrict their opportunities for sex are taken away. 237 00:22:06,030 --> 00:22:14,150 Right. It's a right that all of this stuff doesn't happen. So as to downstream, you know, make it the case that their opportunities are restricted. 238 00:22:14,710 --> 00:22:21,590 So I mean, think about that. What what would a violation then of the right to sex look like for you. 239 00:22:22,870 --> 00:22:26,830 Okay. So one way to start is by thinking about the fact that people have a right to have sex. 240 00:22:27,430 --> 00:22:30,430 And this is really uncontroversial. I think that people have a right to have sex. 241 00:22:30,910 --> 00:22:34,660 So think about like gay couples who want to have sex and then society restricts them. 242 00:22:34,860 --> 00:22:39,220 Their rights are being violated. Their rights to have sex with each other are being violated by the state. 243 00:22:39,460 --> 00:22:42,540 And I think everyone is going to accept that, that those people have a right to have sex. 244 00:22:42,740 --> 00:22:48,780 And you might think, look, what they have a right to is sex with a person who's willing to consent to sex with them or something like that. 245 00:22:49,140 --> 00:22:51,180 Yeah. But then think, okay, 246 00:22:51,700 --> 00:22:59,180 there's lots of other ways in which a person's opportunities to have sex could be undermined in a way that's prior to someone giving consent to them. 247 00:22:59,660 --> 00:23:03,180 It could be undermined because that person is wrongly influenced not to consent. 248 00:23:03,980 --> 00:23:08,500 So like in the book, I go through a bunch of more detailed cases which try and kind of show that this is 249 00:23:08,780 --> 00:23:13,100 a pretty plausible idea that we don't just have a right to have sex with a person, 250 00:23:14,260 --> 00:23:18,220 given that they consent. We also have a right that their decision to consent isn't undermined. 251 00:23:18,860 --> 00:23:21,300 Really? Problematically so. For example, 252 00:23:21,660 --> 00:23:28,500 if someone decides not to consent because someone's lied about the person they were going to consent with in a way that's really problematic, 253 00:23:29,660 --> 00:23:38,240 that might then also undermine that person's right now that this person is given the opportunity to exercise sexual autonomy in a better way. 254 00:23:39,120 --> 00:23:42,520 And if they had been given that kind of opportunity, they would then have consented. 255 00:23:43,360 --> 00:23:47,680 And it really is. The sex is the thing that's being kind of taken away here. 256 00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:51,560 That's the thing that the person had the right to and could say, you know, 257 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:58,200 racist and ableist social attitudes, which the state doesn't do enough to combat. 258 00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:03,480 You know, count as that kind of wrongful undermining that shouldn't have happened. 259 00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:11,240 That's right. So you think about like the kind of like, pervasive kind of impression that's created that some people are not sexually desirable 260 00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:14,960 on racist grounds or because they're overweight or for all sorts of other reasons. 261 00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:17,800 And they say, oh, those people who are targeted by that, 262 00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:23,760 their rights are being undermined because other people are not able to exercise sexual autonomy in the right way, 263 00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:25,880 because they're being influenced in a way that's really problematic. 264 00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:32,950 Going back to the value of consent, kind of, you know, in the framework of the ethics of sex. 265 00:24:33,270 --> 00:24:41,830 There's another view that you address in the book. I think it's a it's a particular scholarly view that emerged in recent years, um, 266 00:24:42,350 --> 00:24:48,390 which says there's actually quite a problem thinking about consent as central to the value of good sex. 267 00:24:48,750 --> 00:24:53,030 And this is because if we think about kind of the best case scenario sexual interaction, 268 00:24:53,990 --> 00:24:56,270 we think about the kind of interactions that are kind of neutrally engaged, 269 00:24:57,270 --> 00:25:01,750 symmetrical, you know, a joint activity where both parties are really enthusiastically involved. 