Sexual Consent in the Post-MeToo World: A Study in Philosophy and Law

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The #MeToo movement of 2017 and 2018 was a veritable cultural and political tsunami, whose full implications are still very much playing out. In its ongoing aftermath, the world continues to reckon with the sheer scale and mundaneness of the sexual harassment, exploitation, and even rape, which was revealed to be an aspect of so many women's experience, in so many different walks of life. #MeToo was a watershed moment, and it is safe to conclude that our thinking about sex, consent, and power will never be the same. Now that we are in the aftermath-or aftershock-the immanent questions are how things ought to be different, what actions ought to be taken (including, possibly, by the law) to inculcate a new ethic of sex, as well as what should be done about those whom #MeToo has found culpable of sexual misconduct, but whom the criminal law has not (or not yet). Certain corrective stances now enjoy near-universal support. They include a new appreciation of the operation of power imbalances in the sexual domain; of the often-exploitative character of consensual sex, and the serious consequences of both severe and casual sexual harassment on the lives of victims, largely women, inside the workplace and outside of it. Every bit as much, though, there are questions which continue to divide and to puzzle. What degrees of pressure, or which kinds of deceptions, effectively invalidate consent to sexual activity? What are the appropriate repercussions for a person who is revealed to have sexually harassed people in the past in ways that were, at the time, socially acceptable? Need A express an affirmative and enthusiastic desire for sex in order for B to reasonably draw the conclusion that A consented to that sex? How should the culpability (or mens rea) condition for rape be formulated exactly? What does it mean to "Believe Women", and how does this imperative interact with the presumption of innocence? Ought we to adopt a presumption of innocence in social life, or in our employment decisions, which echoes that of the criminal law? Is so doing compatible with the disposition to "believe women" when they make sexual assault allegations? Would the egregious sexual practices exposed by #MeToo be combatted by embracing, in life or law, a so-called 'affirmative' standard of consent, as is increasingly the case on American college campuses? These questions are as difficult as they are uncomfortable. This project will draw on long-standing and cutting-edge scholarship across philosophy, law, and politics, to further the answers to them. A series of filmed conversations broadcast online, will disseminate, in an accessible manner, the ideas of scholars working across different disciplines which bear on the project's questions. In both its filmed and written outputs, designed for a general audience, it will inject more of these scholarly debates into the public discourse, connecting up current, topical controversies with deeper ones of long philosophical standing, and will offer much-needed clarity about the law of sexual consent and sexual wrongdoing. Questions of law and ethics will be helpfully prised apart. The project's big questions will be tackled through engaging with real life cases, many familiar from the media attention they received, and applying critical thinking in philosophy, law, and politics, to the issues they throw up. In the legal sphere, policy-makers and legal practitioners will be brought into direct conversation with academics to consider what role legal reform may have to play in promoting better sexual practice. The problems of #MeToo are, at bottom, problems of justice: gender justice, criminal justice, and the justice involved in negotiating sex in an unequal world. As with all problems of justice, we should not expect simple answers; but this project aims to make a dent in them.