Consent, reciprocity, mutuality: A focus group study on ethical sex

The idea of “consent” has come under scrutiny in the last decade, while at the same time campus and public campaigns have emphasized it as the sine qua non of ethical sex. This dependence on consent ignores other ethical perspectives and two decades of research that show sex is often entered into ambivalently and that unwanted but consented to sex is quite common. Despite these challenges to consent, few studies have explored what makes sex ethical beyond consent and what individuals believe make sex ethical. This qualitative study explores, through focus groups, young adults’ ideas about ethical concepts such as consent, reciprocity, mutuality, and vulnerability. Young adults were recruited into 10 focus groups to discuss their beliefs about what makes sex ethical. Discourse analysis revealed that focus groups strove to construct an idealized version of consent while also grappling with contradictory ethics such as the obligation to care for another person, consideration of power differences, and vulnerability caused by trauma. Their emphasis on agency and reciprocity is examined under the lens of neoliberalism.