The failed promise of consent in women's experiences of coercive and unwanted anal sex with men

Abstract

In this article, we critically interrogate the concept of consent in relation to women's experiences of coerced and unwanted heterosexual anal sex. Among the 18 women we interviewed (all living in New Zealand), some clearly labelled their experiences of unwanted anal sex with men as nonconsensual. Many others, however, suggested that they had, in some way, consented. We identified two main discursive patterns in the ways that women discussed consent in these contexts: one that equated it with resignation, mostly associated with experiences of verbal pressure, and another that reduced consent to a lack of resistance to unwanted and unexpected anal penetration. Through these women's accounts, it was clear that consent and coercion are not mutually exclusive. Overall, consent in these cases was scripted within a gendered dynamic that was premised on men's sexual entitlement and women's traditional roles as sexual caretakers and gatekeepers. We argue that women's accounts and reflections on consent in this context illuminate structural fragilities in the very concept of sexual consent as a marker of ethical sex. Consent was substantively distinct from sexual enthusiasm and mutuality. We conclude that it fails in its promise to protect women against sex that is coercive and hurtful.

Keywords

anal sex consent New Zealand sexual ethics sexual violence unwanted sex

Representations of heterosexual anal sex have proliferated in popular media over the past decade, embracing multiple and contradictory meanings. Some promote it as another chapter in women's sexual empowerment and liberation, while others critique it as another avenue for male sexual conquest (Faustino, 2020). As such, the practice occupies a prominent place in wider ongoing feminist debates about the intersections of gender, power, and sexuality. Unsurprisingly, the promotion of anal sex as an empowering sexual act for women and girls has attracted controversy. A high-profile Teen Vogue article on anal sex (Engle, 2017a), for example, prompted debate and criticism rooted in different feminist approaches to sexual politics. This supposedly gender-neutral “guide to anal sex” offered its young readers “the lowdown on everything you need to know about butt stuff,” advising “prostate owners” that being penetrated can be “a great experience,” “very enjoyable”; and for those “without a prostate,” it can give a “feeling of fullness, which can be delightful.” The clitoris was absent from both the text and explanatory anatomical diagrams, and the article was accused of “presenting yet another male-centred sexual practice as gender-neutral and sex positive” (Murphy, 2017) and criticised for omitting “the potential dangers of anal sex” for women (Barnes, 2017; for analyses of a wider range of popular cultural representations of heterosexual anal sex that highlight the prominence of an empowerment narrative, see Faustino, 2020, 2021).

In the context of such controversy, consent has been hailed as the critical ingredient necessary for ensuring that positive encouragement of expansive sexual horizons does not get taken up as a carte blanche invitation to pressure anyone into sexual acts that they do not want to do. The Teen Vogue article did contain the standard communication and consent clause: “Whether you are planning to give or receive anal sex, a conversation must take place beforehand. Enthusiastic consent is necessary for both parties to enjoy the experience” (Engle, 2017a). Gigi Engle, the article's author, later went on to directly address the downside for women when anal sex becomes normalised and men take this as an opportunity to coerce unwilling sexual partners (Engle, 2017b). As she noted: “Despite the supposedly clear cut knowledge that ‘no means no,’ I’ve heard many horror stories of women being pressured into anal under the guise of sex positivity or a ‘willingness to be sexually adventurous.’” Her advice for navigating the normalisation of anal sex centred on the importance of “pleasure-based sex education and consent.”

Engle's reference to “horror stories” is unsurprising in relation to what research suggests is the high prevalence of heterosexual coercion more generally (see Gavey & Senn, 2014), and research on the gendered dynamics of anal heterosex more specifically. While there is only a relatively small body of research on women's experiences of anal sex with men, several studies have shown patterns of men's coercion and women's acquiescence to unwanted anal sex (Fahs & Gonzalez, 2014; Fahs & Swank, 2021; Faustino & Gavey, 2022; McBride, 2019; Reynolds et al., 2015). For example, in a previous article based on the same study we report on here, we found that women described unwanted experiences of anal sex with men that were underpinned by both various forms of direct interpersonal coercion as well as more diffuse forms of sociocultural coercion associated with normative assumptions and expectations (Faustino & Gavey, 2022).

Engle's call upon consent to do the work of distinguishing empowering sexual experiences from “horror stories” of pressured sex is consistent with wider emphasis on the importance of sexual consent as a clear ethical barrier against the wrongs of coercion. In this study, we are interested in how this works in practice, by analysing the way the normalisation of anal sex works alongside the widespread emphasis on consent: Is consent an effective antidote against sexual coercion? And how well does it stand up to the gendered dynamics of coercion that Engle alludes to in relation to heterosexual anal sex?

