In a context of the reframing of the political subject of feminism and the development of LGBTQI struggles, recent works propose to queer the study of consent and sexual violence (Patterson & Grosset, 2016; Buggs & Hoppe, 2023), which until now has been deeply structured by “heteronormativity” (Fassin, 1997).
Following on from this work, and discussing feminist theory, this paper proposes a new genealogy of sexual consent based on the preventive norms promoted by gay/LGBTQI organisations fighting AIDS and the notion of “safer-sex” (Escoffier, 1998-1999). This socio-history of sexual consent will focus on the study of the Syndicat National des Entreprises Gaies (SNEG) / National Union of Gay Businesses, founded in France in 1990, through a large body of archives (approximately 400 documents) and biographical interviews with association’s members (n=12).
First, I will present a brief history of feminist movements fighting sexual violence in France, highlighting the heteronormativity that structures them. I will thus demonstrate the limitations of certain feminist frameworks for studying sexual consent outside of heterosexuality. Building on this, I will propose a queer epistemology for studying sexual violence, based on the idea that sexual consent is the result of negotiating power relations and structural norms in sexuality (Butler, 1993, 2004). This approach can be applied to both sexual violence and HIV prevention.
Secondly, I will draw on the above theoretical framework to explore the evolution of HIV prevention discourses produced by the SNEG in the early 2000s, in the context of barebacking and relapse in the second half of the 1990s. In a 2004 campaign, the SNEG integrated prevention into the very core of seduction interactions and insisted on rules to frame them (Busscher, 2010). Few years later, the SNEG broadened the concept of safer sex to apply it to conjugality, in a campaign targeting gay couples. The relational nature of sexuality was thus reaffirmed from a perspective of ‘negotiated safety’ (Kippas et al., 1997), what queer and feminist theory would call sexual consent.
The history of AIDS struggle could thus shed new light on the problematisation of sexual consent and feminist theories related to that topic.
