There is a global trend towards defining sexual violence in terms of non-consent. However, the very concept of sexual consent has proved ambiguous and many scholars highlight the difficulties of distinguishing genuine consent from compliance in the context of a gender regime that constrains women’s ability to say no to male sexual initiatives. But what about men’s experiences of vulnerability and ambiguousness as regards whether their own participation in sex is consensual or not? This issue has often been left out of discussions on consent, since the key problem connected to the issue of consent is arguably some men’s disrespect of girls’ and women’s non-consent. The framing of (non)consent as an issue first and foremost for girls and women is indeed understandable in the light of the gendered patterning of sexual violence; at the same time, it is problematic insofar as it reproduces masculinity constructions that take men’s sexual willingness for granted.
Based on initial findings from an ongoing interview project, the paper explores heterosexual men’s experiences of sexual consent and non-consent and the grey-area in-between. Examples of questions guiding the analysis are: Do the men experience tensions and ambiguities as regards sexual (non)consent? Do they have experiences of participating in unwanted sex? If so, how do they understand such experiences? How is non-consent communicated? Do they sometimes find it difficult to know what they really want? How is this understood? What role does gendered scripts and masculinity constructions play? What role does care and concern for a sexual partner play? What role is played by the gendered nature of the notions of victim and perpetrator?
An assumption guiding the analysis is that, on one hand, there is a gendered structure that empowers men at the cost of women, but that, on the other hand, men too are likely to be vulnerable in the face of powerful scripts of constant male sexual readiness and the expectations they generate. How are we to make sense of the differences and similarities in heterosexual men’s and women’s respective experiences of unwanted sex and the grey-area between wanted and unwanted sex?