We examine these questions in relation to women's accounts of unwanted anal sex with men, specifically focusing on the relation between sexual consent and coercion.

Consent and its critics

Consent is a “slippery concept” (Beres, 2018, p. 181; see also Beres, 2007)—there is no single definition or fixed understanding of what it is (Beres, 2007). It is largely interpreted as a form of agreement to sex (Muehlenhard et al., 2016), as distinct from sexual desire (Muehlenhard & Peterson, 2005). Some write about it as a mental process, while others emphasise the behavioural or performative expressions of agreement (Beres, 2007; Fenner, 2017; Muehlenhard et al., 2016).

Despite its fluidity as a concept, consent has increasingly been ascribed crucial cultural importance, promoted as the tool for sexual violence prevention and the standard for good and “healthy” sexual encounters. For example, it is prominent within campus rape prevention social marketing materials (Beres, 2018) and, in New Zealand, activists frequently call for consent education within schools in response to the problem of rape culture (e.g., Clark-Dow, 2022; Nightingale, 2017; see also New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, 2017). Within feminist activism and sexual violence prevention discourse more widely, the framework of consent often emphasises “affirmative consent”—which requires the positive expression of consent. This has been represented in activist slogans by messages like “(only) yes means yes,” away from earlier slogans like “no means no” (Beres, 2014; Coy et al., 2016). In the United States, for example, a move towards affirmative consent has been adopted by several universities (Beres, 2018; Jozkowski, 2015; Pugh & Becker, 2018).

In contrast to this ongoing widespread attachment to consent, many feminist scholars have distanced themselves from the promise of consent as a useful tool for demarcating sexual violence from sex (see Beres, 2018; Cahill, 2001). Indeed, the concept of consent has been subject to feminist critique for decades for its failure to adequately recognise (and, in practice, override) unequal power dynamics between men and women (e.g., Alcoff, 2009, 2018; Beres, 2014, 2018; Cahill, 2001, 2014, 2016; Chamallas, 1987; Gavey, 2019; Jeffrey, 2024; Kessel, 2020; Lamb et al., 2021; MacKinnon, 1983, 2016; Pateman, 1980; West, 2020). The consensus among such critics is that consent sets the bar far too low for ethical sex, and that it obscures many of the insidious harms of those forms of coercive and unwanted sex that are, in some way, consented to. This critique suggests that the very concept of consent—in relation to women having sex with men—is premised on a structural relation of inequality between men and women, and it helps to reinforce and naturalise it.

Social science research puts flesh on the bones of these feminist critiques of the conceptual problems with consent, showing how consent does not operate as an antithesis to coercion. Gavey (2019), for example, raised concerns about consent as a suitable standard for sexual ethics, showing that coercion and consent can coexist. Drawing on women's accounts from her interviews, Gavey (2019) points to how social norms constrain women's sexual choices and agency in ways that mean consent can be blurred with acquiescence to unwanted sex (see also Alcoff, 2018; Cahill, 2014, 2016). Interview-based studies consistently show how sexual communication between women and men is deep-rooted in traditional gender norms and power relations (e.g., Burkett & Hamilton, 2012; Conroy et al., 2015; Jeffrey & Barata, 2019; Jozkowski & Peterson, 2013; Pugh & Becker, 2018), and that both young women and men still associate consent with a woman's lack of resistance to a man's initiatives (Baldwin-White, 2021; Beres, 2014; Conroy et al., 2015). Researching young adults’ formulations of consent in relation to how they expressed and understood their partners’ willingness to have sex, Beres (2014, p. 374) concluded that “the concept of consent does not resonate with the young people engaging in various forms of heterosex.” She argued that the concept has limited value in sexual violence prevention.

This body of research presents a discouraging picture about the transformative power of consent to overcome the gendered constraints within the normative discursive field of heterosex and the scripts it offers women and men. Not only does consent not reliably overcome dominant gendered power dynamics, but new formulations of consent can be co-opted and integrated into coercive scripts. Drawing on their interviews with men, for example, Jeffrey and Barata (2019, p. 102) found that “men sometimes work to incorporate new consent messages into old ways of doing heterosex” that uphold their sexual interests at the expense of women's.

Given how much is invested in the promise of consent as a marker for ethical and egalitarian sex, it is crucial to know more about how it operates in practice, particularly in relation to unwanted sexual interactions. In this article, we critically examine how women made sense of their own consent in relation to their experiences of unwanted anal sex with men.

