Willis Malachi, Smith Rebecca
University of Glasgow, UK.
University of Greenwich, London, UK.
J Interpers Violence. 2022 Oct;37(19-20):NP18908-NP18934. doi: 10.1177/08862605211044101. Epub 2021 Oct 8.
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 ( = 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.
性同意是指人们内心愿意与他人进行性活动，以及对这种意愿的外在表达。内在和外在的性同意可能因性行为类型而异；然而，以往关于性同意的研究主要只评估了“典型”的性行为，如生殖器接触、口交和阴道性交，而没有提供更多背景信息，也没有承认人们的性取向多样性。因此，我们初步描述了人们对更广泛的性行为及其发生背景的性同意情况，以及缺乏性同意的情况。通过对英国和美国的参与者进行在线横断面调查（n = 658，50.5%为女性），我们研究了20种性行为或背景下事件层面的内在和外在性同意。在20种性行为中，女性报告的性同意感受显著低于男性的有12种，积极同意表达水平较低的有7种。近三分之一的参与者（31.0%）曾经历过至少一种所列的违背其意愿的性行为。在这些人中，参与者平均报告在所列的20种性行为中有3.1种是未经同意的经历，范围从1种到11种。与男性相比，更多女性报告至少有一种所评估的性行为是未经同意的经历（分别为47.9%和22.3%）。我们讨论了关于性同意及其缺乏的几个特定行为的研究结果。我们还为旨在促进健康的性同意行为的倡议提出了建议：接受性取向多样性、强调性自主权，并鼓励积极的同意表达。
