Early in one of our therapy careers, we sat across from a darling young woman who had come to process her first hookup. The client was frustrated with dating and had decided to follow the path of some of her friends into the scene of sexual liberation, hoping she could feel more alive and desired.
Through sobs, this young woman described an evening with a pushy male partner who was rushed, assertive and uncaring. Though she technically “consented,” she woke up alone, sore and tangled in the sheets of the previous night’s disappointment. She didn’t hear from the man again.
Consent? Yes. Care or concern? Minimal. Love? Don’t even ask.
For a long time, leading voices in entertainment and culture have told us that we can unleash our sexual desires so long as we respect the boundary of consent. This is a risky — if not dangerous — sexual ethic to live by, alluring as it might be. We all deserve better.
Let us firmly state that consent matters. Sexual integrity is central to human dignity and a foundation of relational flourishing. Huge progress for women and other marginalized populations has come from legal reforms surrounding consent. For example, the legal recognition that rape can occur in marriage and other committed relationships has given essential protection to vulnerable individuals who were previously unprotected.
An emphasis on consent has brought gains, but it’s failed to address important issues, notably sexual violence. Despite decadeslong, concerted efforts to teach consent, rates of sexual violence in the United States remain stubbornly high, and efforts to decrease perpetration have not proven effective.
Instead of addressing key drivers of sexual violence — including objectification born from entitlement or power — we’ve embraced a sexual standard that operationalizes it. In today’s prevailing sexual culture, which values sexual liberation, the rule is: “I can use you as long as you say it’s OK.”
Consent is a bandage over the gaping wound of today’s sexual ethics.
One of us once overheard a conversation between two male students at a prestigious business school years ago. The men were crassly comparing how many women they had slept with over the weekend. Did these women know that they would be bragged about and flippantly referred to as another number in each man’s “body count”? Did they know they would be talked about as an “it,” as a “thing”? Not even a “nobody, but a body,” as Salma Hayek wrote in her essay about her painful experience with Harvey Weinstein.
In today’s prevailing sexual culture, which values sexual liberation, the rule is: “I can use you as long as you say it’s OK.”
With hookups, at best, you risk feeling bad about yourself because you used a stranger’s body and let that stranger use you. But with each hookup, you also risk conceiving a child or contracting an STI with someone whose care for you often consists only of getting you to say “yes.”
And worst of all, but staggeringly common, is that you risk exposing yourself to a stranger who will be so set on using you that they won’t respect you when you say “stop.” (One study conducted at a U.S. college found that 78% of campus sexual assaults there occurred during hookups.)
Hookups operate on a model of exchange. Individuals come together for the purpose of using each other’s bodies to experience pleasure, power or validation. Within this exchange, each participant is reduced to the goods that they can offer the other — often a warm collection of body parts or even just an orifice. The seductive lie behind a hookup is that you can have what you want without the actual relational work required to treat another person as a whole, embodied being.
The seductive lie behind a hookup is that you can have what you want without the actual relational work required to treat another person as a whole, embodied being.
None of this is to excuse anyone who disregards another’s “no,” regardless of the context. We would argue that hookups and sexual violence share a self-prioritizing philosophy of sex that (at best) breeds objectification and (at worst) abuse of others.
Humans deserve better, and reports show that most adults want better: They want deep, meaningful relationships with others. And the truth is that consent alone cannot get us there.
A focus on consent is important, but it’s too narrow. Too shallow. Instead, we need to embrace a sexual ethic congruent with deep, meaningful relationships — one characterized by selflessness, sacrifice and commitment.
In other words: love.