This study

In a previous article that mapped women's accounts of their experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual anal sex with men, we described a range of different kinds of interpersonal coercive tactics, both physical and psychological, that women were subject to (Faustino & Gavey, 2022). Psychological coercion involved direct forms of verbal pressure, including insistence, “nagging,” and emotional manipulation such as threats to end the relationship, as well as less direct forms of coercion such as expressions of anger and moodiness. Physical coercion included unwelcome and unreciprocated physical initiations (men starting or attempting anal sex without any prior discussion or agreement), not stopping anal penetration when women asked to, and physical force. Women also described how the increasing normalisation of anal sex induced them to go along with unwanted experiences, which we described as a more indirect form of social coercion.

This article draws on the same body of interviews, to focus specifically on women's accounts of unwanted, coercive, and sometimes clearly violating experiences, in relation to the concept of consent. In the main body of the analysis, we explore the two main discursive patterns we identified across women's accounts about consent in relation to unwanted anal sex: one that equated resignation to unwanted sex with consent, mostly linked to women's responses to a man's verbal pressure, and another that depicted nonresistance to a man's unwelcome initiation of anal sex “by surprise” as consent.

Methods

We interviewed 23 people (18 women and five men; all resident in a New Zealand city) about their experience of unwanted or unconsenting heterosexual anal sex. The analysis presented in this article is derived from the interviews with women participants only, who were all discussing experiences of anal sex with men. Given the very different dynamics described by men, and the different language they used to discuss the experiences, we decided to analyse the sets of interviews separately.

Participants were recruited through flyers posted on university notice boards, distributed in central parts of the city, sent to community contacts and professional colleagues to disseminate among their networks, and through social media. Our recruitment flyers called for people who had “experiences of unwanted and/or unconsented heterosexual anal sex,” noting that “both partners are not always equally interested … and that tensions, disagreements and some forms of pressure do happen.” This wording deliberately avoided explicit reference to sexual violence, as we did not want to restrict the study only to people who understood and labelled their experience in these terms.

The study was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee. Interviews took place in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, between February and August 2019. Participants signed consent forms before we began the interviews, which were conducted by the first author and lasted on average around 1.5 hours. All the interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed by a professional transcriber, and checked for accuracy by the first author. All participants were given pseudonyms.

The women participants ranged in age from 18 to 64. The mean age was 27.7 years, and seven of the 18 participants were aged between 18 and 20 years. Most participants (14 out of 18) identified as heterosexual, three identified as bisexual, and one left this response blank. Participants’ ethnicities/cultural backgrounds included Pākehā/New Zealand European (11), Chinese New Zealander (two), Indonesian New Zealander (one), other European/South American/North American New Zealander (one), European North American (one), other European (one), South American (one). Nine participants were in a relationship, one responded “kind of,” and eight were single.

The interviews explored the umbrella category of unwanted and nonconsensual heterosexual anal sex. They were semistructured, following an interview guide with predetermined question domains, but were carried out in a flexible manner that allowed us to follow participants’ narratives. We asked them to describe in detail any such experiences they had had, and explored with them the nature of the experiences, including the relational context, the coercive dynamics that were used, and their views about if and how consent operated. To do this, we used open-ended questions and follow-up prompts to invite them to elaborate on the details of their experiences and their views. We also asked participants about their general views on anal sex between women and men. Women were asked how they would label or describe their experiences and were invited to elaborate and reflect on the labels they used. The interviewer emphasised that there were no right or wrong answers.

In seeking to understand women's experiences of unwanted anal sex in relation to the concept of consent, we used a form of feminist discursive analysis that blends a critical realist descriptive approach to women's accounts of their experiences with a discursive analysis of the patterns of language that women used to describe and discuss those experiences (e.g., Gavey, 2019). This method is grounded in social constructionist epistemology, which holds that sociocultural and discursive resources shape the possibilities for how people can understand and act in the world—and are therefore important to understand in order to intervene in the sociocultural conditions that enable unethical and exploitative sexual relations.

The practical steps we followed in developing our analysis started with the design of the study and the interview schedule, and included a collaborative and iterative process of observing, discussing, and reflecting on both patterns and exceptions as they arose both through the interviewing and later in the analysis of transcripts. The first author conducted close and repeated reading of the transcripts for familiarity, and underlined similarities across the interviewees’ accounts, taking notes of ideas and identifying patterns of language and experience. For example, several women used similar expressions to make sense of their unwanted experiences after being verbally pressured, such as “giving in.” Throughout this analytic process, both authors regularly discussed details of the participants’ accounts, including revisiting the transcripts, as we identified the most prominent patterns of language and commonalities in women's accounts of their experiences.