270 00:25:02,430 --> 00:25:07,870 And in those kind of scenarios, the idea is actually this whole idea of consent just drops out of the picture, 271 00:25:08,790 --> 00:25:17,110 because consent actually has far more, you know, the hallmarks of a doer and a done to one person is doing something to another person. 272 00:25:17,510 --> 00:25:18,670 It's inherently asymmetrical. 273 00:25:19,430 --> 00:25:28,710 I mean, I think it's it also has roots in, in feminism, this idea, um, that when we're thinking about consenting, it's still presupposes, you know, 274 00:25:28,790 --> 00:25:32,210 this inequality which is never going to be your best case scenario, 275 00:25:32,930 --> 00:25:37,010 so that actually consent is only ever, you know, it's I think you even said this in a, in a seminar. 276 00:25:37,410 --> 00:25:38,930 It's the second best way of putting it. 277 00:25:39,650 --> 00:25:47,210 Um, hence that is not really what we should be striving to, but it's also not absolutely essential, uh, to good sex and ideal sex. 278 00:25:47,770 --> 00:25:49,410 But you push against this view. 279 00:25:49,770 --> 00:25:58,130 You you want to defend what you call the centrality of consent, even in these kind of ideal jointly, you know, symmetrical cases. 280 00:25:59,450 --> 00:25:59,770 That's right. 281 00:25:59,930 --> 00:26:08,810 So a lot of the bad press that consent gets, I think, is to do with assumptions that people make about concern, which I don't think are right. 282 00:26:09,490 --> 00:26:15,810 And then an attitude about consent, which I think is actually something really valuable about consent, which is being denigrated. 283 00:26:16,330 --> 00:26:18,850 So let me just kind of get into both of those sorts of things. 284 00:26:19,090 --> 00:26:26,370 So the, the let me start with the assumption that, um, that people, um, uh, the people have about consent, 285 00:26:26,730 --> 00:26:30,430 which is right, but which I think they're wrong to denigrate, which is the assumption that. 286 00:26:31,150 --> 00:26:35,190 That consent is a unilateral thing. I agree that consent is a unilateral thing. 287 00:26:35,590 --> 00:26:41,990 It's something that one person gives to another person unilaterally, and the other person might not do anything about it at all. 288 00:26:42,150 --> 00:26:47,550 They might not be involved at all. And the consent could be still both given and valid. 289 00:26:48,670 --> 00:26:54,310 Think about the non-sexual kinds of cases where this is obviously true. So if I say look, anyone can come into my room. 290 00:26:55,150 --> 00:27:00,830 So now I've given consent to anyone coming into my room and no one might come into my room. 291 00:27:01,070 --> 00:27:04,190 No one might be interested in coming into my room. Maybe no one wants to come into my room. 292 00:27:04,350 --> 00:27:08,870 Maybe no one wanting me to give them permission to come into my room. Nevertheless, I've given everyone consent. 293 00:27:09,270 --> 00:27:16,630 And in that sense, consent is unilateral. Now, I agree that consent is unilateral in that way, but I don't think that's problematic. 294 00:27:17,190 --> 00:27:24,270 I think that's a real virtue of consent, that each person in a sexual encounter has control over what happened to them sexually. 295 00:27:25,070 --> 00:27:32,100 In this intimate realm, I think it's quite right that each person has that kind of control and they have unilateral control over what happens to them. 296 00:27:33,580 --> 00:27:38,100 This isn't something which some people think we should replace consent with something like agreement between two people. 297 00:27:38,420 --> 00:27:43,660 And I say in response to that, look, if there's an absence of an agreement and you thought agreement with central, 298 00:27:44,420 --> 00:27:50,300 it's like both people are wronged when the agreement is not there, but when one person forces sex or another. 299 00:27:51,340 --> 00:27:57,340 The person who's having sex forced on them is the one that's being wronged because their unilateral control was being undermined. 300 00:27:58,140 --> 00:28:00,940 So I think it's a, it's a it's a virtue of consent that it's unilateral. 301 00:28:02,180 --> 00:28:07,940 But a lot of the other things that people say about consent, which is that it's not dynamic, it's should be given in advance. 302 00:28:08,540 --> 00:28:13,740 It's something you do in response. Exactly. All of that, I think, is just stereotyping about consent. 