QC

Cf. my thread on consent-as-a-tool vs. participation-as-the-thing-consent-is-trying-to-accomplish:https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1113562140307124224 …

Some might say e.g. that a 15-year-old can't "really consent" to sex with a 40-year-old, because of power imbalances etc. Using my terms, I would prefer to say that the 15-year-old is very unlikely to be able to participate, with or without explicit verbal consent.

OTOH parenting requires routinely violating the consent of children in some sense, e.g. making them go to sleep or go to school when they don't want to. We don't have a coherent ethical story about this.

More uncomfortable territory: how do you know that you, or your sex partners, can "really consent" to sex? What if most adults can't "really consent" to sex? Does that make most people rapists?

There's an important sense in which I was unprepared to consent to sex (e.g. lack of ability to tell what I really wanted) when I was 15, and turning 18 didn't make it any better! In some sense I was unprepared to consent to sex until I was 27 or so.

In the meantime I attempted to consent to sex when I was 21 and the experience was deeply traumatizing, in a way that I wouldn't recognize and work on until much later. Long story.

I would prefer to say: it's hard to cause participation, and it is mostly not happening. Many people are suffering and hurting themselves and each other, in and out of the bedroom. We did not get taught how to love ourselves and each other well. But we can learn.

As far as privacy: mostly it seems people want privacy to protect themselves from bad or nosy people. That makes sense. But I think in many ways privacy is part of the problem, e.g. it hides abuse in families and romantic relationships.