We identified two dominant discursive patterns that women used in relation to consent as it applied to describing and making sense of their unwanted experiences. In doing so, we were particularly attentive to the gendered dynamics that were revealed in women's accounts, and how these discursive patterns informed positions from which they could (or could not) act within the gendered dynamics of heterosexual engagement. These discursive repertoires that we focus on here were characterised by their frequency across participants and their analytic utility in helping to understand how consent operates in the context of heterosexual coercion. For a more detailed description of our general analytic approach, see Faustino and Gavey (2022), where we explore different questions, drawing on the same set of interviews.

Analysis

In this analysis, we explore the two main discursive patterns that women drew on when describing how consent operated in relation to their experiences of unwanted, coercive, and sometimes violating anal sex with men.

Questions about consent arose during the flow of the interviews. A few women described their experiences in terms of consent, unprompted; for instance, Caroline started the interview by noting that she had had different experiences with anal sex and differentiated them in terms of consent. Most women, however, did not raise the concept of consent, or lack thereof, when describing their experiences. In these cases, the interviewer typically prompted the question by asking, for example, “how would you label it, in terms of consent?”

When questioned about consent, most women's answers suggested that it was complicated. Despite being clear about their lack of sexual desire and enthusiasm for the unwanted anal sex they had described, most women (13 out of 18) assumed some notion of consent and/or did not rule out consent completely in making sense of their experience.

Women's experiences of psychological coercion: Resignation as consent

In describing their experiences of engaging in unwanted anal sex as a result of psychological coercion, several women used similar terms that described a sense of resignation in response to their partner's repeated verbal pressure (one form of psychological coercion; Faustino & Gavey, 2022): for example, they “went along” (Tracey, 48) with it, “gave in” (Daniela, 23; Caroline, 25; Tracey, 48) to the pressure, and felt they had “no voice” (Lucy, 24). While to varying degrees, several women recounted a sense of powerlessness after prolonged requests and insistence from male partners, with many describing unequal power relations underpinning their experiences of unwanted anal sex. For instance, Lucy recalled how her ex-boyfriend “directed everything” and how she “thought he had all the expertise”: “because he was my first sexual partner or only sexual partner and then first boyfriend I was very new to everything,” she said, adding, “it was always him that initiated things, I didn’t really like have a voice.” That power imbalance manifested in their sexual relationship, most visibly in relation to anal sex: “I never asked for it, it was always he asked for it,” said Lucy. Katie (38) similarly described engaging in unwanted anal sex after insistent requests from her first boyfriend, saying she had “consented” after “he kind of kept asking and asking”: “it was really a favour I was doing him as a present or a sacrifice that I was making for him,” Katie explained, “which I consented to do.” She said, “And he really enjoyed it, I found it painful, uncomfortable, embarrassing. I didn’t want to do it.”

In the way that women described these experiences, consent was nothing more than an accommodation to a script that they felt they had little or no control over; consent was itself a form of resignation, compromise, and capitulation. Describing their experiences of resignation to unwanted anal sex as a result of a man's pressure, some of the women described their consent as coexisting with direct forms of interpersonal coercion. Caroline (25) described an experience of psychological coercion in which her former boyfriend “kept talking about it [anal sex]” and “kept saying he wanted it”: she said “[he] kind of wore me down.” In introducing this experience, Caroline had described it as “consensual,” in contrast to another experience with a different sexual partner that had been “100 per cent nonconsensual.” In this nonconsensual experience, a man who was a “one night stand” had started anal penetration by “surprise.” This comparison seemed to play a pivotal role in making sense of these different, but both unwanted, sexual experiences in relation to consent: in one experience she had “given in” to her former boyfriend (resignation as consent), while in the other, she had been violated by a casual sexual partner when she did not expect or anticipate anal penetration, which she had clearly registered as nonconsensual.

Invited to explore her labelling of the experience of “giving in” as “consensual,” Caroline articulated the idea of consent as a “spectrum”: “It's not really like, [always] yes/no; it was kind of like … maybe I went along with it. Do you know what I mean?” She went on to describe the experience with her former boyfriend: “It's not one of those things where I was like, yes I must do it, or no I mustn’t do it.” In explaining how consent operated in this experience as a more graduated concept rather than a binary “yes” versus “no,” Caroline referred to her assessment of the risks and harms of engaging in unwanted anal sex. Significantly, her experience was not driven by any sort of personal desire, curiosity, or enthusiasm about anal sex; through her expression of “neutrality,” she implied her lack of desire was not sufficient to refuse, and that she would have needed “stronger” reasons, such as “catch[ing] some horrible disease.”