303 00:28:14,380 --> 00:28:20,500 And it's not really true. So people um, the one way I described is that it's like a piece of, like, machinery. 304 00:28:21,020 --> 00:28:25,460 I think a lot of the people who think of consent in this way think of it as a piece of heavy machinery. 305 00:28:25,980 --> 00:28:28,880 You kind of almost have to sign a contract in advance or something like that. 306 00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:34,520 But in concert, in our ordinary, everyday lives, and again, outside of the central context, there's nothing like this. 307 00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:37,640 So people learn to give consent when they're very young children. 308 00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:42,760 Um, think about like the way in which kids play with toys and they say, you can use my truck or whatever. 309 00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,800 You know, they pass things around to each other. 310 00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:52,080 There's a huge amount of implicit consent that's going on in that, in those kinds of ordinary play interactions amongst children, 311 00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:58,560 just in the sharing of toys, which shows just how lighter machinery consent really is. 312 00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:05,480 Someone's consenting then withdrawing consent. They're doing that in a kind of context of a kind of dynamic interaction. 313 00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:09,720 And I think a lot of sexual interaction has that kind of dynamic quality too. 314 00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:16,000 And consent given and withdrawn in a very complex and dynamic way in the course of a person having sex. 315 00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:20,920 And it's not always a response to a request in my case of the room shows that earlier too. 316 00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,280 Some people say, look, it's it's really bad because it's something which people do in response to a request. 317 00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:30,700 I say, no, that's not true, right? People sometimes just give consent without having a request in advance. 318 00:29:31,220 --> 00:29:38,500 So if we take the case, which I guess is kind of the, uh, the antagonistic case for your view of someone who is strongly initiating sex, 319 00:29:39,300 --> 00:29:42,740 you know, almost urging the other person to engage in sexual activity with them. 320 00:29:43,060 --> 00:29:46,980 And then the idea is, well, it would be strange to think of that person, you know, 321 00:29:47,140 --> 00:29:50,780 the instigator as consenting, because, you know, what do you mean, consenting? 322 00:29:51,340 --> 00:29:58,060 They're the one instigating the whole thing. But according to your analysis, no consent is still doing a lot of work with them. 323 00:29:58,260 --> 00:30:03,220 It's just that, I don't know, it's more implicit than often people take it to be. 324 00:30:03,460 --> 00:30:06,900 That's right. So the person who's urging is urging and consenting. 325 00:30:08,060 --> 00:30:14,460 Right. They can they can send urging. It's the consensus part of what's going all the way to get at this is to think, look, 326 00:30:14,820 --> 00:30:21,540 you can urge people to do things and grant them a permission, or you can urge someone to do something without grant granting permission. 327 00:30:21,900 --> 00:30:24,570 So here's again an example outside of the sexual context that I use. 328 00:30:24,850 --> 00:30:29,730 So imagine, like I'm a martial arts instructor and I urge someone to punch me in the face. 329 00:30:31,130 --> 00:30:34,810 And I do that because I want to show my class how to take a punch. 330 00:30:35,370 --> 00:30:40,410 Well, I'm urging the person to do something, and I'm also, in the course of doing that, permitting the person to punch me in the face. 331 00:30:41,690 --> 00:30:46,890 And we know that I'm doing that because if we compare other cases where I could urge someone to punch me in the face where I'm not permitting, 332 00:30:48,570 --> 00:30:53,850 the wrong still is present. So suppose that, um, uh, Kate's out of prison. 