Carnality And Consent: How To Navigate Sex In The Modern World

The #metoo era has changed how we think about consent, sex and dating. Women don’t just look away anymore from all the inappropriate things that men did and men, on the other hand, find it difficult to navigate this redefined world.

This article analyzes how the conversation about the above-mentioned subjects translates in the interactions between people. It looks into dating culture, from when we picked each other up in bars and exchanged telephone numbers on a piece of paper, to nowadays Tinder and all the other dating apps. It talks about porn and how it may have helped spread the idea of traditional all-powerful masculinity, and it addresses the issue – for those who worry – of how sex can still be fun when we have all these complicated terms and conditions to go by.

If sexual encounters can be divided into roughly three categories – happy and consensual; rape; and a hazy area of acts you did not want to do but to which you ended up giving in – then it is the third that now consumes attention. It is the things women go along with out of politeness, pity or embarrassment, or because, as Nigella Lawson put it recently, they were taught that, in rejecting any overture, “we mustn’t make a man feel bad about anything”.