Another woman, Amber (20), had unwanted anal sex with her boyfriend after verbal pressure over a prolonged period of time. When asked how she would label her experience in her own words in relation to consent, she described it as consented, but in a qualified and constrained kind of way:
Kind of begrudged consent or, you know, consent would these days, and we should, you know, we define it as something which is definitely proactive and definitely willing from your side. And so, in that sense, it probably wasn’t that kind of consent, it was consent after a long period of thought and consideration of the other person. So, it was slightly reluctant consent I wonder, which isn’t really explicit consent in that same way.
While describing her experience, Amber contrasted it with an ideal of consent, linked to “mutual agreement” and “mutual enthusiasm.” She explained she was “still trying to unpack” how to make sense of her experience in terms of consent, which she said was a reason for taking part in the study. During the interview, Amber navigated the contradictions and ambiguities of her experience as she worked to make sense of it:
Because, if I look at the definition [of consent], no it wasn’t really. But at the same time, I think the main word that I’m viewing is, did it feel, do I kind of feel regret or do I feel uncomfortable with how it happened?. And I don’t feel regret for the fact that we did it, I just feel regret for the way that it happened. So, I think that's something which I’m still trying to unpack in my head. It's not an experience that I would want other people to have, even though I know there's far worse experiences have happened than mine, I would still want for anybody going into this to have had, you know, more kind of balance and more mutual agreement and more mutual enthusiasm for it. So, I think that's something which I’m still trying to work out. At the moment, I would say yes it is still consent, but the fact that that consent has caveats is kind of concerning. So, I couldn’t give a definite answer at the moment.
Tracey (48) discussed experiences that disrupted the dominant heterosexual script for penetration. Besides experiencing psychological pressure to engage in anal intercourse as the receptive partner, she described “being coerced into wearing a strap on and anally having sex with him, that I didn’t want to do, but I just felt … obliged to or else he would go and cheat.” She elaborated: “Which he was doing anyway, but he made me believe that if I don’t do these things, he would cheat and leave me. Um … So I’m the one penetrating him, yet I’m the one that feels violated.” In this experience, although the gendered sexual script around penetration had been reversed, normative gendered patterns of coercion were maintained. Despite being the one penetrating her partner with a strap-on dildo—a sexual position that might suggest physical control and agency (and, therefore, active consent)—Tracey had “felt obliged” to take up this position and perform a sexual act she did not want to.

Even in situations where psychological coercion was more overtly confrontational, some women used the language of consent to describe their actions. Fleur (18), for example, who recounted how vaginal sex proved painful, as she had vaginismus, described how her former boyfriend was psychologically abusive and would threaten to end the relationship if she did not engage in anal sex. She said she consented when she “let” him anally penetrate her when she didn’t want him to:
So, I was really insecure which is why I let my boyfriend do those things. I consented, but I didn’t want those things, because I thought I can’t get anything. I couldn’t have anyone better … the fact that someone wants to be with me is already like I’m, I should honour that kind of thing. Which is why, yeah, I went along with it.
In invoking personal “insecurities,” Fleur blamed herself for “[going] along with it”: “I do blame myself that I didn’t tell him to stop.” She recalled how the ideas she was exposed to while growing up had taught her to face sex as “just something that you do,” which conveyed a sense of mundane duty and resignation towards her partner's wishes and demands. Nevertheless, the concept of consent proved flexible enough for her to apply it in this coercive, highly constrained dynamic. Implicitly drawing on discourses of personal responsibility, some of the other women also focused on the role of their own actions or characteristics when grappling with how to make sense of their experiences of coerced unwanted anal sex: “I didn’t take care of myself,” said Daniela (23). Jennifer (51) referred to her shyness, personality, and desire to please as partly explaining how her male partners were able to coerce her. Given the binary nature of consent, as it usually operates, it is not surprising that women would avoid naming unwanted experiences as nonconsensual (where there is any shred of ambiguity), given that to do so would automatically frame the experience as a form of sexual assault, which is a label many women avoid (Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2004). However, as we see, when the alternative requires it, they therefore make sense of their experiences as consented to, which invites self-blame (see also Jeffrey, 2024).

In this section, we have discussed examples in which women applied the concept of consent to their experiences of engaging in anal sex that was unwanted and, in some cases, experienced as violating and humiliating, as a result of persistent pressures, emotional manipulation, and even direct threats to end the relationship (see Faustino & Gavey, 2022).

