The Sacrament of Sex

And the limits of consent

Half of my work is behind a paywall. If you are truly unable to afford a subscription, please DM me on Substack or reply to this email requesting a free comp, and I will give you 6 months free, no questions asked.

Don’t want to become a paid subscriber? Buy me a coffee instead.

Photo by Diego Lozano on Unsplash

The alleged sexual misconduct of Neil Gaiman has launched a barrage of think pieces about kink, consent, and sexual exploitation. The Substacker

Sophie

recently published an interesting piece about the limits of consent, arguing that the monomaniacal focus on consent as the sole sexual ethic is harmful.

She writes,

The overreliance on consent in evaluating a sexual encounter has become a kind of thought-stopping technique completely inhibiting the ability of otherwise intelligent people to apply any ounce of emotional reasoning, empathy, social skills or critical thinking while determining whether they should behave in a certain way or not.

I won’t discuss the allegations against Neil Gaiman here. Instead, I want to follow Sophie’s reasoning, explore the world beyond consent as a single ethic, and what it might mean to live a more holistic, robust, and sacramental sex life.