What Women Want

Maybe it’s to be treated as individuals?

- By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Most americans understand today that sex without consent is a no-go, both morally and legally. Sex without consent is rape.

But consent should be the floor, not the ceiling, for ethical sexual encounters, suggests Washington Post columnist Christine Emba in Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. "Things don't have to be criminal to be profoundly bad," she writes.

Consent is a "baseline norm," but consent alone doesn't make sex "ethical, or fair, or equally healthy for both participants," argues Emba. Indeed, there are "many situations in which a partner might consent to sex-affirmatively, even enthusiastically-but having said sex would still be ethically wrong." Emba's vision of good sexual stewardship would involve everyone having less sex with fewer people and caring about those partners more. "In general," she declares, "willing the good of the other is most often realized in restraint-in inaction, rather than action." As it stands, Emba adds, "there is something unmistakably off in the way we've been going about sex and dating." To back up that claim, she offers statements from a number of young and youngish ladies, in addition to drawing on her own experiences with dating as a millennial raised as an evangelical Christian.

Echoes of Emba's qualms can be heard everywhere these days. Critics spanning the political spectrum, including feminists like University of Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan, seem worried about modern sexual mores. Compared to prior laments from social conservatives and feminists, today's debate is less focused on purity and patriarchy. It is more concerned with women's satisfaction and happiness.