Women's experiences of physical coercion: Nonresistance as consent

In addition to psychological coercion, some women also described experiences of physical coercion that they framed as, in some way, consented to. In these circumstances, where women's sexual partners had attempted or initiated anal intercourse without their prior agreement or expectation, several women articulated a version of consent—albeit a complicated one—as the absence of their resistance to the man's coercive sexual act.

In this context, Paige (19) described how her former boyfriend, during her first experience of sexual intercourse, had stopped vaginal intercourse and removed the condom, saying he disliked it, and proceeded to penetrate her anally. Paige was caught by surprise and described “a painful sexual experience,” adding that she “was trying to be quiet because there were other people in the house.” She described how it eventually became a pattern, where her boyfriend would “just put his fingers in” and would “[try] to have anal sex,” which resulted in her crying. She recalled feeling powerless and devalued: “I guess because I’d gone along with something I wasn’t sure about, I felt like I had lost a bit of power in that decision.” She added, “Yeah, that kind of feeling less valued as a person because of that.” When asked how she would describe the experience in terms of consent, Paige responded, “I wish there were more words for what it, like, the consent and not consent.” She described the dynamic as “tricky”: “I’m not even sure,” she stated, “like how consented it was, you know? I didn’t even know myself, which is tricky.” She explained she was still making sense of her experience and all its layers, “it's like, tricky because, you know, yeah, the relationship was good but sometimes the sex was not fully consensual.”

Paige explained how she had started questioning her own experience after being exposed to conversations about consent at university and among friends: “I just hadn’t really thought about, like, that it might not have been completely consensual until more recently.” She further developed this line of thought:
[I]t was not something I would’ve chosen to do myself at that time, but I didn’t, like, I wouldn’t call it rape because I didn’t, like, fully, I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t fully feel the need to stop it at that time. Like, later on, there were times where I was, “I can’t stand this, I need to make it stop”. And that [the first] time it was like, maybe because it was my first time having sex as well, it was like, okay, I want this to be a good experience so I’m going to go along with this thing, even if it's not enjoyable for me. Which is, yeah, just a strange dynamic, I think, of, yeah. Yeah, I think sex should be a sharing between two people and it was not that.
On reflection, Paige pointed to the inequality underpinning her and her former boyfriend's sexual relationship, noting “[sex] didn’t feel on equal terms.” Her desire for her first sexual experience “to be a good experience … even if it's not enjoyable for me” seems almost paradoxical at first glance, but it starkly demonstrates this inequality in action. It highlights a wider sociocultural acceptance of men's primacy and dominance in heterosexual sex, to the point that a woman's sexual interest, desire, and pleasure can be unnecessary for some abstracted notion of “good sex” between a man and a woman (Gavey, 2019).

Katie (38) described a situation in which a man started anal penetration during a sexual interaction, without asking her and without any sign of her interest or desire. In fact, she said, “I was probably physically rigid.” In reflecting on whether she consented, she said:
Had he, had he said, “is this okay?” I would have said “mmm, no”. But I didn’t feel, at the time, I didn’t say no. So, the consent is a blurred line on this particular one, because I, I was, it's just a, almost like a toleration of something that was, I felt quite violating. But I would, I wouldn’t call it, I wouldn’t say that my consent was completely absent, but I also wouldn’t say that it was fully given either. It's very hard to describe actually.
Again, in Katie's case, “consent” did not work to protect her from an experience that was not only unwanted, but also “quite violating.” However, because she “tolerated” it in the moment, the framework of consent seemingly left her with a forced interpretive choice. Since she did not “say no” in that moment, then her consent must not have been “completely absent.” As she observes, in reference to it being “hard to describe,” we still lack a shared language for making sense of such acts of sexual coercion that lead to resignation or nonresistance to unwanted sex.

The notion that women are, by default, consenting if they do not physically fight or react against male sexual initiatives played out in Olivia's case: Olivia (21) described how her former boyfriend, who would try to initiate anal sex despite her saying no, would act “annoyed” and “angry” when she refused. Nevertheless, she overtly blamed herself for the way she had reacted to his advances, questioning whether her not “pushing him off” had been confusing the message of her verbal refusal:
I would just use my words, and … I think that maybe that was maybe giving him mixed messages. And I know that's not giving him mixed messages, I know that no means no and that kind of stuff, but I guess if I’m not like pushing him off me then it must mean, to him, I know it's stupid, but he must have just been, oh, she still wants it to happen, you know. So, I feel like I could have been more aggressive, in a nice way [laughs], you know.
Olivia's rational understanding that “no means no” was buttressed by disingenuous traditional discourse about the role of sexual miscommunication in fuelling men's pursuit of sex with an unwilling female partner, as well as even older social ideas that allow women's consent to be presumed in the absence of a physical fighting response. Her reflection that perhaps she could have been “more aggressive, in a nice way” to signal her lack of consent, further highlights an almost impossible gendered double demand: to be an effective gatekeeper of male desire, but a nurturing caretaker at the same time (Gavey, 2019; see also Gavey & McPhillips, 1999).