333 00:30:54,330 --> 00:30:58,650 I really want to get back into prison, and I can get her back into prison if she commits a criminal right against me. 334 00:30:58,770 --> 00:31:02,170 So I urge her to punch me in the face. So come on, punch me, punch me. 335 00:31:02,290 --> 00:31:03,850 And I want her to punch me so the cops will. 336 00:31:04,130 --> 00:31:08,810 It's like an entrapment type case because I want her to be put back in prison, so I'm not granting a permission. 337 00:31:09,890 --> 00:31:12,690 I'm not saying to Kate, look, you're permitted to punch me in the face. 338 00:31:12,890 --> 00:31:19,730 I'm saying to you, I really want you to punch me in the face, even though I'm not permitting you to do it in order that you went back to prison. 339 00:31:19,970 --> 00:31:24,190 Because if I was permitting you to do it, it wouldn't be a crime. A crime, and you When we came back to prison. 340 00:31:24,590 --> 00:31:28,910 So I really want you not to be permitted. But I still really want you to do it. 341 00:31:29,310 --> 00:31:34,470 So those two cases show you that you can urge and permit, or you can urge a not permit. 342 00:31:34,830 --> 00:31:40,510 So urging is not sufficient. What you need to do is urgent permit in order to have permissible sex. 343 00:31:40,870 --> 00:31:45,710 And so when it comes to urging, you better have implicit permission in there. And I think that's what's going on in a lot of urgent cases. 344 00:31:46,310 --> 00:31:52,950 Okay. Um, you also suggest at some point in the book that there could be instances of sexual 345 00:31:53,350 --> 00:31:58,070 activity that you describe as being beyond the scope of one person's consent in that, 346 00:31:59,390 --> 00:32:08,670 uh, it does not equate to what they intended to allow and yet still amount to a validly consensual interaction that is not wrongful. 347 00:32:10,070 --> 00:32:15,350 Um, so could you take me through how how that's the case and maybe an example of where that might be the case? 348 00:32:16,230 --> 00:32:23,210 Okay. So a lot of the cases around the way to get to this is to think about deception and error. 349 00:32:24,290 --> 00:32:29,490 So when people have sex with each other, there's obviously a lot of deception and a lot of error that goes on. 350 00:32:29,890 --> 00:32:35,210 People make people give consent under conditions of non full information. 351 00:32:36,410 --> 00:32:44,450 And if it was true that um, we required completely full information in order to give valid consent. 352 00:32:45,650 --> 00:32:49,010 Forget valid consent because no one has completely full information. 353 00:32:49,730 --> 00:32:52,770 And that's even true when the information really influences people's sexual choices. 354 00:32:53,410 --> 00:32:59,690 So I think, you know, imagine that you could only have sex with a person where you knew all of the things that were relevant to your choice. 355 00:33:00,290 --> 00:33:02,170 Right. You're never going to you're never going to know that. 356 00:33:02,610 --> 00:33:06,410 And probably people would never give consent if they knew all the things that were relevant to their choices. 357 00:33:06,770 --> 00:33:10,570 Because, you know, there's always something about a person that you're not going to like. 358 00:33:10,970 --> 00:33:15,730 And so people would never really give consent, I think, if they knew everything about the person they were consenting to. 359 00:33:16,010 --> 00:33:18,330 And a lot of consent to sex happens in, 360 00:33:18,730 --> 00:33:24,760 in in contexts like people meet in a bar and then they really don't want to know everything about the other person either. 361 00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:33,760 If they did know that stuff, they wouldn't consent though. Okay, so now notice that when people consent, they consent with a certain kind of scope. 362 00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:43,000 So they consent to sex where they put certain kinds of conditions on or a certain kind of scope to their consent. 363 00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:48,240 And that scope. There's different kind of theories out there about what determines that kind of scope. 364 00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:55,320 My own view is that that's about intentions. So people the scope of the person's consent is what the person intends to consent to. 365 00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:57,680 But that's a controversial view. I'm not relying on that really here. 366 00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:02,360 But that's one way of understanding it that if I consent, then that's determined by what I intend. 