Democracy and tolerance to subordination: free-choice and consent in feminist political theory

• Published in: Revista de sociologia e política 2013-12, Vol.21 (48), p.127-142
• Main Author: BIROLI, Flavia
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Subjects: Choices; Democracy; Ethics; Feminism; Feminist Theory; Informed Consent; Liberalism; Opposite Sex Relations; Political theory; Preferences; Rape; Self Determination; Subordination; Values; Vulnerability
• ISSN: 0104-4478
• DOI: 10.1590/S0104-44782013000400008

The text presents and analyses feminist critics to the adjustments between the liberal value of individual free-choice and material and symbolic iniquities that restrain individual autonomy. The focus is primarily a critical analysis of voluntary consent, a basic notion to liberalism. The aspects related to consent and rape are discussed to expose the limits of the liberal duality between coertion and free-choice. Departing from gender relations and the vulnerabilities that concern women's social position, it is possible to have a better understanding of the connections between consent in liberal societies' day-by-day life and consent in liberal-democratic State. These analyses result in a desplacement of the focus, from the expression of preference and choice as voluntary acts, to self-determination as a primary value to democracy. Two sets of issues are, therefore, considered: those emerging from situations in which the differences between consent and non-consent are nullified - nullifying also individual's moral agency - and those emerging from situations in which consent exists, but leads to subordination or deepens individual vulnerability. Adapted from the source document.