Discussion

In this study, we have discussed women's accounts of their experiences of unwanted, and in many cases hurtful, anal sex with men, specifically focusing on those experiences that women described as, at least in some ways, consenting. Women's accounts clearly showed how consent did not safeguard against coercion. On the contrary, women's narratives of unwanted anal sex with men showed that consent can operate alongside gendered dynamics of coercion, and that it can coexist with unwanted and painful sexual experiences. Consent was scripted as an act—or the absence of an act—within such gendered interactions in ways that replicated and reinforced gendered dynamics of heterosex, such as the naturalisation of male desire as needy, initiating, and sometimes aggressive, and women's role as sexual caregivers and gatekeepers whose own desire is optional. In these coercive dynamics, some notion of consent seemed at best to discipline the form that male sexual entitlement might take, rather than directly counter it. As such, in the context of these gendered dynamics, consent not only offers women no protection from pressure by men to engage in sexual acts they do not desire, but it can contribute to self-blame when this occurs: women questioned and scrutinised the ways they had responded to male sexual initiatives or demands (see also Jeffrey, 2024). Such enduring discourses about men's and women's sexuality are sometimes overlaid with newer postfeminist notions of individual choice, agency, and individual responsibility (Bay-Cheng & Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Burkett & Hamilton, 2012). Such notions seem to invite women to find fault with their own behaviour, rather than with the man coercing them. They are also overlaid with newer pressures on women to be sexually adventurous and the expansion of sexual imperatives that increasingly include anal sex (Faustino & Gavey, 2022). Consent's compatibility with a postfeminist lens (Burkett & Hamilton, 2012) individualises structural inequalities and sanitises the power differential underpinning gendered positions (see also Cahill, 2001). In so doing, consent provides a misleading promise of safety-in-sexual-liberation that in practice fails to address men's coercion of women for anal sex (see also Kessel, 2020).

A general theme running through the women's accounts was the inadequacy of language for making sense of what they had experienced (see McKenzie-Mohr & Lafrance, 2011; see also Gavey, 1999; Karlsson, 2019). Several women used qualified descriptions of consent, such as “reluctant consent” (Amber, 20), “begrudged consent” (Amber, 20), and “levels” of consent (Caroline, 25). Moreover, these women's descriptions of sexual experiences they described as, at least in some way, consenting—such as “giving in” to verbal pressure (Daniela, 23; Caroline, 25; Tracey, 48), “[going] along with it” (Caroline, 25; Fleur, 18), and making “a sacrifice” (Katie, 38)—are illustrative of how consent can operate in sync with coercive dynamics women felt they could not evade.

Several of the women we interviewed labelled their experiences of unwanted and/or coerced sex as consensual in some way, even when recognising the constraints that shaped those experiences. Research has consistently shown that a significant proportion of women who have experienced unwanted sexual intercourse, without their consent, avoid labelling their experiences as rape, even when it is technically consistent with legal definitions (see Gavey, 2019; Koss, 1985; Koss et al., 1987; Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2004). While the concept is arguably problematic, such women are often described in research as “unacknowledged rape victims.” The current study further complicates this picture, to show that in a contemporary discursive landscape where consent is elevated to such importance, women may be unwilling to describe their own unwanted, and in some cases explicitly violating, experiences as nonconsensual—because to do so has serious potentially adverse consequences for the way women make sense of themselves, their agency, and their own sexual and romantic partners. Remarkably, instead of providing a conceptual tool that helps to clearly demarcate and prevent coercion, the binary nature of the concept of consent (which renders its absence criminal sexual violence) may instead socially and psychologically back women into a corner in which they are stripped of any meaningful language for naming their experiences of unwanted and coerced anal sex.

