Navigating Consent Through the Lens of Contemporary Sexualities

Is consent simply saying “yes”? This book argues that it is not. Drawing on concrete cases—a BDSM scene that goes wrong, a dark romance reader facing judgment, a dominatrix rebuilding after domestic violence, and the invention of the telephone as a technology that captures us by the ears.

Is consent simply saying “yes”? This book argues that it is not. Drawing on concrete cases—a BDSM scene that goes wrong, a dark romance reader facing judgment, a dominatrix rebuilding after domestic violence, and the invention of the telephone as a technology that captures us through the ears—it shows that consent is never a sovereign act but an opaque process, shaped by the unconscious, history, and power relations. This book brings together qualitative fieldwork, psychoanalysis, and queer theory to examine the tension between necessary frameworks (safewords, negotiation, and communities) and their transgression in practice. Each chapter explores what Avgi Saketopoulou calls limit-consent: consenting to the unknown, to what exceeds us. From dungeons to dark romance, from cinema screens to telephones, the authors show how the experience of vertigo—when pleasure meets risk, play tips into coercion, or trauma resurfaces—can, under certain conditions, become a lever for subjective and political transformation. The central finding is that consent is not a binary “yes/no” but a fragile, ongoing process where the unconscious and power dynamics constantly interfere. Recognizing this opacity does not weaken consent; it makes it more attentive to what truly matters in intimate encounters. This book is for students and researchers in gender studies, psychoanalysis, and the humanities; for practitioners (psychologists, social workers, and psychoanalysts); for BDSM practitioners; and foranyone who questions what consent really means—beyond slogans, legal definitions, and certainties.