research project
Freedom in the Feminist Utopian Tradition
working papers
The Ambiguities of Sexual Consent
Vanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, caused a firestorm when it was published in France in 2020, as it recounted her sexual relationship with the famed writer, Gabriel Matzneff, that began when she was 14 and he was in his 50s. An open secret at the time, the relationship was tolerated and even encouraged by the adults in Springora’s life, an attitude chalked up by both Matzneff’s defenders and accusers to the permissive attitude toward sexuality and what was commonly referred to as “seduction” in the post-1968 environment. Springora does not so much accuse those who failed to protect her as much as she sadly informs the reader of a childhood lost to domination and exploitation, as well as Matzneff’s continued harassment of her in the decades since. Response to the memoir was immediate: though the statute of limitations had passed, Matzneff was dropped by his publishers and a pension based on his literary output, much of which traced his many relationships with adolescents, was rescinded. Perhaps more significantly, France finally established an age of consent (Robcis 2021). Yet a vocal minority has wondered how best to understand Springora’s relationship with Matzneff, as she unambiguously consented to it, albeit as an adolescent. This paper explores the ambiguities of consent presented by Springora’s memoir, drawing on recent feminist theory (Fischel 2016; Garcia 2021; Srinivasan 2021) and histories of sexual culture in post-1968 France (Bourg 2007; Robcis 2013; Shepard 2017). Following Alcoff (2018), the paper demonstrates that current concepts of consent are inadequate to address situations of deep structural inequalities, such as those in Springora and Matzneff’s relationship. It argues that the cultural permissiveness of late modern France that allowed the relationship to occur challenges two commonplace beliefs about consent that are nonetheless in tension with one another: the first, about the efficacy and desirability of a standard of affirmative consent, and the second, the belief that adolescents cannot act agentically and do not possess sexual autonomy. Reading these two claims with and against each other points toward a new framework for consent grounded in the capacity for judgment.
Wollstonecraft’s Class Politics
One of the most notable shifts in Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings is her attitude toward women of the lower classes. As is well known, the admonitions contained in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman are addressed toward women of the emerging middle class, whom Wollstonecraft positions as the moral superiors of both poor women and the elite. Yet by the time she authors Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman a few short years later, the novel’s most interesting character is just such a poor woman, Jemima, who challenges the novel’s ostensible protagonist for her claim on that role. This paper traces a cluster of concerns - domesticity, excess, and exclusion - that render Jemima sympathetic in Wollstonecraft’s eyes. It argues that by the time she writes Maria, Wollstonecraft comes to recognize an informal market in women’s labor, one that possesses liberatory potential but more often than not serves to isolate and abuse women, particularly those without the legal protection of a father or husband. The paper contributes to a nascent literature on Wollstonecraft’s political economy and develops arguments made in Gallagher (2022).