In our astonishing cultural moment, people—and not just those in gender studies departments—are engaged in serious conversations about sex and power.
One interpretation of the #MeToo phenomenon is that sexual harassment is not about sex at all but only power.
There is truth in this view.
The power dynamics in film producer Harvey Weinstein’s room, for example, clearly made all the difference in determining how women responded to his unwanted advances.
Interestingly, the view that sexual harassment is not primarily about sex is put forward more often by women than by men.
Male commentators, such as the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, often see things differently.
In a conversation with Rebecca Traister of New York magazine, he paraphrases Tony Montana from “Scarface”: “First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women.”
As Mr Douthat puts it, a certain kind of “male sexual brain understands power” to be “a means to sex.”
And if the behavior of men like Mr Weinstein is about sex as well as power—and it certainly seems to be—we will not get out of this mess without asking some hard questions about contemporary sexual desire.
Sometimes we resent the relationship or, at least, we resent that it waylays us—though with those whom we love it is difficult to admit, for it seems so shamefully selfish.
Yet we cannot help but wonder why God has asked this of us.
Why has our life been waylaid?
What is the Lord trying to accomplish here? And how long will my life be like this?
The ethical conversations sparked by the recent revelations, however, rarely get past debating whether or not the encounters were consensual.
Yet mere consent is necessary but not sufficient because it is entirely too thin to support the weight of a sexual encounter.
The Problem With Consent
First, a reliance on consent overlooks the power dynamics that pressure women to consent to sex.
Consent is not the magic bullet that prevents women from getting involved with abusive men.
This is a truth many feminists have grasped, especially recently, as “sex-positive feminism” has come under fire.
Sex positivity is defined by Allena Gabosch as “an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable.”
But this seemingly neutral approach quickly becomes prescriptive.
As one young woman writes at the online magazine Everyday Feminism, “The sex-positive feminist circles I traveled in taught me that you should have sex whenever you feel the physical desire to do so, and if you don’t, it’s because of internalized societal pressures.”
The concrete result is reverse pressure on women to engage in casual sexual encounters—in other words, to act just the way the Mr Weinsteins of the world want them to.
Further, the obsession with consent keeps all the focus on the people (especially the women) while conveniently ignoring the sex.
Is consent really so powerful that it can make any kind of sex non-exploitative?
What about women acting out male pornography fantasies, no matter how bizarre? Isn’t there such a thing as bad, consensual sex? Continue reading
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