In order to answer the question about the conditions under which sex i — Consent

"“Consent is ‘Do you want to have sex this time with this person?’ And we can’t imply that from the fact that you’ve had sex with him before. … So I think it’s a really dangerous precedent.”"

"A person would be incapable of giving consent if she is unconscious or is so intoxicated by alcohol or drugs as to be incapable of understanding or perceiving the situation that presents itself. This does not mean, however, that an intoxicated person cannot give consent to sexual activity. Clearly, a drunk can consent."

"Modern consent, then, is a very specific, narrowly defined legal concept developed at the end of the eighteenth century in part to differentiate full citizens from partial citizens or non-citizens. It is not a vague or open idea: citizens-mature, sane, politically active individuals-are capable of cosnnet. Partial citizens, passive citizens, or non citizens-those below the ae of maturity, those declared insane, orthe politically inactive-are not. In ther eam of sexual crime, the most obvious manifestation of this notibly is in legislation on statutory rape where, whether or not a child consents to sex according to conventional standards, the activity is strll criminal because the child has not become a full citizen and thus capable of consent according to political and legal standards. Children, however, are noy the only partial citizens or non-citizens regulated by national or international political structures, and it is here that the cosnent/bodily integrity formula becomes problematic. Another increasingly recognizable non-citizen or partial citizen is the (internal or external) refugee-mature, sane regualted, but not in any way a full political actor. Indeed, what recent national and international interpetations of consent and bodily integrity have produced from the perspective of refugees-even, or especially, to the extent that they have been endowed with ersatz riights-is a situation in which any and all sexual or reproductive behavior on their part has become crinimal. Sex has become rape and reproduction has become criminal abortion and/or criminal procreation."

"At first glance, it would seem it should be easy for German authorities to prosecute Meiwes. In fact, however, as the New York Times reported on December 27, though the authorities want to prosecute Meiwes to the fullest extent of the law, they are having trouble finding any serious crimes with which to charge him. The obstacle to a murder charge is the fact that the evidence incontrovertibly shows that Meiwess victim wanted to be eaten. Indeed, he had agreed to the arrangement over the Internet, answering an ad placed by Meiwes that specifically sought a person who wanted to be slaughtered and cannibalized. In the United States, the victims consent is no defense to murder, and it would be easy to prosecute an American counterpart to Meiwes. But in Germany, the victims consent renders the crime a "killing on request" -- that is, an instance of illegal euthanasia. Unfortunately, this offense is punishable by a very modest sentence of from six months to five years of incarceration."

"Similarly wobbly views on sex and adolescents—or rather sex with adolescents—are on profligate historical display elsewhere. It goes in the opposite direction, too. The age of consent in 1920s Chile was 20, but now its 16. A century ago in Italy, it was 16, too. But today its 14 there. Overall, studying the numbers in even the most contemporary international age-of-consent table will give you the impression that youre looking at a flurry of seemingly random digits between 12 and 21 (a sizable range): Its 13 in Argentina, 18 in Turkey, 16 in Canada, 12 in Mexico, 20 in Tunisia, 16 in Western Australia, 15 in Sweden, and so on. "More than 800 years after the first recorded age of consent laws," writes the historian Stephen Robertson, "the one constant is the lack of consistency." Just as when were assessing religions with conflicting theologies, we can draw only two possible conclusions from Robertsons observation: Either some societies have the one true age of consent and every other has therefore got it wrong, or any given societys age of consent is based on what its citizens have simply chosen to believe about human sexuality and psychological development. And similar to what any objective analysis of competing religious beliefs would force us to conclude, theres no evidence that the former is the case for cultural variations in age of consent laws (that there is "one true age") and every reason for us to conclude the latter is in fact what were dealing with."

"Perhaps the hallmark of late twentieth-century critical legal studies (CLS) writing was the claim that this widely made inference from consent to value is simply unwarranted. People’s abilities to ascertain and act on their own self-interest are limited, the critical scholars argued. The capacity of countries, institutions, multinational corporations, social forces, or simply stronger parties to create in individual subjects a willingness to consent to transactions or changes that do not in fact increase their well being is well documented. “Consent” of the weaker can be manufactured to serve the interests of dominant parties, and when it is manufactured, it is not a good measure of the value to the weak of that to which consent was given. Neither skepticism regarding the good motives or knowledge base of the “paternalist,” nor faith in the self-regarding preferences of the individual, justify the unexamined inference that a consensual change so extracted is a good one for all affected parties. The degree to which a consensual change is perceived as such is the degree to which it has been unduly legitimated by the consent that preceded it. The legitimation cost of consensual transactions, then, is the sometimes unwarranted belief in the increased value of the change to which consent was proffered."