The ethics of sexual consent

Two of my friends were having a discussion recently. If you’re having sex, is it okay to initiate choking with a light hand on the neck? One friend, the guy, said yes. Many women like it and if they don’t they’ll tell you. The other friend, the girl, said no. Many women will be scared or freeze. They fact that they don’t tell you to stop doesn’t mean that it’s okay. The discussion went on.

The core question here is “What can you do to someone else without asking permission first”.

One answer is nothing but that’s not workable. You can’t stop sex 500 times to ask permission for every single kiss, touch etc…

Another answer is that you can initiate whatever you want. It’s on the other person to make their boundaries clear or tell you they’re not into something you try. This seems wrong. A few problems:

• if you’re a man, chances are many women may be frightened if you initiate anything that’s too aggressive and some % won’t tell you to stop out of fear
• many people are generally agreeable and won’t tell you to stop
• it’s not clear ethically why the burden is on the person you do things to to tell you to stop. This isn’t the case anywhere else in life. E.g: It’s not okay for me to walk up to strangers on the tube and try to kiss them, even if I do so on a way that makes it clear what my intent is and gives them time to ask me to stop

I think the correct answer in sexual situations is that same as in non sexual ones. The allowableness of an action is something like (1 - P(they’re okay with it)) * the badness if they’re not okay with it. The first part is basically a hypothetical consent thing. It’s okay for me to walk up behind a girl I’m dating and to put my hands on her hips in our home because I have a high degree of confidence she’s okay with it. It’s not okay for me to do that to a stranger on the tube. The second part is just a impact thing. Just like the threshold for consent rises when doing surgery on someone vs touching them, so the threshold rises with the likely negative feeling associated with preference violation. (e.g: accidentally mistaking someones preference and hugging them is bad. Doing the same with violent simulated rape is much worse)