In the act of staging a performance, the actor is liberated by the virtue of performing agency, yet inescapably tethered to the script of performance. Similarly, women (not men), while performing consent, appear emancipated by the illusion of choice, yet remain trapped within the confines of the covertly extant, patriarchal underpinnings that shape and constrain their autonomy. Consent, then, is not merely an exercise of free will but a performance of the self – a moment where the self becomes both performer and audience, watching and engaging in the negotiation between its unchained, non-performative essence and its constructed, socially gendered identity.

Conventionally, consent has been framed within the binary of “yes” and “no” – either given or withheld. Under this framework, consent has been unequivocally defined as the mere absence of a “no.” This dichotomous approach triggers critical reflections: What is the standard time for thinking or deciding? Who determines that? Particularly in the context of consent, how quickly should – or rather, must – the consenter arrive at a decision? And why does failing to decide or express a decision often result in an assumed “yes” from the consenter’s side? Tracing these questions, the conventional framework of consent can be found grounded on two main presuppositions: (i) The roles of the giver and recipient of consent remain unexchanged. Which is to say the onus to consent or not is entirely on women, while men, positioned as recipients, are assumed to be exempt from this burden. As Carole Pateman (1980), in her essay “Women and Consent,” analysing the gendered dimension of traditional consent theories, argues, “Consent must always be given to something; in the relationship between two sexes, it is always women who are held to consent to men. The “naturally” superior, active, and sexually aggressive male makes an initiative, or offers a contract, to which a “naturally” subordinate, passive woman “consents.’’’

Therefore, it is evident that the nature of conventional theories of consent is inherently non-gender-neutral, born out of and reinforcing the ingrained societal divisions of roles predicated on the basis of gender. Meaning thereby, that women are, much like with other societal expectations such as household chores, child-rearing, and upholding the family’s fragile honour (responsibilities that remain “untouchable” for men), disproportionately burdened with the responsibility of performing consent. This additional layering of responsibility, ironically in the guise of autonomy, exposes how women are oppressed by the very practice of liberation. Undoubtedly, women have been, and continue to be, subjected to far greater violations of consent compared to men. However, it is crucial to recognise that women were not granted a right to give or deny consent to men, but that consent was instead ascribed to them as an indelible facet of their supposed nature, like a ‘natural’ trait they inherently possess. As a result, the authority to interpret the consent of ‘naturally’ subordinate women – whose refusal or non-consent was perceived as a mere expression of their ‘modest nature’ – was vested to ‘naturally’ superior men as a sacrosanct right. (ii) Secondly, the act of consent has been surmised as a singular, momentary event – a transactional exchange, framed as an unequivocal agreement. To put it radically, if a woman says “yes,” her body is lent, unconditionally, to a man until he decides to un-lend it. The sheer ignorance of the intricacies of consent, or its performance, serves only to strengthen the enduring patriarchal framework that holds sway in a society where the bodies, desires, and even voices of women have been, and, tragically, continue to be, defined and controlled by men. Consequently, a “yes” –whether verbal or gestural – cannot be shallowly inferred as an authentic, unambiguous, and static agreement to a “contract” proposed by men.

Women, historically relegated as chattel under the dominion of the paterfamilias, are, perhaps surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, presumed to possess an essential bodily agency within the theatre of consent. The social, structural and material conditions in which the act of consent is performed have often been side-lined, divorced from the idealised assumptions of autonomy that ground it. Take, for example, unwelcome sexual advances are recognised as sexual harassment, but what if a woman does not resist such advances from her workplace senior because she fears severe repercussions, such as losing her job? Or consider a girlfriend who says “yes” to a sexual act she is unwilling to engage in, simply because she anticipates that refusing might ruin her boyfriend’s mood and strain their relationship. These examples, where “will” and “consent” are contested, reveal how illusory it is to believe that women’s consent is truly theirs. Therefore, consideration of the manifold aspects and factors preordaining the script of consent results in a confrontation with the utter insensitivity of defining and idealising a normative notion of consent – a construct that is, in reality, for those it promises, or more aptly, claims to empower, fundamentally non-consensual.

The word consent has its roots in the Latin word consentire, which is formed through the assimilation of com (“with, together”) and sentire (“to feel”), thus literally translating to “to feel together.” To feel. Together. On the contrary, the way in which consent is defined, understood, and practised has led to the consequences where it has lost its meaning, its essence. To understand the ever-changing nature of consent, it is crucial to trace how its meaning and practice varies across social, cultural, and temporal contexts, and how it evolves within different forms of relationships and encounters or interactions. For instance, in places or cultures where hugging is not an everyday gesture, one might ask before hugging on a first date. Though, as the relationship grows, gestures like hugging or kissing may no longer require explicit consent, while further sexual intimacy might still demand it. Therefore, when someone kisses their partner who does not resist, can consent be presumed? How can one discern whether their partner did not desire to consent but felt unable to express it? In a country like India, marital rape is still legal because outlawing it is deemed “excessively harsh” by the current government. To what extent is the presupposed “consent” of women, authorised within a “marriage contract,” different from the “consent” of sex workers, which is shaped by various societal factors and cannot always be presumed to reflect their true will or desire? As a result, consent, as performed within a fundamentally patriarchal society, cannot guarantee the expression of an uncompromised desire of the consenter – a woman, who has never been considered a desiring subject but instead remains a mere object of desire. Altogether, it clearly is evident that consent is often performed within a world of delusions, created between the performative and non-performative selves of women – a space where the latter, amidst the performance, turns with a glimmer of hope to spot and reclaim the former, but gets blinded by the glaring light of deceptive authority.

During a performance, both the performer and the audience are effortlessly aware that the dramatised expressions on display are not real. All the same, as Sudipta Kaviraj (2021) observes, a skilled actor is one who is able to produce a “real illusion of similarity” between themselves and the character they portray. This illusion blurs the line between imitation and authenticity, captivating the audience with the performance as if it were real. In the “theatre of consent,” a similar performance is staged – an intimate pageant where a constructed version of the self is presented as real, complying with the gendered script of consent. Noticeably, here, men are not the audience but the directors – setting the rules, judging the performance, and reaping its rewards. One might wonder how men can judge a performance in which they are not the audience. The answer lies in the very construction of the gendered performative self. A woman, like a character, is not an autonomous being but a creation – designed, constructed, and controlled by man, the director; her performance is shaped by the expectations, desires, and judgments of her male creator, who becomes part of her identity, judging her from within the veil of her “own” shadow. There is always a “man” within a “woman,” who remains loyal to its creator, its father – a man – to whom a woman remains tethered, eternally.

Unshrouding the obsolete conventional understanding of consent – whose roots lie deeply entrenched in the soil of patriarchy – reveals that consent, in contrast to how it has been universally advocated, is not a mere “nod,” but instead a performative act. It brings to light how patriarchy has systematically reduced the profound essence of human will to a hollow, calculated, and serviceable transaction that it labels as “consent”. This shatters the illusion of women’s autonomy, often superficially assumed in their consent, and opens up a space where consent cannot be understood as an unequivocal, timeless contract. Instead, it is a living dialogue that can be renegotiated or repealed at any moment. But, is it possible? The cold truth that, ultimately, men hold the sole power to interpret consent forces us to confront the urgency to search for an alternative that is more just, egalitarian, and gender-neutral.

References:

• Kaviraj, S. (2021). Rethinking representation: Politics and aesthetics. Philosophy East and West, 71, 79–107. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/5/article/777890/pdf 
• Pateman, C. (1980). Women and Consent. Political Theory, 8(2), 149–168.

Cover Image: Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unspalsh