Sex and Self-Ownership: Essays on Consent and the Criminal Law

Since the criminal law acquits a person who mistakenly believed that another person consented to the sex that they forced upon them: 'rape is not prohibited; it is regulated' (to borrow Mackinnon's phrase). This book is concerned with the legal category of 'the exculpatory mistaken belief in consent', why this category ought to be narrowed, and how it can be narrowed without departing from criminal law's retributive morality and principles of criminalisation.

The book calls for three reform...