In response to women's formulations of consent, some might suggest they reveal a poor understanding of consent, thus pointing to the need to clarify affirmative consent and reinforce the core message about what it is and means: that it is mandatory for every sexual act, should be always freely given, and never be taken for granted. While the need to reinforce those ethical and practical requirements remains important, and such a clarification could work in some cases—for instance, in highlighting that it is problematic to frame women's experiences of nonresistance to coercive sex as consensual sex—we argue that women's accounts of consent reveal crucial fragilities in the concept itself, rather than women's (mis)understandings of it. In fact, some women contrasted their subjective experiences of consent and coercion with an “ideal” form of consent, while still labelling their experiences as weaker forms of consent (even though in complicated ways). But this shows that, even when women know about other conceptualisations of consent that emphasise it as a more affirmative act, such as “definitely proactive and definitely willing” (Amber, 20), a broader, looser conceptualisation of consent persists as an underlying normative framework that is difficult to reject outright. This suggests that these disappointing ways that consent can operate will not be corrected through efforts to reformulate the concept as more positive and enthusiastic, at least in relation to sex between women and men. That is because, at its heart, the concept of consent presumes a relation of structural inequality between the persons seeking and giving consent (Gavey, 2019; MacKinnon, 1983, 2016; Pateman, 1980). As Pateman (1980) noted in her classic text on women and consent: “Consent must always be given to something; in the relationship between the sexes, it is always women who are held to consent to men” (p. 164). Overall, the accounts of women we interviewed support MacKinnon's (2016) assertion that the everyday social meaning of consent poses inherent limitations for its utility as a marker of ethical sex. It is not a term we naturally associate with enthusiasm or welcomeness:
Consenting is not what women do when they want to be having sex. Sex women want is never described by them or anyone else as consensual. No one says, “We had a great hot night, she (or I or we) consented.” (MacKinnon, 2016, p. 450)

Finally, we are aware that in emphasising how consent and coercion coexist, an uncritical attachment to the promise of consent could function to minimise the seriousness of sexual coercion and even, potentially, obscure violence against women. In fact, it often is: the idea that sexual communication and consent are murky terrain is often played to deny male responsibility for sexual violence and coercion of women and girls. As such, it is vitally important that, while exposing the limitations of consent, we—collectively—fight the very myths and excuses that surround sexual violence. This implies, first and foremost, de-natualising the dominant discourses that continue to shape heterosex in ways that make women's acquiescence to unwanted sex appear natural or “just the way things are”—a sense that underpinned several women's accounts in this study. It is also vital to deconstruct the idea that men are unable to read women's signs and expressions of sexual (dis)interest and refusal. In this context, Frith and Kitzinger (1997), for instance, have shown that sexual refusals follow normative communication dynamics and should not require the verbalisation of a “no” to be effective. O’Byrne et al.'s work (2008; see also 2006, Hansen et al., 2010), which explored how men in focus groups talked about sexual refusals, concluded that men were perfectly able to recognise women's disinterest, communicative cues, and refusals. Importantly, though, they found that the men in their study mobilised and relied on a miscommunication model for its utility in avoiding men's responsibility for their own coercive behaviour. In other words, men can rely on the idea that sexual communication is murky to rationalise and justify their own coercive pursuit of sex and reject accountability for perpetrating sexual violence, even when they should normatively be able to read the signs of sexual interest and enthusiasm if they are encouraged to look, listen, and care. Ultimately, therefore, a critique of consent should be intertwined with a critique of the normative dynamics of heterosex. As Kitzinger and Frith (1999) noted, “the root of the problem is not that men do not understand sexual refusals, but that they do not like them” (1999, p. 310; see also Beres, 2010; Jeffrey & Barata, 2019; Siegel et al., 2021).

Conclusion

In stark contrast to the promise of consent as the necessary and, implicitly, sufficient tool to navigate “the normalization of anal sex” (Engle, 2017b), the women we interviewed described unwanted and often hurtful experiences of anal sex with men in ways that reveal how inadequate the concept of consent is for protecting them from harm. Not only does a focus on consent as the safeguard against sexual violence risk invisibilising normative masculine patterns of coercion, it also helps to reinforce women's sexual self-scrutiny and blame. We suggest the focus instead should be on encouraging men to attend to their sexual partner's desires and wishes, and on challenging the cultural tolerance for men's sexual coercion of women.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Maria João Faustino

Author Biographies

Maria João Faustino holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Auckland. Her doctoral research analysed the cultural norms regarding anal sex, its gendered impacts, and links with sexual violence and coercion. She has published about representations of anal sex in popular culture, sexuality and sexual violence in the media, and new interlinks between sexuality and technology.

Nicola Gavey is a professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland. Her research has focused on the connection between sexual violence and everyday taken-for-granted norms around gender and sexuality. The second edition of her book, Just Sex? The Cultural Scaffolding of Rape, was published by Routledge in 2019.

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