Response from Jay L. Garfield on December 9, 2005

The person most associated with this claim was Andrea Dworkin, though she was not alone in asserting it. The claim was a bit hyperbolic, but reflected an interesting, controversial claim. Consent, she argued, presupposes rough equality. If you are a violent person holding a gun, and ask me politely for all of my money, even if you don't threaten me, my handing it over is nonconsensual. And that is the case, on this view, even if, had you not had the gun, I would have consented, out of generosity, to give you the cash you wanted. The presence of an unequal power relationship, and the background of potential violence renders consent conceptually impossible.

Now, Dworkin argued, given the tremendous power disparity between men and women in the culture of the USA in the 1970's and 1980's, and the prevalence of domestic violence with men as actors and women as victims, a man's request for sexual activity is too much like your request for cash with the gun in your hand and a history of violence. Even if a woman, on this view, would have been happy to engage in sexual activity with that person absent the background coercion, the fact of coercion makes consent conceptually impossible.

That, I believe, was the heart of the argument. And it does point out one of the many horrible consequences of power disparity, of a culture of violence, and of such evils as sexism and racism, hyperbolic though it may be.

Response from Alan Soble on December 9, 2005

The claim (nowadays, at least) is mostly associated with feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon---and it is restricted to heterosexual sex in particular, not homosexual or lesbian sex. Before we proceed, note that there is a slight error in the question. The writer moves from "rape" in the first sentence to (in effect) "nonconsensual" sex in the second sentence. However, it is still being debated whether a nonconsent defintion of rape is as adequate as, or more adequate than, a definition in terms of "force." (MacKinnon's writings are implicated in this debate.) For an account of some of the philsophical arguments, see Joan McGregor, Is It Rape?, Ashgate, 2005.

Here is one version of the claim in MacKinnon: "Few women are in a position to refuse unwanted sexual initiatives" from men ("Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory," in Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology, edited by Nannerl O. Keohane, Michelle Z. Rosaldo, and Barbara C. Gelpi [Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1982], pp. 1-30, at p. 18). In patriarchy, women do not have the social and economic power to refuse sexual advances from men, in which case their agreement to sex with them is fraudulent, and that makes heterosex into rape. Her point here seems to be that women cannot genuinely consent to sex in patriarchy, since real consent requires equality, and so if rape is understood as nonconsensual sex, there is no non-rape heterosex in patriarchy.

For defenses of the thesis that woman cannot consent to sex in patriarchy, see Carole Pateman, Carole. "Sex and Power" [Review of Feminism Unmodified by Catharine A. MacKinnon]. Ethics 100:2 (1990), 398-407, and "Women and Consent." Political Theory 8:2 (1980), 149-68. Reprinted in The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 71-89.

We also find in MacKinnon: "Compare victims' reports of rape with what pornography says is sex. They look a lot alike. . . . [F]or women it is difficult to distinguish the two ["rape" and "intercourse"] under conditions of male dominance" (MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 146, 174). Here and elsewhere MacKinnon seems to assume a "force" definition of rape and claims that the forcefulness of heterosex in patriarchy turns it into rape. See also John Stoltenberg, who links up with MacKinnon through Andrea Dworkin. For him, pornography "reveals . . . an addiction to force and coercion for [male] arousal; Refusing To Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice (Portland, Ore.: Breitenbush Books, 1989), pp. 120-21.

There is also Robin Morgan (perhaps before Dworkin, even): "rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire. . . . How many millions of times have women had sex "willingly" with men they didn't want to have sex with? . . . How many times have women wished just to sleep instead or read or watch the Late Show? . . . Most of the decently married bedrooms across America are settings for nightly rape ("Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" [1974], In Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist. New York: Random House, 1977, 163-69, at pp. 165-66). Exercise for the reader: disentangle the "nonconsent" and "force" strands in Morgan's notion of rape. The core of Morgan's idea can be found in the writings of Victoria Woodhull in the late 1800s and even in Bertrand Russell's Marriage and Morals (1929).

Response from Andrew N. Carpenter on December 9, 2005

I associate recent defenses of this claim with criticisms of "sex positive feminism," which stresses ways that embracing and affirming their their own sexualities can help feminists to resist the patriarchy and can empower themselves and others; the basic criticism by MacKinnon and others is that the immoral consequences of patriarchy are so intense and pervasive in our culture that they undermine this sort of sexual liberation.

So, for example, in some articles Catherine MacKinnon's position is stronger and more radical than the one Alan describes because her pessimistic view extends to all expressions of sexuality, and is not limited to heterosexuality. In "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: 'Pleasure Under Patriarchy'", MacKinnon argues that there exists in our patriarchal society a "rape culture" that is so strong that it is internalized even by those who oppose the patriarchy most strongly. Her pessimistic conclusion is that this makes morally problematical all sexual activity, including for example masturbation and homosexual sexual activity. Thus her article ends with this haunting conclusion: "I do not know any feminist worthy of that name who, if forced to choose between freedom and sex, would choose sex. She'd choose freedom every time." (That conclusion is a quote from Ti-Grace Atkinson's article "Why I'm Against S/M Liberation.")