Sexual Consent Across Diverse Behaviors and Contexts: Gender Differences and Nonconsensual Sexual Experiences

Abstract

Sexual consent refers to people’s internal willingness to engage in sexual activity with another person—as well as their external communication of that willingness. Internal and external sexual consent can vary by type of sexual behavior; however, previous research on sexual consent has primarily only assessed “typical” sexual behaviors such as genital touching, oral sex, and vaginal–penile sex without providing further context or acknowledging people’s sexual diversity. Therefore, we provided an initial account of people’s sexual consent—and lack thereof—for a broader array of sexual behaviors and contexts in which they occur. Using an online cross-sectional survey of participants in the United Kingdom and the United States ( N = 658, 50.5% women), we examined event-level internal and external sexual consent for 20 sexual behaviors or contexts. Women reported significantly lower levels of sexual consent feelings than men for 12 of the 20 sexual behaviors and lower levels of active consent communication for 7 of them. Almost a third of participants (31.0%) had experienced at least one of the listed sexual behaviors against their will. Of those, participants on average reported nonconsensual experiences with 3.1 of the 20 types of sexual behavior listed, ranging from 1 to 11. More women reported at least one nonconsensual experience with one of the sexual behaviors assessed compared with men (47.9% versus 22.3%, respectively). We discussed several behavior-specific findings regarding sexual consent and the lack thereof. We also made recommendations for initiatives aimed at promoting healthy sexual consent practices: embrace sexual diversity, emphasize sexual agency, and encourage active consent communication.

Unacknowledged and missed cases of sexual victimization: A comparison of responses to broad versus behaviorally specific questions

“…It has been suggested that victims prefer the label “sexual assault” to the label “rape” because of the negative societal connotations attached to rape victims. An alternative explanation could be that due to widely shared stereotypes about rape, participants may have been less sure about whether their experience matched the specific characteristics of rape, even though they recognized it as a sexual assault (Hirsch et al, 2019; Temkin & Krahé, 2008; Willis & Smith, 2021).…”

Media portrayals of sexual consent and refusal influence adolescents’ gender-related attitudes.

“…Inasmuch as entertainment media can influence consumers' beliefs about gender, consumers' own gender identity may also influence their beliefs about sexual consent and how they interpret entertainment media that depict consent. For this particular study, perhaps the most notable difference between men and women is the greater rate of sexual victimization for women (Willis & Smith, 2022). As a result, women have been socialized to take a more defensive approach to sexual activity (Humphreys, 2007).…”

Exploring Intersectional Variations in Sexual Pleasure, Sexual Autonomy, and Important Correlates

“…Sexual beliefs related to the importance of sex in life and of pleasure in sex were associated with self-perception of loss of sexual control among both Cape Verdean women and men. Previous work has acknowledged that a diminished sense of sexual control may be related to more sexual compliance, that is, a willingness to engage in unwanted sex, for a variety of motives and with a variety of consequences, from emotional reactions to sexual risk-taking, and sexual violence (Impett and Peplau 2003;Willis and Smith 2021). In this line, our result seems to support that giving too much importance to sexual life may compromise societal roles, as it may be related to less sexual control or a perceived perception of more social loss of control.…”