Proposes a reconceptualization of consent which argues that consent should be viewed as a dynamic concept that is context-dependent, incremental, and variable.

A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women’s desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women—and their bodies—want. Meanwhile, sexual violence abounds. How can women, in this environment, possibly know what they want? And why do we expect them to? In this elegant, searching book—spanning science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on Me-Too, consent and feminism—Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women’s desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood? In today’s crucial moment of renewed attention to violence and power, Angel urges that we remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions about perfect self-knowledge. Only then will we fulfil Michel Foucault’s teasing promise, in 1976, that “tomorrow sex will be good again.”

This book explains what inalienable rights are and how they restrict the behavior of their possessors. McConnell develops compelling arguments to support the inalienability of the right to life, the right of conscience, and a competent person's right not to have medical treatment administered without consent. Yet, surprisingly, he argues that the inalienability of the right to life does not entail that voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide are wrong. This distinctive defense of inalienable rights will appeal to medical ethicists and other applied ethicists, political theorists, and philosophers of law.

Since its inception as an international principle to protect the welfare of patients and volunteers taking part in medical research, informed consent has become increasingly important within healthcare. Despite its ubiquitous status, there are a number of scholars who are beginning to question whether consent is adequate for contemporary biomedical research. The Limits of Consent considers a number of criticisms that have been levelled at the prominence given to autonomy, a central tenet underpinning the rationale for informed consent in Western bioethics. It raises questions about how quickly and easily this principle has been adopted, and how appropriate it is for those actively engaged in research. In the context of genetic research, for example, the individual's overriding right of autonomy to give consent to research could have huge implications for other members of their families. The Limits of Consent questions the assumption that informed consent protects or facilitates individual autonomy, and discusses empirical studies which suggest that gaining a truly informed consent can be difficult to achieve in practice. With the expectation of treatment and guidance from the physician, how much is the process of consent governed by social norms and expectations? The Limits of Consent focuses upon three principal areas within biomedical research: clinical trials, genetic research, and research with those who may have impaired capacity to consent. It is a truly multi-disciplinary book, incorporating perspectives from medicine, law, philosophy and sociology. The Limits of Consent is a fascinating exploration of the inadequacies of consent, and will appeal to those in the fields of bioethics, socio-legal studies, sociology, and health law. Policy makers, research ethics committee members, and those healthcare professionals with an interest in medical ethics, will also find the book of interest.

This open access book examines the ways that consent operates in contemporary culture, suggesting it is a useful starting point to respectful relationships. This work, however, seeks to delve deeper, into the more complicated aspects of sexual consent. It examines the ways meaningful consent is difficult, if not impossible, in relationships that involve intimate partner violence or family violence. It considers the way vulnerable communities need access to information on consent. It highlights the difficulties of consent and reproductive rights, including the use (and abuse) of contraception and abortion. Finally, it considers the ways that young women are reshaping narratives of sexual assault and consent, as active agents both online and offline. Though this work considers victimisation, it also pays careful attention to the ways vulnerable groups take up their rights and understand and practice consent in meaningful ways.

A portrait of the dopolavoro, or leisure-time organization, the largest of the regime's mass institutions.

When we talk about sex—whether great, good, bad, or unlawful—we often turn to consent as both our erotic and moral savior. We ask questions like, What counts as sexual consent? How do we teach consent to impressionable youth, potential predators, and victims? How can we make consent sexy? What if these are all the wrong questions? What if our preoccupation with consent is hindering a safer and better sexual culture? By foregrounding sex on the social margins (bestial, necrophilic, cannibalistic, and other atypical practices), Screw Consent shows how a sexual politics focused on consent can often obscure, rather than clarify, what is wrong about wrongful sex. Joseph J. Fischel argues that the consent paradigm, while necessary for effective sexual assault law, diminishes and perverts our ideas about desire, pleasure, and injury. In addition to the criticisms against consent leveled by feminist theorists of earlier generations, Fischel elevates three more: consent is insufficient, inapposite, and riddled with scope contradictions for regulating and imagining sex. Fischel proposes instead that sexual justice turns more productively on concepts of sexual autonomy and access. Clever, witty, and adeptly researched, Screw Consent promises to change how we understand consent, sexuality, and law in the United States today.