367 00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:09,640 Now, what I intend is often pretty vague, actually. So, you know, a lot of the the boundaries of consent anyway are quite vague. 368 00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:13,720 And again, think about outside the sexual context and you can really see this. I invite someone into my house. 369 00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:20,620 What am I really consenting to? And I can send it to them. Walking through the corridor, sitting on the sofa, Getting a glass of water. 370 00:34:21,100 --> 00:34:25,100 Going to the toilet. You don't just address your mind. I'm not thinking about all of that stuff. 371 00:34:25,660 --> 00:34:27,940 And then it's also really unclear whether I've consented to that. 372 00:34:28,100 --> 00:34:32,500 Not just unclear because we don't know, but unclear because there is no determinate fact here. 373 00:34:32,700 --> 00:34:39,220 About what? What's really going on? Okay, now, think sometimes I could consent with a certain scope, 374 00:34:39,860 --> 00:34:44,940 but maybe what I've done is granted a permission to do something which is broader than that scope, 375 00:34:45,700 --> 00:34:48,740 because maybe the conditions that I've put on are really problematic. 376 00:34:49,740 --> 00:34:54,980 Right. And then I think sometimes the consent that I've given gives rise to a permission, 377 00:34:55,460 --> 00:35:00,460 even though the thing that I got wasn't really the thing that I contend is an example in the book about virginity, 378 00:35:01,180 --> 00:35:06,580 where one person puts a condition on having sex with another person who is a woman that she's a virgin for, 379 00:35:06,780 --> 00:35:16,940 very problematic, you know, ideological reasons. Exactly. So again, go back to Egyptian society, where being a virgin is incredibly important in, um, 380 00:35:17,700 --> 00:35:23,360 uh, in people's ability to secure marriage and sex within marriage, have children, and so on. 381 00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:28,400 If a person's not a virgin, they've had sex outside marriage, then it's much more difficult for that person to get married. 382 00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:37,880 And women in Egypt go through all sorts of, um, ridiculous kind of, uh, um, um, practices in order to try to prove virginity. 383 00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:44,440 And many women who've had sex outside marriage lie about virginity and get married. 384 00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:49,880 And the husbands that they get married to, that's a condition for them having sex. 385 00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:56,560 And the question is, have these women wronged these men because these men haven't consented to sex with a non virgin? 386 00:35:57,720 --> 00:36:02,640 And my view is that can't be right, that under these conditions, 387 00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:10,320 particularly conditions where these particular men are also upholding these sexist norms, I don't think there's an obligation to inform. 388 00:36:11,240 --> 00:36:14,200 But the sex that's being had then is outside of the scope of consent. 389 00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:18,910 I think you want to hold that that clear that it's definitely outside of the scope of consent. 390 00:36:19,350 --> 00:36:23,310 That's right. Because the men say I only have I only consent to sex with someone who's a virgin. 391 00:36:23,750 --> 00:36:27,750 I suppose they put that condition on which they explicitly, explicitly. That's what they say. 392 00:36:29,190 --> 00:36:33,630 Then they haven't consented to sex with these women because what they did was outside of the scope of consent. 393 00:36:34,030 --> 00:36:39,270 But I think they consent to sex nevertheless gives rise to a permission to have sex. 394 00:36:39,990 --> 00:36:46,550 Okay. Even though they haven't consented to exactly this. So that gets you to the, I guess, counterintuitive sounding conclusion, 395 00:36:47,150 --> 00:36:52,950 but I can see why you get there that sex outside the scope of consent can sometimes be permissible. 396 00:36:54,350 --> 00:37:00,030 You've consented to something not quite what you got, but you can send it to something and that's enough to ground the permission. 