The Enduring Sexual Violence of Cisheteronormativity: Failures of Postfeminist Consent and the Promise of Queering Prevention

• In Event: Sociology of Sexualities Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Sexuality, the State, and Religion

Abstract

Purpose and Methods: Despite decades of prevention programming, rates of sexual violence (SV) have not meaningfully declined. This article draws on participatory research with straight and LBTQ+ peer educators in Canada to examine why prevention efforts have not produced meaningful reductions in SV. The concept of unconscious endurance is advanced to describe how cisheteronormativity and postfeminist sensibilities compel women and AFAB non-binary people to remain in unwanted or unequal sexual encounters, recasting self-sacrifice as care, confidence, or empowerment. These dynamics persist even as schools and universities expand prevention curricula, underscoring the structural endurance of rape culture.
Results: The findings highlight three interrelated themes: (1) heterosexual scripts continue to organize sexual and relational life through endurance, where prioritizing men’s pleasure and ego is normalized as part of intimacy; (2) queer sexual cultures provide counter-scripts grounded in joy, reciprocity, and mutuality, illuminating what is foreclosed when prevention ignores cisheteronormativity as a structuring violence; and (3) prevention efforts confront a pedagogical paradox, as attempts to challenge cis heterosexual men’s entitlement risk reinscribing women and non-binary people with the emotional labor of persuasion.
Conclusions: Situated in a political moment marked by resurgent misogyny —including the rise of ‘tradfeminist’ ideals that reassert women’s subordination— and anti-queer backlash, this article argues that prevention must move beyond frameworks centered on awareness, consent, or bystander intervention to reimagine sexual ethics. Queer sexual joy is taken up here not only as an epistemology but also as a pedagogical orientation. It disrupts endurance and reorients sexual ethics toward reciprocity and care, unsettling cisheteronormative defaults and offering new ethical possibilities for all sexual relationships.

Authors

• JJ Wright, MacEwan University

• Gillian Robinson, University of Alberta