Polyamory Consent: 2026 Communication Strategies for Boundaries

Let’s Talk About Consent

What is sexual consent? What practices does it refer to? Rébecca Lévy-Guillain explores these questions through the prism of sociology in her doctoral research. A Ph.D. student at the National Institute for demographic studies (Ined) and at the Observatoire sociologique du changement (OSC) of Sciences Po, she is studying the uses of the category

A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent

Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more.

A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent

Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more.

Against the Couple-Form | LIES Journal

Libidinal flows cut through the social world. Amorous and sexual relations do not exist in some domain safely taped off from the rest of society. Rather they are constituent elements of nearly every aspect of social life. Desire flows and circulates amongst places of employment, intellectual debates, political organizing, artistic circles, playgrounds, and cemeteries. The elderly patient grabs at the breast of a nurse hunched over him. A governmental official strips his newly hired intern down to her leopard print thong during an important briefing in his office. The incarcerated man holds his hand up to the glass of the visiting booth, attempting to touch his wife after twenty years of their bodily separation. These flows of libidinal desire operate within and amongst broader social mechanisms, such that they help animate the dynamics of economic and political life. Often a locus of politics, desire permeates the so-called ‘public’ terrain.

Beyond Equality—Non-Monogamy and the Necropolitics of Marriage

‘Marriage equality’ has been a widely used slogan and mobilizing concept for LGBTQ+ rights’ movements across the globe striving for formal recognition for ‘same-sex’ or ‘same-gender’ marriages. In this article, we critically interrogate the terminology and political rationality that have given shape to ‘marriage equality’ campaigns. We demonstrate the structural erasure of non-monogamous relations and populations from the changes hoped for and envisioned in these mobilizations. The lack of any genuine and substantial concern with consensual non-monogamies (CNMs) from most of the literature in the field highlights the close entanglement of marriage with monogamy. As a result, ideas are scarce about how meaningful and adequate legal recognition and social policy provisions for a wide range of intimate, sexual, familial, and/or caring bonds or constellations on the CNM continuum could look like. We argue that the critique of the mononormativity inherent to marriage is fundamental to understanding the role of this in the 21st century. We identify the roots of the mononormativity of marriage in its governmental role as a necropolitical and biopolitical technology, evidenced by its ‘civilizing’ function in white settler colonial projects. Because of this, an expansion of the call for equality to include non-monogamous populations does not resolve but rather aggravates the problem. We conclude that any truly queer politics of CNM consequently needs to be anti-marriage.

Relationship Anarchy - LGBTQIA+ Wiki

Relationship Anarchy (abbreviated RA) is the belief that relationships should not be bound by set rules, aside from the rules the individuals involved mutually agree...

The School of Consent-Based Business

Discover a deeply human way of doing business on the internet

Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future - The Center for Partnership Systems

By Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, by Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, holds the key to a clear perspective on our personal and social options in today’s world, showing how to structure our environments – from family and gender relations […]

Relationship Design

Peter McGraw sits with Jessalyn Dean to discuss relationship design. Tune in as they challenge societal norms and craft connections beyond convention.

Anatomy of a Sex Scene: Heated Rivalry Edition - Reading the End

Stop saying there's no plot! A romance critic explains the craft of the sex scenes in Crave's Heated Rivalry (2025).

The Consentful Tech Project – The Consentful Tech Project raises awareness, develops strategies, and shares skills to help people build and use technology consentfully.

The Consentful Tech Project, the Detroit Community Technology Project, And Also Too, and Data 4 Black Lives are thrilled to announce the launch of our new curriculum. From protecting ourselves…

The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy

Andie Nordgren The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy 2006

Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children

Chatbots on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are empowered to engage in ‘romantic role-play’ that can turn explicit. Some people inside the company are concerned.

A Spectrum of Consent

Blockchain & Decentralized Identity Architect — Internet Cryptography Pioneer — Co-author TLS Security Standard — Collaborative Tools & Patterns