397 00:37:00,550 --> 00:37:05,110 So it's important in this analysis that the person has has given their consent, 398 00:37:05,550 --> 00:37:11,030 even in the the context of not knowing all the information, they have given some sort of consent. 399 00:37:11,390 --> 00:37:17,970 It would be different, for instance, if for the same problematic reasons, a person said, well, I found out you're not a virgin, let's say. 400 00:37:18,210 --> 00:37:23,090 Now, I don't want to have sex with you. Then the other person forces sex on them anyway because they don't accept the reason. 401 00:37:23,730 --> 00:37:28,210 This is a different situation, right? Exactly. The fact that the person considered something really makes a difference in itself. 402 00:37:28,770 --> 00:37:33,650 You couldn't force a sex on a person who said no, or for racist reasons or ableist reasons, or what happens exactly. 403 00:37:33,970 --> 00:37:40,890 But once the person says yes to something, in this case, sex with a person who's a virgin, 404 00:37:41,730 --> 00:37:48,970 then they, um, give rise to a permission to sex that a non virgin can have sex with them. 405 00:37:49,530 --> 00:37:53,290 Right? Because it's close enough. Close enough. It's close enough to what actually happened. 406 00:37:53,570 --> 00:37:58,090 Close enough so you didn't get quite what you wanted, but you got something which was close enough to what you wanted. 407 00:37:58,410 --> 00:38:01,450 And the reasons why you didn't want it were really [INAUDIBLE] good. 408 00:38:01,650 --> 00:38:07,290 So, um, I'm playing the world's smallest violin now and say, thinking you didn't get quite what you wanted. 409 00:38:07,890 --> 00:38:14,950 It's super interesting. Um, okay. I mean, coming outside of, uh, the sexual context when it comes to consent. 410 00:38:15,950 --> 00:38:24,110 Obviously, consent is an idea, is a notion that we have that is not just relevant to sexual activity, we employ it all the time in other situations. 411 00:38:24,670 --> 00:38:30,910 And in your book, you use tons of analogues to do with consent to figure out what's going on with consent that are not in the sexual context. 412 00:38:32,270 --> 00:38:42,390 And so I guess I wonder whether and when it matters to our analysis of consent and when we unearth valid consent, 413 00:38:42,830 --> 00:38:48,230 invalid consent permissibility that we are thinking about sex in particular, is sex special? 414 00:38:49,230 --> 00:38:52,670 In other words, in a way that changes our analysis of consent? 415 00:38:53,150 --> 00:38:56,390 Or should our analysis of consent in the sexual context just follow, 416 00:38:56,910 --> 00:39:00,830 you know neatly along how we would think about consent in all of these other contexts. 417 00:39:01,350 --> 00:39:05,950 You know, contracts, you know, property exchanges, business transactions, um, 418 00:39:06,430 --> 00:39:09,830 medical surgery, you know, is another good example where consent is really germane. 419 00:39:10,910 --> 00:39:13,620 Should it look the same in all these cases? You know, do we work with the same principles? 420 00:39:14,180 --> 00:39:17,380 Or does the fact that we're thinking about sexual activity change anything? 421 00:39:18,620 --> 00:39:22,180 So I think it's both the same and different in some aspects. 422 00:39:22,540 --> 00:39:28,460 It's the same. In some aspects it's different. So the very idea of consent I think is the same across all these different contexts. 423 00:39:29,300 --> 00:39:35,140 I think it's the very same idea of granting people permissions to say, someone, you're allowed to do this. 424 00:39:35,620 --> 00:39:39,340 That's really what consent is about, saying people you're allowed to do this. 425 00:39:39,740 --> 00:39:45,140 And that basic idea, I think is prevalent across all sorts of different domains. 426 00:39:45,540 --> 00:39:48,020 And that's why consent is really important in all sorts of different domains, 427 00:39:48,340 --> 00:39:52,940 because people want to have control over whether they allow people to do things or not. 428 00:39:53,380 --> 00:39:56,220 Not just in the sexual realm, but in all sorts of other realms as well. 429 00:39:57,540 --> 00:40:02,660 So I think that in that way, when we think about the philosophy of consent to sex, 430 00:40:02,900 --> 00:40:07,060 we should think about consent in a way that's uniform across these different contexts. 