Human sexuality is the act of expressing intimacy and sexual sensation amongst human beings. A persons consent is based on acquiescence or compliance between the two parties. There are three types of consent; affirmative consent refers to a person’s express of word indicating agreement, free consent that is a person agreed freely without being induced by fraud, violence, threat or even coercion and capacity to consent that is based on legal ability.
A good example of affirmative consent is a scenario whereby both parties are of legal age and have an agreement in that during the intercourse they both use words like ‘okay’, keep going’ etc. Free consent is whereby both parties agree on having sexual intercourse without being threatened by any one; a good example is two people in love who are of legal age also. Capacity to consent is mostly based on married people that have legal ability to have sexual intercourse.
A person may not be able to consent due to various factors like age, intoxication, unconsciousness, physical disability etcetera. A situation whereby a person is unconscious in that they are asleep, sedated or even suffering from physical trauma may not be able to consent to sexual intercourse since they are physically helpless. Another example is when a person is suffering from physical disability .This makes a person not able agree nor disagree to the act. An intoxicated person may not be privileged to consent as the state may not know if the victim agreed voluntarily or involuntarily.
In the California state, consent is termed as the positive cooperation in attitude and act while pursuing free will. The individual should act voluntarily and gain enough understanding regarding the transaction nature and act in context .Hawaii states that person should be able to free to the sexual act by compulsion and should not be mentally incapacitated nor physically helpless(HRS §§ 707-730; 707-731; 707-732).
The forms of sexual violence include sexual assault, incest, child sexual abuse, intimate partner sexual abuse, drug-facilitated sexual assault and sexual assault of men and boys. An example is a scenario whereby a victim consent is exploited in that the act was an attempted rape, such that the victim was forced to perform the act through oral sex or penetration to the perpetrators body. Another example is when a victim is forced to have the sexual act by a family member. This act is known as incest and the victim may not be able to report the incidence due to blood ties and causes lasting effect on the survivor.
Work cited
https://www.rainn.org/about-sexual-assault
