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Sexual Refusal: The Fragility of Women's Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2023

Elinor Mason
Elinor Mason*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA
*
Corresponding author. elinormason@ucsb.edu
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Abstract

I expand on and defend a particular account of silencing that has been identified by Mary Kate McGowan. She suggests that one sort of silencing occurs when men do not think that women have the authority to refuse. I develop this proposal, arguing that it is usefully distinct from other forms of silencing, which attribute a radical misunderstanding to the perpetrator. Authority-silencing, by contrast, concedes that the perpetrator understands that the woman is trying to refuse. I examine the nature of authority and of refusal and argue that a normatively binding refusal requires authority: the normative capacity to make a determination that has a “because I said so” structure. Women's authority in this sense is fragile. Authority to refuse sexual advances can be lost through women's attire, how much they have had to drink, location, or their profession. This account makes sense of the way that perpetrators both do and do not understand sexual refusal, and explains how they are blameworthy despite their misunderstanding.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , Winter 2023 , pp. 114 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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