431 00:40:07,500 --> 00:40:14,400 And sometimes we can learn a lot from other contexts by thinking about those and then drawing analogies from other contexts for consent to sex. 432 00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:16,480 And I think there's nothing wrong with doing that, 433 00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:23,960 as long as we're mindful of the fact that the conditions that make consent valid or that determine the significance of consent, 434 00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:27,000 they might be quite different across these different realms. 435 00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:32,040 And we've got to be careful about saying just because it's okay in this kind of context doesn't mean it's okay in the sexual context, 436 00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:37,800 because sex has special kinds of value for people. It has a special kind of significance for people. 437 00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,080 There's special kinds of power relations that are involved in sex. 438 00:40:41,720 --> 00:40:45,880 Lots of other problematic features of sex which make it also different from these other things. 439 00:40:46,240 --> 00:40:49,520 So we've got to be mindful when we're drawing analogies from other contexts. 440 00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:50,760 I think it's okay to do it, 441 00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:56,040 but you just need to be kind of careful about exactly how you do it and make sure that you're tracking these potential differences. 442 00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:03,920 Right. And in this vein, I think you mentioned maybe in your introduction, this consent and t video that that went like viral a few years ago. 443 00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:11,260 And then teacher friends of mine tell me that they use it in high school to train, uh, teenagers about consent to sex. 444 00:41:11,860 --> 00:41:18,700 Um, I mean, I don't know if everybody knows about this video where the the they basically say, here's how to think about consent. 445 00:41:19,620 --> 00:41:24,380 Imagine you're asking someone if they want a cup of tea. If they say no, you don't give them a cup of tea, do you? 446 00:41:24,540 --> 00:41:28,060 You don't try to force it down their throats, scold them, this sort of thing. Um. 447 00:41:28,260 --> 00:41:32,540 And you, you're unsure that in that case, that. That's a helpful analogy. 448 00:41:33,460 --> 00:41:40,780 Of course it's helpful in some ways. You know, it's true that, like, it would be wrong if someone says to have a cup of tea before someone has sex, 449 00:41:40,940 --> 00:41:44,020 or the analogy works there, don't you think? Other ways in which it doesn't really work? 450 00:41:44,300 --> 00:41:49,660 So it would be okay, I think, if a student came into a professor's office for the professor to offer them a cup of tea, 451 00:41:50,100 --> 00:41:57,020 not okay for them to offer them sex, it'd be okay for me to say to my grandmother at, um, a social occasion. 452 00:41:57,500 --> 00:42:02,340 You're really good at making tea, right? Wouldn't be quite so okay for me to say you're really good at sex, right? 453 00:42:02,580 --> 00:42:06,780 And urging someone to have a cup of tea. Maybe because you suspect that they do want the tea, but they're being polite. 454 00:42:07,100 --> 00:42:12,130 It's quite unproblematic. Right? Whereas Less so in the case of sex. 455 00:42:12,730 --> 00:42:15,370 We need to be much more careful in the sexual realm than we do in the T realm. 456 00:42:15,890 --> 00:42:20,570 So the T video is kind of helpful in one way, but in another way it might actually generate some problems. 457 00:42:21,170 --> 00:42:26,250 Cause people, if people start to think, look, I can do all the things that I would do with t with sex, 458 00:42:26,610 --> 00:42:33,690 then we're going to get some serious problems, I think, as a result of that. And then going back to the introduction and the value of consent, 459 00:42:34,170 --> 00:42:38,490 there's something you say there where you explain the thesis of the book and you say that the value of consent, 460 00:42:39,770 --> 00:42:45,250 valid consent depends on the circumstances in which it's given and actually the value of consent. 461 00:42:46,010 --> 00:42:52,490 This is separate from the question of is there consent is something that we can actually work to improve, you know, collectively or individually. 462 00:42:53,410 --> 00:42:58,850 Can you say something about that? Like how would we improve the value of the consent that there already is being given? 