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Reframing honour in heterosexual imaginaries
Churcher, Millicent Gatens, Moira
Churcher, Millicent
Gatens, Moira
Author
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between honour and recognition in the context of normative heterosexuality, and the implications of this relationship for sustaining and transforming problematic sexual norms. Building on recent attempts to move beyond a narrow and restrictive focus on consent as a means of thinking through the ethics of heterosexual sex, we reflect critically on the concept of honour in this domain. Honour, in our approach, is a cluster concept that houses a number of related normative values and affective attitudes, including respect, self-respect, pride, dignity, esteem, integrity, trust, and honesty. We examine how honour is distributed by heterosexual imaginaries in ways that privilege men in the sexual encounter, and argue that part of cultivating ethical heterosexual relations is to imagine a sexual honour code where both men and women see themselves, and are seen by their counterpart, as entitled to sexual respect. To conclude, the paper examines and defends the cultivation of ethical, just, and honourable heterosexual relations as a necessarily embodied, intersubjective, and imaginative endeavour that involves challenges to, and shifts within, multiple imaginaries and (in)sensibilities that cluster to support damaging norms of sexual conduct.
Keywords
sexual ethics, honour, consent, heterosexual imaginaries
Date
2019
Type
Journal article
Journal
Book
Volume
24
Issue
4
Page Range
151-164
Article Number
ACU Department
Collections
Relation URI
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled
Notes
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group