463 00:42:59,410 --> 00:43:03,730 I take you to be saying so one of the kind of like, um, 464 00:43:05,730 --> 00:43:11,310 ways in which consent has figured in social discourse and in educational institutions, for example. 465 00:43:11,750 --> 00:43:16,830 As I say, look, you've got to make sure that you've got consent. That's that's what we're trying to achieve. 466 00:43:17,350 --> 00:43:21,310 Trying to achieve sexual justice is about making sure that people only have sex with consent. 467 00:43:21,990 --> 00:43:25,510 And then people say, look, it can't just be consent. It has to be valid consent. 468 00:43:26,670 --> 00:43:31,630 So the aim of kind of institutions is to make sure that people only have sex when they have valid consent, 469 00:43:32,070 --> 00:43:37,470 texts, that consent that isn't induced by coercion or deception or, or lack of capacity or whatever. 470 00:43:37,990 --> 00:43:41,590 And I say, look, that's not enough. You need to do better than that. 471 00:43:41,790 --> 00:43:46,150 Because the thing that I pointed out earlier was people can give valid consent, 472 00:43:46,550 --> 00:43:52,830 sometimes in deeply unjust conditions, and the value of the consent they give is less, even though it's valid. 473 00:43:53,470 --> 00:43:56,510 So it gives rise to someone else being permitted to have sex with the person. 474 00:43:57,510 --> 00:44:01,350 But it's just not as good as it could have been so valid because of the reasons we discussed earlier. 475 00:44:01,790 --> 00:44:08,250 Because you still want people to be able to exercise agency in that situation, yet not as good as it could be. 476 00:44:08,370 --> 00:44:12,690 Not as good as it could be, because the person's consent would have more value than the sex they had as a result, 477 00:44:12,970 --> 00:44:16,410 would have more value if it had been given in a better social context. 478 00:44:16,930 --> 00:44:25,810 And so our reasons for addressing, for example, ableist norms, um, misogynistic norms, racist norms, 479 00:44:26,450 --> 00:44:34,850 our reasons for addressing those aren't just to ensure that people can have sex, which is consensual, and which people validly consent to. 480 00:44:35,290 --> 00:44:40,450 It's to enhance the value of consent. When consent is given in more valuable circumstances, 481 00:44:41,690 --> 00:44:48,330 then it improves the overall ethics of sex in a way that isn't just about making sure that it's all permissible. 482 00:44:49,090 --> 00:44:53,130 It's about improving its significance for people, its value in people's lives. 483 00:44:53,570 --> 00:45:02,730 So perhaps this is one way in which, according to you, we we de-emphasise slightly or to de-emphasise the importance of the binary of consent 484 00:45:03,130 --> 00:45:07,400 and non consent as explaining everything that is going on in the ethics of sex. 485 00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:13,760 That's right. So the challenge isn't just to make sure that people have sex when it's okay. 486 00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:20,760 Yeah. It's to improve the circumstances in which people give consent to improve the value of sex in people's lives, 487 00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:22,880 and the value of consent to sex in people's lives. 488 00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:31,320 That's that's a central kind of aim of sexual justice, which I think has been kind of downplayed in the aim to ensure that people only have sex, 489 00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:36,520 which is consented to they're not really thinking enough about this, but that's also about consent. 490 00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,760 So some people might think, look, that's a way of decentralised consent, but it's not really. 491 00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:47,120 It's a way of centring consent in a different way. So thinking about consent not just as something which determines permissibility, 492 00:45:47,720 --> 00:45:51,760 but something which can have genuine value for people, more or less value for people. 493 00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:58,080 And then we want to try and enhance its value as well. Victor Tadros, thanks very much for having this conversation with me. 494 00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,080 Thank you so much. This was really enjoyable to talk to you.